Hasheem El-Rewini addressed concerns regarding the presidential search at last week’s Staff Senate meeting. Photo by Nick Nelson/The Dakota Student

The UND University Senate met last Thursday to discuss a new ombudsman, the budget shortfall and an update on the presidential search.

Senators welcomed a new ombudsman to UND, Henok Elias. The ombudsman’s goal is “engendering perfect peace for all.”

Elias is a voluntary difference and dispute manager for faculty to utilize if a conflict ever arises. He mentioned that it’s not just the obvious disputes that he deals with. 

“I help people respond to diversity that exists, that means everything from differences in gender to speech patterns and accents, and all pieces of culture,” Elias said.

The ombudsman is outside of the university “hierarchy,”meaning it is a resource that is separate from all other parts of the university.  This makes it very useful for solving a variety of problems that arise from different parts of the university system.

Budget woes:

Susan Walton, vice president for university and public affairs, updated the senate members on the budget, saying there will be a meeting with Provost DiLorenzo on Feb. 25 to discuss the budget.

Sen. Eric Basile, assistant professor at UND,  suggested a suspension on the logo creation process until the university becomes more fiscally secure.

“The university has recently chosen a graphic identity firm to choose a Fighting Hawks logo. We are about to spend $49,500 to establish a graphic identity, and have already spent $200,000-plus on the entire nickname voting process,” Basile said. “A graphic identity is important, but not essential. There is no credible reason to form a new logo because the interlocked ND logo is already being used.”

“We all work hard for this university, it would hurt everybody if we waste money on this logo at this time.”

There will be more budget information from President Schafer coming soon.

The first presidential candidate will be on campus Thursday, February 11. University Senate members will have the opportunity to participate in a “meet and greet” with all arriving candidates during the next few weeks. Senate members will create a core set of questions to ask the candidates when they visit campus.

Dean of the College of Engineering and Mines Hesham El-Rewini spoke about the senate being involved in the candidate’s visiting process.

“This is your committee, try as much as you can to attend. It is an exciting time to be here and we want to be asking the right questions and also making a good impression to the candidates,” El-Rewini said to senate members.

It was brought to the senate’s attention that a only one female received an interview in the entire presidential search process, and not one was chosen as a finalist to visit campus. There was concern about the pursuit of a diverse pool of applicants and to what extent those ideas were put into play.

El-Rewini, who is a co-chair of the Presidential Search Committee stressed the fact that this was due to the individuals who applied to the position. 

“UND received only four applications from women. One individual withdrew, two did not proceed to round two and the last individual was not chosen based on the same 14 criteria we used to narrow down all of the applicants,” El-Rewini said.

The University Senate meets on the first Thursday of each month during the academic year at 4:05 p.m. in Room 113 of the Education Building. All are welcome to attend Senate meetings.

Journey Gontjes is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected]