Dathan Trevino EDINBURG – After the dissolution of faculty senates across Texas public universities and colleges two months ago, a UTRGV official confirmed there are no updates to share despite a UT System Board of Regents meeting later this week.
UTRGV announced the dissolution of its faculty senate on Sept. 9, leaving faculty with no major specific representation in important decision-making committees.
In that same announcement, sent from the Office of the President, it stated the university would seek approval from the UT System to transfer the faculty senate’s duties to a faculty advisory board.
A UT System Board of Regents meeting is set for Wednesday and Thursday; prompting the big question, what’s going to happen next?
Patrick Gonzales, vice president for University Marketing and Communications, stated in an email sent to KVAQ-TV that UTRGV had “no updates” to share in regard to the faculty advisory board, and the university would not present anything of that matter at the upcoming meeting.
Christopher Gabler, a former president of the UTRGV Faculty Senate, said the university has not reached out to him to discuss the forming of a potential advisory board, nor about the UT System Board of Regents meeting. However, Gabler said if the university does form a board, he hopes it can serve to advocate for students, faculty and staff.
“In order to represent the breath of student and faculty interests and concerns, I would want those qualifications to include having faculty members that are representative of all the different sort of types of faculties we have and voices we have,” Gabler said. “They just need to be someone who has the trust of their colleagues so that their colleagues would be, you know, have the confidence to speak openly and sincerely to them and, and trust that they’re going to do something with that information.”
Gabler is also a member of the UT System Faculty Advisory Council, which is the current form of representation for faculty. He said it still does not fully represent faculty as its focus in on all the institutions under the University of Texas System.
“That is in no way, shape or form equivalent to, or as representative, of faculty at each individual institution,” Gabler said. “But, what that has allowed us to do is at least learn some things about what’s going on at our peer institutions and talk to our peers here without our prior faculty senate.” … “At this poin there’s no comparable alternative in place.”
At this time, there is no current commentary on what UTRGV will present at the next UT System Board of Regents meeting set in February of 2026.
