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1st
appeared 24 June 1999
Academic Senate Forms Committee on Clinical
Affairs
The UCSF Academic Senate voted on June 17 to establish
a committee to keep faculty current on health sciences issues and clinical activities that
affect the academic mission.
The Academic Senate amended its bylaws to create a Committee on Clinical Affairs to
identify trends and decisions that may affect UCSF's teaching, service and research and to
conduct town hall meetings to maintain a free flow of information and discussion between
faculty and administration about UCSF Stanford Health Care, affiliated sites and other
clinical matters. To be composed of Senate and non-Senate faculty who must represent the
various sites, the committee will forward faculty concerns to appropriate officials.
Forming the committee is timely, faculty say, as changes at UCSF Stanford and in the
health care industry in general affect the practices and policies that have a direct
impact on how well faculty meet their academic mission in clinical areas.
"We did not have any specific committee that deals with the clinical affairs of our
faculty," says Svein Oie, Academic Senate chair and professor of biopharmaceutical
sciences. "In the past, individual schools have dealt with the issues within their
own faculty. Now we feel we are facing issues that are of cross-campus concerns. We need
to look at all the campus sites and also be able to respond to systemwide committees
focusing on health sciences matters."
UCSF's clinical affairs committee will serve as the
faculty's liaison to systemwide committees.
Thursday's vote -- with no opposition and two abstentions -- required no debate as the
faculty discussed the issue at length at its May 10 meeting when the Academic Senate
lacked a quorum of 40 members to vote for establishing the committee.
The Academic Senate bylaws call for the Committee on Committees, an elected group of
faculty, to name the members of the new clinical affairs committee. The 11-member
committee will have seven regular members, including at least one member from each of the
four professional schools. The four ex-officio members will include the Vice Chancellor
for Academic Affairs, the Chair or Vice Chair of the Graduate Council, and two UCSF
faculty members who serve on UCSF Stanford's Committee on Inter-School Academic Advisory
Group.
Recognizing the difficulty of reaching a quorum, the Academic Senate in a separate vote on
Thursday approved a bylaw amendment to enable it to use secure forms of electronic
communication for voting. About 90 percent of the faculty have access to email.
"We think the return on the vote will be higher," says Larry Pitts, Academic
Senate chair-elect. "This is an opportunity to get a more accurate voice of the
faculty."
In related news, the Academic Senate voted in April to deny department chairs eligibility
for faculty representation to the UCSF Stanford board of directors. The campuswide mail
ballot for the faculty representative to the UCSF Stanford board resulted in 150 votes in
favor and 227 against for a total of 393 votes cast from a pool of 949 eligible voters.
There were three abstentions and 14 invalid ballots, according to the minutes of the
Academic Senate.
Links:
UCSF Academic Senate
Faculty Concerned About UCSF
Stanford's Impact on Academic Mission
Source: Lisa Cisneros, Newsbreak
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