The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to hear reports from the chairs of various SACUA subcommittees, including the Medical Affairs Committee, General Counsel Advisory Committee and the Committee for Fairness, Equity and Inclusion.

Tom Braun, professor of biostatistics and SACUA chair, opened the meeting with a discussion of a proposed resolution to an amendment that will be discussed at the upcoming special University Senate meeting on May 25. This resolution would expand the Senate to include medical faculty.

“There is one additional resolution that was submitted to us that we will be discussing on May 25,” Braun said. “This is an amendment as submitted by the authors to the original resolution to now include lecturers as well in our expansion of the Senate.”

The meeting then transitioned to hearing reports from various subcommittees. Analisa DiFeo, associate professor in the Department of Pathology and Obstetrics & Gynecology and chair of the Medical Affairs Committee, provided a report on issues the committee raised with Michigan Medicine CEO Marschall Runge, including faculty and staff burnout. DiFeo said faculty and staff burnout arises when physicians are not satisfied with the work they are tasked with doing.

“The stress and burnout really comes from the physicians feeling like they’re not actually getting to do the job that they’re supposed to be doing, because they’re doing a lot more administrative work, (as well as) the issues of lack of staff and inability to fill vacant positions,” DiFeo said. 

DiFeo said though there are many wellness initiatives across campus, it would be helpful if they were centralized and easier for faculty and staff experiencing burnout to find. 

“We should better coordinate a way to inform faculty of where (wellness initiatives) are (and) how they can access them,” DiFeo said. “It should not be siloed in various places or various departments. There should be a location where (staff) should be able to find them all in one place.”

Braun said he believes the committee should discuss DiFeo’s report and findings on faculty burnout when they speak with University Provost Laurie McCauley at a future meeting.

“When we first met with the provost, she said one of her major initiatives was faculty well-being (and) mental health, and I haven’t heard much since,” Braun said. “I think what you’re learning is useful for us to inform the Provost moving forward.”

Yasmina Laouar, associate professor of microbiology and immunology and chair of the Committee on the Economic and Social Well-Being of the Faculty, reported on the committee’s goal of producing a study on faculty salary by gender and race.

“The goal is, once we have this data within two years, we can identify whether discrepancy happened in (the) unit, and then at the level of SACUA we could reach out to chairs or deans to point to some discrepancy in salary,” Laouar said. “We agreed that the University is investing a lot of effort in diversity. Hopefully, in the next year we will have a more diverse cohort. Now what are we doing in terms of salary?”

Laouar said the committee raised the idea to McCauley, but they were told the study could not be completed by her office.

“We sent this letter through the former SACUA chair Allen Liu to Provost McCauley, and the answer came back negative,” Laouar said. “(It is a) complex subject (and) a little bit difficult to manage, (so) it will not be done at her level.”

Luke McCarthy, director of the Faculty Senate, told Laouar that the Faculty Senate would work on the salary study.

“In SACUA, there’s a lot of interest to go ahead, and if the provost isn’t going to do this, then this is something that the Faculty Senate can push through,” McCarthy said. “We’ve communicated to the provost our intention of ‘if you’re not going to do a salary study, then the faculty might run with this ball.’ ”

Yulia Sevryugina, chemistry librarian and chair of the Research Advisory Committee, said the committee focused on learning about a variety of research initiatives by the University.

“We learned about (the) Research Data Stewardship Initiative, (the) opioid epidemic initiative (in the) Opioid Research Institute, about research halls on campus and some issues (and) concerns,” Sevryugina said.

Nicolai Lehnert, professor of chemistry and biophysics and chair of the Committee for Fairness, Equity and Inclusion, said the committee had put forward ideas to analyze campus climate.

“In terms of tracking campus climate, there were two major things that we came up with,” Lehnert said. “We wanted to see if (the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office) could release a report on race-based misconduct … and then analyze the data. The other idea that we had was looking at exit interviews….if you look at the (ADVANCE Program) report, 40 to 50 percent of the faculty that they interviewed mentioned that campus climate was an important issue why they were leaving.”

However, Lehnert said it would be difficult to obtain data to research exit interviews because they are done by local departments rather than the University’s Department of Human Resources.

“This is more complicated than we had thought,” Lehnert. “When faculty decide to leave, this is all handled by the HR Department in their units and the University’s HR doesn’t even know about this until faculty have already left, so it’s very difficult to interview faculty when they’re already gone.”

Rogério Pinto, associate dean for research and innovation at the School of Social Work and chair of the General Counsel’s Advisory Committee, said the committee discussed how to handle student complaints such as emails about changing final grades, and the possibility of raising this issue to the Board of Regents.

“We were all very moved by how people described what they’re perceiving in the classroom, and the (General) Counsel was very open to us trying to create a statement which would then be used by the Regents that would in some ways not be legally binding but a statement of solidarity with faculty,” Pinto said.

Daily Staff Reporter Joshua Nicholson can be reached at joshuni@umich.edu. 

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The University of Michigan’s Central Student Government met Tuesday evening over Zoom to confirm representatives for the School of Public Health and School of Dentistry, as well as candidates for the Executive Committee of CSG. 

Jarek Schmanski, LSA junior and recently elected speaker of the 13th Assembly, opened the meeting to resolve the March elections by confirming candidates for the Public Health School and Dentistry School.

“For those two schools, we had no file candidates, so we just had a number of write-ins that were tied in the March elections,” Schmanski said. “As the Assembly, our job is to break those ties (and) select one of the candidates to serve as a representative for the full year.” 

Members discussed whether or not to delay the process to break those ties since the candidates weren’t present. If the election were delayed, students who were interested in being representatives for the Dentistry School or Public Health School, but did not officially run, could still fill those seats. However, Schmanski said the Assembly is supposed to resolve any election ties at their first meeting.

“I think probably the sooner we could resolve these elections, the better,” Schmanski said. “The sooner we can have a representative fill the seat, the sooner we can have those schools be represented at the Assembly.”    

The Assembly then unanimously voted to elect Dentistry student Jacob Vieau and Public Health student Andrea Kennedy as representatives for their respective schools. Law school student Tyler Watt was unanimously approved for the Student General Council and rising Public Policy senior Ayden Makar was unanimously approved to be the director of the Student Organization Committee.

The Assembly then moved on to a discussion of the Election Code Study Act. This act is intended to appoint a task force to study and revise CSG’s Election Code. Schmanski said the March CSG election revealed issues with the Election Code as written, which he hopes will be addressed by the task force. 

“For our March elections, there (were) a couple cases that had to be adjudicated through the Central Judiciary (Branch of CSG),” Schmanski said. “There’s a few somewhat glaring issues with the Election Code and some vagueness that could be ironed out, so the creation of this task force would try to alleviate that.”

This act was met with an objection from Hayden Jackson, a Rackham student and CSG member. Jackson said they believed the proposed task force should not be able to issue subpoenas and disagreed with the proposal for a set composition of the party affiliations of task force members. 

“Giving blanket ability to issue subpoenas is not appropriate in this case,” Jackson said. “In addition, I’d like to echo the President (of CSG) to say that the proposal to include members from specific parties is a bizarre inclusion to me.”   

The act was referred back to the Rules and Resolutions Committee.   

Mario Thaqi, rising LSA junior and chair of the Finance Committee, then discussed the Spring Summer 2023 CSG Consolidated Budget Act. Thaqi said he believes the main goal of this act should be to increase Student Organization Committee funding in order to best allocate CSG funds.

“The main goal of the spring summer budget is to increase student organization funding,” Thaqi said. “It’s my philosophy that the people that best know how to spend (the funding money) are the e-boards of the student organizations. They know what their members want, what events to host to help their members.”

This act was met with no objections and was referred to the Finance Committee. The Assembly will next meet on May 23. 

Daily Staff Reporter Aditya Kannan can be reached at kannana@umich.edu.

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The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to hear reports from the chairs of various subcommittees, including the Information Technology Committee, Financial Affairs Advisory Committee and Committee on Anti-Racism.

Tom Braun, biostatistics professor and SACUA chair, opened the meeting with a brief discussion on nominating new members to head SACUA’s subcommittees for the 2023-2024 academic year and a resolution to expand the membership of the University Senate, which will be discussed at SACUA’s May 25 meeting. 

“We’re going to discuss a resolution for expanding the senate membership,” Braun said. “We have enough people registered right now that we would have a quorum if they all end up showing on that day, but we certainly would like more people there.”

Braun then opened the floor for committee reports. Heather O’Malley, assistant research scientist in the Department of Pharmacology and chair of the Information Technology Committee, provided a report on the committee’s work during the 2022-2023 academic year. This included the University-wide implementation of CrowdStrike Falcon, a cybersecurity platform, across about 100,000 devices. 

“It’s intended as a platform that will prevent breaches, so it should keep out threat actors —  things like malware (and) ransomware,” O’Malley said. “I think the security value is very clear … as ransomware and threat actors from foreign entities are happening, we can’t afford to have the University compromised.”

According to O’Malley, the CrowdStrike Falcon’s platform has access to all data on devices where it is installed. She said some faculty have expressed concern over the capability of the program to access to their personal documents, citing the release of former University President Mark Schlissel’s emails following his dismissal in January 2022.

“The biggest issue surrounding this right now is faculty trust,” O’Malley said. “I think the incident where past president Schlissel’s emails were released to the public, in a very overt way, did not help with faculty trust, so people were concerned about files such as student information (and) … health information.”

Rebekah Modrak, professor in the School of Art & Design and SACUA member, said she believes the data access required by this software is unacceptable and voiced support for further inquiry.

“I think having software on our computers that essentially monitors every keystroke we make and can monitor every file is highly problematic,” Modrak said. “I hope that the committee pursues this (issue) further, and I hope that there’s more information and a vote amongst the faculty, about our confidence in the software.”

Karen Downing, librarian and chair of the Development Advisory Committee, highlighted supporting the Office of University Development and improving knowledge of the fundraising process as two of the committee’s tasks for the 2022-2023 academic year.

“The committee has been collaborating with OUD to repurpose a presentation they’ve put together called ‘Demystifying Fundraising’ and to adapt it to a faculty audience so that people have a firmer understanding of what fundraising entails and how to get involved again.” Downing said. 

James Gulvas, acquisition librarian and chair of the Financial Affairs Advisory Committee, then reviewed the committee’s work during the 2022-2023 academic year. Gulvas said their role was primarily informational and educational.

“We didn’t actually do a lot of advising or have a lot of deliverables, which I think is hard to do when you don’t have the foundational aspect of finance or the University’s structure with budget,” Gulvas said. “I think it would be beneficial that we have an educational session to onboard new (committee) members so that we can get to the meat of advising the Chief Financial Officer.”

The meeting concluded with a report by Dinesh Pal, associate professor of anesthesiology and chair of the Committee on Anti-Racism. Pal discussed two resolutions the committee proposed and passed by the Faculty Senate during the 2022-2023 academic year, including a statement calling on the University to condemn racism toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and a resolution to create a new land acknowledgment memorial. 

Pal also discussed SACUA’s push to include protections against caste discrimination in the University’s non-discrimination policy. He said while the University has since included the category in its official policy, he believes they should take further action beyond changing its language. 

“The most that we could get out of the administration was that they included (caste) in their non-discrimination statement, which kind of falls short,” Pal said. “It’s not a big ask…it’s just providing safeguards (and) preventing bullying in the context of caste, because there are a lot of microaggressions that happen.”

The subcommittees will continue their work throughout the 2023-2024 academic year.

Daily Staff Reporter Joshua Nicholson can be reached at joshuni@umich.edu. 

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Facing a frequent shortage of study spaces, students at the University of Michigan occupy every inch of the Shapiro Undergraduate Library year-round. Now, after a year of planning and renovation, the University has transformed the 37,500 square foot third floor of the UGLi into Stephen S. Clark Commons, a public study space open during the library’s operating hours.

In addition to the opening of Clark Commons, the UGLi connector  — a structure bridging the third floor of the UGLi to the second floor of Hatcher Graduate Library — has reopened after its closure during Clark Commons’ construction.

The third floor of the UGLi was previously used to store print copies of academic journals. Donna Hayward, interim university librarian and dean of libraries, told The Michigan Daily the decision to renovate the space came out of decreased demand for these print journals and increased pressure for study spaces. 

“Way back when there was a lot of need to print articles in journals, the whole floor was full of these print journals, and less and less used over time because a lot of that content is now online,” Hayward said. “Seeing a lot of the need for different kinds of spaces particularly for students and student use … there’s a lot more pressure for those kinds of spaces.”

Clark Commons was named after its donor, U-M Engineering alum Stephen S. Clark, who previously gifted the University with the Clark Library, which stores maps and atlases and is located inside the Graduate Library. In a press release, Clark said he wanted to fund a space that would serve all students at the University. 

“I spent a lot of time in the library, and my hope is to provide students with a pleasant and comfortable space for collaboration and study,” Clark said. 

According to the press release, Clark Commons offers seating to over 200 students, as well as a digital scholarship hub for research, publishing services and a dedicated exhibition space to showcase student projects. 

Rising LSA junior Elizabeth Whitmore, a student library ambassador, said that a highlight of Clark Commons is the extensive number of outlets available for charging devices, which differentiates it from the first and second floors of the UGLi.

“One thing about the first and the second floors is that it’s kind of hard to find an outlet nearby,” Whitmore said. “But on the third floor, outlets are much more accessible, which makes the area more (attractive) to students.”

According to Whitmore, a popular sentiment among students is that the higher the floor, the quieter the UGLi becomes, but this has not held true with the opening of Clark Commons. Whitmore noted that while Clark Commons is intended to be a more social space, there is still space for students who wish to study in a quieter environment.

“When I was talking to some other library staff, they were like, ‘we know the norm is the higher you go, the quieter it tends to get,’ Whitmore said. “In my opinion … the second floor is quieter than the third floor. The way that (Clark Commons) is designed, it’s much more collaborative, and the spaces are more open. I think (this will) violate that norm, but there is a reading room at the south end of Clark Commons, so if people want to study in a more quiet area, that area is available.”

Rising Engineering junior Patrick Periard has used Clark Commons for studying both individually and in groups. In an email to The Daily, Periard said while he appreciates the diversity of spaces available on the floor, the activity level has caused distractions.

“My favorite part is the diversity of different studying/collaboration spaces, whether it is having club e-board meetings, studying for a final or working on a group project, there is space available for everything,” Periard wrote. “Currently my least favorite part is the crowded atmosphere. I am happy that the space is being utilized; however, it is often difficult to concentrate with the noise and activity level.”

Clark Commons is currently open and available for 24-hour use on weekdays. However,  Hayward described the opening as a ‘soft roll-out,’ with changes to be made in the coming months in preparation for the fall 2023 semester. 

“It was a bit of a soft rollout,” Hayward said. “There are a few things that we set up that we didn’t follow through with yet because we wanted to see how the spaces were used. So there are a couple of spaces where we can put screens on walls that we held back on a little bit because we wanted to see how that space was used.”

Alan Pinon, U-M Library director of communications & marketing, told The Daily that following the opening of Clark Commons, the University hopes to fully renovate both the UGLi and the Graduate Library in the future. 

“We’ve had a goal set for a while now where we want to do a full renovation of both Hatcher and Shapiro as a complex,” Pinon said.

Summer News Editor Sneha Dhandapani can be reached at sdhanda@umich.edu.

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The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to discuss the upcoming Faculty Senate meeting and the need for diverse faculty expertise on various committees.

The meeting began with welcoming new members Heather O’Malley, assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan Medical School; Vilma Mesa, professor of education and mathematics; and Alex Yi, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Tom Braun, biostatistics professor and the new chair of SACUA, then asked committee members to encourage their constituents to attend the Faculty Senate meeting on May 25 to discuss the Faculty Senate restructuring plan, which would allow clinical faculty, archivists and curators into the Senate.

“We need a quorum of 100 individuals at this meeting for it to go forth, so please tell your constituents that their attendance is needed and welcome,” Braun said. “We do plan to invite individuals to come forward to express information both in support of the resolution and information that is against the resolution so that we can have a free debate within the Senate.”

Art & Design professor Rebekah Modrak raised concerns over the upcoming meeting and vote being scheduled for over the summer rather than during the school year.

“This is a hugely important matter, restructuring the Faculty Senate,” Modrak said. “A lot of faculty disappear once they’ve submitted their grades, and they’re just not around or are checked out in the summer. I’m just curious why we’re not going to be doing this, let’s say, the second or third week into the fall, which is when I think faculty are engaged.”

Braun said they did not select the date with the intent to suppress anybody’s interest in the resolution, but were just looking to continue ongoing discussions from the school year.

“We have the ball rolling on this, the momentum is here,” Braun said. “We felt the time to strike was now, to get one more meeting with the faculty before the semester is over.”

Braun then provided updates on the array of feedback SACUA has received on their most recent statement regarding grading amid the ongoing Graduate Employees’ Organization strike. Braun emphasized that not all faculty agree on the position of the statement.

“The polarized opinions that I have seen about what we stated are obvious and demonstrate that there is not an overall faculty consensus on the grading issues at this university,” Braun said. “I want to reiterate that there have been direct statements given to SACUA expressing alternative viewpoints to those public statements.”

The committee then held a brief executive session regarding the ongoing contract negotiations between GEO and the University. 

Following the session, Luke McCarthy, Faculty Senate Office director, discussed the importance of having members of the various SACUA committees with areas of expertise including academic freedom, communication and government relations. McCarthy said he plans to reach out to committee members for their help finding volunteers with specific expertise. 

“To make sure that these committees work well, it would be nice for us to think about the areas of particular expertise that we don’t have,” McCarthy said. “If a committee is meeting and talking about a particular issue they can (then), instead of looking to the administration, look to the faculty expert in this area.”

Modrak said she would suggest adding several other categories where expertise is needed to the list, including social justice, political science and institutional critique. She said it is also important to consider the skill sets of various faculty in addition to their academic expertise.

“I would lean on different areas,” Modrak said. “One of the strengths of a lot of faculty in the arts is thinking creatively about different strategies, and I think that would be really helpful.”

Summer Managing News Editor Madison Hammond can be reached at madihamm@umich.edu.

The post SACUA talks need for diverse faculty expertise, upcoming vote on Faculty Senate restructuring  appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Amy Cohn, Industrial and Operations Engineering professor, won one of three Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year Awards from the Michigan Association of State Universities. According to MASU, this award recognizes professors at public universities in the state of Michigan who show phenomenal dedication to undergraduate education and student success. Recipients are picked from a list of nominees submitted by all 15 of Michigan’s public universities. The selection committee considers how nominees support student education and growth, both personally and professionally. Cohn is joined by two other winners, Anna Spagnuolo from Oakland University and Arthur L. Martin from Saginaw Valley State University. 

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Cohn said she works to create a safe space within her classroom where students feel comfortable making mistakes and learning from them.

“I try to be very open with students,” Cohn said. “I talk about my kids, I talk about my own stresses (and) I’m up front when I’m having a rough day. I want them to know that I’m human and fallible so that they feel like it’s okay to make mistakes around me, that they feel like it’s okay to say, ‘I’m having a problem and it’s going to affect my work.’” 

In addition to being a professor in the IOE department, Cohn also serves as the associate director of the Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety. Engineering senior Alexios Avrassoglou works under Cohn at CHEPS and took IOE 310 with her while classes were still remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Avrassoglou said even on Zoom, Cohn created an environment that made him excited to learn. 

“I (can) remember her positive spirit and energy on Zoom actually making me excited to go to the Zoom class,” Avrassoglou said. “(With online classes,) there was just another lost sense of belonging in the (IOE) major because we didn’t have the chance to be with everyone in our grade in the big classroom. But even still, because of her positive spirit, she made me want to come to class. She made me excited about learning.”

Adam VanDeusen, former student and doctoral advisee of Cohn’s, said Cohn works to create a meaningful relationship with students that lasts beyond her time as their professor or supervisor. 

“(Cohn) continues to make time for her students, both while she’s working with them either during the semester or during (their) research project, but also after (they) complete it too,” VanDeusen said. “(She) is always there to meet with us and check in with how we’re doing and respond to emails …so I’m just really in awe of her ability to (manage) both the quality of her mentorship as well as the quantity.”

Avrassoglou said he feels Cohn is unique as a professor because of the way she prioritizes her students and creates a productive learning environment. 

“There (are) not that many educators who actually get excited to teach,” Avrassoglou said. “(Cohn) has always felt like a teacher first to me and I know countless others.”

Cohn said she tries her best to meet the needs of all her students both in and out of the classroom. She said she hopes to foster a community that emphasizes students’ well-being and helps meet their unique needs.

“If your basic human needs aren’t met, you can’t learn,” Cohn said. “Sometimes you need a place (where) you can go shut the door, and we have a box of tissues. Sometimes you need a place to say, ‘Oh my god, the most amazing thing happened.’ … and there are people who will celebrate that with you. I think that (in this) community, it’s not just about how much am I producing or how much am I scoring on an exam. It’s that kind of holistic, ‘How am I moving forward as a person?” 

Cohn said she is thankful to students who allow her to be herself while also helping them to learn and grow.

“I have really great students,” Cohn said. “They indulge me talking about my kids and my bad jokes, and I think we laugh a lot — and sometimes they’re laughing at me but that’s all right. But I really just appreciate being in an environment with really smart, fun, interesting people who (are) willing to kind of share that with me.”

Summer News Editor Rebecca Lewis can be reached at rebeccl@umich.edu. 

The post IOE Professor Amy Cohn wins Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to discuss a proposal to recommend the creation of a task force to respond to harassment against faculty from people outside the University of Michigan and say farewell to members whose terms end on April 30.

Julie Boland, president of the University’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, spoke to SACUA about the proposal to create a task force on external harassment. Boland said the task force would work to support faculty experiencing harassment from non-U-M community members, including online harassment. 

“Often (the external harassment is) online harassment, but not exclusively,” Boland said. “So (for example), people getting trolled because of what they’re teaching or because of some service, maybe (a) DEI service that they’re involved with. Maybe some clinical practice that they’re doing, but (it’s) their work for the University and they’re getting harassed.” 

Boland said this committee would aim to place less of a burden on targeted faculty members, and more on the offender. She referenced a conversation with Tabbye Chavous, chief diversity officer at the University and director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity.

“The proposals that we looked at (from other universities) still largely put the onus on the targeted faculty member,” Boland said. “That’s something that came up in my conversation with Tabbye Chavous. We want to take the burden off the targeted faculty member, and she’s interested in partnering with us on this.”

The proposed committee would be composed of AAUP and SACUA members, as well as other U-M faculty. Luke McCarthy, director of the Faculty Senate Office, suggested expanding the size of the committee beyond four members to reflect the variety of jobs and disciplines which may put faculty at an increased risk of external harassment.

“Does (the committee) need to be larger to make sure that particular disciplines that tend to be targeted are included in the conversation?” McCarthy said. “There are going to be different issues for clinical abortion-related things versus what would come up in Stamps, for instance, and the arts.”

SACUA voted unanimously to approve the proposal and plans to work with AAUP to send a letter to University Provost Laurie McCauley outlining the task force.

At the conclusion of the meeting, outgoing members shared advice and said their goodbyes. Outgoing SACUA member Kentaro Toyama, professor of information, said he thought it was important for SACUA to strike a balance between criticizing the University and supporting it.

“We should be super conscious of the relationship that we have with various members of the administration,” Toyama said. “We don’t want to be in a situation where we’re constantly worried about whether they’ll think badly of us and therefore don’t push back hard enough, nor do we want to be in a situation where all we do is criticize and ask for things that are very difficult … I do think that we need to find this balance.”

Summer News Editor Abigail VanderMolen can be reached at vabigail@umich.edu.

The post SACUA discusses task force for external harassment of faculty appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

The University of Michigan Senate Assembly met in the Alexander G. Ruthven building Monday afternoon to discuss creating a committee to build a physical land acknowledgement monument and present amendments to a proposal regarding Faculty Senate restructuring. 

The assembly heard from Senate Assembly chair Allen Liu on a resolution to establish a committee in charge of creating a monument on Central Campus acknowledging the land was donated to the University by the Anishinaabe, Ojibwa, Odawa and Bodewadmi tribes in 1817. The statue would recognize the Treaty of Fort Meigs, in which Native Americans ceded their land to the “University of Michigania” in hopes of securing an education for their children.

The committee will also work to ensure that members of these Native American groups receive adequate representation across campus. Members of the special committee will be appointed by the Senate Advisory Committee with input from the Committee on Anti-Racism, the Native American studies program and members of the Native American community. 

After the proposal was introduced, CAR chair Dinesh Pal spoke to the assembly about the importance of creating a visible monument to honor the Native American groups that gave up their land to build the University. 

“I’ve been on this campus for 16 years, and I had no clue about the land acknowledgement or the land grant,” Pal said. “(An issue) of this proportion deserves a bigger monument.”

Pal said the current land acknowledgement plaque, located near the flagpole in the Diag, is small and easy to miss. The current plaque displays the names of the tribes that donated the land used to build the University.

The Senate Assembly voted 42-2 in favor of approving the resolution toward the end of the meeting, concluding the section on land acknowledgement. 

The assembly also discussed four prospective amendments to a proposal restructuring the governing body that they voted to implement last month. This proposal added clinical professionals, archivists and curators into the Senate structure, implemented a quota of 17 representatives per school, college or campus, and inhibited who can vote on specific issues. 

Nursing professor Christopher Friese opened the discussion by presenting Amendment One, which would require a two-thirds vote to pass any rules that would change the structure or membership of the assembly.  

“In the current state of the underlying proposal without amendments, newly included faculty would not be able to vote on future structural changes,” Friese said. “I personally feel that this provision would be unnecessarily exclusionary.”

Sociology professor Silvia Pedraza then presented Amendment Two to the assembly. If approved, the amendment would allow clinical professors, archivists and curators to have full voting rights with the exception of tenure-related matters. 

“If we vote yes to admitting (clinical faculty, archivists and curators), they should enjoy the full and equal exercise of their voice and vote,” Pedraza said.

Michigan Medicine professor Andre Monteiro Da Rocha presented Amendment Three, which would allow non-tenure track faculty to vote on tenure-related issues. Art & Design professor Audrey Bennett concluded this portion of the meeting by talking about Amendment Four, which would require examples of tenure-related issues to be provided.

Following discussion of the amendments, Geoffrey Chatas, executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Chief Investment Officer Erik Lundberg joined the Senate to discuss using an endowments code of conduct. Chatas said while the University has a large endowment of about $18 billion, the per-student value is much lower compared to that of other universities. 

Chatas and Ludenberg talked about their roles in ensuring that managers are making ethical investments with the money from the University’s endowment. They also said they met with professors and community members with concerns about ethical investments. 

“We want to invest with managers that are ethical, that build good businesses,” Ludenberg said.  “Last month, we had our final meeting with a professor who was concerned about palm oil investments and its impact on the environment. The manager was excited about that investment from our portfolio.” 

The Assembly heard comments from outgoing members to conclude the meeting. Liu was the first member to provide closing remarks.

“I got to do a lot of fun events but also have great discussions and debates with my colleagues around certain issues and all of them have enriched my life as a faculty (member) at the University,” Liu said. “It’s been a pleasure and honor to serve you all.”

Senate Assembly members will have the opportunity to vote virtually on the four amendments until Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. There are currently no results available.

Daily News Reporter Joanna Chait can be reached at jchait@umich.edu. 

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The LSA Romance Languages and Literatures Department’s RLL Gender Diversity Committee is planning to develop materials to facilitate discussions surrounding gender diversity and identity in University of Michigan classrooms. The committee plans to utilize funds from the LSA New Initiatives/New Instruction Grant, which was awarded to the committee and a team of 15 departmental collaborators in summer 2022. The grant will provide funding for the department through December 2023.

Nick Henriksen, associate chair of RLL and chair of the committee, told The Michigan Daily he noticed a need for educational change once he assumed his position on the board of the department in fall 2019.

“There were a number of students — early on when I became Associate Chair — who reached out to us, (including) students who were nonbinary or (transgender), but also allies of them who were in classes and just didn’t feel like the curriculum was very welcoming,” Henriksen said.

As a native French speaker, Sabine Gabaron, a French Department lecturer and a founding member of the committee, told The Daily she found the French language to be limiting in terms of expressing gender identity. 

“I grew up with this idea of gender being given to objects and how the language is very much gender-driven, and I grew up in that culture — not really questioning it at all,” Gabaron said. “As the years were going by, and as I was teaching, I started reflecting on what those genders meant, because I had to teach it to (my) class(es) in an intelligible way, to American students and also international students, who had to try to understand what it meant to give a gender to objects.”

Gabaron said she reached out to Henriksen in fall 2019 to ask how she could thoughtfully teach the Romance languages in relation to gender. Henriksen said he got in touch with the lead of the RLL department’s diversity committee to create a subcommittee focused on these issues, which ultimately became the RLL Gender Diversity Committee.

In most romance languages, there are gendered terms for pronouns, adjectives, nouns and more. There aren’t many easily accessible linguistic terms that are no gendered.

With the motto “all identities are RLL identities,” the committee aims to create a public awareness campaign to promote their efforts dedicated to creating an inclusive space for the gender diverse community within the department. According to Henrikson, the committee seeks to ensure the 3,337 enrolled students, as well as the department’s faculty,  are aware of the  resources available.

Henriksen said the department’s curricula had not previously recognized of the existence of gender diverse communities in Romance-speaking countries that use gender nonbinary pronouns.

“That seemed incompatible with the cultural moment that we’re in,” Henriksen said. “The most recent (diversity, equity and inclusion) survey of undergraduate students indicated that 24% identified as LGBTQ+, so it seemed like we needed to serve our students better.”

Gabaron said comprehending new languages often involves understanding perceptions of gender and gender-neutral language in various cultures.

“Language is not just a language on its own,” Gabaron said. “There’s a cultural component to the words that we use, so the choice of pronouns and the choice of language that you’re going to use are going to be a reflection of the culture.”

Henrikson said the textbooks used to teach each of the five Romance languages available to students in the department cover grammatical gender in a binary way. The first initiative the committee undertook was to create morphology tables that break down singular and plural third-person masculine, feminine and neutral/nonbinary pronoun options. These resources can currently be accessed on RLL’s website under the “Gender Diversity Committee” tab.

Other efforts made by the committee include incorporating a disclaimer on course syllabi that promotes exploration of gender-diverse language in the classroom. The committee has also set out to create supplementary materials for all course levels that integrate gender diversity topics and still meet the learning outcomes of the respective course.

LSA junior Mallery Bee, an undergraduate research assistant for the RLL Gender Diversity Committee, told The Daily they have been impressed by the positive feedback the department’s curriculum coordinators have given to their efforts.

“There is a big risk there because we’re going in and making changes to a curriculum that (department coordinators) put together, but they were super receptive and super kind,” Bee said.

As they work on the development of both Spanish and Catalan materials, Bee said they hope students see the initiative as a purely educational effort. 

“I really hope that people see (our efforts) as a first step and not a final solution because really we’re just starting and there’s not a lot to go off of,” Bee said. “I hope that people recognize that we are learning along with them and that we feel really passionate about it.”

Rackham student Laura Pensa, a graduate student instructor and researcher for the RLL Gender Diversity Committee, is an international student whose first language is Spanish. Pensa told The Daily about how many members of the LGBTQ+ community are not taught the words they need to express aspects of their identity in their language classes, such as how to discuss their affection, relationships and kinship.

“I do feel like learning a language and teaching a language is like giving someone the key to open a whole new world of meaning, (and) that can be a very liberating thing,” Pensa said. “Speaking from personal experience, learning a second language during my adolescence was a way to say things that I couldn’t say in my own language. That doesn’t need to be the case for everyone, but if there is someone that is going through that situation, they really need those tools.”

Daily Staff Reporter Alexandra Vena can be reached at alexvena@umich.edu.

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The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building Monday afternoon to vote to elect biostatistics professor Tom Braun as chair and Damani Partridge, associate professor of anthropology, as vice chair of SACUA. Committee members also discussed a resolution to establish a committee that would work to construct a land acknowledgement monument on campus.

Before the vote for the new committee chair and vice chair, the candidates gave statements on their platform to the committee. Braun ran uncontested for SACUA chair, while Partridge ran for vice chair against Sociology professor Silvia Pedraza.  

Partridge said he plans to address problems with the University of Michigan campus climate. He said he is particularly passionate about tackling sexual misconduct, making the University more supportive of faculty of Color and bolstering relations between all three U-M campuses.

“Some of the key issues here are University climate, the risk and persistence of sexual misconduct and making the University feel more welcoming to Black and Latinx faculty in particular. We also need to address the targeting of Chinese faculty,” Partridge said. “Finally, to continue to build the relationships between the three campuses, especially to make sure that we can help and strive together when vulnerabilities emerge.”

Braun said he intends to focus on faculty retention, child and family care and shared governance during his tenure — topics that he believes many faculty members care about.

“(These topics) are what SACUA is able to do,” Braun said. “We need to combine our collective networks and faculty connections to produce solid evidence and data from which our proposals will truly have merit and power with the administration.”

Braun was elected chair of SACUA and Partridge was elected vice chair. The chair of SACUA also serves as chair of the Faculty Senate and Senate Assembly.

Having served as SACUA chair from May to December 2022, Pedraza said she looks forward to continuing to help guide SACUA in the coming year and supporting the new leadership.

“I should continue to help SACUA as best I can with all the details of how SACUA runs itself, how the University administration runs itself and, how the different departments interface with the faculty and faculty governance,” Pedraza said. “I just thought that it would be good for me to continue to offer my services in effect.”

SACUA also discussed a resolution to create a land acknowledgement monument which had been previously proposed by SACUA’s Committee on Anti-Racism (CAR). Land acknowledgements recognize Indigenous peoples as the original owners of areas of land currently being inhabited by others. The three Anishinaabeg tribes and the Wyandot tribe originally granted land for the University to be situated upon in 1817 through the Treaty of Fort Meigs. 

The University installed a plaque on campus in 2002 to commemorate the land grant, listing the names of the tribes and the history behind it. This resolution states that CAR feels that the plaque is an “inadequate” monument to honor the land gift and asks SACUA to establish a special committee. The committee would be tasked with the creation of a new monument on Central Campus commemorating the Indigenous nations’ donation. They would also advocate for the University to take steps to bring members of the original tribes to campus.

SACUA unanimously approved the resolution to be further discussed at the April 17 Senate Assembly meeting.

Daily News Editor Joey Lin can be reached at joeyylin@umich.edu.

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