The Faculty Senate celebrated their 40 years of service to ULM on Monday and began to make plans to work on future projects with Interfaith in the future.
Karen Niemla, a faculty representative of the library for the past three years, is a part of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee.
While reviewing old bylaws, Niemla noticed that senate was created in 1973.
Niemla said that this gave her the idea to create the anniversary event.
“The turnout was not as much as I would have liked but we did have some people, enough people, who used to serve on the faculty senate who were retirees…I sent invitations to past presidents and some of them actually came,” said Niemla,
The Faculty Senate is an elected representation of each professional aspect of the university.
Senator numbers are based on population of colleges and staff members.
The Faculty Senate is the voice of the faculty and staff when communicating with the administration.
The senate hopes to take on future projects concerning primary education in the future in partnership with a local circuit of churches titled Interfaith.
Interfaith is a non-profit organization that wants to unite all people and to make changes to the community.
“We want to deal with issues such as education for kindergarten through twelve and higher education. Louisiana has one of the highest incarceration rates and that is saying something,” said John Anderson, president of the Faculty Senate. We believe developing a higher education for grade school will help lower that rate in Louisiana.”
According Anderson, as ULM is beginning to consolidate, keeping unrelated colleges separate is also primary goal of the senate.
“We recommended Graduate College to the ULM administration be a separate entity and they listened,” Anderson said.
Chet Parks, a sophomore construction management major, believes that the Faculty Senate working with Interfaith is great move.
“I feel that God should be part of our educational programs. So it impresses me to know that the staff does ask and work with [Interfaith] to improve our children’s lives,” Parks said.
