1. Report of the President of the Faculty Senate
General Faculty Meeting,
Fall 2013

2. 2012 – 2013: an amazing year for SMU

3. A quiet revolution
Reputation of individual academic departments within their discipline has been rising steadily.
Acceleration in output of research, scholarship and other creative work.
Stellar new faculty.
Our very ability to attract such excellent faculty is proof of this revolution.

4. We stand on their shoulders
Hard work by faculty and university leaders over decades.
Institutional innovation at the grassroots level:
Recruitment
Mentoring of junior faculty
Internal incentives for research and scholarship
Higher tenure standards
Change in norms and work culture
Once it acquires momentum, it is driven by the forces of professional competition.
Spreads across academic units.

5. Faculty Lines
Pace of change in academic reputation depends on new faculty lines.
Faculty size important for individual department’s academic ranking
Quality of faculty attracted and increase in reputation of the university for each dollar spent is higher than ever before.
Endowed professorships in the centennial capital campaign.
Strategic investment in new faculty lines very important in future.

6. Doctoral Programs 50 years of doctoral education
More than 40 PhDs over last one year
Spread over 14 disciplines.
Using very small amount of resources
Programs going up in the national rankings
High quality of research output
Excellent placement
We do not celebrate our doctoral programs

7. Urgent Need to Focus on our Doctoral Programs
Seriously underfunded.
Fellowships and graduate stipends.
Visibility within academic discipline.
Important role in attracting and retaining high quality faculty.
High quality undergraduate education: tutoring, individual contact and attention.
Giving back to the community: creating skills and human capital for the region.
Takes long to build reputation of a doctoral program; must not allow programs that have risen through ranking to slip back.

8. Faculty Senate
: Discussion of new ideas and issues under the leadership of President Steve Edwards.
Initiated discussion on:
Faculty leave policy
Support for graduate programs
Online courses
Constitutional reform
Need for online syllabi repository
Guest presentations: Dr. Eric Bing related to faculty Involvement with the Bush Institute; President Turner.
Standing committees did great job.

9. Key Issues for this Academic Year
Focus on Doctoral Programs:
Understand the complex institutional structure
Impediments and resource constraints
Initiate a university wide conversation over the Fall semester
Deans of schools to participate
Publicize important achievements
Several committees to explore issues related to doctoral students.

10. Key Issues for this Academic Year
Online courses
Faculty charged with ensuring curriculum standards
Online courses: mechanism for faculty review by all relevant academic units
Online education in general: university-wide conversation

11. Issues for this Academic Year
Increasing use of adjunct faculty in our teaching: cause for concern?
Budget situation.

12. New President-Elect: Jody Magliolo (Cox)

13. 2013-14 Executive Committee Steve Edwards (Meadows), Past-President
Joshua Tate (Law)
Wei Tong (Lyle)
Michael Harris (Simmons)
Jody Magliolo (Cox), President-Elect
Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner (Perkins)
Robert Howell (Dedman I)
Santanu Roy (Dedman II), President
Steven Vik (Dedman III), Secretary

14. Chairs of Standing Committees
COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES: Susanne Scholz
ACADEMIC POLICIES : Tom Fomby
ADMISSIONS AND FINANCIAL AID: Alexis McCrossen
LIBRARIES: Melissa Dowling
ACADEMIC CALENDAR: Ian Harris
FINANCE: Hemang Desai
FACULTY BENEFITS: Edward Countryman
ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE FACULTY: Tony Ng
ATHLETICS POLICIES: Dennis Foster
ETHICS AND TENURE: Michael Hawn
STUDENT POLICIES: Hal Barkley
RESEARCH: Suku Nair

15. The faculty are the custodians of the interests of future generations of students

16. The faculty are the custodians of the interests of future generations of students
Thank you