John Bender, our regular Faculty Senate beat reporter, was unable to attend the meeting on Tuesday, March 3rd. But never fear, we sent some cubbies to fill in to file this report. If you want to read coverage from an actual journalist, Lincoln Journal Star reporter Chris Dunker wrote a lengthy piece on the meeting.
Faculty Senate President Opens the Meeting
The meeting got started with Faculty Senate President John Schrader letting the body know exactly what he thinks about how things are going. He stated he sent NU System President Gold a letter expressing concerns about how EM 40 and EM 46 were pushed out of Varner Hall without any discussion with anyone. He also stated that this expressed concerns about the announcement of the AI Institute and the lack of input from faculty or notice that this was coming.
Update from VC Amy Goodburn
Senior Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Undergraduate Education, Amy Goodburn, provided her annual update on the state of undergraduate education. She discussed numerous metrics, including graduation rates, retention, and undergraduate research participation, which all appear to be trending in upward directions. She also discussed a number of initiatives her office has undertaken, including a successful pilot project for an alternative to math placement exams, which the math department helped design, and the Cornelius chatbot that messages all students every 7-10 days to check on them, connects them to resources, and helps connect students to actual humans if the bot determines it is warranted. She also mentioned efforts to smooth the transition to campus for transfer students from Southeast Community College (SCC), as well as free, non-credit Coursera courses students can take on their own time for employment verification credentials.
She also mentioned a new initiative the 12twenty tool for data collection for first job outcomes, including graduates’ employment, where they are employed, and their salary. She stated this would provide a more nuanced view by major. And while we take our journalism colleague’s approach to factual reporting seriously, we would be remiss if we did not point out additional contextual facts, such as State Senator Tonya Storer, who introduced a bill this session that would allow the easy elimination of “low-earning” majors. Iowa also saw a similar copy-paste bill. If anyone wants to know of a perennially low-paying field that requires a BA, it is teaching. Anyhoo, nothing to see there, obviously.
Interim Chancellor Ankerson
Interim Chancellor Ankerson spent much of her time talking about how she suddenly remembered all this stuff about the AI institute after having been asked previously in the Faculty Senate Executive meeting about it, and how she searched her email and found many exchanges about the AI Institute, including an AI task force. She also noted that the President’s State of the University speech in the fall of 2025 heralded this AI Institute. You can watch or read the speech on the NU Website.
To save everyone time, we asked ChatGPT to highlight any portion of the text that refers to an “AI Institute.” This is what it said:
The speech does not contain the phrase “AI Institute.”
However, it does reference AI-related initiatives. Here is the relevant highlighted passage mentioning artificial intelligence:
“We have new undergraduate and graduate degree programs in AI, jointly developed and launched through a UNL and UNO partnership, to build Nebraska’s pipeline of talent. And today, I am proud to announce the creation of a new Center of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence—an academic hub that will harness our unique strengths, foster groundbreaking discovery and ensure Nebraska is at the forefront of this rapidly evolving resource—on every campus, in every college and for every member of our faculty, staff and student body.”
(At the risk of editorializing, a center and an institute have very specific meanings within the NU multiverse, but for Gold, I guess it is potato-patato, tomato-tomatoe… but also, does it seem weird to anyone else that Gold announced this Center in September and then no one heard anything about it again until January?)
Interim Chancellor Ankerson also noted that we all got surveys about AI in 2024, so of course, faculty were consulted. She said there is also a system website where faculty can provide input. There is a website. No, you cannot provide input.
She reported she had been meeting with legislators, the state chamber of commerce, and numerous external stakeholders.
She bragged on the increased number of NSF CAREER Award winners, from 4 to 9. Some helpful context, one of those NSF CAREER Award winners is in Statistics and received a termination notice in January.
She emphatically stated that EVC Mark Button, VC Tiffany Heng-Moss, and Interim VC Nelson have her full confidence.
Her statements included Bold at least half a dozen times, along with Odessy to the Extraordinary, Five Pillars, and Research Identity.
She stated that, given the other agenda items, she would not be taking questions. Not to editorialize again, but we don’t think she was referring to the parking committee update.
Other Updates
The parking committee and some other committees provided updates. Our cubby reporters said they couldn’t hear these reports because there was too much steam coming out of their ears.
Metrics Committee
Senator Beth Lewis provided an update on the ad hoc metrics committee that was approved at the February meeting.
Motion for No Confidence Votes
Motion Introduced
The Senator from Statistics, and noted NSF CAREER Award winner, introduced the motion of no confidence votes for three members of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC): EVC Mark Button, newly-appointed-without a search VC of IANR Tiffany Heng-Moss, and VC of Research Jen Nelson. It was seconded by a Senator from History and the Senator from Ag Econ. A document outlining justification for the motion was shared with the Faculty Senators on Monday.
Discussion highlights
To start the discussion of this motion off, the Senator from the School of Computing stated he was “not familiar with how admin works, recent events made it less clear.” He expressed a worry that these three administrators might also be dismissed the way Chancellor Bennett was, with a golden parachute.
The Senator from Plant Path had this to say next, “What the hell!?” followed by a recognition of the anger, including from his own department, which will be losing its academic identity when it merges with Entomology. He also stated he was concerned that like much of the downfall of the Roman Republic, bad decisions were being made at the highest levels, and that is where our anger should be aimed.
The Senator from ALEC asked about the potential of a post-mortem on the budget cut process so it could be improved. While he was not sure about a vote of no confidence, he expressed there was a need for the administrators to rebuild trust and state he was disappointed that the Interim Chancellor did not take questions.
The Senator from Nutrition and Health Sciences expressed that he felt the ongoing chaos at UNL was leading to administrators leaving and making it harder to hire a department chair. He stated, “We deserve better administrators,” but wondered if the vote of no confidence would accomplish that.
TLTE member noted that she tried on multiple occasions to discuss with Interim VC Nelson the lack of attention to teaching and teacher education in the Research Identity, and on one occasion was told yes, of course. No changes were made. Multiple EDAD faculty report similar conversations and emails with Interim VC Nelsonabout the lack of inclusion of education in the research identity, despite numerous CEHS faculty members attending the full-day event, at which they provided copious input on the strengths of CEHS in the area of teacher and leader preparation and research. Some more helpful context, we reported that the State of the University was notably thin on its coverage of P-12 education, despite the three NU universities educating a large proportion of teachers and administrators in the state.
One of the Senators from Physics, and a member of the APC, stated he believed the “ELC [executive leadership council] fell under the thrall of the metrics and were incompetent in their use,” but that he thought the bigger problem was that there were very specific cuts to faculty in the departments proposed for elimination, but only very vague discussion about “administrative efficiencies.” He continued, “If you look at the changes in employees at the university, normalize it to student growth, 3% over time, faculty has gone up 4% and staff down by 35%, and the number of admin has gone up by 55%. I suggested many times with details that we could cut fluff from admin and make up the whole 27.5 million, and that was rejected out of hand by the admin team, who are administrators… the idea that they should cut themselves over faculty is a foreign concept.” He said he ultimately agreed with the criticism and it is important to let people know where we stand, but also thought that the real architect of the program cuts was President Gold.
Senate President-Elect Leiter stated he was in agreement that a vote of No Confidence should be aimed at President Gold, if not the Board of Regents. He noted that faculty, unlike students, have no representation on the BOR and there are efforts underway to fix that. He also noted that part of the challenge is the lack of state funding from the legislature and the governor, and that we have to be better at telling our story to the public. He worried about faculty being seen as combative. However, he closed by stating Varner Hall is a black box, and decisions are coming out of there without any faculty input.
A senator from the English Department discussed the need to move rhetorically away from ‘fighting the administration.’ She noted, however, that the people who brought the motion “have been open and vulnerable the whole time and have not been trying to battle them [the ELC].” She continued, “We have to find a way to show we stand in solidarity with the faculty who lost their jobs for reasons that none of us understand.” She stated a desire to edit the wording so that it is less adversarial, saying, “We don’t want them to lose their jobs, we just want them to answer our emails.”
The Senator from 4-H stated that the central question is how administrators can be held accountable and how we as faculty can be heard. She said, maybe we seem like hungry toddlers, but if you are not heard, what do you do, you kick and scream. She expressed concern “about the VC of IANR being made permanent without any faculty input, nothing against [Heng-Mss], but the process is flawed.” She asked if the faculty are going to have any input into the chancellor, and expressed that it was a scary thought if the faculty did not. She said, “ I don’t like where we’re going. If they aren’t hearing us, then, yes, I am going to be a toddler, and I will kick and scream in hopes of being heard.”
Faculty Senate President Schrader expressed that he also had concerns about the VC of IANR being advanced without a search, saying, “The outcome was clearly decided before the game was played.”
A Senator from Extension agreed with Leiter that the university and faculty need to be better at telling their stories.
The Senator from ALEC returned to the mic to discuss the APC guidelines and asked how they cannot have a conflict of interest if they created the metrics and voted on the process they designed.
Karen Griffin stated that they have discussed that the bylaws say all members [of the APC] will vote on all motions. Which is why ELC said they should vote, but she agreed they should recuse themselves. She noted that she is working with the chair of the APC, Kevin Hanrahan, and others on procedures that would state if members were involved in the preparation of the budget cuts, they need to recuse themselves.
A Senator from Physics stated, “It reveals the screwed-up nature that those who created the plan are voting on the plan they created.”
A Senator from History stated, “If the chancellor had been doing his job, then it wouldn’t have been such an issue.”
The aforementioned Senator from Physics replied that the previous Chancellor had been at APC meetings in the past and was deeply involved, while Bennett was conspicuously absent.
President Schrader discussed how he had a conversation with EVC Button about whether he should vote on his own proposal. Button cited the bylaws that said all members shall vote on all proposals. Schrader relayed that he said to Button that an abstention is a vote. And Button reiterated that the bylaws said that all members shall vote on all proposals.
A Senator from English stated “We have problems, and there doesn’t seem to be any indications that things are better… maybe this is not the answer but we need a solution.” She asked what tools and leverage is available to the Senate.
The Senator from Statistics offered an amendment to make the motion less aggressive.
The Senator from Mechanical and Materials Engineering stated she thought that the amendment was too weak and should include something about their “continued ability to serve.”
The Senator from ALEC made a motion to send the motion to the Executive Committee for minor editing, which was seconded by a Senator from History and by the Senator from Agricultural Econ. The motion passed.
Highlight from the Open Mic
An associate professor from TLTE spoke at the open mic about how frustrated she is with being told to just apply for more federal grants by the university leaders. She spoke about having lost a five-million-dollar, multi-year, multi-institution federal grant last spring as part of the first wave of grant recisions. That grant supported helping high school students enter teacher preparation and return to teach in their home communities. Students lost their scholarships to UNL, and faculty lost their resources for the project. She noted that not a single administrator at the university pushed back. She also noted that with the hollowing out of the Institute for Education Sciences as part of attacks on the US Department of Education, there are no longer federal grants in her field.
She stated that thisis about more than metrics and productivity, it is about the moral core and the vision of our leaders and their ability to lead and find the resources we need to do our job. But instead, we have a revolving door of acting and interim administrators. She closed by saying, the feeling is real that no one is fighting for us; someone needs to stand up and fight for us.
A Final Comment from the Keeper of the Bylaws
The Senator from Classics and Religious Studies, and keeper of all things bylaws and Robert’s Rules of Order, had the last word after a very busy meeting. He read from the bylaws, which include the directive that the Chancellor must meet twice a month with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, but by mutual agreement, that can be reduced to one meeting a month by mutual agreement, provided that the Chancellor meets with the full Senate instead and TAKES QUESTIONS from the full body. The number of administrative bylwas violations in the last seven days is up to two.
President Schrader Wraps Up
President Schrader closed out the meeting by stating that no one at the University is pushing back against the Governor’s narrative.
He stated he has told administrators, you have to have our backs, but they do not and that is why people thing we are the problem.
He reiterated that the shots are being called by Varner Hall. “Varner Hall is calling the shots on our campus and everywhere else, and the governor is in the ear of the president.”
He closed by saying that, whether this vote of no confidence passes or not, the discussion needed to be had.
