Along with electing this year's officers, faculty senators questioned the provost about the current hiring freeze at last night's Faculty Senate meeting.
The senate will have the same three executives next year as this year, after a call for challengers went unanswered. Senators unanimously re-elected Joe McLaughlin as chairman, David Thomas as vice chairman and Elizabeth Sayrs as secretary.
I think that the priorities the senate outlined in the November meeting are still our priorities
McLaughlin said after the meeting. I'm also concerned with the diminishing resources and the transition to semesters about keeping faculty at a comparable workload.
McLaughlin, who will serve as Faculty Senate chairman for the second year in a row, added that he hopes to hold the administration to its commitments on compensation and is concerned about the potential decrease in Group I faculty given the hiring freeze.
While discussing the hiring freeze, one of the main concerns was about crucial faculty positions, which in the past had been held by Group II and Group IV faculty only, could potentially be held by Group III faculty - which would be a cheaper alternative.
Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit said that was not the goal of the change and that she hoped it would simply cause departments to think carefully about their hiring and justify each decision.
That is certainly not the intention
she said. But we want to make it broad enough that if a Group III is the appropriate person to hire into that position it's also possible to do.
Arts and Sciences Senator Ken Brown also voiced concern that this could ultimately change the balance of courses taught by Group I faculty at Ohio University. Group I faculty taught 44 percent of undergraduate credit hours and 68 percent of graduate credit hours during the 2008-2009 academic year.
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Pat Holmes
