Carter clear lead for faculty senate head

The Faculty Senate nominated Duncan Carter to be presiding officer for the 2005-06 academic year, and subsequently accidentally unanimously voted to appoint him, Monday.

The vote on Carter’s appointment to the position was mistakenly held at the meeting, but the results are not considered official. In the unofficial vote, the senate voted unanimously for Carter, but the official vote will not be taken until the June meeting, at which time there will be the opportunity for further nominations. If there are no further nominations Carter will take over the position beginning in the fall.

Carter, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was the sole nominee for the position.

A member of the Steering Committee, the body designated to put forth nominations, nominated Carter at the most recent meeting.

One goal of Carter’s is to spend less time on routine matters and more time on issues of importance to both students and faculty.

“The faculty senate has a lot of predictable and fairly routine business. If the faculty senate allows itself to, it gets overwhelmed with routine matters, and we never get to talk about issues people care about. I hope we can collaborate with students on issues of mutual importance,” he said.

Should Carter be elected, he plans to take advantage of a new format for meetings that would give faculty the opportunity to debate important issues such as fixed track versus tenure track positions, and other issues.

“This is my big thing, my big hope. A couple of years ago we experimented with a new format for our meetings, in which we would have a discussion item and it would get debated,” he said.

Carter has been an active faculty member here at Portland State University since 1987, when he began as the director of writing in the English department. He has served on committees such as the budget committee, the budget reduction committee and the deadline appeals committee, and has also served on the President’s Advisory Council.