Solon Simmons looks for win-win opportunities in his role as Faculty Senate president

Melanie Balog — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 16:17:28 +0000

Solon Simmons looks for win-win opportunities in his role as Faculty Senate president Melanie Balog Wed, 09/04/2024 - 12:17

Solon Simmons, professor of conflict and analysis in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, enters his first year as the George Mason University Faculty Senate president. At George Mason since 2006, Simmons has been a member of the senate for eight years. He also has served, among other roles, as interim dean for the Carter School and the university’s vice president for global strategy during the pivotal start-up years of Mason Korea.

The George caught up with Simmons to discuss the senate’s recent achievements, issues the group will be tackling this year, and how his academic expertise might serve him as Faculty Senate president.

Simmons

What do you consider some of the Faculty Senate’s major achievements in recent years, and what issues do you envision being focal points for the senate in 2024-25?

One thing that becomes immediately clear when you look at the history of the Faculty Senate here at Mason is the strong legacy of independent leaders who have served there. In just the past decade, we have seen significant growth in collaboration between faculty and administrative leaders. What stands out to me are the roles that senate leaders played in co-chairing the last presidential search, chairing the recent provost search, and in establishing new norms for the acceptance of financial support [of the university]. Faculty representatives have served on every major initiative in the university from promoting the rights of term faculty, to supporting Mason’s COVID-19 response, to developing the conversation about how to have difficult conversations across lines of difference.

This coming year will bring many challenges, but my hope is that we focus on our people, using evidence to center employee engagement and placing proper value on the contributions of both faculty and staff and helping to modernize and update our concept of what a university is for. We are here to pursue both excellence in knowledge and access to wisdom, and all of us—staff, student workers, tenured faculty, term faculty, and administrative/professional faculty—have an important role to play. The faculty job is changing, but in an era of automatic thinking and information overload, it is more important than ever.

How do think your expertise in peace and conflict resolution will serve you both within the Faculty Senate and as the faculty representative on the Board of Visitors?

I direct what’s called the Narrative Transformation Lab. Our baseline assumptions are that emotions matter as much as arguments do and that facts are only intelligible when situated in relation to values. From what I have seen of our new board members, they are very principled people who want the best for the university as articulated from their own point of view. Assuming that everyone brings the best intentions to the case makes it easier to look for those win-win opportunities that are almost always available if you search for them, and no one should forget that win-win is a peace and conflict resolution concept if not THE concept that defines the field.

From a global perspective, American universities have a real advantage over most other countries. Our decentralized structure allows and even forces each of our institutions to serve as global laboratories for the organization of knowledge, producing an intellectual ecology in which we have developed and sustained most of the best universities in the world. Look at the data. Whether it’s Nobel Prizes or global university rankings, the world still looks to the U.S., and increasingly the U.S. looks to Mason. The board members know what a great value proposition Mason is and they have no intention to compromise that. Our job is to make sure intentions match the available opportunities and to keep faculty centered in that conversation.

How significant of an issue is AI for Mason faculty? What sort of discussion is the Faculty Senate having about the implications of AI?

I’m really excited about AI, especially that part that works with language and writing. I like the metaphor of the old Texas Instruments calculator that people often use about the 1970s. We used to think of using a calculator as “cheating” just like we think of writing with the aid of a language model today. I use AI almost every day now, and I find it makes me that much smarter. It feels like what it was like in the ‘90s to start using Google and the other search engines that we had back then. You can just do so much more. Over the summer, the leadership team had a great presentation from a colleague at the University of Michigan who made a point that stuck with me: all good uses of AI require a human-in-the-loop. Maybe someday machines will tap into some form of universal consciousness and discover how to do without us, but so far, it looks like only the human being has the wisdom, contextual awareness, and moral judgment that is necessary to apply knowledge to meaningful problem solving.

If AI is not something to be afraid of but something to use, nevertheless, it really is time to wake up. What we mean by knowledge is changing and our modes of assessment will have to change along with that. It seems to me that AI places emphasis on lived experience and the present moment that will challenge all of us to grow in ways that will be both painful and exhilarating.

Since the pandemic, Faculty Senate meetings have taken place entirely on Zoom. Will that continue? Do you find that meeting virtually leads to greater engagement from senators and from faculty around the university?

There is nothing like face-to-face interaction, but we will continue to use Zoom for the actual Faculty Senate meetings. I think it’s just part of the new normal of higher education. Not only can a senator access the meeting from any one of our many campuses and locations (including Mason Korea), but this format allows for a much larger array of visitors to attend as well. I think the format expands the value of the senate to the university community and makes it easier and more efficient for us to manage our deliberations.

You’re coming up on two decades at the university. What are the major differences between the George Mason you came to in 2006 and the George Mason of today?

I will admit that the first I heard of George Mason University was its famous Cinderella Final Four run in 2006, the year I arrived. Back then it was described almost like a commuter college with peaks or pillars of excellence. Now the university feels like a major player. In 2006, we were known for a variety of innovative and special programs like the old multidisciplinary Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (now the Carter School) that I joined. Now, we are good at almost everything we do, and getting better each year. I like President Washington’s line that this is the most competitive university environment in the country, and still we excel and grow. This is a great place to work and a great place to be a professor. My goal is to make the job even better.

Editor's note: Earlier versions of this story gave Simmons' rank as associate professor. We regret the error.

Topics

Faculty Senate

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

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