It's official -- faculty senate elects chair

It took four votes over two meetings, but Leslie E. Bauman prevailed in her quest to succeed Marion B. "Mike" Couvillion as chair of the Robert Holland Faculty Senate.

After three ballots at a special call meeting April 25, Bauman, this year's vice chair, defeated G. Euel Coats 27-13. The two preceding ballots each resulted in 24 votes for Bauman and 17 for Coats.

According to an interpretation of the advisory body's bylaws, selection of officers requires a candidate to receive at least 26 votes for election results to be valid. In voting April 11 at their last regularly scheduled meeting of the school year, senators gave Bauman, a professor of physics and astronomy, a 20-18 victory over Coats.

Then, in successive balloting on the 11th, Coats took the vice chair post after receiving 26 votes to 12 for Paul W. Grimes of the College of Business and Industry. Beverly R. Howell, a Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service representative attending her first senate meeting, accepted her lone nomination as senate secretary.

Only after the regular meeting had adjourned did senators learn that the chair's election was invalid because Bauman's total didn't meet the 26-vote threshold.

Terms for the 1997-98 officers begin July 1.

Bauman, a 20-year faculty veteran, first served on the senate in the 1980s.

Returning to the 50-member body in 1993, the College of Arts and Sciences representative was reelected last year to a second three-year term.

Coats also is in his second consecutive senate term from the College of Agriculture and the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station. A professor of weed science who first joined the faculty in 1965, he also serves on the Division Policy Advisory Council, the representative body for the Division of Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine.

Howell, a human sciences specialist, has been a member of the extension staff since 1980.

A complete summary of business conducted at the April meeting can be read on the Faculty Senate Home Page at <http://www.msstate.edu/Org/FS/faculty_senate.html>.