Bringing geosciences to the senate

Dr. Andrew Klein, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and one of four faculty senators for the College of Geosciences, joined the Faculty Senate after Dr. Robert Bednarz, also a senator for the College, encouraged him to get involved. This fall, Dr. Klein will begin a 3-year term with the Faculty Senate.

Dr. Klein said he has many goals to see through; he determined these goals after completing Dr. Bob Pressley’s term last year. Experiencing the faculty senate helped Klein better understand the senate, thus shaping his goals for the upcoming academic year.

“My primary goal is to see that issues affecting Geosciences Faculty are brought up to the senate and that issues affecting the college are conveyed to the appropriate individuals,” Dr. Klein said. “As the faculty senate tends to be more focused on academics and quality of life issues revolving around research, my goals for next year are focused on academic issues. I think, potentially, President Gates ideas concerning student access to (majors in different colleges) as long as they good standing and the potential to create a new university studies degree has a great potential to impact our college, especially geography. I hope to be able to vocalize concerns our college has on this issue.”

One goal in particular that Dr. Klein outlined was the potential parking problems that may arise form the shifts in parking allotments in the fall.

“Not surprisingly parking will probably be a major issue for the college in the next year - especially if plans to eliminate lot 55 go forward. I have raised concerns about parking, especially for faculty without a reserved space and who work at night and on the weekend,” he said.

As a senator, Dr. Klein attends the monthly faculty senate meetings and several committee and subcommittee meetings, including the Academic Affairs committee, the Elections Committee and the Core Curriculum subcommittee.

“The duties for each of these vary. Academic Affairs deals with academic, primarily undergraduate issues, the core curriculum committee determines that courses put forth as core curriculum courses meet the requirements and provide oversight for the upcoming core curriculum review process.  The election committee handles the yearly faculty senate elections,” Dr. Klein said.

His past experiences working with undergraduates shape his perspective as a senator greatly, Dr. Klein said, and he hopes to utilize his background to serve the College of Geosciences as a Faculty Senator.

“Actually, one of the reasons I ran for the faculty senate has been my active participation in the college undergraduate program, first in curriculum development for our GIS program and more recently as director of our undergraduate program. Through these activities, I witnessed how university-level decisions filter down and affect classes and advising within a department and hence faculty. The small size of our college and the importance of teaching to geography in particular means we can be quite affected by changes in the university core curriculum and other changes in the universities undergraduate program. Therefore I feel it is important to make sure our concerns are voiced and information about potential changes makes it to faculty who may be impacted by these changes.”

For more information on Dr. Klein and his research, go to http://geog.tamu.edu/klein.