Ken Brown, JD, MPA, PhD, FACHE, executive vice chancellor and chief operations officer for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, was named Administrator of The Year by the UTHSC Faculty Senate earlier this week for his support of the faculty organization and for his overall vision for the future of the campus.
Faculty Senate President Terry Cooper, PhD, Hariett S. Van Vleet Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Biochemistry, said Dr. Brown received the award for his support in getting the Faculty Senate website revamped, for directing the development of the new Center for Patient Safety on campus, and for his unceasing work to transform the campus and position it for the future.
“He has been a good friend of the Faculty Senate for a long time, and those three things more than justify being awarded the Administrator of the Year,” Dr. Cooper said.
The organization focused its final meeting of the year on thanking those who have supported it, he said.
- Richard Smith, PhD, associate professor and graduate program director for orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering, received the Senator of the Year Award for redeveloping the faculty evaluation of administrators, known as the Upward Evaluation of Campus Administrators. As chair of the faculty affairs committee, Dr. Smith worked to make the survey easier to take and brought in an outside firm to administer it to reassure participants their comments would remain anonymous. He also helped better promote it to faculty members. All of these improved participation.
- Allen Gillespie, digital content manager in the Department of Communications and Marketing, received a Presidential Citation for revamping the Faculty Senate website. “Without him and his team, it wouldn’t have happened, and we wanted to say thank you for that,” Dr. Cooper said.
- A Presidential Citation also went to Allen Dupont, PhD, MS, director of Institutional Effectiveness, for supervising the construction and implementation of the new Upward Evaluation of Campus Administrators, and for past faculty surveys.
- Special thanks went to Faculty Senate Executive Committee members Peg Hartig, PhD, APRN-BC, FAANP, concentration coordinator in the Department of Advanced Practice and Doctoral Studies in the College of Nursing, and Professor Radhakrishna Rao, PhD, both of whom are committee chairs and did outstanding work.
In keeping with the focus of the meeting, the organization recognized and thanked retiring faculty and staff by listing all of the names in a slideshow.
The Faculty Senate represents the faculty in the shared governance of the university and recommends policies regarding educational and other objectives for the campus. Officers serve from July 1 to June 30.
“We’re the voice of the faculty,” Dr. Cooper said. “A major goal this year was to connect with the faculty, to communicate with them, to let them know they had a voice, and to help them make a positive difference in their university community.”
Martin Donaldson, DDS, associate professor of pediatric dentistry and community oral health in the College of Dentistry, becomes president of the organization July 1.