Spring elected University Senate President

05/15/2013

Michael Spring has been elected President of University Senate,  which is the official University body for shared governance. Through its various committees, the Senate considers and makes recommendations concerning educational policies and other matters of University-wide concern. The organization fosters discussion and maintains communication channels among students, staff, faculty, administrative officers, and the Board of Trustees. Spring, an Associate Professor at the iSchool will begin his service as President on July 1, 2013.

This year-long office is merely the latest Dr. Spring’s long career of service to the University. Since joining the faculty of the School of Information Sciences in 1986, he has held positions on the University Senate Council, the Faculty Assembly, the Senate Budget Policies Committee (he currently serves on this committee), the Senate Plant Utilization and Planning Committee, and the Audit Committee of the Board of Trustees. His work to enhance the University community has been in addition to his teaching responsibilities and a very rigorous research program. Dr. Spring teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs in Information Science and Technology and his research interests include distributed systems, collaborative authoring, automated development of secure websites to support medical research, ontology mapping, web applications, data mining of social web applications, and secure location-based services. His current research efforts include NIH-funded projects on “improving the Quality of Primary Care for Anxiety Disorders,” “Web-Based Ovarian Cancer Symptom Control: Nurse-guided versus Self-directed,” and “SmartCare: Innovations in Caregiving Interventions.”

Dr. Spring’s goals for his time as President of the Senate involve increasing communications with university constituencies and enhancing the role of faculty in the shared governance of the university. He states that “the Faculty Assembly and Senate Standing Committees deserve to be more actively involved in administrative planning and decision-making so that faculty can make appropriate contributions to moving Pitt forward.”

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