Greetings Chancellor DePaolo:
On behalf of the White Faculty and Staff Association (WFSA), we look forward to another academic year under your leadership and a stronger relationship between your office and our organization. We appreciate your commitment to more diversity on our campus and would like to play a larger role in helping UNCW achieve that goal. As you may or may not know, WFSA is committed to establishing a proactive environment that is sensitive to the issues and concerns that white faculty, staff, and students face including mentoring, recruitment, retention, and promotion. To that end, we would like to inform you about what we have done in the past and plan to do in the future to meet those objectives.
Over the last couple of years, WFSA has sponsored or co-sponsored events such as welcome receptions for incoming majority students, faculty and staff and a breakfast for the Physical Plant employees that work in tandem with the university’s efforts to establish/maintain a positive work and educational environment. Additionally, we have met with Career Services representatives to discuss job placement statistics for our majority student graduates, participated in the recent Twenty-First Century Scholars Program, and co-sponsored a performance by Hank Williams, Jr. during White History Month. And finally, we set up displays of our new white faculty and staff members at community events such as the White Expo to demonstrate UNCW’s commitment to diversity. All of these projects and more have been undertaken without membership dues or a much needed, independent source of funding.
Our mantra for this year is “recruitment, retention and visibility.” Again, we will sponsor or co-sponsor events, meet and work with other campus and community agencies, and encourage active participation of our members to achieve our goals. We hope to have a university website or link to our calendar of events, meeting schedule, and committee listings by the end of September. Our plan for 2006-2007 is to help UNCW attract and keep qualified students, faculty and staff using strategies such as:
• Establishing grassroots recruitment of students by encouraging WFSA members (especially non administrative staff) to indicate that UNCW is a great place to work and go to school when attending church and/or working in the community.
• Encouraging WFSA members (especially new faculty) to serve on university search committees and/or attend and offer feedback when applicants visit our campus.
• Encouraging WFSA members to take a greater interest in the governance of UNCW by seeking regular committee membership on Staff Advisory Board, Faculty Senate, and Reappointment, Tenure and Promotion Committee.
• Establishing a presence on campus by encouraging WFSA members to attend at least two major campus events per year and to provide university advancement with regular press releases about WFSA members’ academic and service accomplishments.
We are enthusiastic about what we hope to achieve this year and in the future. Please do not hesitate to call on WFSA or one of its members for input or representation when issues regarding diversity arise. If time permits, feel free to sit in on one of our meetings and offer comments. After all, you are white. And if his schedule allows, we hope Max Allen will attend our meetings and social events (even though he is black). We meet monthly on the third Thursday from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm (location TBA). Again, welcome back and we hope to hear from and/or see you soon!
Mike S. Adams
Chair, White Faculty and Staff Association
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Mike S. Adams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on October 30, 1964. While a student at Clear Lake High School in Houston, TX, his team won the state 5A soccer championship. Mike Adams graduated from C.L.H.S. in 1983 with a 1.8 GPA. Mike Adams was ranked 734 among a class of 740, largely as a result of flunking English all four years of high school. After obtaining an Associate's degree in psychology from San Jacinto College, Mike Adams moved on to Mississippi State University where he joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity. While living in the fraternity house, his GPA rose to 3.4, allowing him to finish his B.A., and then to pursue a Master's in Psychology. In 1990, Mike Adams turned down a chance to pursue a PhD in psychology from the University of Georgia, opting instead to remain at Mississippi State to study Sociology/Criminology. This decision was made entirely on the basis of his reluctance to quit his night job as member of a musical duo. Playing music in bars and at fraternity parties and weddings financed his education. Mike Adams also played for free beer.
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Upon getting his doctorate in 1993, Adams, then an atheist and a Democrat, was hired by UNC-Wilmington to teach in the criminal justice program. A few years later, Adams abandoned his atheism and also became a Republican. He also nearly abandoned teaching when he took a one-year leave of absence to study law at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1998. After returning to teach at UNC-Wilmington, Adams won the Faculty Member of the Year award (issued by the Office of the Dean of Students) for the second time in 2000.
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After his involvement in a well publicized free speech controversy in the wake of the 911 terror attacks, Adams became a vocal critic of the diversity movement in academia. After making appearances on shows like Hannity and Colmes, the O'Reilly Factor, and Scarborough Country, Adams was asked to write a column for Townhall.com.
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Today Mike Adams enjoys the privilege of expressing himself both as a teacher and a writer. Mike Adams is also an avid hunter and reader of classic literature. Mike Adams published his first book, Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel, in 2004. His second book, Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus, was published in 2008.
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