Faculty Council
Minutes of the Meeting of March 11, 1996
1. Chairperson Robert Deming called the meeting to order at 4:00 p.m. in Room 104 of Fenton Hall.
2. A motion to approve the agenda was approved.
3. Motion to approve the minutes of the February 12, 1996 meeting was approved with the following correction: on page one, paragraph 11, strike the word "intern" in referring to the President of Oswego.
4. President's Report: (Due to illness, the President was not able to make his report before council.)
5. Chairperson's Report: (Robert Deming)
a. The President and the executive committee are reviewing the criteria and procedures for nomination to distinguished professorships.
b. The President has approved the faculty council resolution regarding instructor initiated drops. It becomes effective in the Fall 1996 semester.
c. The President was planning to address an issue concerning enrollment. Vice President Hess was invited to address it. Dr. Hess: As of March 8, we are still a considerable number of applications behind. We are behind in both freshman applications and transfer applications. Every SUNY school is having similar problems. Deposits are down approximately 31 compared to last year at this time. This obviously is a concern and we are trying to do everything we can to make it up. Standards of admissions have not been compromised due to the drop in applications. To lower standards would be a major shift in institutional policy and we do not plan to do this.
Ken Mantai asked whether private colleges were also experiencing the same problem. Dr. Hess replied that we do not have data on this.
d. The executive committee has decided to activate the provision in the bylaws for an administrative review committee that is provided for in article 6, section 1, sub-section C. The section reads as follows:
"Administrative review committee shall be created no more often than every three years and no less often that every five years with the office of the President and the offices of the Vice-Presidents. The faculty council chairperson shall nominate the members of such committees with the approval of the faculty council. Administrative review committees may be established for other offices as the faculty council sees fit. These committees shall review the activities of the offices over the past three to five years, the problems and challenges it faces, the current issues facing the office, and the immediate future needs of the office. These committees shall endeavor to work closely with the person directly responsible for the operation of the office. Each committee shall produce a summary evaluation and recommendations which shall be presented to the office. A copy of these committee reports shall be available in the library, and the faculty council shall be notified."
The charge to the administrative review committee is as follows: As soon as possible convene and review the attached model for administrative review committees developed by George Sebouhian's early redaction of the committee in 1990. If you desire to make any changes in the model, or in its procedures, please notify the executive committee. As soon as is practical proceed with a review of the four Vice-Presidents' offices and the three Deans' offices. Plan to make your final report by January 1997.
The executive committee recommends the following as members of the administrative review committee: Tracy Bennett, Vivian Conover, Jack Croxton, Leanna Dunst, Karen Mills-Courts, and Peter Schoenbach. Peter Schoenbach will serve as chair.
It was moved and seconded to approve the administrative review committee and its charge. Discussion. Passed.
6. Vice-chair: No report.
7. Faculty Senator:
Moj Seyedian reported that there will be an articulation transfer conference that will be held on April 16 at SUNY Albany. There will also be a conference on instructional technologies which will be held on May 21-24 in SUNY Oswego.
8. Presidential Search Committee:
Ray Belliotti reported that the field has been cut to 8-10 semi-finalists. Interviews will take place in Buffalo March 21-23. There are currently two women and two African American males among the field. There are no in-house candidates. We expect to bring 3-4 finalists to campus directly after Spring break and forward a recommendation to the College Council by the end of April.
9. Governance Committee:
Steve Rees reported that the election ballots for Planning and Budget Committee from the area of Arts, Education and Humanities and Natural and Social Sciences will be distributed through campus mail to appropriate division members by Thursday, March 14. One person from each area is to be elected.
10. Academic Affairs:
Tom Rywick introduced the two related motions dealing with the issue of prerequisites. (The text of these had been distributed with the agenda.) The committee's recommendations grew out of a request it received in late January from Vice-President Hess to consider the issue of prerequisites and the kinds of listings of pre- requisites that appear in the catalogue. The committee felt that there are some prerequisites that are not really necessary or meaningfully stated and moved the following recommendations and changes policy:
1) (a) Insert the bracketed material below after the following sentence in the College Catalog and Faculty Handbook under Course Prerequisites:
Many courses offered by the college are open to any interested student, space permitting. However, some courses have prerequisites -- other courses you must have had before taking the course in question, in order to understand it. [For other courses there are recommendations regarding courses or experiences that might be beneficial, but not necessary, to have.]
(b) Also add the following bracketed words to the catalog as indicted:
Information about pre- and co-requisites [and recommendations] is given in the course descriptions in this catalog.
2) Since some current prerequisites (such as "junior status" or "9 hours in the discipline" do not clearly follow existing policy (that prerequisites be "courses or experiences you must have had before taking the course in question, in order to understand it") and since departments are in the best position to determine prerequisites for courses within their disciplines, the Academic Affairs Committee strongly recommends that all departments do a comprehensive review of its prerequisites and make appropriate changes before the next catalog copy deadline.
Discussion: Vice President Hess described the problem of a student who has 57 hours and wants to take a course but is told by a department that they must have 60. He felt that prerequisites should be tied more logically to specific skills or knowledge that students must have and supported the idea that these debates take place within the departments as called for in the motion.
Question: There isn't any proposal to add some enforcement to pre- requisites is there? Dr. Rywick: Not from us (Academic Affairs); no.
After additional discussion, the first recommendation of the Academic Affairs Committee was passed unanimously. The second recommendation was also passed with one vote of nay. 11. Planning and Budget: No report.
12. Professional Services: No report. They are likely to have their job related time survey ready for the April meeting.
13. Student Affairs: No report.
14. Affirmative Action Committee:
This had been attached to the agenda. There were no questions. The chair thanked the committee for its report.
15. The College name change. The previous motion, to change the institution's name from State University of New York College at Fredonia to State University of New York at Fredonia, was taken from the table.
Discussion. Motion defeated.
16. New Business: Mac Nelson offered the following motion: "Resolved that the Faculty Council of SUNY College at Fredonia calls upon the Governor and the Legislature to fund fully SUNY's budget request for 1996-1997." Second. Motion passed.
17. Vivian Conover asked, now that Vice-President Dimitri was present, if he could address the fact that our accept numbers have gone up despite the fact that we are down 700 applications.
Mr. Dimitri: We realized that application numbers are down and these students will be getting multiple acceptances from five or six other colleges, many of them within SUNY. We decided instead of putting a student on a waiting list or asking for supplemental information, if they met the criteria that has always existed here at Fredonia, we have given them acceptance earlier than we ever have. So we are ahead of the game. There is a price we will pay for that because we do have 200 more acceptances at this time this year than last year. Little by little we are inching towards the appropriate number. So there has been no change whatsoever in the admission standards. We are still looking at high school averages, SAT scores, a level of preparation, and recommendations. That has not changed. We did go after the pool as quickly as we could this year. We are not accepting more students; we are just accepting them earlier than in the past. We have not changed our standards here at Fredonia. If you were at the faculty council meeting the President did say very clearly that this college made a conscious decision to down size numbers (total enrollment) in order to avoid that very slippery track of reducing standards, because we live off of our reputation, and if we lose our reputation the application pool could be even more vulnerable than it is at the present time.
Question: How are we doing compared to the other colleges? Mr. Dimitri: It's hard to say because nobody is being totally honest. It seems that all the colleges are in about the same position.
Question: Can I ask about Genesseo? Answer: They are down, but they have a tremendous application pool. They have 9,200 applications compared to our 4,400, but they are down 7.7%. Students are taking a hard look at the value of SUNY because the image has been tarnished. Some students are probably waiting to see what happens with tuition and TAP.
18. Chairperson Deming made the following suggestion. Now that we have a very efficient mode of carrying out business, we come to the end of the hour, we have accomplished all our business but we probably have more things we want to talk about. I am proposing something called "Off Agenda." We conclude our business, we go off the agenda, anyone who wants to leave can leave. I would like to set some parameters as part of the discussion here. I would not want to see the "off agenda" period as a time to line the administrators up against the wall and fire at them. I would like it not to be a time for whining, griping, and complaining. But sometimes the venting of spleen will accomplish something worthwhile. The reason I came to this suggestion was that I attended all three faculty forums last week. I noticed that when the Dean sponsors a faculty forum and provides lunch for the faculty they come and they talk -- a lot. But when the faculty invite the faculty to come to faculty forums, very few come. There are obviously things on our minds. We do not talk to each other on almost any subject. For example: a chair leaves the chairs meeting and says to a more experienced chair (this actually happened), "I don't know what to go back and tell my faculty about what the priorities are. The Dean has set three priorities, there is a committee working on that, now a new thing called distance learning has been thrown into the mix. How do I represent that to my faculty? What are the priorities? Where is the college going? Why isn't the faculty discussing these kinds of things?"
So that's my idea. Do you want to have, after the agenda, assuming we can maintain the efficient style which we're operating now, something like this idea called "Off Agenda?"
Jefferson Westwood: If I don't have to take minutes, I'm in favor.
Mac Nelson: Let's try it next month and see what happens. I think it's a good idea.
Deming: According to trustee's policies, we, the faculty, have responsibility for the programs and everything concerned with the programs of the college. So this issue that was raised about enrollment patterns, could as easily come up off agenda as on agenda. If you have something that you want off agenda, let us know and we'll just attach it at the bottom of the agenda, but it's "off the agenda." We will try it out next month.
Meeting adjourned at approximately 5:00 p.m.
Attendance:
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[x] Sylvia Clarke
[E] Fabrizio Daloisio
[x] Susan Maloney
[ ] Kevin Michki
[x] Timothy Murphy
[ ] William Ortega
[x] Martha Smith
[x] Charlene Wiles
[x] Vivian Garcia Conover
[E] Thomas Malinoski
[x] Lisa Marrano
[ ] Jerome Moss
[ ] Richard Notte
[x] Patrick Rocheleau
[x] Terry Tzitzis
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Minda Rae Amiran
[x] Robert Deming
[ ] Carl Farraro
[x] Rose Klassen
[x] David Ludlam
[x] Lawrence Maheady
[x] Malcolm Nelson
[x] Stephen E. Rees
[x] Candice Brown
[x] Janet Fairbairn
[x] Harry Jacobson
[x] Kenneth Lucey
[x] Ringo Ma
[x] Karen Mills-Courts
[ ] John Onufrak
[x] George Sebouhian
Natural and Social Sciences:
[x] Nancy Boynton
[x] Jon Kraus
[x] Kenneth Mantai
[x] Tom Pencek
[x] Amin Sarkar
[x] Mario Vassallo
[x] Nancy Gee
[ ] Gary Lash
[x] Peter Mattocks
[ ] Greg Prechtl
[ ] Brenda Joyce Stephens
[ ] Deborah Welch
Ex Officio Members:
[x] Moj Seyedian (Faculty Senator)
[ ] Jean Malinoski (Interim VP, Development)
[x] Greg Harper (Acting Dean, Educational Studies)
[x] James Hurtgen (Dean for Liberal Studies)
[x] Sean Costello (Proxy for SA President Peter Mooney)
[x] Jefferson Westwood (College Senate Secretary)
[x] David Burdette (VP, Administration)
[T] Michael Dimitri (VP, Student Affairs)
[x] David Hess (VP, Academic Affairs)
[ ] Donald MacPhee (President)
[x] Stephen Rees (Chair, Governance Committee)
[x] Sharon Zablotney (Dean, Arts and Sciences)
Guests:
Ron Ambrosetti
Ruth Antosh
Ray Bellotti
Nancy Bowser
Tom Rywick
Peter Schoenbach
Gloria Taylor-Neal
Respectfully submitted,
Jefferson Westwood, Secretary