Case settled: Farha moves on to Valparaiso
Mandy Toepfer
Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Campus Life
He says he loved all areas of the job and the people with whom he interacted.
"There are so many areas of the law on a higher ed. campus that you get to deal with and you get to deal with every department, every administrator and so forth," he said. "…(The university attorney is) the only other person besides the president that gets to deal with every single aspect of the university."
Farha says he's enjoyed working with the faculty to improve the university, in particular, the faculty union.
In 2004, the faculty union and the administration weren't on the best of terms; they disagreed on contract negotiations.
Both Farha and Bobby Winters, assistant dean of College of Arts and Sciences, teamed up to overcome the impasse, Farha on the administration side and Winters on the faculty side.
Winters says the group had to go through a process.
"It was a slow and painful process to actually live through that … and both sides decided we needed to come to a different way of doing things."
Farha agreed a change needed to be made.
"When I first got here, there seemed to be a lot of friction between the faculty and the administrators, and when I've left, it's been very amicable," he said. "We found we can get a lot more done if we work together as partners rather than foes. That's been neat to watch that unravel."
Winters says it's that communication combined with professionalism that made Farha good at his job. He said Farha could look at an issue from both the faculty's perspective and the administrator's.
"He was trained to be a lawyer, educated to be a lawyer, not a university professor, but then he had to understand or make an attempt to understand, how university professors think," Winters said. "He made some attempts to understand that and I think did some good things."
Farha says with his new position of vice president and university counsel he'll be both a higher education lawyer and a corporate lawyer. He says he'll carry all the knowledge he's accumulated with him to Valparaiso.
Of that knowledge, above all, he believes in including people.
"There's so much shared governance in a university that you need to understand there are a lot of smart people at a university, so you need to stay on your toes," he said. "… You need to enfranchise everybody when you're doing something big, and that's crucial to be successful in college administration whether it's an attorney, or president or vice president. And so I'll take that with me."
Farha says he won't forget where he came from.
"I'm going from one great university to another, that's what I keep telling people," he said. "This has been a great university and it's got a lot going for it, I'm going to miss it."
"There are so many areas of the law on a higher ed. campus that you get to deal with and you get to deal with every department, every administrator and so forth," he said. "…(The university attorney is) the only other person besides the president that gets to deal with every single aspect of the university."
Farha says he's enjoyed working with the faculty to improve the university, in particular, the faculty union.
In 2004, the faculty union and the administration weren't on the best of terms; they disagreed on contract negotiations.
Both Farha and Bobby Winters, assistant dean of College of Arts and Sciences, teamed up to overcome the impasse, Farha on the administration side and Winters on the faculty side.
Winters says the group had to go through a process.
"It was a slow and painful process to actually live through that … and both sides decided we needed to come to a different way of doing things."
Farha agreed a change needed to be made.
"When I first got here, there seemed to be a lot of friction between the faculty and the administrators, and when I've left, it's been very amicable," he said. "We found we can get a lot more done if we work together as partners rather than foes. That's been neat to watch that unravel."
Winters says it's that communication combined with professionalism that made Farha good at his job. He said Farha could look at an issue from both the faculty's perspective and the administrator's.
"He was trained to be a lawyer, educated to be a lawyer, not a university professor, but then he had to understand or make an attempt to understand, how university professors think," Winters said. "He made some attempts to understand that and I think did some good things."
Farha says with his new position of vice president and university counsel he'll be both a higher education lawyer and a corporate lawyer. He says he'll carry all the knowledge he's accumulated with him to Valparaiso.
Of that knowledge, above all, he believes in including people.
"There's so much shared governance in a university that you need to understand there are a lot of smart people at a university, so you need to stay on your toes," he said. "… You need to enfranchise everybody when you're doing something big, and that's crucial to be successful in college administration whether it's an attorney, or president or vice president. And so I'll take that with me."
Farha says he won't forget where he came from.
"I'm going from one great university to another, that's what I keep telling people," he said. "This has been a great university and it's got a lot going for it, I'm going to miss it."
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