“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

Professor Perry Leo, head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, will never play in the PGA, but he has a good excuse. Over the past 28 years, in addition to teaching, research, and departmental administrative duties, he has advised graduate students, reviewed for various journals, published numerous articles, and visited other universities and research centers. Add in a busy family life with two young children, and it’s no wonder his golf game has suffered.

Leo, who grew up in upstate New York, worked himself through the ranks of the faculty at the University starting as an assistant professor in the fall of 1988. His research focused on advanced materials, or more precisely (in layman’s terms), “how different materials blend together to form new materials.” Though offered a position in a government research lab, Leo chose the diversity of academia over a pure research career. He always wanted to work at a Big Ten university, or something comparable to a Big Ten university, because he “like(s) the fact that we are really trying to educate the people in the state and surrounding states. And being at a big school allows us to do different things.” One of those different things for Leo has been participating in shared governance.

Leo served as a representative in the Faculty Senate from 1995-1998. He first began committee work – which he finds more fruitful - in 2002 on the Faculty Academic Oversight Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics (FAOCIA). “Art Erdman from Mechanical Engineering knew I golfed. That was athletic enough [for me] to be appointed,” he quipped. Leo currently serves as Faculty Athletics Representative to the Big Ten and NCAA. In this role he also serves on the Advisory Committee on Athletics and (again) on the FAOCIA. Additionally, he serves on the ROTC subcommittee and has served on the Committee on Committees (with one term as chair).

The moment that Leo felt the most satisfied with his contribution to Senate work was in his initial years on the FAOCIA, soon after the basketball program scandal in 1999. Through the actions of committees, the Senate was able to move the pendulum back to assure the “relationship between the athletic departments and academic departments was a good one” while maintaining necessary firewalls between the two. He added that Senate action assured a level of academic integrity that has maintained to this day.

Leo is one of the small handful of seasoned faculty whose continued participation contributes to the institutional memory that serves committee work so well. As he said, he’s not looking to build his resume at this point. He, and other long-serving faculty, truly have the good of the institution at heart. But Leo also believes that more faculty should participate, so that we don’t hear from the same voices year after year. Leo considers it “integral that new faculty are included and recognized in governance, so that it continues to work as well as it has for so many years.”

In other words, Leo has fully embraced the traditional idea of a university: a place where all participants are engaged not only in learning, but also in active discussion and decision-making regarding the direction the institution should take. Sacrificing a serviceable handicap is worth it for him. But his involvement in shared governance is not solely altruistic. He also said that “it’s fun to get to know faculty from outside my department and college. This is and has been the best part of governance.”

Peh H. Ng was “just a grad student” at Purdue when the University of Minnesota­Morris urgently needed to replace a faculty member in the math department. Wanting a full­ time teaching experience, Ng took the temporary faculty position and completed her PhD while at Morris. When there was no tenure­track position available, she was off to a university in Georgia for a position. Two years later, there was an opening at UM­Morris and former colleagues emailed Ng urging her to apply. She did. And it was back to west central Minnesota where Ng has been since 1995.

In Ng’s view, she was a part of University governance from day one. Every faculty at UMM is a part of the campus assembly, the campus­wide governance body. And, Ng adds, “UM­-Morris is a very egalitarian campus, and so technically, I became involved in shared governance when I started as a regular faculty.”

Ng says she was surprised ­and at first, annoyed­ at how long it can take for the University to implement a policy. She’s been on three committees, has served on the Faculty Senate since 2003, and is currently on the Senate Committee for Faculty Affairs. She now understands the complexities behind the process. “I grew up, and learned about being patient, governance­style!”

Ng admits that when she was a brand new faculty, she was very naive. “I had some weird notion that college administrators made lousy professors,” she says. A few years years later, a chief administrator retired and there was some shuffling of campus leadership. Several faculty, including Ng, were asked to take on administrative duties as part of their appointments. Ng asked her then boss, “Why do you take all these award­ winning and excellent teachers from the classroom and make them administrators?”

The response was, “Would you rather I choose lousy teachers to lead academic affairs?” That, Ng says, changed her perspective ­ and stereotype ­ of administrators. In turn, Ng says she has learned much by being on system­wide committees and considers herself lucky to be able to serve. “I am a better faculty and a more mindful academic administrator for having served on system­wide shared governance,” she says. Ng says when a solution presents itself or is arrived at, she asks if that solution solves more problems than it creates.

Ng’s academic background in applied mathematics has served her well in governance. She loves problem­solving and coming up with creative ways to address issues that arise. “Facilitating students’ learning is one of my passions,” she says. Having the opportunity to teach mathematics to undergraduates, and mentor and collaborate with students to conduct research over the past twenty years at UMM are among what she considers her most notable achievements.

An essential skill, Ng notes, and one that she continues to hone, is learning how to balance the “Big Picture” and the detailed ramifications of policies. She said, “Finding a healthy balance between being consultative and moving forward is also another key to how I usually approach governance.”