Kathleen komar at the
helm
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Photo by Reed Hutchinson UCLA
Photographic Services
As chair of the Academic Senate, Kathleen Komar wants to
make the processes of the organization more transparent to
faculty. |
Senate chair takes comparative view of issues
by david greenwald
ucla today staff
Kathleen Komar was an undergraduate English major when she became
captivated with the anxiety-ridden prose of Franz Kafka and decided
to learn German so she could read his works in the original.
That in turn ignited her interest in other facets of German, and
then French, literature. At the same time, she was reading James
Joyce and William Faulkner. “I thought, I can’t let
go of either end of this,” she said. “The only discipline
that would let me hang on in both directions was comparative literature,
which demands that you work in at least three different languages
and specialize in more than one author.”
So began her scholarly career in comparative literature. Now Komar
also is using her considerable talents as a comparativist in her
new role as chair of UCLA’s Academic Senate.
“Doing this kind of work (comparative literature) gives
you a vision of things in a much broader context,” said Komar,
sitting in her Academic Senate office in Murphy Hall. “That
is what interests me, seeing the differences in things. I think
some of my fascination with seeking comparisons of different parts
of the campus has grown out of my trying to understand different
cultural and literary contexts, both in their similarities and their
very important dissimilarities.”
At the moment, Komar is working on several initiatives that are,
she said, vital to the campus and faculty. Among them is Chancellor
Albert Carnesale’s Ensuring Academic Excellence campaign to
raise $250 million over five years to provide additional resources
for both undergraduate and graduate scholarship and fellowship support,
as well as to fund 100 new endowed chairs.
“That is something that is really important to (faculty),”
Komar said. “Attracting the best graduate students is crucial
in terms of maintaining the best faculty. And on the undergraduate
level, it’s crucial for us to maintain a really diverse population
that has access to the university.”
Faculty involvement is essential to the success of the initiative,
Komar said. “If donors see the faculty, see their work, see
their students and the passion involved in the whole enterprise,
then they are much more likely to support us,” she said. “Faculty
can be intimately connected to this effort by doing what we already
do: demonstrating our research, talking to people, being willing
to go to events ... by having that frontline contact with people
who can help us.”
On other fronts, Komar said, making the workings of the Academic
Senate more transparent is an important goal this year. “Too
many people view the Senate as a roadblock, something they have
to go through to get what they want at the other end,” she
said.
One way to counter this perception is to implement a tracking
log so that faculty can follow initiatives as they move through
the Senate. Such a system should be in place by the end of this
quarter, she said.
“I’d like to convince people that the Senate is not
a roadblock but a help to them achieving the projects they want
to realize, whether it’s a new degree program or creation
of a new department,” Komar said.
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