Professors Samantha Robinson and Kevin Brady have begun their terms as chairs of the Faculty Senate and Campus Faculty, respectively.

Samantha Robinson

Robinson has been elected the chair of the Faculty Senate at the U of A for the 2024-25 academic year. Robinson previously served in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences as the director of data science initiatives and in the Department of Mathematical Sciences as vice chair, including serving as the Julia A. Hicks Endowed Professor in Mathematics and as a teaching associate professor. She is now an associate professor in the Center for Agricultural Data Analytics and the School of Human Environmental Sciences in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.

She also currently serves as a statistical consultant with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Northwest Arkansas campus as well as a senior applications system analyst consulting with the Department of Family and Preventative Medicine's community research group at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Robinson has held the role of chair of Campus Faculty, served as a Faculty Affairs Fellow in the Provost's Office and has been actively involved in faculty senate for several years.

Kevin Brady

Brady has been elected chair of the Campus Faculty and Faculty Senate chair-elect for the 2024-25 academic year. Previously, he served on the Faculty Senate, including as vice chair during the 2019-20 academic year. He is a professor of educational leadership in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

Brady is also a mediator licensed to mediate disputes in the Arkansas Civil Courts. His current research interests include the empirical analysis of legal trends in education, including special education, student free speech, school discipline and student searches. He is also interested in improving legal literacy among educators and school/district-level leaders. He has been a higher education faculty member since 1999 and has been at the U of A since 2015.

The Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate will be elected at the first meeting of the Faculty Senate, which begins at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 11, 2024, in ENGR 209. Current members of the Executive Committee include:

Officers	Name	College
Chair	Samantha Robinson	AFLS
Vice Chair	Jeremy Beaulieu	ARSC
Secretary	Adnan Ali Khalaf Alrubaye	AFLS
Parliamentarian	Robert Brady	ARSC
Outgoing Chair	John Pijanowski	EDHP
Chair-Elect	Kevin Brady	EDHP
Vice-Chair-Elect	Rhett Hutchins	EDHP

About the Faculty Senate: The Faculty Senate is the representative body of the University of Arkansas faculty and holds authority as given in the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees Policy 810.1. The Faculty Senate exercises the general legislative powers of the faculty and has sole jurisdiction over admission requirements; transfer of credits; withdrawals; academic honesty; scholastic probation, suspension, and dismissal; curriculum and courses; degrees and degree requirements; awarding of academic honors; and recommendations to the board of trustees for honorary degrees. The faculty may also make recommendations on any institutional matter of faculty concern such as: policies regarding faculty status, including appointments, promotions, granting of tenure, retirement, nonreappointment, and dismissal; policies affecting the general welfare, working conditions, and the services performed by and for the faculty; and policies relating to academic and professional research and other scholarly and creative activities.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the top 3% of U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.