printable versionRoberts selected by peers to lead Faculty Senate next academic year
BY RAY DELGADO
Eric Roberts, a professor of computer science and director of Interdisciplinary Science Education, was tapped by his peers to lead the 38th Senate of the Academic Council next academic year. Roberts soon faces the unenviable task of leading a senate that often found itself entertained and sometimes bemused by the speechifying of outgoing Chair Rob Polhemus, the Joseph S. Atha Professor in the Humanities, chairman of the English Department and self-described "windbag."
The Polhemus show came to a fitting end at the senate's final meeting last week when he delivered an impassioned reminder of the importance of the university. This was followed by an even more colorful tribute to Polhemus delivered by Senator Phyllis Gardner, associate professor of medicine.
Delivering an "improvised Cervantes" poem about Polhemus' leadership, Gardner painted him as a great defender of the university:
May I set the stage? I shall impersonate a man.
Come enter into my memory and see him.
His name: Rob Polhemus, an English professor.
No longer young, bony, hollow-faced, but eyes that burn with the intensity of inner vision.
Being tenured, he has much time for books.
He writes from morn to night, and often through the night as well.
He also reads, and much that he reads oppresses him.
It fills him with the indignation of man's betrayal of man and science's of the arts.
So he conceives of a method to address the oppression.
He shall become chair of the senate.
He shall sally forth with a great passion to right these wrongs.
No longer shall he be a plain English professor, but a fearless and dauntless university leader.
Though inconsistencies, weaknesses and professional horrors may abound, a holy endeavor of truth and knowledge will succeed.
Gardner then had her "American Idol" moment with an all-too-brief verse that she sang about Polhemus, a song that was greeted with boisterous applause from her colleagues. She followed up the song with the customary gift of a gavel, which she presented to Polhemus, who told her that she was an act that even he couldn't follow.
Roberts arrives at his senate leadership role having already served the university in a variety of ways since he joined the faculty in 1990. For 12 years, Roberts was the director of undergraduate studies for computer science, becoming the principal architect of the university's introductory programming sequence. He has been honored with the Bing Fellowship, the Dinkelspiel Award and the Hoagland Prize. In January 2002, Roberts was named the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, taking on one of the first eight endowed University Fellow positions designed "to reward faculty who make truly outstanding contributions to Stanford's undergraduate experience."
Besides Roberts, members of next year's senate Steering Committee will be Vice Chair Albert Camarillo, the Miriam and Peter Haas Centennial Professor in Public Service; Gunnar Carlsson, the Ann and Bill Swindells Professor of Mathematics; Wanda Corn, the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History; Charlotte Jacobs, the Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson Professor in the School of Medicine; Gail Mahood, professor of geological and environmental sciences; and Evan Porteus, the Sanwa Bank, Limited, Professor at the Graduate School of Business.