News & Announcements

All events are co-sponsored by UM-Dearborn Student Government, the First Year Experience Committee of Faculty Senate, and Planet Blue Ambassadors.  This series is related to our Community Read, All We Can Save. Please reach out to members of the FYE Committee with any questions: John Burklow, Anne Dempsey, Lynda Dioszegi, Amy Finley, Tyler Guenette, Katie LaCommare, Kevin Lewtshanyn, Darena Matti, Micheal McDonald, Anna Muller, Kristin Poling, Natalie Sampson, Maggie Rathouz, Margaret Willard-Traub.
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Thursday, March 9, 4:30 pm-6:00 pm, All You Can Save: Confronting Eco-Anxiety & Moving Towards Action, Kochoff Hall B, Renick University Center.

Panel discussion on coping, staying hopeful, and working towards climate change solutions. Featuring UM-Dearborn students, faculty, counselors, support staff and administrators.

Pizza will be served!

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Wednesday, March 15, 7:00pm - 9:00 pm. New York-based animator Zoya Baker presents her environmental film, Cranberry Lake, and other shorts, followed by Q&A, 1071 CASL Building.

Cranberry Lake is a 17-minute documentary about immersive forest ecology courses in the Adirondack Mountains, connecting experiential learning and environmental stewardship.

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Thursday, March 16, Annual Forum on Migration: Climate Change. Hosted by Department of Language, Culture, and the Arts (LCA), featuring students and faculty exploring migration issues of climate change, labor, and studying abroad.

Zoom event: Passcode: 557449

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Monday, April 10, Noon - 3:00 pm, Sustainability Fair: All We can Save, Kochoff Hall, Renick University Center.

In celebration of Earth Month, meet UM-Dearborn and community organizations working on sustainability initiatives, offering  internships and volunteer opportunities. Film screening of Pollution Has No Boundaries and a “pie the professor” fundraiser for the UM-Dearborn Environmental Interpretive Center.

Faculty Senate Sponsors Community Read for 2022-2023

Community Read is a program of the First Year Experience Committee of Faculty Senate (co-chairs Holly Sorscher and Margaret Willard-Traub), modeled after the Big Read of the National Endowment for the Arts. The intent is for students, especially those new to campus, to engage with the topic from several disciplinary perspectives. 

The reading for 2022-2023 is All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, an anthology of 60 essays and poems edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson (One World 2020). The anthology is part of the All We Can Save Project. Members of the Faculty Senate First Year Experience Committee are planning a variety of events throughout the 2022-2023 academic year related to the climate crisis.

The book selected for 2021-2022 was William D. Lopez's Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid. The book traces wide-ranging economic, social, psychological, heath, and educational fallout from one ICE raid in 2013 in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Dr. Lopez is an assistant professor at the UM School of Public Health. He answered student questions about his work as part of the programming throughout the year, including "Books and Brews" events and a panel discussion.

The reading for 2020-2021 was How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi. UM-Dearborn faculty members prepared video presentations on individual book chapters for use in classes or as guides to prepare class presentations. These chapter video commentaries are available on the UM YouTube playlist. The Mardigian Library also has several web pages devoted to Antiracism resources.

The Faculty Senate encourages all faculty members at UM-Dearborn to consider ways in which Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist, excerpts from the book, or similar resources can be incorporated into classes across the curriculum.

Faculty Senate Virtual Meetings  

During the academic years 2022-2023, Faculty Senate continues to meet virtually once a month on Monday afternoons, 3:30-5:00 pm. The full UM-Dearborn meeting schedule is available elsewhere on the Faculty Senate web pages. Meeting information for the University of Michigan three-campus Faculty Senate and Senate Assembly are located on the Senate Assembly web page. 

Statement from UM-Dearborn Faculty Senate to President Schlissel (Approved, Faculty Senate 06/16/2021)

We would like to convey our serious misgivings about the wording of Q14 in this year's administrative review of President Schlissel, as part of the AY2020-21 faculty Evaluation of Administrators. The question, added at the request of President Schlissel and not discussed by the AEC, asks faculty to rate their agreement with the statement: “UM-Ann Arbor should provide funding for students at UM-Flint and UM-Dearborn to benefit from the Go Blue Guarantee even if it means sacrificing academic excellence or lower salary growth on the Ann Arbor campus.”
We find this to be a leading question that seems to pit funding for Flint and Dearborn students against both the “academic excellence" and potential "salary growth" for AA faculty. It implies a zero-sum game between funding regional campuses and "salary growth" for AA employees. We find these aspects to be deeply troubling.
Although President Schlissel has now issued an apology to SACUA and faculty on the three campuses stating that the data from the question will not be used, we still consider it important to convey our concerns and to urge that an inclusive approach be consistently used not just in communication but in policy. Suggesting that the three campuses are competitors, rather than partners, is in direct opposition to the president serving the entire University of Michigan as well as the One University and DEI initiatives that have gained support among faculty and students on all three campuses.
The Flint, Ann Arbor, and Dearborn campuses fill complementary roles as parts of the University of Michigan system, and work best to serve our state when we encourage cross-campus collaborations. Instead, encouraging faculty to think of the three campuses as in competition with each other, and the branch campuses as a threat to Ann Arbor, creates an environment that makes these kinds of productive and mutually beneficial collaborations more difficult.

Dearborn Discovery Core Changes Being Implemented

In June 2019 the University Curriculum Development Committee (UCDC) of Faculty Senate released its proposed revisions to requirements in the Dearborn Discovery Core (DDC).  Proposed revisions were considered by Faculty Senate from October 2019 through March 2020. Approved revisions were implemented to take full effect in fall term, 2021.

Regents Issue Memorial Statements for Two UM-Dearborn Faculty Senators 

At their meeting of December 6, 2018, the UM Regents adopted Memorial Statements for two UM-Dearborn faculty members who died in 2018, Associate Professor Bruce Elenbogen (CECS) and Professor Elsayed Orady (CECS).  Both Elenbogen and Orady were active members of Faculty Senate over many years, serving as Senators representing their college and as members of several Senate committees. Orady also served as Senate Chair in 2003-2004, and as Vice Chair in 2010 and 2011. Their memorial statements were framed and presented to their families by Faculty Senate and were published in the Regents' minutes for December 6, 2018.