Jim Hill Senate Chair

Welcome to Academic Senate

  It is a great honor for me to serve the CSU Dominguez Hills community as chair of the Academic Senate in the 2011-2012 academic year. This is a year in which our university, our system, and the very nature of universities in America face extraordinary challenges. Our students face ever-increasing financial struggles as the burden of funding higher education shifts from state to home. The reality of the state budget and its impact on the CSU put increasing stress on the operation of our campus. The chance to rise to this challenge can also become our great opportunity; creative solutions to today's challenges can move us forward through tomorrow. 
      Issues of shared governance within the university and within the CSU system are ongoing matters of concern. This senate will hear about and address several of these. They range from the role of adjuncts on campus to the newly proposed system standards for hiring high level administrators. These are critical problems on which any academic senate must have a viewpoint and take a stand. Most importantly, however, the senate and all other parties need to keep in mind that "shared governance" is all about working together, and that is our primary goal.
      As our campus president pointed out in the annual convocation address, the campus reputation ̶ including the recent changes of it ̶  is both a point of pride and a problem to be solved. We need to critically analyze our rising "external reputation" and work not to just enhance it, but broaden it to wider audiences. The senate may be a vehicle for guidance in that effort. We need to examine any deficiencies in our "internal reputation" and find ways to realize and state with conviction the justifiable pride in our accomplishments, while keeping a perspective that allows us to work actively on issues we still face. The senate serves our  reputation directly and profoundly by setting policy to support standards of academic quality, as is uniquely the faculty’s job.
      In my tenure as Academic Senate chair, I want to be a vehicle to bring groups together and be part of a collective voice that resonates in the campus and beyond. As senate chair, I will work as closely as possible with "the usual players": the senate, administration, department/program chairs, and CFA. I also want to make it clear that the Academic Senate represents more groups and an even larger number of individuals. To that end, I am instituting a "chair's office hour" twice a week during which I will make sure to be available at the senate office for whatever formal or informal matters anyone wants to bring. I welcome the chance to meet with any groups on campus.
      The Academic Senate is a critical part of the structure of this or any American university. It has a significant role in determining what the university is and will be. Like the rest of us, I want that to be something great. Here's to a year of hard work toward that goal!