Letter to Suresh Garimella

Dear Colleagues,

I am forwarding an email from department chairs in the College of Arts and Sciences. They are asking faculty to sign a letter to Suresh Garimella. Please see their cover email below with a link to a Google Doc if you'd like to sign the letter. The letter to Garimella is linked here

All best,
Sarah Alexander

President, United Academics

Dear Colleagues,

Here you will find a letter to Dr. Suresh Garimella drafted by department chairs in the College of Arts and Sciences. We are respectfully asking our faculty colleagues across the university to read the letter and to consider adding their names to it through this Google Docs site by noon next Friday, 2/22: Sign the UVM Faculty Letter to Dr. Suresh Garimella

As department chairs, we are not members of the collective-bargaining unit, and we are accordingly very grateful to the faculty union for helping us to get this message out to the largest number of faculty in the shortest possible time. We are, moreover, eager to enlist the support of faculty who are not members of United Academics, and we will be grateful if those on the UA mailing list who support us will pass this appeal on to faculty administrators in their units, including department chairs, and to members of the faculty who are not members of the union (e.g., those in the Larner College of Medicine).

Dr. Garimella spoke in his public forum about his vision of UVM’s special combination of Land-Grant mission and commitment to the liberal arts in the New England tradition. The letter we are asking fellow faculty to consider signing greets that vision with enthusiasm and calls on Dr. Garimella to act on it at a moment when the entire University is at risk due to the ongoing budget crisis at its liberal arts core, which generates the great plurality of tuition dollars in UVM’s General Fund Revenue Budget.

We respectfully commend to your attention the letter we are asking you to sign. Thank you very much. 

Sincerely,

Joseph Acquisto, Professor and Chair, Romance Languages and Linguistics

Paul Besaw, Professor and Chair, Music and Dance

Thomas Borchert, Professor, Interim Chair and Director of Asian Studies, Religion

Terence Cuneo, Marsh Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Interim Chair, Philosophy

Daniel Fogel, Professor and Chair, English

John Franklin, Professor and Chair, Classics

Jack Gierzynski, Professor and Chair, Political Science

John Green, Professor and Chair, Psychological Science

Randall Headrick, Professor and Associate Chair, Physics

Sara Helms Cahan, Associate Professor and Chair, Biology

Dale Jaffe, Professor and Chair, Sociology

Jane Kent, Professor and Chair, Art and Art History

Christopher Landry, Professor and Chair, Chemistry

Andrea Lini, Associate Professor and Chair, Geology

Emily Manetta, Associate Professor and Chair, Anthropology

Gregory Ramos, Professor and Chair, Theatre

Helga Schreckenberger, Professor and Chair, German and Russian

Sara Solnick, Associate Professor and Chair, Economics

Sean Stilwell, Professor and Acting Chair, History

Beverley Wemple, Professor and Chair, Geography

John Jing-hua Yin, Professor and Chair, Asian Languages and Literatures