At its final meeting of the academic year, the faculty assembly on Tuesday voted in a slate of candidates to serve as the body’s officers and committee representatives for the next academic year, approved a list of graduates for the class of 2025, and awarded Chair Nelli Sargsyan with the Faculty Service Award.
Dozens of nominations poured in for Sargsyan that praised her work as the chair, her dedication to her students, and commitment to the women’s, gender, and sexuality studies program, Vice Chair Adam Franklin-Lyons said to the assembly.
Sargsyan thanked the faculty present, who she said do “the less visible work to ensure Emerson serves its educational mission,” as well as her council members and senior officers.
“I’m deeply grateful to everyone, and the struggle continues. We struggle for post-secondary education and our ability to extend our consciousness,” she said. “I hope that this semester you were able to find some solace and community. Let’s just make sure that we support each other as faculty, and our students.”
Sargsyan is among a trio of current officers also voted in by the assembly body in a separate motion to continue on as senior officers for the 2025-26 academic year. Current Secretary Felicity Ratté will lead the 2025-26 academic year faculty assembly meetings as chair, Sargsyan will become the vice chair, and Vice Chair Franklin-Lyons will become secretary. The motion passed with 75% (133) approval, 16% (24) disapproval, and 9% (13) abstaining.
In addition to the senior leadership, the assembly also voted in professor P Carl as the next Board of Trustees representative, who will be in charge of communicating the voting body’s feedback to the Trustees. Professor Cristina Kotz Cornejo will be the next Academic Mission Subcommittee representative; professor Ruth Grossman will serve as the next Faculty Handbook Committee chair.
The Shared Governance Committee, led by Franklin-Lyons and communication studies professor Joshua Way, was also renewed for the next academic year with overwhelming approval—86% (127) in favor, 8% (12) against, and 6% (9) abstaining. The committee works to further involve the faculty in the college governing process, and Way said it is especially difficult now more than ever to tell what the board is thinking. It must be renewed each academic year to continue its work according to the assembly bylaws.
Franklin-Lyon led a debate about two proposed amendments to the bylaws that set the language guidelines and fine print for assembly officer positions and the roles of each subcommittee. The first motion sought to allow assembly leadership to send informative emails and other electronic communications to the voting body and updated term dates to ensure faculty elected to positions can fulfill the term commitment. The second motion updated position language and sparked a contentious debate about faculty assembly oversight in regards to the Board of Trustees representative.
The language called for the representative to present written reports to the voting body to review before submitting to the board. The debate came amid several aired concerns about added oversight and social pressure to the position. Those in favor of the language argued it would ensure transparency in an otherwise opaque institution.
“What we do is the work of the college, and the Board is in charge of the work of the college. We never hear from them, but they should hear from us,” Tulasi Srinivas, a Marlboro Institute professor, said in favor of the motion. “We should all see the report in order that it is transparent to us before it is given to the board. It’s a matter of process. It’s a matter of transparency. It’s a matter of honesty, quite frankly, at least upwards, if not downwards.”
Eventually, Marlboro Institute professor Nancy Lyons made a motion to amend the language to remove the sentence empowering the assembly to vote on it while still being able to review it before it goes to the board. Lyon’s amendment to the second motion passed with 70% in approval.
Neither bylaw motion passed, as the amendments required a minimum number of faculty to vote, and not enough did, so the language remained unchanged as written. The amendments could return in another vote in the fall, Sargsyan said.
The voting body approved an amendment to a motion from the previous month about the provost’s office paying for a part-time ombudsperson, a neutral third-party that resolves internal concerns within an organization.
The voting body also unanimously approved the class list of 2025 graduate and undergraduate students for the May commencement ceremony. Marlboro Institute professor of political science Mneesha Gellman made a motion to include the seven Emerson Prison Initiative summer graduates, which also passed unanimously.
The final piece of business the assembly tackled concerned adopting amended language for the tenure track and promotion dossier that more clearly outlined content, length, and format guidelines. The main source of debate came from the use of the word “suggested” in regards to the length of the service statement, a standard measure of career competency in higher education professional development, as several faculty members voiced concerns about appearing to limit one’s professional achievements by encouraging “up to 1500 words.”
Professor and Associate Chair of Faculty Development De-nin Lee, who brought the motion forth, explained that the language was not meant to be reductive, but instead intentional in the interest of efficiency. Candidates, she said, are more than welcome to exceed the suggested length as they see fit.
“I’d like to emphasize that this is not an issue of academic freedom, that academic freedom pertains foremost to the content of one’s research, creative work, and to teaching, and ultimately, one has the freedom to exceed a suggested length which remains but a suggestion,” she said.
Another motion regarding an “Appellation of ‘Distinguished’ title” was tabled as the meeting came to a close.
Ten minutes were reserved at the end of the meeting for Provost Alexandra Socarides and other Emerson leadership to speak about academic visioning and looking ahead, per the agenda, but the assembly was unable to attend to the business as the meeting concluded.
The next faculty assembly will take place on Sept. 23.
