New Collection Guide for the Faculty Senate General Records Now Available

The Special Collections Research Center is pleased to announce that a new collection guide for the Faculty Senate General Records is available online. The Faculty Senate is a body of representatives that provides advice to the Chancellor and, through the Chancellor, to the Board of Trustees. These representatives come from each college, school, and other constituency of the University.  Faculty Senate General Records compliments the Faculty Senate Minutes that are part of the University Archives.

The first iteration of this group was the Faculty Council, who held its first meetings in 1923. This Council remained in place as an ad hoc advisory board to the (then) College President. In 1954, the Faculty Senate was organized to replace the old Faculty Council. The Faculty Senate discusses or provides information to the administration and makes policy recommendations to the Chancellor, Provost, and Vice Chancellors. This collection includes files of all administrative aspects of the Faculty Senate, covering topics ranging from the search for a new chancellor, outstanding teacher awards, student affairs, and retention of African American students. The bulk of the records come from different committees.

The first series of this collection covers the Faculty Council years and includes correspondence, student disciplinary cases, and materials from different committees. A surprising discovery in the Faculty Council materials comes from a folder titled “Student Relocation Program.” This folder contains a 1943 letter to Frank P. Graham, President of the Consolidated University (predecessor of the University of North Carolina System), granting permission for vetted Japanese American students to leave American concentration camps to attend a university in the UNC system. (Learn more about how our Reparative Archival Description group helped us to provide historical context for this letter and the harmful terms used within it.)

A recurring topic in the Faculty Senate materials is the recruitment and retention of African American students. One report related to these efforts comes from a Special Task Force appointed by Chancellor Joab L. Thomas in 1977. The task force was charged to investigate potential reasons and develop recommendations for handling the negative image of the University in the African American community. This excerpt details some of these reasons, including a perception of the University as resistant to integration efforts. The rest of the report goes on to present eighteen recommendations to enhance the image of the University in the African American community.  (A video and other documentation related to this report can be found on Special Collections' Rare & Unique Digital Collections website.) 

(NC State University admitted African American graduate students for the first time in 1953. Three years later, the first African American undergraduate students enrolled. Check out our African Americans timeline to learn more about African American history at NC State University.) 

The Faculty Senate series also contains materials that touch on the concerns of women, including students and faculty/staff, on campus. Materials from the Ad Hoc Committee on Women's Concerns from the1980s and 1990s discuss salary equity, retention of women employees, and even a proposal for a day care facility on campus. In 1989, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution to amend the Faculty Senate Bylaws to remove gender-specific language (pictured). 

One interesting discovery is the 1986 Founders' Day Address given by Sondra Kirsch, the first woman chair of the NC State Faculty Senate. In her address, titled "The Emerging Role of Women at North Carolina State University", Kirsch imagines a future where more women are included in administrative positions, as department heads, and as deans on campus. However, in 1986, five of NC State's schools had no female full professors and 14 departments only had one full-time tenure-track female faculty member. Kirsch includes some of her own experiences as a working woman — "Mrs. Kirsch, we don't like to hire working mothers, and your family is so large." — and closes with a call to change the "emerging role of women" to the "equal role of women" on campus. 

(Gertrude Cox was the first woman at (then) NC State College hired as a full professor. To learn more about the history of women at NC State University, check out our Women timeline.)

If you have any questions or are interested in viewing Special Collections materials, please contact us at library_specialcollections@ncsu.edu or submit a request online. The Special Collections Research Center is open by appointment only. Appointments are available Monday–Friday, 9am–6pm and Saturday, 1pm–5pm. Requests for a Saturday appointment must be received no later than Tuesday of the same week.

Special thanks to Abigail Leinfelder, Bec Douthart, Caetlyn Elder, Ellie Beal, Emily Mandara, Matthew Angel, Olivia Bonnette, and Trey Kaufman for their work on this collection.