By SHANNON O. WELLS

In November 2024, Faculty Assembly and Senate Council approved resolutions to allow the formation of affinity groups as informal committees comprising faculty, staff, students or other Pitt community members that share a “common goal, purpose or ideology” and who want to participate in the Senate.

At the most recent Faculty Assembly meeting, on Feb. 13 in Posvar Hall, David Salcido, assistant professor of emergency medicine, proposed Pitt’s first such group to serve the Health Sciences faculty, which the Assembly approved.

Noting that Senate bylaws allow the creation of ad hoc committees, standing committees and affinity groups, Salcido said affinity groups “provide for the representation of groups in the University that fill a specific need or niche among the university population, I think it’s fair to say.”

Faculty Assembly members from health sciences have met in recent years with Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and School of Medicine dean, to discuss issues within Shekhar’s purview. These include advancement of shared governance in the School of Medicine, along with issues that “commonly affect the destiny of the faculty in the health sciences,” Salcido noted.

“I’d like to formalize that as an affinity group, which would give — extending beyond the members of the Assembly, but generally that group of faculty — the advantage of some mechanisms the Senate affords, including the ability to elect members of a committee, for instance.”

An affinity group answers “two needs,” he explained: The representation of those faculty, collectively across the health sciences, and also, “what we know is an acknowledged need for some method of representation within the School of Medicine at the faculty level.”

This includes something like a faculty assembly, “which has been discussed in our meetings (with Shekhar). As we continue to discuss related matters with the senior vice chancellor, this will give us a formal mechanism for continuing the work we’ve already been doing,” he said.

‘Important issue’

Senate Council President Kris Kanthak said the new Senate bylaws say that a proposal for an affinity group needs to go through the Senate executive committee and be approved by Faculty Assembly, which is what Salcido did.

“I think this is actually the first time that we’re using it,” she said. “We have no objection to this. We think this is an important issue, and we support it.”

Kanthak said she’s aware that School of Medicine faculty members feel “squeezed out,” at least somewhat because they aren’t part of the faculty union bargaining unit.

“I think the new affinity group for faculty in the health sciences is an excellent avenue for shared governance,” she noted. “I appreciate the hard work of David Salcido to make that happen.”

Responding to a question about whether, like standing committees, affinity groups would have executive committee liaisons working with and “monitoring” them, Kanthak said affinity group rules indicate they can have “someone in the executive committee who does that,” or perhaps a representative from the chancellor’s office or someone from “under the chancellor’s purview.”

Noting that the bylaws say this is based on the chancellor’s discretion, Salcido said “as far as the administrative liaison, it makes sense for it to be the senior vice chancellor of health sciences.

Creating change

Praising Salcido’s initiative, John Maier, Department of Family Medicine assistant professor, said as a longtime Faculty Assembly member, the move to make an affinity group has “made a lot of sense for a long time. This isn’t just something brand new. We’re not trying to take over the world.

“This is a really nice way, using existing mechanisms to bring together faculty in a way that is going to help our University get better,” he added. “Thank you, David, for that. There’s a lot of, I think, really positive history here, just to let other folks in this body know that.”

Salcido said the interests of the affinity group are different from those represented in standing Senate committees. Standing committees, he explained, do not “effectively converge on the issues that are unique to the health sciences faculty,” such as budgetary considerations and administrative choices across health sciences.

Noting that he’s “been here a while,” Salcido said the need for “more complete shared governance (in the School of Medicine) is well known and well discussed. And frankly, the administration in the School of Medicine is responsive to that,” he added. “It just takes a long time for these things to change.

“It may be that this group also serves as an interim body for formulating how that might work within the School of Medicine,” he added. “In that sense, it sort of exercises processes and modes of discussion that just would not make sense in other standing committees.”

Kanthak clarified that the “main reason” to not have an affinity group is if it was trying to take over for an existing standing committee.

“Our committees don’t work like this,” she said. “There are a lot of implications for that, but the committees in the Senate are, by definition, University-wide. This will be something that will be specifically for those faculty who are in the health sciences.”

Noting that two members of Senate leadership — Vice President Julia Meade and Secretary Penny Morel —  are School of Medicine faculty and part of the affinity group, Frits Pil, a Pitt Business professor, proposed a “friendly request” that there always be an executive committee liaison to this group, “so that there’s coordination …. between what this governing body does.”

Kanthak said bylaws stipulate establishing an executive committee member who liaises with any affinity group. “My hope is it will always be someone who’s in the health sciences. But even if it’s not, a member of the executive committee will always be able to liaise with this affinity group and the committees.”

She called Salcido’s proposal a “perfect example of why the affinity group structure could potentially be helpful.”

The creation of the affinity group was approved by voice vote, with no objections.

Commenting to the University Times after the Faculty Assembly meeting, Salcido said short-term goals including figuring out how the group should operate and its structure. “There has never been an affinity group in the University Senate, so we have a clean slate and the ability to make some choices. … The next step will be to iron out the details.

“Longer term goals at this point include facilitating the development of a faculty assembly or something like it within the School of Medicine,” he added. “We are lucky to have very receptive leadership at Pitt and the School of Medicine, so I look forward to seeing how that will proceed.”

Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.

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