Faculty Senate's commitment to bettering academics for all

By: Hannah Wiley, Features Editor

Going into the 2025-26 academic year, the faculty senate has all its seats full for the first time in three years and a new chair, Dr. Graham Stowe. Faculty senate consists of full-time faculty that is tenured, tenure-track or clinical, meaning they have been at the institution for a long time though they are not tenured or on a tenure track. “The role of the faculty senate is to make decisions that affect the faculty and to contribute to the overall running of the university,” said Stowe, who was named the new chair in May. 

The other 12 seats are filled by Deb Burns of quantitative sciences, Stephen Chanderbhan of philosophy, Lorrei DiCamillo of education, Shannon Jemiolo of accounting, Aimee Larson of the physicians assistant program, Bob Nida of education and human services, Jen Snekser of animal behavior, ecology and conversation, Yvonne Widenor of fine arts, welfare chair Tanya Loughead of philosophy, finance and budget chair Zach McGurk of economics, education policy committee (EPC) chair Jonathan Rodgers of psychology and Vice Chair Sara Tulin of biology.

In the 1980 case, NLRB v. Yeshiva University, the Supreme Court ruled that faculty at private universities are managerial employees, meaning they cannot unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but must have input in the decisions made in faculty and academic issues at the institution. In other words, faculty and administration must have shared governance. This means that the faculty senate is in charge of “some very obvious things like curriculum, majors, new certificates and programs. And the administration and the Board of Trustees has a voice in that, but the decisions are our faculty now at the same time…there’s the less obvious things [that] are stuff like…Success Centers and tutoring centers,” Stowe said. They neither have nor want involvement in the decisions of student life: “We don't have much say or much interest [in] how the dorms are run,” Stowe said.

Elections are held every April to fill open seats and each person can serve two consecutive terms. They follow guidelines of where seats have to come from; however, with the new division of schools over the summer, the guidelines will have to be rewritten to ensure that each unit of the university is being represented. On becoming the new chair, Stowe said “I think I do a pretty good job being able to speak to faculty and administration. I understand that both sides have difficult jobs, and that ultimately we’re on the same team, we all want the same thing in the end, we want Canisius to thrive, and of course, we have a difference of opinion sometimes about how that’s going to work. But you know, a bunch of PhDs in one room are going to have a lot of opinions, and they’re gonna want to talk about them.” 

On the senate, the welfare committee, chaired by Dr. Loughead, advocates for faculty compensation, benefits and having a voice in these conversations, which is an issue the faculty senate has faced in recent years. The welfare chair and the budget chair are also both members of the University Budget Committee, so they have a voice in those conversations. 

During the academic year, the faculty senate is “interested in addressing salary compression [as well as] working out the relationship between the Educational Policy Committee and the academic programming board, because much of the work has been stuff that should have been with EPC,” Stowe said. Salary compression means that professors who are new to the institution get paid more than professors who have been teaching here for 20 years. It also means that some professors aren’t getting paid a livable wage despite being tenured. Faculty senate will also be working on phase two of the restructuring, which is efficiencies, and consists of looking into how departments can work together on interdisciplinary work and interdisciplinary teaching. Phase one was the new divisions of schools. We now have the Division of Business, Communications, and Health Studies and the Division of Arts Education and Sciences. 

At its core, the faculty senate and its chairs are made up of people who care deeply about this institution, its students and their fellow colleagues. “I’m not aware of anyone at Canisius who doesn’t find intense joy in going into their classrooms and doing the work that they do with their students,” said Stowe. For professors, especially Dr. Stowe, going to their classes is a place where they find happiness on a bad day. The faculty senate’s mission is to ensure that professors can keep doing that.