Faculty Senate elects new leaders, committee members

The Faculty Senate on Wednesday elected Carmen Sceppa, a professor in the Department of Health Sciences and director of research in the Human Performance and Exercise Laboratory, to serve as chair of the Senate Agenda Committee for the 2015-16 academic year.

Sceppa was nominated along with current Senate Agenda Committee chair Richard Daynard, University Distinguished Professor of Law, and Dennis Cokely, director of the American Sign Language program and chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Robert Hanson, the Matthews Distinguished University Professor in the College of Science, was elected Faculty Senate secretary. Four senators were also elected to serve on the Senate Agenda Committee: Cokely, Louis Kruger, associate professor of counseling and applied educational psychology, Timothy Cresswell, professor of history and international affairs, and Timothy Bickmore, associate professor in the College of Computer and Information Science.

Following the elections, the Faculty Senate held its final meeting of the 2014-15 academic year. The senate passed a number of resolutions, including:

• Accepting a report from the Committee for Full-time, Non-tenure-track Faculty

• Extending the academic withdrawal date to Reading Day

• Changing the name of the Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology to the Department of Applied Psychology

• Suspending admissions to the Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology program

• Making the Master of Fine Arts: Studio program into the Master of Fine Arts: Interdisciplinary Arts program

• Establishing a Master of Public Policy program, establishing a Master of Arts in Environmental Science and Policy program, and establishing a graduate certificate in Arts Administration and Cultural Entrepreneurship