Faculty Senate

Trustees at Drexel University yesterday gave unanimous approval to a new faculty-governance system that will establish the first faculty senate in Drexel's 98-year history. The trustees also approved an 8.5 percent increase in tuition for the 1989-90 academic year. Tuition will rise from $8,370 to $9,081, school officials said. The tuition increase is the smallest percentage hike in four years. Tuition rose by 18.5 percent in the 1986-87 school year and was followed by increases of 12.1 percent and 8.9 percent, officials said.

The Temple University board of trustees yesterday expressed support for Temple president Peter J. Liacouras, whose leadership was sharply criticized in a report endorsed overwhelmingly Monday by the university's faculty senate. In a resolution, the board acknowledged receipt of the report - which found that nearly 60 percent of the faculty had little or no trust in the president - but said it was "confident in the president's commitment to the board's policies of governance of the university.

As Pennsylvania State University began its three-day public mourning Tuesday of Joe Paterno's death, elsewhere on campus an academic debate raged on for more than an hour over whether faculty would formally criticize the board of trustees for its handling of the child-sex-abuse scandal that ultimately cost Paterno his coaching job. In the end, the university's faculty senate by a large margin voted against taking a "no-confidence" vote against...

Call it a war for independence. That's the way some Rutgers-Camden faculty members see it. They would like to break off from Rutgers' main campus in New Brunswick and begin receiving direct funding from the state legislature. Yesterday, William Lutz, president of the faculty senate here, told Rutgers president Francis Lawrence that the university's long-range plan shortchanged the Camden campus in favor of the Newark and New Brunswick campuses. "I have sat in the same chair for 25 years now," Lutz said at a tense faculty meeting in a conference room at the Campus Center here.

A battle over University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann's commitment to diversity has been playing out on the pages of the student newspaper this week. In a letter to the Daily Pennsylvanian, a group of senior faculty in the Africana studies department blasted Gutmann as failing to add leaders of color to her administration while touting diversity as an initiative. Their letter was prompted by Gutmann's decision last month to appoint Steven J. Fluharty, who is white and had been senior vice provost for research and professor of pharmacology, psychology, and neuroscience, as the new dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.

The board of trustees of Temple University declared its "complete support" of Temple President Peter J. Liacouras yesterday and told the faculty senate it had no authority to conduct an investigation into the president's leadership of the university. In a strongly worded letter to professor Lynn H. Miller, president of the faculty senate, Temple board chairman Richard J. Fox also said the board had instructed Liacouras and his top administrative officers not to participate in the faculty governing body's pending probe.

The faculty senate at Temple University voted overwhelmingly yesterday to investigate whether Temple President Peter J. Liacouras has lost the "trust and support" of faculty members on the 31,000-student campus. The investigation, to be conducted by a faculty commission to be appointed next week, was approved with only two dissenting votes by about 200 faculty members who attended a special meeting of the faculty's chief governing body at Ritter Hall yesterday morning. The meeting was linked by telephone to faculty members on Temple's Ambler campus and at the Health Sciences Center.

The Temple University Board of Trustees has politely told faculty leaders that they have no business investigating president Peter J. Liacouras' effectiveness in running the university. Representatives of the trustees, stressing their continued support for Liacouras, said yesterday they would instruct the president and other university officers not to cooperate in the faculty senate probe. After a two-hour meeting with key trustees, however, senate leaders yesterday moved ahead with plans for a 10-member commission "to investigate, not the president, but the question of whether or not the president has lost the support of the faculty," said Lynn H. Miller, president of the Faculty Senate.

The Temple University faculty senate yesterday overwhelmingly endorsed its inquiry commission's report highly critical of Temple President Peter J. Liacouras and voted to consider asking for his resignation or dismissal in September if it considers his response to the report's recommendations unsatisfactory. "The senate position, which passed by something like 250-3, means that we agreed to wait until September before more drastic measures, like a call for his resignation or asking the board of trustees to fire him or for a vote of censure, might be undertaken," said Lynn Miller, a professor of political science and president of the faculty senate.

A battle over University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann's commitment to diversity has been playing out on the pages of the student newspaper this week. In a letter to the Daily Pennsylvanian, a group of senior faculty in the Africana studies department blasted Gutmann as failing to add leaders of color to her administration while touting diversity as an initiative. Their letter was prompted by Gutmann's decision last month to appoint Steven J. Fluharty, who is white and had been senior vice provost for research and professor of pharmacology, psychology, and neuroscience, as the new dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.

Rowan University faculty members are considering coming out against legislation that would restructure New Jersey's public universities, potentially adding weight to plan opposition. In a statement released Sunday, university senate president Eric Milou said a proposed joint board overseeing Rowan and Rutgers-Camden would "diminish the autonomy and potential growth of both universities. " The statement proposed that the schools collaborate through other means. "Faculty and staff have consistently demonstrated restraint about the speculation and controversy regarding the possibilities of a reorganization of higher education in NJ," Milou said.

Faced with declining state revenue, Temple University's provost spent the last year looking at ways to cut costs and improve operations, but some educators on campus aren't pleased with his ideas. In a 25-page white paper, Dick Englert laid out a range of possibilities, perhaps the most controversial of which calls for consolidating or merging several schools and departments. The schools of education and communications and theater, the Boyer College of Music and Dance, and the Tyler School of Art were listed as possible candidates.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - As Pennsylvania State University began its three-day public mourning Tuesday of Joe Paterno's death, elsewhere on campus an academic debate raged on for more than an hour over whether faculty would formally criticize the board of trustees for its handling of the child-sex-abuse scandal that ultimately cost Paterno his coaching job. In the end, the university's faculty senate by a large margin voted against taking a "no-confidence"...

ON THE first day of a public viewing for former Penn State coach Joe Paterno, the university's Faculty Senate is scheduled today to consider a vote of no confidence in the Board of Trustees that fired him. Dr. Anthony Ambrose, from the School of Medicine, had proposed at a meeting last month that Penn State should ask for the resignation of the entire 32-member board and form a board "that is lean, clean, and probably under these circumstances pretty...

Like many Penn State alumni, banker Karen Peetz and potato farmer Keith Masser - the new chairwoman and vice chairman of the university board of trustees - have lives deeply intertwined with their alma mater. Peetz's father is a Pennsylvania State University graduate. She met her future husband, David, a landscape architect, there. His parents went to Penn State, too. And so did her son. "She's a Penn Stater through and through," trustee Joel N. Myers, founder and president of AccuWeather Inc., said when he nominated her at the trustees meeting Friday.

Even as Pennsylvania State University president Rodney Erickson began a statewide goodwill tour this week to address alumni, he faces a battle back on his main campus over whether the university is doing enough to investigate allegations that it missed or ignored signs that onetime coach Jerry Sandusky was abusing kids. On Tuesday, a faculty leadership group agreed to place before the full faculty senate a motion that calls for Erickson to create a separate task force to investigate the conduct of the board of trustees, according to a source.

Even as Pennsylvania State University president Rodney Erickson began a statewide goodwill tour this week to address alumni, he faces a battle back on his main campus over whether the university is doing enough to investigate allegations that it missed or ignored signs that onetime coach Jerry Sandusky was abusing kids. On Tuesday, a faculty leadership group agreed to place before the full faculty senate a motion that calls for Erickson to create a separate task force to investigate the conduct of the board of trustees, according to a source.

Walter J. Gershenfeld, 84, of Center City, a labor arbitrator and mediator and emeritus professor of management at Temple University, died of a heart attack Thursday at his home. Dr. Gershenfeld served on Temple's Fox School of Business faculty for more than 40 years. For more than 50 years, he helped negotiate labor contracts and mediate disputes, including those between teachers and area school districts, police and the City of Philadelphia, and the city and its white- and blue-collar workers.