By SHANNON O. WELLS
Regardless of what recent winter squalls suggest or what Punxsutawney Phil predicts, one sure sign that spring is on its way is the announcement of final details for the annual Senate Plenary.
SENATE ELECTIONS
Senate Council hopes to wrap up the nominations process for president, vice president, Faculty Assembly members and Senate committee positions by the end of February.
Robin Kear and Kristen Kanthak have served two terms of two years each as president and vice president of Senate Council, respectively, which is the limit for each position. Kear, who previously was Senate vice president from 2017-19, will move into the immediate past president role in July. Kanthak is able to run for president now, although no nominations have been released.
The plan is to have officer elections and Faculty Assembly elections run April 3 to 18. Senate committees would run April 25 to May 7. The Elections committee, headed by current immediate past president Chris Bonneau, will meet the week of March 10 to finalize the slates for officers and Faculty Assembly.
Anyone interested in the positions, can contact Lori Molinaro, Senate Executive Committee director, at lam06@pitt.edu.
Senate Council President Robin Kear, who has teased the event for months, enthusiastically shared the finer points of the March event, called “Academic Freedom in the Classroom: Strategies for Discourse and Dialogue,” at the Feb. 12 Faculty Assembly meeting in Posvar Hall.
Michelle Deutschman, executive director of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Engagement, is keynote speaker for the plenary, set for Tuesday, March 11, at noon in the William Pitt Union Lower Lounge.
“I'm very excited that Dr. Deutschman is coming in person,” Kear said. “In this world of Zoom … (she was) intrigued about our environment and very interested.”
Pitt panelists include Paul Harper, associate dean for inclusion, engagement, and international affairs for Pitt Business; Calum Matheson, chair of the Department of Communication in the Dietrich School of Arts and Science; and Sera Mathew, director of equitable and inclusive teaching in the University Center for Teaching and Learning.
The event will open with remarks from Chancellor Joan Gabel. Each panelist will speak for about five minutes, followed by a question-and-answer session. Provost Joe McCarthy will provide concluding comments.
The event will available via Zoom on the University Senate website, and a recording will be posted, but Kear encouraged attending the event in person.
“Please do, if you can attend that event, because I want to get a good turnout for Michelle, because she's coming all the way from California,” she said.
Federal changes
Kear also touched on the onslaught of research funding-related budget cuts proposed or enacted in the first weeks of the new Trump administration. This included a move to drastically reduce funding for National Institutes of Health-based research grants, which federal judges halted with a temporary restraining order.
“Last month was a different time, and now (we see) what a difference a few weeks can make, really, for us,” Kear said of the head-spinning series events since Donald Trump’s January inauguration. “We are in incredibly uncertain times right now with few assurances and reassurances to be found.
“I know that you have received updates by email from senior leadership, and are likely to be following federal government developments closely that affect our University and your research as well,” she added. “I can assure you that the Senate is working with and talking closely with senior administration as our external environment changes, almost daily.”
Noting the “many people at Pitt who are working very hard to understand” the financial and other impacts,” Kear noted that “many, many others who are also worried about what those impacts can mean. And I assume that's you and me. But what I do know is that we must try to work together and do the best that we can for our students and for our university.
“I know whenever there's any change, there are the intended consequences and the unintended consequences,” she said. “And we are going to be (dealing) with those.”
Kear encouraged monitoring the Pitt Research webpage on executive orders and federal funding for the latest developments.
Pitt EDGE
Tony Delitto, Pitt’s associate provost for digital education, gave a presentation on the Center for Excellence in Digital Education, or Pitt EDGE, which supports the planning, development and implementation of online and hybrid educational programming through centralized services and the engagement of existing teams within the University’s 16 schools, including the Health Sciences.
Delitto fielded questions after the presentation, including how Pitt EDGE might work with existing programs at the School of Computing and Information. Nora Mattern, teaching assistant professor and director of the Sara Fine Institute, asked if Pitt EDGE might intersect with the master’s in library and information science program that she teaches.
“The answer is yes. We’ve been approached by some of the schools that have been working with OPMs (external online provider management companies) that would like to at least explore doing what we did at SHRS (School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences), and getting out of that arrangement,” Delitto said, noting the schools of Law and Social Work have expressed interest.
“No one has yet come to us with an existing online program, but we'd be happy to talk to anybody … because one of the things I think that we could offer is a look at the marketing recruitment model,” he added. “We’d be wide open to that.”
Franz Ferdinand, professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, asked about the possibility of an immersion program similar to what the School of Nursing offers.
“If the space is available, absolutely we would do that,” Delitto said about bringing online students onto campus for short, intense study periods. “The preference, if the school has the space, is to have it right in the school. … The whole idea of getting a student to feel like they're part of Pitt and part of the program, you would solve some of it if you could have immersions right in the school.
Tom Songer, assistant professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health, asked how Pitt EDGE will affect individual faculty members going forward. In SHRS, Delitto explained, faculty were hired specifically to teach online.
“The obvious thing (with) the programs building themselves, (is) the faculty becoming engaged. And we'll have an instructional design team that will work with faculty in whatever way feasible,” Delitto said. “Certainly, if there's a place for a hybrid operation, where you have faculty that want to actually do instructional-design technology, or if somebody from the business school wants to help us with some of the marketing, recruitment, the market analyses, things like that, there would be a place in Pitt EDGE for that.”
Pitt Space Initiative
Alan George, department chair of electrical and computer engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering, shared a presentation on the Pitt Space Initiative, which University Times profiled last fall.
Some questions from Faculty Assembly related to different areas of faculty involvement with the program.
Afshin Beheshti, director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s new Center for Space Biomedicine, a pillar of the Pitt Space initiative, encouraged conversations and collaborations with ethicists, lawyers and those from various areas of expertise “who need to be involved in the second Space Age that’s coming.”
“I know a few people outside of Pitt that want to work with us,” Beheshti said.
A global education certificate program for space biomedicine is being created for graduate-level medicine students. The online course, which could be launched as early as this fall, will involve around 100 universities from around the world.
“They will incorporate what we're doing into their own universities,” Beheshti said. “But Pitt’s the hub. Pitt’s going to be known for this, because space biomedicine is the key.”
Melanie Good, teaching associate professor and co-director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, followed up on George’s mention of the Survey of Transiting Extrasolar Planets at the University of Pittsburgh (STEPUP) research group.
Good, who founded the research group, noted that Allegheny Observatory is remotely operable from the Pitt campus. While students use “pre-provided data,” they also can also take data directly from the Allegheny Observatory and “use their own data to look for planets orbiting at their stars.
“And you don't have to be a physics major to be involved,” she added. “It's a completely student-run organization, and any undergraduate who has an interest can be involved.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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