University Faculty Committee-Non-Senator

Charles Brittain
Chair of Philosophy and Humane Letters; Professor, Classics and Philosophy
Biography
Charles Brittain is a professor of Classics and Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the current holder of the Susan Linn Sage Chair of Philosophy and Humane Letters. Brittain works in the field of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, with a focus on the study of Hellenistic epistemology, ancient Platonism, and philosophy in Latin from Cicero to Augustine. He came to Cornell in 1996 as an assistant professor. He is a recipient of the Carpenter Advising Award, the Apell Teaching Fellowship, the Provost’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship, and the Alice & Constance Cook Award for commitment to empowering women.
   
Brittain served as Chair of the Classics Department from 2007 to 2014. During this period the department’s mission to diversify kicked off with a radical correction of its gender balance, the appointment of a Diversity Postdoctoral fellow, and a broadening of the department and field to include colleagues from related fields such as Near Eastern Studies. He has also served CAS as an elected member to the council for the Society of Humanities in 2000-03 and 2014-16; and as a member of the Dean’s committee on appointments in 2012-15, which drew up a set of recommendations aimed at making the college’s tenure requirements more transparent and so fairer to junior faculty.
   
Brittain has been a longstanding member of college and university committees that serve undergraduates, including the Academic Records Committee, for CAS, and the Rhodes-Marshall committee and the HCEC, for the university; he has also been a constant advocate for the University Library, including stints on the Humanities Research committee and the University Library Board. He has served as a faculty senator and alternate senator and as a member of a faculty senate investigative committee in 2016 that called for a new framework for community oversight of the Cornell Police.
Candidate Statement
Cornell is a great research and teaching university with a unique mission as both a land-grant and an Ivy-League university. The faculty senate committee is a vital conduit for the transmission of information about the teaching and research missions between the faculty engaged in these missions and the administration that was designed to support them. If elected, my aim would be both to transmit to the faculty the decisions and plans of the administration, with as much clarity as they are susceptible of, and to represent energetically the views of the faculty when their control over teaching and research is at risk of administrative overreach. A clear interchange of views on issues such as the proper function of the Graduate School and the non-financial effects of our engagements with peer institutions in non-democratic political systems.

Maurine Linder
Chair and Professor, Department of Molecular Medicine
Biography:
Maurine Linder is professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Medicine in the College of Veterinary Medicine. She obtained her Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from the University of Texas at Dallas and did postdoctoral research in pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. A member of the faculty at Washington University in St Louis for sixteen years, she began her present appointment at Cornell in 2009.
   
Dr. Linder’s research addresses the mechanisms that enable cells to respond to extracellular signals. Her lab group has identified and characterized a family of acyltransferase enzymes that attach lipid molecules to proteins, facilitating substrate protein localization and function on cell membranes. Dysfunction of these pathways is linked to several neurological disorders, as well as cancer and inflammation, and the acyltransferases are potential therapeutic targets. Research has focused on enzyme structure and mechanism and recently, on identifying the acyltransferases and their substrates that regulate inflammatory responses.
   
Dr. Linder teaches in the preclinical veterinary curriculum and co-teaches an undergraduate pharmacology course. She is a member of the Biomedical and Biological Sciences (BBS) and Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology (BMCB) graduate fields. She led the effort to organize graduate fields based at the vet college as the field of BBS. She has also been active in responsible conduct of research training. Dr. Linder is an AAAS fellow and was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association.

Candidate Statement:
Representing the faculty on the University Faculty Committee is an opportunity to fully participate in shared governance of the university. Service on the General Committee of the Graduate School and the Financial Conflict of Interest Committee has informed my understanding of the diverse viewpoints and issues that arise in setting university-wide policies. My experience as a chair and member of college leadership has made me appreciate the value of faculty engagement and transparency in dealing with the challenges and opportunities that we face as an institution. I would be honored to bring my experience and perspective to the UFC.

Alan Mathios
Professor, Brooks School of Public Policy
Biography:
Alan Mathios is an economist who studies the effect of government regulatory policies on consumer and firm behavior. His research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Merck Foundation, and the Foundation for a Smoke Free World.  He co-edits the Journal of Consumer Policy.  He has been the recipient of teaching and advising awards including the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Cornell University Kendal S. Carpenter Advising Award. Professor Mathios served as Dean of the College of Human Ecology from 2007-2018 and served as a Commissioner for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education from 2013-2020. Professor Mathios came to Cornell following employment at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), where he served as an economist in the Division of Economic Policy Analysis. He received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Candidate Statement:
Institutions, corporations, or organizations that have thrived for over 150 years are far and few between. I believe that the long-standing success of institutions like Cornell is linked to the relatively unique shared governance model that has been established in the higher education sector. Consequently, I see shared governance as a crucial element in shaping how Cornell can maintain its excellence and continue to successfully evolve. I have already served one term on the UFC and would continue to bring significant experience to this role. These experiences include being an educator and mentor to students (awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award and the Carpenter Advising award), being a researcher who has significant experience with external funding agencies (NIH and a number of foundations), having been the Dean of the College of Human Ecology (11 years), having served on committees spanning a variety of topics (including currently serving on the Presidential Task Force on Admissions), and having served for seven years as a Commissioner for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). I have also been involved in Cornell’s self-study processes through several accreditation cycles and have also participated in (and often chaired) evaluation team visits for MSCHE reaccreditation including visits to NYU, Columbia, and several other universities abroad. This is relevant because one of the factors MSCHE evaluates for granting accreditation is the quality and robustness of the faculty governance process. In summary, few faculty have had the opportunity to be exposed to such a broad scope of experiences relating to how universities function and the role that faculty play in guiding leadership.