printable versionNew senate chair aims to encourage vigorous debate
BY RAY DELGADO
Sheri Sheppard, the new Faculty Senate chair, said she is "looking forward to the discussions and debate with the wide range of colleagues on future directions of Stanford and how we can better support student learning."
Although she stops short of issuing a call to arms, new Faculty Senate Chair Sheri Sheppard speaks intently about leading a year filled with lively and substantive discussions.
For one thing, she hopes a few good debates will go a long way toward boosting attendance within the university's faculty governing body, an issue that has plagued the past several senate chairs. But perhaps more important, there are some meaty issues that will hit the senate floor this year and Sheppard, a professor of mechanical engineering, is eager to see her colleagues weigh in on them.
"Attendance at the meetings is really important, because we can't have those debates and discussions unless people attend," Sheppard told members at the first meeting of the 39th Senate last Thursday. "And I'm sure that all of you will give the senate the time that it really deserves to be an active, vibrant part of the Stanford community."
Although she is planning several substantive agenda items, Sheppard, 49, would like her colleagues to help set their own agenda, and so on Thursday she asked them to break into small groups to come up with potential ideas (see story on p. xx).
"Yes, it's work, but it's good work," Sheppard said of her role as chair in an earlier interview. "It's not just pushing papers around. We can be really asking some hard questions about why we do what we do and how do we want to be stepping into the future."
Many of the time-consuming formalities of senate business have been done away with thanks to streamlining measures enacted last year by Sheppard's predecessor, Eric Roberts, that leave more time for debate and discussion. "[Roberts] really streamlined the processes," Sheppard said. "What I'm hoping to do is really build on that to use our time for debate."
Since this year's Faculty Senate includes more first-year senators than ever before, she is planning several meet-and-greet lunches this year so members can better get to know one another.
Three main issues will be discussed this year: graduate education, interdisciplinary research and undergraduate education, Sheppard said. Graduate education reform will once again be placed on the front burner as part of an ongoing discussion of last year's report of the Commission on Graduate Education and the various initiatives that came out of it. Sheppard said the senators can look forward to hearing a report from education Professor Patricia Gumport, who was appointed as the university's first vice provost for graduate education, a position that was created as a result of the commission's report.
Sheppard said a planned discussion on interdisciplinary research could generate some good debate and might result in an "off the record" executive session with President John Hennessy so that senators could speak freely about their concerns. The discussion likely will touch on the concerns of faculty about the various impacts of interdisciplinary research on traditional disciplines, how tenure decisions are made and how fundamental interdisciplinary research is to the overall university mission, she said.
The senate also will hear a report from John Bravman, vice provost for undergraduate education, on proposed changes within undergraduate education. Bravman's report might also include a preview of next year's scheduled review of the Introduction to the Humanities program.
"We're going to take some of the debate out of the committees and bring it to the floor," Sheppard said. Other topics that will be discussed at the senate include admissions policies, conflict of interest policies, and student and faculty diversity efforts.
Sheppard's 20 years on the Farm should serve her well as the senate tackles these and other issues. Although she said she always resisted the desires to follow in her mother's footsteps as a schoolteacher and her father's footsteps as an engineer, Sheppard eventually crafted a career that struck the perfect balance between the two professions. She earned her bachelor's degree in engineering mechanics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1978 and earned her master's and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1980 and 1985, respectively.
After earning her doctorate in 1985, Sheppard took a job at Ford Motor Co.'s research laboratory in Michigan. Later that year, Stanford called with an offer of an assistant professor position in the tenure line.
Sheppard has spent most of her career at Stanford in the Design Group of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, where she has taught both undergraduate and graduate design-related courses. Her research has focused on weld fatigue and impact failures, fracture mechanics and applied finite element analysis, some of which has resulted in the development of engineering tools that allow designers to make better decisions around structural integrity. Many of the tools she has helped develop are in wide use within the automotive industry.
Having found her passion within the engineering world, Sheppard has been an eager ambassador for her field. She tackled the question of dwindling numbers of students who are pursuing engineering degrees by serving as a co-principal investigator in a National Science Foundation study of curriculum development at 70 different universities. She is currently building on that research with a new longitudinal study that is tracking 160 students from across the nation—including 40 Stanford students—who expressed interest in engineering careers. The research will record the number of students who end up pursuing engineering degrees and analyze their choices, experiences and attitudes about engineering. The study also will analyze why students decide not to pursue engineering degrees in the hopes of making the programs more appealing.
"I'm increasingly seeing that engineering can isolate itself," Sheppard said. "You can lose yourself in the School of Engineering."
Her colleagues have recognized Sheppard's ambassador-like qualities and voted her to the Faculty Senate two years ago. Now she is poised to lead the governing body and she hopes her fellow senators find their service as rewarding as she has so far.
"I find it so intellectually exciting to be confronted by people who think differently," Sheppard said. "I like hanging out with those people and finding out why they think the way they do. I'm looking forward to the discussions and debate with the wide range of colleagues on future directions of Stanford and how we can better support student learning."