The 2024 CLAS Faculty Governance Elections are scheduled to run from 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 24, to midnight on Wednesday, May 1. Please contact Lisa Gray with any questions or problems concerning the faculty elections.
The CLAS Executive Committee meets weekly to advise the Dean and Associate Deans on issues affecting faculty and departmental quality and uses of the College's budget (see the College's Manual of Procedure, Article VI). View the current membership of the Committee.
The Executive Committee has three member seats to fill. One member must come from the Arts, and two members will be elected from the faculty At Large. Voting faculty may vote for candidates in all electoral groups, and may cast votes for one, two or three candidates.
Arts (Electoral Group IV) candidates (click on name to see statement)
At Large candidates (click on name to see statement)
Arts (Electoral Group IV) CANDIDATE STATEMENTS
Rebekah J. Kowal
Professor, DEO, and Collegiate Scholar, Department of Dance
PhD, American Studies, New York University
Joined UI faculty in 2001
I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for the CLAS Executive Committee (EC) and would welcome the opportunity to serve colleagues and the college on this deliberative body. This academic year, I have attended EC meetings ex officio in my role as CLAS Administrative Fellow and am familiar with the committee’s process and deliberations. The EC is tasked with making important decisions that have a broad impact on our college and community. I wish to serve this committee in an official capacity to represent the arts and strengthen the sense of collaboration and cooperation, both within the committee and with stakeholders including other faculty governance bodies. My approach to leadership is collaborative, inclusive, and team-based, and I am familiar with facilitating difficult and vital conversations around/about change. At the UI, I have been appointed to and served on divisional, collegiate, and university strategic planning and consulting committees in which I collaborate with colleagues across all disciplines. This is my eighth year and second term serving in the role of department Chair. Since I have been department Chair, UI Dance was re-accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance in 2023, an effort that I led, which involved curricular review and transformation over many years. I have been at the helm through an institutional reorganization of the arts and into a new configuration, Performing Arts at Iowa starting in the summer of 2022. I received the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence in 2023. In the professional field, I have served in leadership in the Society of Dance History Scholars (board member and vice president), the Dance Studies Association (interim VP of Awards and Prizes), and the National Association of Schools of Dance (board). Since 2021, I have served as Executive Co-Editor of Dance Research Journal, the flagship journal in the field of Dance Studies, supported by the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and published by Cambridge University Press, and I co-chair the DRJ Editorial Board. I have received excellent mentorship and opportunities for leadership development throughout my career including as a Fellow in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Leadership Program (ALP) in 2018-2019, and work as a CLAS Administrative Fellow this academic year, during which I have co-led a collegiate review of the Rhetoric requirement within the General Education Program. Committed to learning and growing as a person and academic leader, I have actively sought to develop my skills in the areas of inclusion, change management, and communication. This accounts for the work I have done in the UI BUILD certification program, the Harvard School of Graduate Education “Bravely Confronting Racism in Higher Education” course, coaching for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD), and training and practice in “Crucial Conversations” through UI HR, and for the ways that I am putting these skills into practice in my administrative and leadership roles. I would welcome the opportunity to serve on this committee. Thank you for considering my candidacy!
Tammie Walker
Professor and Director, School of Music
DMA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joined the University of Iowa in 2019
It would be an honor to serve as a member of the CLAS Executive Committee. As I finish my 26th year in higher education (9 of those years as a DEO at two different institutions), I believe I could bring experience, perspective and a deep commitment to collaboration to this committee. During my time at Iowa I have served on the CLAS DEO Advisory Group (summer 2020-present), the Associate VP for Research Search Committee (hires: Kristy Nabhan-Warren and Aliasger Salem), the CLAS Implementation Committee, the CLAS Policy Review Committee and the Hancher Director of Programming and Engagement Search Committee (hire: Aaron Greenwald). I have led the School of Music through some of its most historically challenging times with resolve and an unwavering focus on our students, faculty and staff. Due to the sheer size, breadth and pace of our large School of Music, I am experienced in managing large quantities of information and competing priorities. My research area is classical piano and I continue to perform, record (Narrative, MSR Classics, 2023), give international masterclasses (South Korea, Zoom), and publish (two arrangements with Alry Publications [2022], article in Music Educators Journal [2021]). I teach doctoral applied piano, guest lecture in courses, and serve on a large number of graduate student committees. I have extensive experience with national accreditation, leading the School of Music through their re-accreditation process in 2021 (after a 14-year gap) and was recently elected Chair of the NASM (National Association of Schools of Music) Nominating Committee. My strong commitment to faculty governance and transparency was highlighted in my second year at Iowa when I led a year-long major revision of our departmental Manual of Operations that created a more equitable committee structure, more opportunities for faculty leadership, more transparency in communications and decision making, and a robust Student Advisory Council structure. During my time at Iowa I have built strong relationships and partnerships across campus, the community, our vast donor and alumni bases, and formed new international partnerships and formal agreements with the School of Music. Recent examples of my collaborative leadership include my co-chairing of the Iowa City Cultural and Entertainment District Committee (see the results of our work in the “X Marks the Arts” campaign), my election to the Executive Board of the Iowa Music Teachers Association, and my election to the international College Music Society’s Presidential Task Force for Leading Change. I am accessible, always a listener first, a collaborator by nature, and experienced in building consensus in groups with strong opinions; it is possible to make positive progress everyone can feel good about when you focus on the principles we all share. I am also experienced in holding firm to decisions that are in the best interest of our students.
At Large CANDIDATE STATEMENTS
Ed Gillan
Professor, Department of Chemistry
PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Joined UI faculty in 1997
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute my faculty and shared governance voice and experience to the CLAS Executive Committee. As a faculty member in CLAS Chemistry for nearly 27 years, I have worn many different hats that span teaching, research, and service activities. I have contributed to teaching teams that administer and teach some of our largest ~1000 student introductory chemistry courses, including three semesters during the height of the recent pandemic. I have worked for many years to improve departmental laboratory safety training and safety culture and received the first UI OVPR Innovation in Laboratory Safety Award in 2020. I advise and mentor several doctoral graduate students in my inorganic materials chemistry research lab and I am very familiar with the ever-present challenges of securing external grant funding, producing research publications, and using university shared instrumentation facilities. I have a long record of departmental service, including serving nine years on the chemistry executive committee with several different DEOs. I served on the OVPR’s Research Council for six years, including two as chair.
I am very knowledgeable on UI policies and policy makers through my 12+ years of service on the Senate’s Faculty Policies and Compensation Committee (FPCC), including six years as chair. My FPCC service involved extensive work on faculty-centered policies and practices including post-tenure reviews, faculty dispute procedures, and various other community policies. I also served on the Senate’s AAUP Sanction Removal Committee and contributed to our university’s successful efforts to remove our national AAUP sanction. This involved collaboration with our local AAUP chapter and creation of a best practices document for future UI Presidential searches. I was very pleased to see that our imagined best practices were successfully implemented in hiring of President Wilson.
My most significant recent service has involved Faculty Senate activities where I am the current Faculty Senate President after serving as Vice-President last year. I was a Senator for nine years, a Faculty Council member for three years, and was elected Senate Secretary in 2016. My Senate officer shared governance activities involve extensive interactions with the President’s and Provost’s offices as well as interacting with most central administration offices and collegiate leadership. I have worked on recent revisions to instructional-track faculty and faculty dispute policies and have learned ways to navigate interactions with administration and the faculty that I represent. I have become more knowledgeable about the campus budget situation and have an increased awareness of the challenging intersection of academic freedom with faculty instructional and research activities.
I look forward to using my UI policy and faculty governance background to serve in an effective advisory role to the Dean and collegiate administration. I am a person who can provide advice, guidance, and strategies to achieve successful outcomes to collegiate issues that are supportive of both faculty and administration needs.
Gregory Howes
Professor, Physics and Astronomy
PhD, UCLA
Joined UI faculty in 2008
It is an honor to be nominated to serve on the CLAS Executive Committee, and it would be my privilege to represent our faculty across the broad range of academic disciplines within our College. Our College has experienced significant challenges in the recent years, from riding out the Covid pandemic to significant fluxes in its leadership. As a participant in the Iowa Academic Leadership Academy this year, I have learned a tremendous amount about the operation of our College and its place within the University, and through his program I am working on honing my communications skills to serve as an effective representative for the diverse voices across our College. I have recently served on the external review committee for the Department of Computer Science, and also have many years of experience serving on strategic planning committees for the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and NASA, including serving on the NASA 2012 Heliophysics Roadmap committee charged with aligning NASA’s policy implementations and operation with the recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences. I have received numerous honors both in my discipline and here at the University, including an NSF CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, Dean’s Scholar from CLAS, and Scholar of the Year from the Office of the Vice President for Research. In my view, self-governance is a critical foundation for academic freedom as well as success both in educating the next generation of leaders and in our own scholarly endeavors. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences boasts faculty across an incredibly diverse range of disciplines—from the arts and humanities to the social sciences to the natural sciences—with cultures in each discipline that vary widely from department to department. This diversity creates unique challenges for our College to ensure that all voices are heard in coming to a consensus on future choices in the direction of the College. Critical challenges facing our College in the coming years include the impending retirement of a large fraction of the faculty in numerous departments, changes in expectations for teaching across departments, and ongoing need to make hard decisions in the face of ever-diminishing funding for the public universities in our state. With the aim to advise College leadership on equitable responses to these challenges that do not unfairly disadvantage certain disciplines over others, I ask you to support my candidacy for the CLAS Executive Committee.
Miriam Landsman
Associate Professor and DEO, School of Social Work
PhD, MSW, University of Iowa
Joined UI faculty 2000
Thank you for nominating me to serve as a member of the CLAS Executive Committee. I bring multiple perspectives to this potential role – I am a new DEO in the School of Social Work (SSW), a UI faculty member for over 20 years, and prior to completing my PhD, a UI P&S staff member, plus a parent of three UI alumni. In addition to the DEO role, I direct two centers: the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice and the Iowa Consortium for Substance Use Research and Evaluation, both of which work with community partners in Iowa and nationally, supported through external funding and staffed by skilled professional researchers, faculty, and graduate students. During my career at UI, the accomplishments of which I am most proud are helping people to launch and thrive in their careers; and conducting research that has an impact on the well-being of individuals, families, and organizations. But enough about me. The task of the Executive Committee is to contribute ideas and expertise to the College in making decisions and setting policies that affect the CLAS community and its relation to stakeholders within and outside the university system. It’s important to acknowledge the collective impact of the relentless pressure of strained budgets and the call to do more with less, within an increasingly threatening socio-political climate. However, we also need to be proactive and creative in thinking about and planning for the future, and ready to confront new challenges; these times call for alternatives to business as usual. If selected for the Executive Committee I look forward to collaborating with colleagues to advocate for ideas, decisions, and practices that advance the well-being of this community while honoring our commitment to advancing excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service.
Gary Pierce
Professor and DEO, Department of Health and Human Physiology
Russell B. Day and Florence D. Day Chair in Liberal Arts and Sciences
PhD, University of Florida
Joined UI faculty in 2011
I would be honored to serve on the CLAS Executive Committee. I am the DEO of the Department of Health and Human Physiology (HHP), a large department that serves 2200+ undergraduate students across 6 majors, and 100+ graduate students across 5 degree programs. Our 40 faculty consists of 29 instructional-track (IT) and 11 tenure-track/tenured (TT) faculty, who teach the largest number of undergraduate student credit hours in CLAS and mentor graduate students in active extramurally funded research programs. Given HHP’s size and unique faculty structure, I am well-versed in the needs and concerns of both IT and TT faculty as well as the challenges in meeting curriculum and research demands. As such, I have been very intentional in mentoring both IT and TT faculty (junior and mid-career), providing IT and TT faculty with departmental leadership opportunities, and managing instructional and research resources while maintaining focus on our departmental strategic goals. At the college level, given the ongoing budget constraints and challenges in higher education on the horizon, (e.g., enrollment cliff), it is more critical than ever that the college be forward-thinking in strategically supporting renewed growth of smaller programs while sustaining support for larger departments to provide the high-value education that students deserve. I hope that my experience as a DEO in a large, complex department and the following service will prepare me well to serve the best interests of the college on the CLAS Executive Committee. My service to the department in addition to DEO, includes being Director of Graduate Studies (2018-2022) and program director of M.S. Clinical Exercise Physiology graduate program (2013-present). At the college and university levels, I serve on the CLAS Dean’s DEO Advisory Group (2022-present), the UI Presidential Committee on Athletics (2021-present) and have served on the UI Recreation Services Charter Committee (2018-2021) and UI Faculty Senate (2020-2023). For professional service, I serve as the Treasurer (2019-present) of the North American Artery Society, Councilor of the Association for Chairs of Departments of Physiology, have served on several National Institutes of Health (NIH) and American Heart Association (AHA) grant study sections, and on the Editorial Boards of several top physiology journals in my field. For mentoring and scholarship, I direct an extramurally funded research lab consisting of postdocs, graduate students, undergraduate students, medical students, and research staff that studies the mechanisms and risk factors that contribute to accelerated vascular and cognitive aging in humans, and interventions (exercise, pharmacological) that may attenuate or treat vascular aging in individuals at high risk for cardiovascular disease. I have published 110+ peer-reviewed articles and my lab has been continuously funded by the NIH or AHA since 2013. I have served (past and current) as the primary mentor of 5 postdoctoral fellows, 6 PhD students, 8 MS thesis students, 12 undergraduate honors students, and 6 medical students/fellows, as well as numerous undergraduate independent study students. I have taught undergraduate and graduate courses in integrative physiology of exercise, cardiovascular physiology, clinical exercise physiology and graduate seminars. Finally, I was elected as a Fellow of the American Heart Association in 2016 and the American Physiological Society in 2023. Thank you for considering my candidacy for the CLAS Executive Committee.
Michael Sauder
Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology and Criminology
PhD, Northwestern University
Joined UI Faculty in 2005
I am excited for the opportunity to serve on the CLAS Executive Committee. In these times of challenge for higher education, I would appreciate the chance to play a role in supporting the college’s mission and shaping its vision. I believe my experience in teaching, research, and service in the college, university, and profession have prepared me to be an effective contributor to the committee. In addition to acting as DEO and DGS for my department, I have served two previous terms on Executive Committee under three different Deans. I have also served on CLAS’s Self-Study Committee, the CCG, the Advisory Board of the Obermann Center for Advanced Study, the Planning Committee for the Public Policy Center, and a term on Faculty Senate. These experiences have given me an appreciation for the rich variation in departments and disciplines across the university and insight into the range of concerns and challenges that they face.
Through my research on higher education—specifically, examining how educational rankings such as those published by U.S. News & World Report, I have studied how external pressures affect day-to-day practice in higher education. This has provided valuable comparative insight into how universities across the country are managing pressures to quantify outcomes, manage budgetary constraints, and deal with demands to be more transparent and accountable. I believe this experience lends valuable perspective for the challenges the college faces now and will continue to face in the immediate future. If elected, I am committed to representing the faculty’s interests, and I will strive to promote positions that reflect academic values and professional autonomy. My goal is to help the University of Iowa achieve its potential by working to make CLAS and the university a better place for students, faculty, and the state.
Alberto Maria Segre
Professor and DEO
Gerard P. Weeg Faculty Scholar in Informatics Department of Computer Science
PhD, 1986 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Joined UI Faculty in 1994
Thank you for considering me for a position on the CLAS Executive Committee. I have been a professor since 1987, a member of the UI faculty since 1994, and a member of the CLAS faculty since 2003. And while I've worked in many different collegiate environments (Engineering, Business, Public Health and Liberal Arts and Sciences) over these last 37 years, I can honestly say I have most appreciated CLAS' intellectual breadth and the open, collaborative, environment.
I am now in my 14th year as the DEO of Computer Science. In addition to my administrative responsibilities, I still very much enjoy teaching the 300-seat Introduction to CS for CS, math, statistics and engineering students each fall as well as our federally mandated graduate Responsible Conduct of Research course each spring. I also continue to lead, with my research partners from CS and the Carver College of Medicine, the Computational Epidemiology Research Group, one of only six CDC-funded disease modeling centers in the US. From a service perspective, I have previously served on EC, UEPC, Graduate Council, Research Council (including 3 years as chair), and have also worked on a large number of ad hoc committees, from decanal reviews, student retention, research misconduct, and space planning, to a good number various steering, award, and search committees. These service assignments have provided me with many opportunities to learn about different facets of the institution, consider new and consequential problems, and work collaboratively towards their practical solution.
I would be honored to have the opportunity to serve you and the College as a member of the Executive Committee: I appreciate your support.