Nickerson to continue as Senate chair

Peter Nickerson will assume another term as chair of the Faculty Senate, effective July 1, following action by the Faculty Senate Executive Committee at its Dec. 16 meeting.

With Nickerson emerging as the only viable candidate for the position of chair, the FSEC directed senate Secretary Marilyn Kramer to cast a unanimous ballot naming Nickerson to the position. Kramer, chair of the senate's Elections Committee, told senators that after a 10-week nomination period, she had received eight nominations for chair. Of those eight, six people "firmly declined" to run, one failed to meet the deadline for submitting a statement of candidacy and could not be reached by telephone or email, and one-Nickerson-fulfilled all of the requirements.

"So we have one, and only one, candidate," Kramer said.

Don Schack, professor of mathematics, suggested the senate reopen nominations during the first two weeks of the spring semester, calling it "an unfortunate situation" to have only one person running for the position of senate chair.

But several senators disagreed, saying that candidates for the position had ample opportunity to respond to the call for nominations, and that reopening nominations would not guarantee that any additional candidates would surface.

Mitchell Harwitz, associate professor of economics, warned that reopening nominations would "send two messages, both of which I think we don't want to send:" that there was a problem with the nomination process, and that Nickerson has not been an effective chair of the Faculty Senate.

Professor of pathology, Nickerson has served as senate chair since July 1, 1997. He previously served as chair from 1993-95. He also has served as president of the Medical Faculty Council in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and as a member of the SUNY-wide Faculty Senate, representing the health sciences.

A UB faculty member for 30 years, Nickerson conducts research on the mechanisms of pulmonary and systemic hypertension in experimentally induced models of the disease.