From Chris Schilling, engineering faculty senator.

I'm an engineering faculty senator. I've heard many faculty say they they are too busy to get involved in university governance. The same people share common concerns about lots of issues including academic standards, admission standards, professional ethics, performance reviews, and more.

The problem is that we're all in different buildings and we're too busy to meet face to face.

So, I had a look at how Stanford handles this situation.....they have an electronic forum called "Tomorrow's Professor". It's interesting to see how discussion themes are organized at Stanford's website http//cis.stanford.edu/structure/tomprof/listserver.html.

It's very comprehensive, and it is also a valuable information source, especially for new professors.

I started a similar forum at ISU to link people together and promote communication of basic, faculty values that are needed to enhance the health of the university. It is a listserve called "facultyvalues@iastate.edu." My hope is the forum can act as a sounding board and will hopefully encourage more faculty to participate in university governance. We just started the list, and we're discussing the new post tenure review policy.

To sign up:  send an email to facultyvalues-request@iastate.edu with a single word in the body of the message: subscribe

Your e-mail handler most likely has a "filter" that can put all the listserve messages into a mailbox......this way, your PC won't get cluttered with too many incoming messages.

To unsubscribe: send an email to facultyvalues-request@iastate.edu with a single word in the body of the message: unsubscribe