Three faculty members have been elected to serve on committees of the Board of Trustees for the first time in Marywood history.

Elected faculty members will now serve on the Academic Affairs committee, the Advancement committee, and the Enrollment and Student Success committee.

Sr. Gail Cabral, professor of Psychology and Counseling, has been elected to the Academic Affairs committee; Dr. Lisa Antoniacci, associate professor of Science, has been elected to the Advancement committee; and Dr. Kielty Turner, associate professor of Social Work, has been elected to the Enrollment and Student Success committee.

Dr. Helen Bittel, associate professor of English, was originally elected to serve on the Enrollment and Student Success committee, but said she stepped down because of a family emergency, which she said would affect her attendance at meetings.

According the Lisa Lori, Esq., chair of the Board of Trustees, faculty will serve on the committees in order to “foster transparency” and promote communication in the Marywood community.

“This was a decision that was made in spring of this year,” Lori said. “It was the right thing to do.”

According to Lori, the faculty will serve as nonvoting members to the committees and will have “full participation in discussions.”

“I think having faculty on the committees is going to give a different perspective,” Lori said.

Faculty Senate President and Professor of Psychology and Counseling, Dr. David Palmiter, explained that all faculty members participated in the voting to elect the three representatives to the committees of the board.

“Based on standards of the AAUP [American Association of University Professors], faculty should be in the room helping to make decisions when any of those decisions concern the academic mission,” Palmiter said.

He explained that the decision to add faculty to the board’s committees was based off of recommendations from the Faculty Senate.

Palmiter explained that in the past, the shared governance committee of the Board of Trustees had met with the ad hoc shared governance committee of the Faculty Senate. The decision to add faculty members to board committees was a result of the dialogue between the faculty and the board’s shared governance committees.

Palmiter said the current administration has been supportive of the new positions.

“It’s a huge day for shared governance at Marywood,” Palmiter said.

The three committees met for the first time on Sept. 9.

Turner explained that the Enrollment and Student Success committee meeting included presentations from Student Government President Maria Temples; Vice President for Enrollment Services and Student Success Ann Boland-Chase; Assistant Vice President for Student Life Dr. Amy Paciej-Woodruff; and Assistant Vice President for Student Success Meghan Cruciani, on different aspects of student success and enrollment.

Turner said that she felt “welcomed by the other Marywood community members as well as the other Board of Trustees members.”

“I think it’s a continued effort to make the student experience the best one possible as well as to continue to have good enrollment, recruitment and retention of students,” Turner said.

Sr. Gail said the accreditation for different departments was one of the talking points at the first Academic Affairs committee meeting of the school year.

The progress of the Middle States report, which concerns Marywood University’s accreditation, was also discussed by the committee members.

Sr. Gail said she is happy with the decision to add faculty representatives to the board committees and that the trustees present at the meeting expressed the same sentiment.

“I think it’s important because I think faculty have a degree of understanding of what college is about and what college teaching is about that other people won’t necessarily have,” Sr. Gail said.

Dr. Lisa Antoniacci could not be reached for comment.

Contact the writer: [email protected]

Twitter: @JBonacciTWW