Meet the Faculty Senate Officers for 2005-06

Barney faculty member Jerome (Jerry) Katrichis heads a new slate of officers who will preside over the Faculty Senate during the coming academic year.

Katrichis was elected chair of the Faculty Senate in May. Also elected at that time were Walter (Wally) Banzhaf, vice chair; and Donn Weinholtz, secretary.

The Faculty Senate is a legislative body concerned primarily with rules and general regulations pertaining to all undergraduate and graduate programs of the University. The Senate plays a major role in setting academic policies and procedures. The Faculty Senate also concerns itself with policies pertaining to the benefits, rights and responsibilities of faculty; student-faculty relations; and the role of faculty in other university bodies.

Visit the Faculty Senate website.

Katrichis, who is an associate professor of marketing and interactive information technology, is entering his 11th year at the University of Hartford and his eighth year on the Faculty Senate. Last year, Katrichis served as secretary of the Faculty Senate. He has served as chair of the Senate’s Academic Standards and Procedures Committee and an ad hoc Benefits Committee, and he has been a member of many other committees as well.

The holder of numerous research and teaching awards, Katrichis is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who Among American Teachers. He received an Outstanding Teacher Award from the university in 2001, and an Award for Innovative Excellence in Marketing Education from the American Marketing Association in 2002. Katrichis’s research interests include organizational purchasing decisions, customer satisfaction, and the use of technology in teaching.

Banzhaf, professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA), served as chair of the Faculty Senate for the past two years. This will be his second stint as vice chair, having previously served in that position in 2002-03.

Never one for accurate record keeping, Banzhaf estimates he has been a Senator for “about 20 years” during his 28 years of teaching at the university. As chair, he strived to make the University community aware of the resources and services the Senate provides to the faculty, administration and staff. He has served on many Senate committees, and he continues to serve as webmaster of the Faculty Senate website. The website provides frequently updated information on Senate activities, agendas, minutes, grants opportunities, awards for faculty, curriculum actions, and membership, and it provides links to the Faculty Policy Manual and other documents.

In his teaching career, Banzhaf’s areas of interest include the first-year experience, radio frequency and optical communications, fiber optic systems and applications of operational amplifiers. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a member of the American Society for Engineering Education, and a licensed professional engineer. In addition, Banzhaf is the author of two books on computer-aided circuit analysis. Before coming to the University in 1977, he taught for three years at the secondary level, and before that he was an engineer for the U.S. Navy, working on submarine antennas and communication systems. He welcomes inquiries from University colleagues who own submarines and have problems with cell phone or TV reception.

Weinholtz is entering his 15th year at the University of Hartford and his second term as a member of the Faculty Senate. For the last seven years, he has served as a professor of educational leadership in the College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions (ENHP). Prior to that, he served for seven years as dean of ENHP, where he oversaw the development of the physical therapy and educational leadership programs, as well as the creation of the University of Hartford Magnet School.

Before coming to the University of Hartford, Weinholtz served on the faculties of the East Tennessee State University Quillen-Dishner College of Medicine, the University of Iowa School of Education, and the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston.

Weinholtz teaches graduate courses in professional ethics, introductory statistics, research methods, and educational assessment and evaluation. Twice a year, he teaches undergraduates in the All-University Curriculum’s “Discovering America: 1945-Present.” Much of his time is dedicated to supervising doctoral dissertations and conducting evaluations of magnet schools and smaller educational programs providing quality instruction in desegregated settings. He was a co-author of the text, The Teaching Process: Theory and Practice in Nursing and was lead author of Teaching During Rounds: A Handbook for Attending Physicians and Residents. He also wrote the monograph, Restructuring an Urban School and a self-published memoir, Longing to Live…Learning to Die.