UVa's Faculty Leaders Gain New Power After President Is Reinstated
Now, a day after the senate helped engineer a reversal in the Board of Visitors’ decision to force Teresa A. Sullivan from Virginia’s presidency, it seems the provost was right. The Faculty Senate here has transformed itself into a major player, the guiding force that galvanized alumni, students, and community members in demanding that the university bring Ms. Sullivan back. “This is the making of our Faculty Senate,” says David W. Breneman, a professor of education economics and public policy who is widely respected here and has been at Virginia since 1995. That the senate could so quickly become a force to be reckoned with has shocked even faculty leaders themselves. At the beginning of the Sullivan controversy, Mr. Cohen discovered that the group didn’t even have the authority to send mass e-mail messages to professors on campus. They were hardly calculating leaders, ready to do battle. But when a battle came to them, they found a way to assemble their voices and fight back.
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by Robin Wilson, The Chronicle of Higher Education.