[Vision2020] UI Faculty Senate Voices Support for Flagship Status

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (February 29, 2012) Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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UI Faculty Senate voices support for flagship status
The University of Idaho Faculty Senate on Tuesday afternoon unanimously passed a resolution to call on the Idaho State Board of Education to reinstate the word "flagship" into the UI's mission statement.
State board members removed the word during a Feb. 16 meeting in Boise, where they also edited the mission statements of Boise State University and Idaho State University. The word "flagship" had only been in the UI's mission statement since September.
But the UI change - intended to foster collegial relationships among the three universities - caused controversy across the state.
The Faculty Senate resolution expresses "profound disappointment" at the decision and asks the state board to reconsider at its April 18-19 meeting on the UI's Moscow campus.
Senate Chairman Paul Joyce said a resolution is the strongest type of statement the senate can make, and the state board will have to respond to it in some form.
"A resolution stays on the books until it is resolved," he said.
Joyce said senate leadership drafted the resolution after consulting with UI President Duane Nellis.
UI Provost and Executive Vice President Doug Baker said at Tuesday's senate meeting that the flagship issue "doesn't seem to be going away."
The senate resolution gives multiple examples of why faculty believe the UI is the state's flagship, including the university's statewide land-grant mission as established by the 1862 Morril Act; the UI's 1889 territorial charter that predates Idaho statehood; and the more than $100 million in research grants and contracts the UI brings in per year.
The resolution also asserts that the UI "is considered by its peers to be Idaho's flagship institution, by virtue of its primacy, its statewide mission and the scope of its graduate and professional programs, consistent with commonly accepted criteria for such universities."
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Seeya later, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

"If not us, who?
If not now, when?"

- Unknown


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