The Fall 2016 Semester Update from the University Senate is now available to download. 

Here's a preview of what you'll find inside:

• A Message from the Chair fo the Faculty and Senate Consultative Committees
• Governance Working For You - Updates from the Civil Service, Faculty, P&A, and Student Consultative Committees
• A View From the Inside - The Intersection of Academic Freedom and Free Speech
• Update from the November joint Faculty and University Senate meeting
  • Forum on Student Mental Health
  • President's Report
  • Provost's Report
• Senate Committees Collaborate on Issues
  • Campus Climate and Freedom of Expression
  • Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
  • Bias Response and Referral Network
  • Learning Space Plan
• SCIT Says: Protect Yourself from Identity Theft

READ IT NOW

Enter the office of Patricia Jones Whyte on the 3rd floor of Johnston Hall, and you’ll find it stacked with boxes. She’s trying to clean house. But to Jones Whyte, director, Office for Diversity in Graduate Education, those boxes are full of stories of all the students she’s worked with over the years at the University. She can’t just discard them!

Jones Whyte, who grew up in Washington D.C., is a long-time participant in student-focused Senate committees at the University. She served as a member of the Student Behavior Committee from 2004 through 2010; the Equity, Access, and Diversity Committee from 2004 through 2008; the Provost’s Appeal Committee from 2010 through 2012; and the Senate Committee on Student Affairs from 2013 until this summer, including a stint as chair from 2013-2015. She attributes her commitment to shared governance, and specifically on these committees, to her earliest years in higher education, first as student and then as staff. Her attendance at The Defiance College in Ohio coincided with the tail of Civil Rights activism across the nation. Black students were recognizing that they had the right and the power to make demands, to be treated fairly.

Jones Whyte earned her undergraduate degree in 1969, where she was one of only twenty black students out of a population of just over 1000 undergraduates. Ten of those twenty black students at Defiance were in her class, and nine out of the ten graduated four years later. (Fun fact: She was also a cheerleader.) Jones Whyte continued her education with a master’s degree in Student Personnel from Bowling Green State University, and after being well ensconced professionally, a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, tracked in Higher Education.

After earning her master’s degree, Jones Whyte returned to Defiance and stepped in to a new position – associate dean of students. For Whyte Jones it was an opportunity to help shape “how I thought the world might look.” At that time, duties were split by gender, and so she was in charge of the women. Naturally, one of her responsibilities was student discipline. At that time, there was no student code of conduct at Defiance, and so consequences for transgression were meted out in a very arbitrary fashion. How one was punished depended greatly on the individual meting it out. Jones Whyte, in collaboration with her colleagues at four other small private colleges, had a hand in drafting the first student code of conduct for Defiance and the other colleges. The code provided new structure and guidelines for student judicial processes. It also provided an opportunity for students to be represented in the process, something Jones Whyte feels very strongly about to this day; her experience has proven that it is easy for students to get lost in decision-making.

That’s why, when the call for committee membership went out at the University of Minnesota, Jones Whyte applied and was selected to serve on the Student Behavior Committee. It seemed a natural fit. Ensuing committee service was a logical progression from the Student Behavior Committee. And all of it was a nice complement to the work she was already doing in the Office for Diversity in Graduate Education. Jones Whyte’s focus has been on increased retention and inclusion of students who might otherwise fall through the cracks, or feel they were not a full member of the University community. In addition to regularly tutoring and counseling students of color and first generation students on how to navigate the higher education environment, she has played a significant role in programming that helps support these same students. Such efforts include the Multicultural Summer Research Opportunities Program (MSROP), which encourages undergraduate students to give graduate education serious consideration; the Community of Scholars Program, which aims to “create an institutional environment that supports the academic and professional success of graduate students who are underrepresented in academia;” and other supportive programming, such as fellowships for a limited number of graduate students to teach at system campuses, a setup that is mutually beneficial: it provides the campuses with much needed diversity in the classroom, while offering the graduate student the opportunity to teach. And while not at work, Jones Whyte’s work continues: she is chair of the Board of Directors for Scholars of Minnesota - Creating Opportunities for Post-secondary Education (C.O.P.E.) Project, a non-profit organization whose mission is "to assist underrepresented students in obtaining educational opportunities, financial support, and other resources they may need to reach their highest academic, professional and personal goals."

When asked why others should get involved in governance, Jones Whyte said, “The only way for the University to fairly represent its members, is for those members to participate. It is the responsibility of everyone to get involved with the structure of which they are a part.” She added that if a person is uninformed on what is happening, they won’t be able to fix the problems they see.

It’s obvious that Jones Whyte has more than fulfilled her duties in this realm. And while she insists she is not tired by the work, Jones Whyte is retiring at the end of summer 2016 to provide the space for others to have the opportunity to continue her work. She’s slowly working to digitize the files in all those boxes so the paper can be recycled, but the stories remain. Her voice and service will be greatly missed, but she encourages others to step in, to be a part of the governance process, and to let their voices be heard.

“Did you know that only certain birds sing?” asks Professor William Beeman, long-time participant in University Senate governance, breaking into a grin that belies his delight at the idea. Professor Beeman is not an ornithologist; his interest in birdsong is just one example of the varied facets of his career in linguistic anthropology. He gives off a similar sense of wonder about other aspects of his work: having had the pleasure of taking one of Professor Beeman’s courses, Biology, Evolution, and Cultural Development of Language, in grad school, I remember this infectious sense of delight as one of the reasons I found his course so engaging.

Beeman completed his undergraduate work in anthropology at Wesleyan University, and then went on to a Master’s and PhD at the University of Chicago. While doing doctoral work on discourse analysis in Iran, Beeman became interested in traditional performing arts in Asia. Eventually, this led to an unusual path in his career: although he was already tenured faculty at Brown University, he felt that he lacked an “insider’s” view of performing arts, and decided to attend the Boston Conservatory to study vocal performance. He later spent three years performing as an operatic bass in Germany.

In addition to serving as chair of the anthropology department, Professor Beeman maintains faculty affiliations with the Center for Cognitive Sciences and the program in Second Language Studies. He is a world-renowned expert on the Middle East, the Gulf Region, and Central Asia and has published dozens of works on myriad subjects, such as Iranian performance traditions, the neurobiology of opera, and language and identity politics. He served for several years as the secretary of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and the president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. He also speaks over ten languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Bengali, and several European languages.

As with so many other aspects of his career, Beeman demonstrates an enthusiasm for governance that is contagious. He first got involved in governance at Brown University, where he served on the Faculty Executive Committee from 2001-2004. At the University of Minnesota, he served on the Faculty Senate from 2007 to 2013, as well as on the Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs (SCFA) from 2011 to 2013. He is currently serving his second term on the Faculty Senate, from 2014-2017. Known for being unafraid to voice a dissenting opinion, he believes in shared governance because he feels that proper consultation, cooperation and transparency are critical, as is faculty input.

When I ask him what he does in his spare time, he half-jokes that between his duties as professor and department chair and his governance participation, spare time is somewhat elusive. Nevertheless, Beeman continues his singing career, and has also written, directed and produced various plays. Recently, in conjunction with the University of Minnesota Department of Theater Arts and Dance and the Elemental Ensemble, he directed and produced a reading of It Can't Happen Here, a play written in 1936 by Sinclair Lewis and John C. Moffitt, which explores life in the U.S. under an authoritarian leader elected on a populist platform.

— Amber Bathke