Spectrum - Volume 20 Issue 29 April 23, 1998 - Faculty Senate elects officers

A non-profit publication of the Office of the University Relations of Virginia Tech,
including The Conductor , a special section of the Spectrum printed 4 times a year

Faculty Senate
elects officers

By John Ashby

Spectrum Volume 20 Issue 29 - April 23, 1998

The Faculty Senate has elected officers for the upcoming academic year.
Elected at the first April meeting were Kerry Redican, president; Richard Bambach, vice president; and Cliff Shaffer, secretary-treasurer.
A point of discussion at the meeting was the ongoing issue of reducing the number of serials subscribed to by the University Libraries. Principal Bibliographer and senator Paul Metz, in information provided to Spectrum following the senate meeting outlined a concern expressed by fellow senators. Metz responded to the question, "Why don't you just cut the serials that were nearly cancelled last time rather than bother us with them this time?
"You are probably remembering that in the 1997 cancellation we came in with over a half-million dollars worth of titles nearly cancelled in 1995," Metz said. We listed them again, indicated as left-overs, and cancelled a large fraction of them. Still, the commentary a second time was useful and spared numerous titles. The problem this time is that we had fewer than a dozen titles nearly cancelled, just barely spared, from last time so we basically had to go back to the well.
"Also it's hard to compile these messages, since all nearly 500 of them came straight as e-mail to the individual bibliographers. Your question does remind me though that I should work to make sure bibliographers share last year's notes with people who have replaced them, and I will do that. Again, I hope that everyone participates once we put the list up, and I would in addition appreciate senators' assessments of where between benign and ruinous the overall set of nominations looks from your perspective." (Editor's note: A detailed discussion of the serials issue will be published on page 3 in next week's Spectrum.)
At the March meeting of the Faculty Senate, senators reported on the year's progress to date.
Tom Sherman discussed the relationship between the Faculty Senate of Virginia (FSV) and Tech's Faculty Senate. He also described the positive direction the FSV has taken recently. "We are heading in a positive direction, but we need to keep up with legislative-relations activities."