Chapter Workshops

2009 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting & International Research Conference

November 12-15, 2009
The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel
The Woodlands, Texas (near Houston)

Friday, November 13 10:30-11:45 a.m.

Policy and Research Initiatives of the European Community in Energy PDF
An analysis will be made of the broad Policy and Research initiatives that are being undertaken by the European Community in order to address our needs for various forms of Energy. The EC’s Policy issues and its present status regarding the liberalization of the Network Industries (Electricity and the use of renewable Energy, Gas, Water), as well as the handling of Climate Change issues through the Kyoto Protocol (with the emission trading scheme), will be addressed. With regards to the Science initiatives, a presentation will be made of the EC’s 55 Billion Euro 7 year FP7 program and an analysis of the Energy Research Topics that have been brought up in the calls for grants during 2008, 2009 and 2010
Facilitator, Antonio Pita, Director, Director of the Canadian/International

Science and Human Rights Coalition Workshop
A common phrase in many professional scientific society mission statements conveys the message that we exist "for the purpose of improving the human condition." Since the desired outcome of our individual and collective endeavors is to contribute to the universal welfare of our planet, whether that is stated in the hypothesis for our experiment or not, this is considered to be a reasonable purpose. In this spirit, Sigma Xi joined the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition (SHRC) as a member society. This workshop will introduce chapter representatives to SHRC and ways in which how we can promote human rights through our chapters. In particular, the workshop will review the goals of SHRC and its five working groups. The workshop will also introduce Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which states the right "to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications."
Facilitator, Jerry Baker, Executive Director

Diversity Matters: A Twenty Year Tale of Minority Faculty Participation at the University of Michigan
Does faculty diversity matter? According to the administration at the University of Michigan, the diversity is important, so important in fact that over that past twenty years, several initiatives have been undertaken to improve that very characteristic. In fact, in the wake of the passage of the anti-Affirmative Action Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), President Mary Sue Coleman stood on the steps of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library and boldly declared, "Diversity matters at Michigan, today more than any day in our history. It will always matter because it is what makes us the great university we are."

Since that day, much of the discussion regarding diversity has focused on the composition of the student body, while little campus dialogue has addressed the diversity of those in the front of the classroom. The faculty, however, did not ignore the issue. In 2008 the faculty-based Committee for a Multicultural University (CMU) released a landmark study of the diversity, hiring and retention of the tenure-track faculty. Participation among minority faculty, it found, has been increasing since 1994. The distribution of the growth, however, has been highly uneven across both units and races. In some schools, the participation of some minorities groups has even seen a decline.

The current CMU study was based on a previous study by the committee in 1994. Done in the midst of then-President James Duderstadt's Michigan Mandate, that report's most notable finding was the relative lack of black, Hispanic and Native American faculty as a percentage of all faculty in respect to the nation's population. In each case, the percentage of the national population was larger by at least a factor of three.

In the subsequent 14 years, progress has been made, but the results are far from ideal. Gains have not been experienced uniformly across the university's schools and colleges and certainly not evenly between the different races. And so the question remains, why has minority faculty participation not improved and how can such an improvement be achieved? Is this more reflective of the pools of prospective candidates or the University's administration commitment to diversity? What actions can a concerned faculty take to improve its minority composition? In this session, we will review the study results and attempt to answer the questions of how we positively act on that knowledge.
Presenter: Jeffrey Lee, Executive Director of the Michigan Conference of the American Association of University Professors