Kate Catterall (Associate Professor, School of Design and Creative Technologies)
Dear colleagues,
It would be an honor to serve as a member of the Faculty Council Executive Committee (FCEC). I bring to the assignment insights from my years as a member of faculty in College of Fine Arts (COFA), initially situated within the Department of Art and Art History, a conventional academic unit, and more recently as one of few tenured faculty in the relatively new School of Design and Creative Technology.
In 2015-16, I joined the campus-wide Innovation Task Force, led by Dr. Julia Mickenberg from American Studies, working with colleagues from across the university to draft a roadmap for cross-disciplinary collaboration at all levels on campus. The task force emerged from then Provost Fenves’ Campus Conversations and was an exhilarating experience in creating a collective vision for this university. It also led to a prototype course offering, “The History and Future of Higher Education” that I taught with Julia and another Task Force member, Dr. Richard Reddick. The course engaged students and faculty from American Studies, Design and Education, and served as a prototype for speculative and collaborative research through teaching.
These experiences have led me recognize the creative and transformative potential of cross-disciplinary committees on campus and spurring me to contribute to the deliberations of the FCEC. I would also embrace the opportunity to provide insights, at the university level, from what Nigel Cross refers to as the third culture of education -- design and the arts -- sharing knowledge derived from arts-related research fields across our campus. I’m eager to address pressing issues in higher education and for our institution, utilizing “… skill[s] and understanding embodied in the arts of planning, inventing, making and doing” (Cross, Nigel. (2006). Designerly Ways of Knowing. 10.1007/1-84628-301-9.), augmenting approaches contributed by researchers from the humanities, sciences and other traditionally “academic” fields.
If given the opportunity I will bring a thoughtful diligence to my role on FCEC and contribute to its collaborative agenda.
Notes
- An understanding of the budgetary, curricular and academic concerns of an academic unit, gleaned during my years as an Assistant Chair and head of the then Design Division in AAH.
- Service to the Faculty Council as a general member and as a member of the Committee on Committees, which I chaired 2017-2018.
Jaimie Davis (Associate Professor, Nutritional Sciences)
Jaimie N. Davis, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences. Dr. Davis received her BS in Nutritional Sciences from UT-Austin, where she then become a practicing Registered Dietitian. She later went back and got her PhD in Nutritional Sciences from UT-Austin, and then moved to Los Angeles where she did her postdoctoral fellowship and then transitioned to faculty at The University of Southern California. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Davis’s research has focused on designing and implementing dietary and exercise interventions to reduce obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes risk factors in youth and adults. She has conducted numerous clinical, community and school-based randomized controlled trials with high-risk populations. She has 100 peer-reviewed articles that address how dietary and physical activity behaviors impact and mediate changes in adiposity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiometabolic disease risk factors. She has served as Principal Investigator on numerous federal and foundation grants. She has developed and taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses over the past decade. Dr. Davis has served in many leadership roles at the department, school, and college level including: Graduate Advisor (2014-2019), Graduate Studies Committee Chair (2019-present), Co-Chair of the CNS Graduate Education Committee (2017-2018), Member of the 21st Century Graduate Education Committee (2016-2018), Associate Chair of her department (2018-present), Chair of Search Committees (2019-present), and Chair of School of Human Ecology Graduate Program Committee (2019-present). Dr. Davis is ready and willing to take on more leadership roles at the university level.
Amanda Hager (Associate Professor of Instruction, Mathematics)
I'm excited to be joining Faculty Council for a second term. I have one year's experience on the Executive Committee, and I have chaired both the A3 Committee on Committees and the A5 Faculty Welfare Committee. I also served as Faculty Council Parliamentarian for three semesters. Connected to the curriculum work that Faculty Council does, I am serving on the Quantitative Reasoning Flag committee for UGS and I will be serving on the UGS Advisory Committee from 2022-2025.
I am particularly interested in faculty welfare and faculty affairs, and in Mathematics I do service work on faculty annual review, mentoring, and assessment of teaching. I also work for Texas Institute for Discovery Education in Science (TIDES) performing teaching consultations for CNS faculty; to date I have visited about 80 different instructors in 16 different departments and units. Coupled with my work in Faculty Council, I believe this has given me quite a bit of perspective in a short amount of time on the incredible diversity of teaching cultures and work cultures that our colleagues experience here. I hope to contribute by fighting for an ever greater diversity of voices in Faculty Council and for better working conditions for faculty, tenure-stream and professional track alike.
Stephanie Holmsten (Associate Professor of Instruction, Government)
I am honored to run for Faculty Council’s Executive Committee. In leadership positions throughout the university, I have developed skills for collaborating across colleges to build community, investing in high-quality teaching, and finding innovative solutions to pressing challenges. I believe these skills would be useful in FCEC.
As chair of the Provost Teaching Fellows, I worked with faculty across the university to design innovative teaching projects, providing a supportive community to workshop these ideas, connecting with others doing similar work, and creating smart solutions to address specific needs at the university. Our renovated website now showcases these impressive projects. The annual Texas Teach-Up connects faculty in low-stakes, peer-to-peer classroom observations. Our podcast, The Other Side of Campus, highlights the stories of amazing UT faculty. My efforts in PTF demonstrate my commitment to building communities that supports faculty to be successful.
Chairing the New Faculty Symposium, I designed the campus-wide, two-day event that highlighted the diversity of faculty, students and staff and invited our new colleagues to find belonging in our community. I also direct the faculty learning community for our global virtual exchange faculty, where faculty share best practices and address challenges together. I have invested in professional track faculty, serving on COLA’s Professional Track Advisory Committee and as Associate Director of IRG.
Having served this past year on Faculty Council and the Education Policy Committee, I would like to deepen my work in faculty governance because of the pressing issues we are facing at this time. I would enjoy contributing to the FCEC team as we build an effective community to solve hard problems and design practical, meaningful solutions.
Lisa Moore (Professor, English)
I am standing for election to the Faculty Council Executive Committee because current attacks on faculty governance and academic freedom require all hands on deck. We have recently seen how effective advocacy by faculty, led by FCEC among others, denied an attempt by non-University actors to bypass the normal channels of peer evaluation in the creation of the Liberty Institute. This is a heartening development that shows how effective we can be when we remain vigilant and speak up in defense of our rights, at the same time holding administrators and the Board of Regents accountable for their responsibilities. My experience as co-chair of the President's Committee for LGBTQ+ Initiatives (2019-20) and the Provost's Council for LGBTQ+ Equity, Access and Inclusion (2019-present), has given me the opportunity to meet and work with senior staff and faculty across the University on issues of faculty, staff, and student welfare. As Director of the LGBTQ Studies Program (2019-23), I have been part of efforts by the College of Liberal Arts Diversity Committee to increase recruitment and retention of underrepresented faculty and to strengthen institutional support for gender and ethnic studies at a time when those areas have been political targets. As a member of FCEC, my intention is to be a strong advocate for faculty self-governance, academic freedom, and a shared sense of purpose and community on our campus. Thank you for your consideration.
Tyrone Porter (Professor, Biomedical Engineering)
My name is Tyrone Porter and I am a Full Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. I am firm believer in societal and institutional evolution and that they work in concert. Universities, such as UT, have a mission to educate students and prepare them to contribute to our evolving society. As a member of the Faculty Council Executive Committee (FCEC), I will be committed to thinking strategically about the evolution of UT and how best to support our students, faculty, and staff as we work to fulfill this mission. My tenure in higher education, both as a student and as a faculty member, has prepared me for this role. As a graduate student I received training on strategic planning and I also served on the University President Search Advisory Committee, which provided insight at a relatively young age on how a university is governed. I have held numerous leadership positions in which strategic planning was essential, such as a member of the Executive Council for the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), as the founder and chair of the Committee for Improving Racial Diversity and Inclusivity within the ASA, and as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Institute of Physics. Lastly, I participated in the Northeast Faculty Leadership Program hosted by Northeastern University, which was a semester-long intense program on university governance and leadership skills. It would be an honor to leverage these past leadership experiences and serve this Faculty Council as a member of the FCEC and continue to move UT forward.
Stuart Reichler (Associate Professor of Practice, College of Natural Sciences)
I am an Associate Professor of Practice, and I have been a faculty member in the UT College of Natural Sciences since 2001. I lead both the Urban Ecosystems and Maker Space undergraduate research groups as part of the Freshman Research Initiative in the College of Natural Sciences. My classes offer both introductory lab credits as well as upper-division research credit. My research focuses on understanding the impact of urbanization on the environment. Through my environmental work, I have collaborated with faculty from Fine Arts, Communications, and Engineering.
I have served on the Faculty Council since 2018 working on the Calendar and Faculty Welfare committees. I am interested in serving on the FCEC to push back against the administration’s willingness to pander to reactionary extremists instead of serving the needs of UT’s faculty, staff, and students. We need meaningful actions to solve the real problems facing our campus. I want to be a voice for ALL faculty to the UT administration. Our needs are not being met on a range of topics from equitable pay to diverse hiring. We should be moving more aggressively to protect academic freedom, increase faculty diversity, and dismantle the caste system that woefully undervalues the role of professional faculty. We, along with students and staff, are The University. Faculty input should be integral to policies at UT. If I am elected to the FCEC, I will work to bring these issues to the administration’s attention and push them to act on solutions.
Philip Schnarrs (Associate Professor of Population Health, Population Health)
Phillip W. Schnarrs, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Population Health at Dell Medical School and received his Ph.D. in Health Behavior from Indiana University School of Public Health at Bloomington. He is a community-based participatory researcher (CBPR) and integrates community organizing and community building techniques into the research process. For more than a decade, he has worked towards empowering communities to create change in Texas, and has honed his skills in community outreach, coalition building, agenda setting, and effective dissemination of findings. He develops community advisory boards, comprised of multi-sector stakeholders, to drive his research projects and working with these diverse community partners has helped him learn best practices for finding consensus to move forward together. His expertise in CBPR will allow him to ensure that diverse faculty voices and concerns are carried forward to the Faculty Council Executive Committee (FCEC) and information is effectively communicated back. He has also served on several nonprofit boards, including a statewide philanthropic foundation, that has allowed him to develop skills in organizational governance, strategic planning, and organizational leadership and as an assistant professor at UTSA he co-founded and chaired the LGBTQ+ Faculty and Staff Association. His experiences make him an ideal candidate for the role of council representative of the FCEC. As a CBPR practitioner, he understands what it means to be accountable to a diverse group of individuals and through his service he has learned what it means to effectively govern and lead an organization.
Stephen Vladeck (Professor, School of Law)
These are especially fraught times both for academic freedom and faculty governance not just here at UT but across our state and nationwide. I’ve spent my first two years on the Faculty Council doing my best to advance awareness of and reforms to both of these critical aspects of University policy while serving on the Committee of Counsel on Academic Freedom and Responsibility (on which I’ll be Chair-Elect for 2022–23), and hope to continue that work in the years to come not just within the specific context of CCAFR, but across the whole range of the Faculty Council’s activities. Given my professional work on (and expertise in) constitutional law, my hope is that I’m able to add a helpful voice to University-wide discussions—and resolutions—of these issues.