[WFA*] Please vote in senate elections (candidate statements)

[Jennifer Hughes]

Dear WFA constituents,

The WFA steering committee encourages your engagement in the senate elections currently taking place.  We are not endorsing a particular candidate for senate chair, but we share the following statements provided to us by the three candidates, in alphabetical order by last name.

Jean Helwege

I am running for Chair of the Senate and I hope you will endorse my candidacy. We want women at UCR to excel in their academic careers, which is really challenging when the resources are limited and most faculty are commuting from cities with better school districts and better opportunities for their spouses, not to mention the childcare issues during Covid. My goal, if elected, is to make the Senate an organization that serves the faculty’s interests and improves the education of our students.

Sang-Hee Lee
Our academic mission has been encumbered by challenges, most recently exacerbated by the pandemic. While UCR plans to grow to 35,000 students in less than 15 years, our Senate needs to ensure that faculty be an integral part of the projected growth, not asked to do more with less. I have a long history of working with the administration and the Senate, across the college and the campus, in matters of academic, budget, student admissions, courses, and academic personnel, as Department Chair, Associate Dean of Student Academic Affairs, and Associate Dean of Social Sciences. I have been a member of the WFA and its predecessor since I joined UCR in 2001, and served as a WFA co-chair. As the Senate Chair, I will invite all voices to the table to build consensus through transparency and open dialogue, while streamlining senate operations to reduce ineffective redundancies. Under my leadership, we will get things done to uphold our academic mission, and to be a clear and loud voice in all matters, as we stand at this critical juncture.

Dylan Rodiguez

Underrepresentation of women among UCR faculty, along with the persistence of informal, unrecognized barriers to promotion and long-term retention, are distressingly normalized in our institutional culture. This is both reprehensible and unsustainable. I have consistently worked with and in support of women faculty at UCR to address these issues in direct, collective ways. Colleagues can attest to my principle, consistency, and integrity on these issues during my time as Chair of Ethnic Studies, term as President of the American Studies Association, two previous terms as Senate Chair, and current position as Co-Director of the Center for Ideas and Society.



A recent and current example of my commitment and seriousness on issues regarding gender equity: since Fall 2021 i have been co-leading (with Prof. Donatella Gallela) a directed strategic discussion on recruitment and retention of women, LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented faculty through the Faculty Commons project at Center for Ideas and Society. We are building a collective analysis of the problems at stake, which include (but are not limited to):

  *   Maldistribution of departmental, college, and university service onto women faculty and other underrepresented faculty members at all levels, but particularly at the Associate Professor levels;
  *   The stubborn, ongoing institutional crisis of women faculty at the Associate Professor rank being asked/compelled to assume various burdens (including numerous “unrecognized” forms of institutional labor/service) that inhibit their progress to Full Professor;
  *   Lack of robust dialog and information at the administrative level (including Deans and the Academic Personnel office/VPAP) regarding the complex, nuanced conditions that both 1) inhibit the advancement of women faculty at UCR and 2) result in departures by women faculty for positions at other research universities (often with promotions to Full Professor);
  *   Resultant lack of a large pool of senior women faculty who could serve on CAP; and
  *   The need for full transparency regarding salary equity within and across ranks in every college and school.

Importantly, the effort i’m describing has formulated a strategy that will culminate in a series of directed conversations with the VPAP (Dan Jeske) and Provost this Spring. We are pushing for changes to The Call as well as a more substantive, long-term agenda to address the problems WFA has been raising and addressing, among many others. I am committed to making use of the office of Senate Chair to think and plan alongside WFA to accelerate institutional changes that center, rather than marginalize, the experiences and concerns of women faculty at UCR. And, my track record shows that when i commit to something, i follow through!

Sincerely,

The WFA Chairs and Steering Committee.



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