Faculty Council
Minutes of the Meeting of May 13, 1996
Chairperson Dr. Robert Deming called the meeting to order at 4:05 p.m. in a ground floor lecture room in McEwen Hall and announced that a quorum was present. The agenda was approved.
1. Approval of minutes of April 15 meeting: Dr. Deming pointed out that in item 7, (no. 13) the council had approved the insertion of the world "knowingly" between the words "not" and "violate" before the lack of a quorum was declared. The minutes were approved with this correction.
2. Presidents Report:
Dr. MacPhee made some comments about what it is like to be leaving after 11 years. He commented that in looking back, it's hard not to focus on the preoccupation with the budget. But we should be aware of the many accomplishments of this campus community during the last decade, despite resource constraints. This is due to the hard work of many people. The reputation of the college is strong, and we should all be proud. Our academic programs are strong, despite the fact that we have fewer of them than in the past.
We are well along in implementing our multi-year technology plan. The library is automated, and the fiber optic ring should go in this spring, linking academic buildings.
The fund raising campaign served two things: it's serving to provide some funding, not only for some academic programs and "the margin of excellence," but also was an opportunity to educate our board of directors and the community that this is something that is going to be with us for a long time. It was a start for a long journey -- a long term part of our existence, and served of catalyst for change in that regard. The alumni network of this college is strong, it's active, it's supportive, and it's literally all around the world.
There have been a lot of physical plant changes -- some of them not so glamorous, the asbestos type ventilation health safety -- but some other things. I can remember the condition of the signage when I arrived. A lot of people worked on making that, and now it's something we take for granted. In addition to those
unglamorous physical plant changes, we have a new addition to the library. The old existing library has been transformed. Gregory, which used to be one of the most ugly entrances on the campus. It is no longer, it's quite attractive.
I'm delighted with the momentum being gained in international programs of all sorts. I moved very slowly in that area knowing that this campus has had fine international programs in the past, and didn't want to raise expectations that we couldn't deliver on. I'm very pleased that I think virtually every international program that we now have -- Japan, England, Wales, Spain, Venezuela, Mexico, Albania --are all based not on the President making a trip around getting agreements signed, but rather on a faculty contact that has led to a substantive arrangement with that particular land, whether it be faculty exchange, student exchange or both. I've reviewed a draft of a new inter- departmental major in this area and if you move fast I will be glad to sign the letter of intent and get that on its way before I leave.
So, it's time for me to move on. I do have concerns -- I could spend time on those as well -- its not all good news about the future, especially with the unstable environment in which SUNY is operating. Let me just mention two concerns, there are others and maybe I'll have a chance to jot some of those down, and give them to you before I go. In my view the greatest immediate need is for some degree of stability and predictability for SUNY in funding. As I sometimes do when I get riled about something, I put together a little op-ed piece that essentially summarized what my part at least was in the discussions a few of the Presidents had with the board of Trustees of SUNY. [President MacPhee then summarized his op-ed piece which was subsequently published in area newspapers.] He continued: I don't think that what I am proposing is likely to happen but I felt a lot better having said it.
Finally the other issue that I'm deeply concerned about for the future is the goal of a more diverse campus community. I don't need to tell you that affirmative action in it's legal sense is under assault nationally, but not only that -- the very un derpinnings, morally and ethnically are under attack, and a new wave of hate and bigotry that's abroad in the land visited this campus in November, not only in terms of racial but also religious aspects. This is troubling to all of us. The police in vestigation is active again, and with suspects, but I can't say more about that, because its a police matter at this point. If it points off the campus, we'll be pleased it's not on the campus but it wont be good news for this community. So the issues are still very serious.
I'm concerned not only about society, but where we are on this campus. I remember the comments I made at the introduction of the forum in November: I said wouldn't it be a cruel irony if allowed those responsible for these incidents to win the day by driving students and faculty away from Fredonia, but to some extent they did win the day, this has been very troubling for students and for faculty. Even before that incident took place, Mike [Dimitri] and I looked at the figures again today, even before the November incident, recruitment and retention of students of color was down, not only this campus but across SUNY and to some extent nationally. So some of the gains that we made, they were significant gains, in the middle of the decade, have slipped away, and I really hope that in the days ahead the campus can focus on the ends to be achieved by this goal, don't divide yourselves on the question of means. Diversity and multiculturalism remains not only a worthy goal but one that's very crucial I think to both the quality and the vitality of this institution. I wish you all well. It's been a great rush, Thank You. [Applause]
3. Dr. Deming:
As part of my report I am personally pleased to place before you the following resolution:
The resolution of faculty council May 13th 1996,
Whereas, he has for eleven years served the State University of New York College of Fredonia as President, and Whereas, his leadership of the college has been marked by the highest principles of collegiality, honesty and integrity, and Whereas, the external reputation of the college within western New York and throughout the state of New York, has benefited from his personal style, behavior and decorum, and Whereas, he has been a devoted friend to faculty, staff, students and others at the college, as well as to the neighboring communities, and Whereas, his departure from the college will leave it better for his having been here, and Whereas, he will not in any sense will he be gone from our collective memories of him, and Whereas, the college extends to him its deepest and most sincere good wishes in the challenges of his new life,
Therefore be it resolved: that the Faculty Council of the State University of New York College at Fredonia, the representative body of students, faculty and administrative staff, gratefully acknowledge the eleven years service of Dr. Donald A. MacPhee on behalf of public higher education in our state, and on behalf of this college, and that the Faculty Council of the State University of New York college at Fredonia expresses by this resolution its deep respect and admiration for the man, the administrator and the friend that Dr. Donald A. MacPhee has been to us all, and that the faculty council of the State University of New York College at Fredonia via this resolution says a fond farewell to Dr. Donald A. MacPhee, and Betty Joe MacPhee, an d wishes them every happiness and success in their new endeavors, secure in the knowledge that another community will receive in them the best there is.
I ask your unanimous consent to this resolution, do I hear a motion?
Motion was made, seconded and passed with one "no." [Applause]
Dr. Deming: there is one further matter in my report, not quite of the same seriousness. It has been brought to my attention particularly after review of the last minutes, that as chair of council I have participated too actively in the discussion. Two reasons for this, One: it's very difficult to keep my mouth shut on any subject, and Two: I am an elected member of council and I feel therefore that I should participate. However, if you so instruct me, whenever I am going to speak to a motion , I will absent the chair, and Jane will come and assume the chair, I'll say my bit, Jane will go back, and then I'll come back into the chair. If that's what you wish.
Dr. Sebouhian: Mr. Chair, I thought you made it a requirement that all resolutions would be presented to this body before they were brought to us for action.
Dr. Deming: This requirement was for motions, not resolutions.
Dr. Karen Mills-Courts: It seems to me that you can simply say "I'm now speaking as an elected member of Faculty Council," when you need to, without all this [elaborate procedure.]
Jon Kraus and Jane Romal indicated they thought this would be sufficient, and Dr. Deming said he would proceed accordingly.
4. Vice Chairperson: No report.
5. Faculty Senator (Moj Seyedian):
referred those present to his written report which was distributed with the agenda. There we no questions.
6. (Item 7 on agenda):
Dr. Deming indicated that the council would continue discussion of the previously pending motion on prerequisite requirements, namely, that "administrators and chairs must not knowingly violate catalogue requirements in registering students."
Dr. Mantai: Does this mean that chairs would no longer have the flexibility of waiving prerequisites in special cases?
Dr. Deming: I don't know
Rose Klassen: I have an objection because the very way it's worded it sounds that there are administrators and chairs who are knowingly violating the catalogue requirements, and that's a legal document, and I would say any chairman or administrator who knowingly violates the catalogue requirements as a legal document, shouldn't have that position. Also, I have a question. When we talked about this the other day and someone asked what requirements are being violated, there was never anything offered up to us. Is it the possibility that the chairman can make exceptions to the rule? Did someone really violate something? I still don't know what we're voting on.
Mr. Deming: I'd just as assume not get into the pre-history of the motion. My understanding is that a faculty member took exception to a chair allowing a student into his or her course, in violation of the prerequisite statement that was in the catalog. But we have dealt with part of that issue in the earlier cleaning up of the language on prerequisites.
Mr. Westwood: Each department was asked to review the prerequisites listed and whether they were really appropriately described, especially the issue of Junior standing and things like that.
Dr. Amiran: This is just a remark, an observation, that in many places in the current catalogue it says for a prerequisite, "x course or by consent." Maybe as departments are revising catalog copy they might think about that because it sends an important message to students too -- they could rightly be encouraged to see the chair about, or the faculty member.
Mr. Westwood: I don't think that this topic has had the benefit of review by the Academic Affairs Committee which I would submit is within that committee's domain. I also think that if the issue is clamping down on prerequisites, before I would sup port this [motion], I would like to see some indication of the feasibility of having prerequisite checks done by the computer. And, inasmuch as this has come to us with neither the Academic Affairs committee having really taken a position on this is sue, nor any analysis as to the extent by which some of this could be done by the computer, I would respectfully move to refer this motion and its related issues of prerequisite administration, to the Academic Affairs Committee, with the request that they come back with a recommendation sometime in the fall semester.
Motion to refer was seconded.
Jon Kraus: I would support it generally. There are times within my own department when we make exceptions based on substantive fulfillment of something. This [motion] might suggest that we are in violation. There are times when in fulfilling requirements here has to be a little bit of flexibility and substitution, without doing damage to what's involved with fulfillment of the obligations, and I would dislike an extra legalism thrown into what already is quite a tangled morass.
Dr. Deming reminded the body that this resolution came to us by petition, and that the context or the events that led to the petition where not part of the petition, but that he believed the specific triggering issue was one of "Junior Standing."
Vice President Hess: I believe it was a wider issue than just Junior standing, and when I asked the departments to review prerequisite requirements, I asked them to consider the wide issues of what students needed to have before entering a course in order to benefit from the course.
Dr. Romal: One problem is that the chairs don't let the people in but then when they go to Early Change they get in, because there is no computer control, which Nan Bowser said at an earlier session would be impossible.
Mr. Westwood: Mr. Chairman, the debate at this point should really be on whether or not this body wants Academic Affairs to take this motion up or whether it wanted to dispose of it itself. The motion to refer to Academic Affairs was passed unanimously.
7. Governance Committee (Steve Rees):
Concerning the elections held during the month of April, the Affirmative Action committee required one seat from Arts, Education, Humanities and Natural and Social Sciences. That seat was won by Karen Mills-Courts. The Student Affairs Committee required one At Large seat; that was won by Marjorie Plaister. The Governance Committee required one seat from Natural and Social Sciences; Ellen Litwicki will take that seat. And the one seat for Governance Committee required for Arts, Education and Humanities seat will be taken by Daniel Ihasz.
8. The Academic Affairs report of the Ad Hoc GCP Revision Committee, (Joe Straight):
Dr. Straight distributed excepts from the last meeting of the Academic Affairs Committee and indicated that a full annual report to the Faculty Council would be forwarded later.
The GCP review committee was appointed by letter by the past chair Faculty Council, Ted Steinberg. The letter of appointment was dated October 26, 1995. I wanted to mention that the letter did not specify a charge to the committee, nor did it speci fy a date by which we were to report. I think some of these things were going to be done at the first meeting in person so they were not in the letter, and this may have led to some of the confusion on the part of the committee. First of all we wer e not aware that we were supposed to report through Academic Affairs. Because the letter had come from Ted Steinberg, Chair Faculty Council, we thought we were just a direct committee of Faculty Council, and also the fact that we were supposed give our final report by April 15th, but we were not aware of that, but that was extended at the last faculty council meeting.
The first meeting of the committee took place on November 1st, 1995, and I was not able to attend the meeting due to a class conflict and was subsequently elected chair of the committee. We met on numerous occasions late in the fall semester and during the spring semester. We met with a number of individuals across the campus and also made a progress report to this body at its April meeting. As we got together and began to discuss the General College Program, first of all Ted had indicated to us that in our discussions and deliberations we were to focus on educational or pedagogical aspects of the General College Program, and not be too concerned with budget implications, or pressures that the campus might be facing. But as we began to discuss the GCP it was found that the committee generally had a favorable impression of the current GCP. This was especially true of the faculty members relatively new to Fredonia on the committee --they felt that the GCP was a good thing and it was better than what they had seen at other campuses -- and the veteran faculty members on the committee felt that it was a significant improvement over what we had had previously, the GCP we had in say the late 1970's. So we felt that the overall structure and philosophy of the current General College Program were good, and so we were basically looking for ways to make some improvements in the General College Program, rather than to change it in a drastic way.
We have made a number of recommendations and the first and probably the most important one, is one that we feel is important for the future, as far as having an ongoing review of the General College Program. We actually felt that this was needed eve n before it came to light that future (or at least the near future) there will not be a Dean directly responsible for the General College Program, as there has been in the past. But just the fact that currently the General College Program committee is a Sub-Committee of Academic Affairs, we felt that since the General College Program is important that it needed more visibility on the campus, and that importance needed to be stressed by having a Standing Committee of the faculty charged with oversight and ongoing review of the General College Program. So that's our main recommendation.
And then we have some other recommendations on part One of the General College Program, and I think implicit in the recommendations you can see the areas of Part One that we thought could be improved. And as we discussed at the April meeting, we had come up with an idea for a change in Part Two based on clusters of courses -- courses related to a common theme -- and we are not proposing that this be implemented at the present time, but we are proposing that some method be found for studying that issue further, perhaps doing a formal experiment, so that clusters of courses can be tried and we can see whether they are going to work or not.
Mr. Chairman how would you want to proceed with recommendations? Would it be helpful to focus on them one at a time?
Mr. Deming: Let's take recommendation No. 1 first.
Dr. Jacobson: What are the other regular standing committees?
Dr. Straight: The standing committees of the Faculty are listed in bylaws in article five, and these are committees like the Academic Affairs Committee, Student Affairs Committee, Planning and Budget committee and so on. So to make this a standing committee of the faculty it needs to be added to article five of the by-laws, and the idea is that would make it like the other committees of Faculty Council, so in particular it would be an elected committee, and would have representation across the campus. This would have to be spelled out in article five -- both how the representation should look, and what the charge of the committee would be.
Dr. Jacobson: And this would take just a majority of the faculty to approve?
Dr. Straight: Usually what has happened is that the Governance Committee has brought a recommendation for a by-laws change to this body for endorsement, and then it's gone out to the faculty for a vote, where it must be approved by two-thirds of those voting.
Dr. Karen Mills-Courts: Don't we have current standing GCP standing committee?
Dr. Straight: It's not a standing committee, it's a sub- committee of Academic Affairs.
Jon Kraus: Why, do you recommend now that the GCP committee should be a full standing committee, and elected rather than appointed as it has functioned in the past.
Dr. Straight: I think it gives it more visibility, more importance, and people can then run for this committee. They can stand for election, they would have terms. Some of the people on the present GCP Committee have been on there I think since it 's been formed. In checking the bylaws [just now] I found that there is no specific mention of the GCP sub-committee under Academic Affairs, so the Academic affairs committee, could have it, or not have it at present.
Dr. Deming: However, when the GCP sub-committee was first set up, it was with the understanding that its work would be constantly under review by Academic Affairs.
Dr. Amiran: People serve three year terms which are renewable.
Dr. Deming: Speaking for myself now, could you clarify the issue about it needing to be a standing committee of faculty council because there's not going to be a Dean supervising it. It sounds to me like de facato this is going to be yet another Faculty Council committee, but all of its actions, policies etc. are going to be supervised by who? Nobody in the administration? Or Faculty Council?
Dr. Straight: I've heard that there will still be someone, I believe in Dean Zablotney's office, who will have responsibility for the General College Program, to handle the day-to- day kinds of questions that come up and so on. I think right now that many faculty are not aware of the GCP Committee because it is a sub- committee of Academic Affairs, but they probably were aware of Dean Hurtgen, so if they had questions or they wanted to submit a course for approval or so on they could always cal l Dean Hurtgen.
Dr. Deming: So how would this change?
Dr. Straight: Well my understanding is that there won't be that Dean any more.
Dr. Romal: Isn't Associate Dean Ron Ambrosetti taking over these responsibilities?
Dr. MacPhee: This issue hasn't been addressed officially. Dean Hurtgen has resigned and gone back to faculty status. The decision at this point has been to not fill that position, and the responsibility will need to placed someplace in Academic Ad ministration. Just where this will be has not been decided, because the plan itself is still in consultation. It is true that there will not a be a separate Dean responsible.
Dr. Kraus: Who is the current Chairman of GCP Committee?
Dr. Amiran: I believe that Dean Hurtgen had acted as chair.
Dr. Kraus: May I ask Dr. Amiran to comment on what the befits of having and elected versus an appointed committee?
Dr. Amiran: It depends on the context in which the committee is operating, what the committee has by way of an agenda. When we set it up, at that time the then-present chair of Faculty Council was chair of the Academic Affairs Committee that set up the GCP Sub-committee as an appointed committee. And the desire was to have people who had qualified themselves by their previous activity in all the faculty consultation that went on before the new GCP was proposed. To have some of those people o n the committee because they were especially qualified to deal some of the initial issues [was thought to be a good idea]. The committee not only developed the requirements for the courses but also then approved the specific courses. At that time i t would have been distinctly unhelpful if some very eager person with no background in the discussions had gone on had been elected to the committee. I don't know how to say this more specifically.
Dr. Kraus: Does this concern still apply?
Dr. Amiran: It depends what you want the committee to do. I believe that when a committee has a smaller focus, it's very important and valuable to have it be an appointed committee. This is my own view.
Dr. Karen Mills-Courts: I'm not sure how I feel about electing [vs. appointing the committee]. I have some concern about splitting an academic program this large off from Academic Affairs. It would seem it might cause some odd problems at times.
Dr. Straight: This proposal did receive the unanimous endorsement of Academic Affairs. I'm on the Academic Affairs Committee, and we feel that we have an awful lot to do just in terms of looking at proposals for major and minor programs, reviewing those, looking at academic standards and the calendar and all the other things that are under academic affairs. So we saw this as certainly a committee that we could consult with and have liaison with, but not having it a step lower in the bureaucracy of the faculty would be better.
Dr. Deming: If you are prepared to vote, we are voting now on recommendation Number One: that the General College Program Committee be established as a standing committee -- that is, that the governance committee will be charged with drafting and amendment to the by-laws, establishing this committee which would come before council again in the fall. Motion passed by a show of hands.
Mr. Westwood: Just for clarification, the council has one more time to change its mind on this in the fall and then it has to go to a vote of the faculty at large so the earliest that you would actually have a committee that is elected, (and then you have to have elections), it would probably be November before you would have a committee in place, even if all of the future steps are positive.
Dr. Amiran: Presumably the present GCP sub-committee will continue until a successor committee is constituted.
Dr. Deming: Dr. Straight, do you want us to vote on items two through five, or do you want to wait until the a new committee is established?
Dr. Straight: [I think it would be helpful to get some general ideas about the sense of the body, but not necessarily vote on all items today.]
Question: Are you suggesting that communication between the GCP committee, and say, the student committee, be by some mechanism whereby one member of each committee sits on the other committee at all times, or simply by sharing reports?
Dr. Straight: Our committee is going to dissolve now, we've finished, so I think there are a number of people on our committee who would be interested possibly in running such an elected committee of Faculty Council, but we have said that we will as individuals make sure that these recommendations are put before that body, or whatever body exists in the fall. Concerning recommendation No. Two, the committee felt hat although there are certainly advantages to having the second writing course in part I-B taken outside the major (or taken in say the English department) that are there are in many cases more advantages to having it in the major. Often times, the type of writing that is done in a particular discipline is quite discipline specific, and we see this as a way to expose the students to the writing that's done in that discipline, and what thing s are valued in the discipline, what conventions exist in the particular discipline. That was the main reason why we made this recrimination number two.
Dr. Jacobson: Your recommendation states that it can't be in English any more?
Dr. Straight: That's correct, unless you're an English major. We talked to a number of people about this and found that there is a misperception about what a part I-B course is: many people think that it requires a lot more writing than it really does. Secondly, we found that many departments had courses which already have a fair amount of writing and could easily be adapted. Thus, for most departments, this requirement would not mean that a new course would have to be created. It would mean that an existing course that the majors already take might have to be modified to some extent to incorporate more writing.
Question: What is your rationale in making the language so restrictive that you're putting this right into the department?
Dr. Straight: We didn't want to have to try to write in exceptions. I can see that some department or departments might be granted an exception, as currently some programs are exempted from part three of the GCP.
Question: What was the problem with departments having an option?
Dr. Straight: We felt that (and Dean Hurtgen seemed to indicate this to us) that many departments wouldn't do it unless they were forced to do it.
Dr. Yaqub: I wish that it would not be required for every department create its own I-B course. Many already have such courses in existence. Some of the others that don't, have good reasons for not having such a course. In mathematics for example, our students need to learn how to write in mathematics in addition to acquiring a facility with writing in general. Under the existing requirement, our students have the opportunity to learn both kinds of writing. With your recommendation, you are limiting them to writing only in Mathematics, and I don't think that's a good idea.
Vice President Hess: Mr. Chairman, I think recommendations two, three, four, and I guess recommendation five need to be discussed by this faculty more extensively. I think the best form for this is to have it discussed in faculty meetings with their chairs, and then report back to the representatives of this body. I would feel very uncomfortable voting today on this major curriculum matter without the faculty speaking to the issues very specifically. I would like you to consider sending it t o the appropriate faculty for discussion in the departments and bring back to the faculty council in that fashion.
Dr. Romal: So moved.
Dr. Deming: This sounds reasonable to me. On just I-B I hear Business, Communications, Math, and Music already saying "we can't do this," not saying "we won't do this" but "we can't do this."
Dr. Hess: Let me also add that there are going to be two issues here: the academic issues and the fiscal issues, both of which have been raised here. I think that's all the more reason why this discussion has to start back with in the departments with the chairs.
After some discussion about the role of Academic Affairs Committee in such a review, Dr. Deming announced that the motion would be to request Academic Affairs to review with the departments items two, three four and five. Carried.
9. Planning and Budget (Jon Kraus):
This may be under a somewhat different heading, but I would like to announce that the Kasling committee has selected George Browder of the Department of History as this year's Kasling winner. He will be giving his lecture next year. I believe you have a report from the Planning and Budget committee complied largely by past chair Holly Lawson, plus a report from the long rang planning sub-committee which was created this year under the Planning and Budget Committee and I will entertain any questions you may have with regard to these, but I'll make a brief comment.
During the process of the year the Planning and Budget Committee did come to believe that in order to do serious planning we needed on the committee people who had facts. We were primarily operating as a advisory body responding to the President and over the course of the year there was consensus on the committee that some more systematic planning had to be done. We spoke with members of the administration and it was agreed we needed to create a sub-committee called the long-range planning sub- committee. It has the current elected members of the Planning and Budget Committee, as well as the major administrators-- the President, vice-presidents, and Deans. The object was that it would meet monthly primarily or more often if necessary b ut it would be exclusively concerned with medium and long range planning issues, not whenever a phenomenon arose on a day-to-day basis. They would pick up particular issues, gather information etc., in order to undertake more systematic planning.
The sub-committee has met over the course of the semester and we've stayed really with the question of admission and recruitment of students, primarily. We will be meeting again Wednesday to continue discussing that particular issue, and probably create another committee, to deal with that in a systematic fashion. Are there any questions:
Dr. Deming: Since the Faculty Council has access to the President's budget reduction contingency plan (because it was on the list serve, and is in the library) does Planning and Budget have any objection to Faculty Council having access to the Planning and Budget Committee's Response? Dr. Kraus: Not particularly.
Dr. Deming: The only reason I raised this is that the Presidents Budget Reduction Contingency Plan came to me as chair [of Faculty Council], I put it on the list serve and put it in the library. Planning and Budget responded to the President's Plan, and did not carbon me, but the President did. I find this a little bit unusual. I would like Council to have access to these documents. I take it you have no problem with this?
Dr. Kraus: I have no problem concerning this document. My only concern would be if an incoming president was asking for advise from the committee on a matter without public debate on it. I've already spoken with [College Senate Secretary] Jefferson Westwood on the matter of more extending cooperation between Planning and Budget, and the Executive committee of Faculty Council, and I would be delighted to do so on all matters that seem appropriate.
Dr. MacPhee: The Committee's memo directly to me reflects their proper role of giving advice directly to the President. I have made a practice of routinely sharing copies of correspondence received with the Chair of Faculty Council.
9. Professional Service: No report.
10. Student Affairs: No report.
11. (Item no. 9 on the agenda):
Proposal from the Executive Committee. Requiring no second, since the item came from a standing committee, the Council proceeded to debate the Proposal:
Resoled: that the Executive Committee of Faculty Council, acting in collaboration with the chairs of Faculty Council Standing Committees and other major campus constituent groups including UUP, CSEA, and the Student Association, form a summer transition task force for the sole purpose of developing and administering a summer survey to gather ideas and opinions about the critical issues, problems and needs facing the campus from individuals in the constituent groups, and for gathering and sorting such comments for use and consideration by the new College President upon his arrival on campus. The exact questions to be asked in the survey will be submitted for approval to the president-designate upon his approval by the Board of Trustees.
Dr. Sebouhian: This strikes me as an extremely important activity. I am worried though that we might get caught up in exchanging a lot of paper work without getting into activity. In other words, what do we do? I have no easy answers to this, but I really think were in the middle of a crisis. I think we should act as though we are, and the word act is very important, I think, at this point. I wonder if we couldn't have follow up meetings on the campus, for all of those who would wish to at tend, so that there can be as we have in this body, free and open discussion about what we do with the information. I also have in mind that most of us know what the information is going to be. I think where we are stuck is what can we do, and I don 't know how we can so work this. I think that if Albany and Pataki are going to have their way, this institution is never going to look the same.
Dr. Deming: Are you in favor then of the idea which is essentially to get together the constituent groups so as to gather data on critical issues problems and needs facing the campus?
Dr. Sebouhian: I think most of us already know which way we think SUNY is going without necessarily having a lot of figures. What I'm wondering about is how about trying to work out a plan of action that we would then discuss in the fall. Do we for instance consider a work slow down, do we consider resignations, do we consider activity that is going to produce responses from Albany because they cannot possibly ignore us any longer.
Mr. Deming: I don't think that's what the Executive Committee had in mind, with this proposal.
Motion passed unanimously. Meeting Adjourned at 5:18 p.m.
Attendance:
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[x] Sylvia Clarke
[E] Fabrizio Daloisio
[x] Susan Maloney
[x] Kevin Michki
[x] Timothy Murphy
[ ] William Ortega
[x] Martha Smith
[x] Charlene Wiles
[x] Vivian Garcia Conover
[x] Thomas Malinoski
[x] Lisa Marrano
[x] Jerome Moss
[ ] Patrick Rocheleau
[ ] Terry Tzitzis
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Minda Rae Amiran
[x] Robert Deming
[x] Carl Farraro
[x] Rose Klassen
[x] David Ludlam
[x] Lawrence Maheady
[E] Malcolm Nelson
[x] Robert Klassen
[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:
[E] Nancy Boynton
[x] Jon Kraus
[x] Kenneth Mantai
[E] Tom Pencek
[x] Amin Sarkar
[x] Mario Vassallo
[x] Nancy Gee
[ ] Gary Lash
[x] Peter Mattocks
[ ] Greg Prechtl
[ ] Brenda Joyce Stephens
[x] Deborah Welch
Ex Officio Members:
[x] Moj Seyedian (Faculty Senator)
[x] Jean Malinoski (VP, Development)
[x] Greg Harper (Acting Dean, Educational Studies)
[ ] James Hurtgen (Dean for Liberal Studies)
[ ] Peter Mooney (SA President)
[x] Jefferson Westwood (College Senate Secretary)
[x] Jane Romal (Vice-Chair, FC)
[x] David Burdette (VP, Administration)
[x] Michael Dimitri (VP, Student Affairs)
[x] David Hess (VP, Academic Affairs)
[x] Donald MacPhee (President)
[x] Stephen Rees (Chair, Governance Committee)
[x] Sharon Zablotney (Dean, Arts and Sciences)
Guests:
Ron Ambrosetti
Joseph Straight
Fawzi Yaqub
Respectfully submitted,
Jefferson Westwood, Secretary