Faculty Council
Minutes of the Meeting of September 9, 1996
1. Chair Bob Deming called the meeting to order at 4:03 p.m. in Fenton 105. The Agenda was approved as distributed.
2. The minutes of the May 13th 1996 were approved as distributed.
3. President's Report (Dr. Dallas K. Beal):
It's good to back with Faculty Council again. I read your minutes. You've been very busy; I hope that will continue that way throughout the whole term. If you missed the faculty meeting, I plan to circu late the things I said at the Faculty Meeting so you all have it. I know many of you were teaching and couldn't make it. I had the feeling as I came in the door, I seem to have lost my vote on the way to the forum. That's one of the changes that's taken place since I was last here. I'm sure that that's probably for the better.
I don't have a long report today. Let me report to you first of all that I had a good meeting with the executive committee of the Faculty Council, and one of the things that concerned me as I looked over the planning process, and as you remember my "Dear Colleague" letter, we were going to continue to push forward on that planning process, and I am very concerned that we do that, and we not waste any time. There was a loss of a person in my office, Heidi Mahoney, who staffed that long range pl anning committee, and I really felt that the long range planning committee should be maybe one step removed from being overly influenced by the President's office anyway. So we put together a new planning process that will involve, particularly the Vice Presidents more directly, and I went over this with the executive committee, and they have agreed that it's a plan worth trying, and I couldn't be more pleased. So I'll leave that up to the chairman in his report. If you have any recommendatio ns or suggestions you want to make, make them to the chair of the Faculty Council and I'm sure they'll be given very serious consideration. But it seems to be a more workable process, at least to me.
I think it's also time to review the college's committee structure. I agree certainly with the executive committee on this one: that during this advent of a new president arriving (hopefully around the first of January) I think it would be to our ad vantage, and also to the advantage of the new president, if we did a kind of analysis, and scrubbing down of all the various committees that must exist on this campus. Some of them have probably long since maybe lost their function, and to the exten t that they are lying on the shelf or not operative, I think it would be a good idea to look closely at whether they are needed in the future. I presume a good many of the committees that exist will need to be continued. I worry somewhat about too many committees laying outside the governance structure of the institution. I worry even more when too many committees report to the president's office, I think that that's just not good governance. And to the extent that we need to change some of t hose things, we will come back to you and report on that. But I wanted you to know that that examination is going to go forward.
Let me talk a minute about Change New York. There was a report as you know that attacked the General College Program, the Core Curriculum or whatever you want to call it throughout the University. And we were singled out in a kind of probationary w ay as not having satisfactorily met the expectations of this particular group, that said they examined carefully the General College Program throughout the campuses of the University. I seriously question whether they actually did a very serious job with that. My feeling is they started with a particular bias, and they looked around and tried their best to confirm it, no matter how they warped their report.
I read their report rather carefully when I first came on board, and one of the things that struck me initially was that they had just gone through catalogues and picked helter-skelter. I saw no evidence that they had done a very careful study of wh at it is that students actually enrolled in. And since this General College Program was developed on my watch, I guess I took particular exception to that because I remember this faculty working very hard, putting it all together. I remember the ag onies we went through, in establishing certain compromises that we felt were workable, and I also remember very well the philosophy that actually drove the development of this General College Program, which was based on giving students reasonable cho ice within certain parameters. We felt it was within the tradition of the American Culture, not to designate specific courses in too great in number that every student had to take. I think were a little ahead of the curve in that from the way we al l know knowledge has expanded, to be able to say that there are certain sets of courses that students should take. Or, as the committee said, there's know way of assuring that students enrolling in a General College Program took courses in the basic academic disciplines. Well we gave them some choices within, I though reasonable parameters, and I was concerned that [Change New York] didn't bother to look carefully at what it is students had actually enrolled in, during the General College Prog ram.
So we did a study of some 339 of last May's graduates. What did they actually enroll in, and without going into detail about that, I have just circulated to you the report that Rich Notte did, and I want to thank Sharon Zablotney and Dave Hess and R ich Notte for putting this all together. Now as far as I'm concerned this is the first step, but I didn't want to go out on a limb and start writing an article, which is in process, attacking this report without having done our own homework. I didn 't want them to accuse us of doing what they did, and so I hope within a few weeks to have something that's printable that we can send out as a response to what I think is an unfair attack on particularly this institution. We have the evidence to support the decision that was made some years College Program unstudied, and that's why I submit this more statistical report to you and to the chair of this Faculty Council to pass along to the study that is going to go forward now on the General College Program. Hopefully that will be helpful to us, as we look at ourselves. Then I'll proceed to do the other piece at a later date.
In this connection there is a conference on general education scheduled for October 4th and 5th at SUNY Albany. I'm sure that it will deal with a lot of the issues raised in the Change New York report. Vice President Hess will head our delegation to go there.
Dr. Beal called on Dr. Hess to report on plans for the conference.
Dr. Hess: The meeting is being sponsored by the University Faculty Senate and Faculty Council of Community Colleges. They invited up to 400 people to discuss general education. They are bringing in a series of outside speakers and consultants. It was suggested that each campus convene a committee that consulted a group of people including the Faculty Council chairperson and the Faculty Senator and others. The group going to Albany will include a variety of faculty and administrators. We wil l report back when we return as to the outcome of the conference.
Dr. Beal: You have [a hand-out with] the fall enrollment figures. We are definitely ahead of last year in terms of freshman and transfers, and were behind our target on returning students. I think that was a target that was set too high to begin w ith. I appears, and I'm going out a little bit on a limb, and may shake up the vice presidents a bit, but it appears were close to making the 4400 FTE which we had set as a target. The number of students that enroll from the first day, until the en d of the third week is probably pretty flexible. If we can pick up another 75 or 100, we'll get them. More will by the third week about our final numbers, the dollars that flow from them and how close we came to meeting our budgeted targets.
Graduate enrollment was of course up in the summer session. We had planned that because you had cut back on the graduate programs during the academic year. It's down this fall as has been predictable. Mike Dimitri reported that the Residence Hall enrollment has exceeded projections, the projection was 2031, and we have 2111 at the present time, so that's on the side of the good news.
I want to place special emphasis on a committee that was created last year, the Student Recruitment Advisory Committee. As far as I'm concerned right now that is one of the most important committees on this campus. The committee will report to my o ffice, and I want to keep it that way, because I want to stay close to that committee. I think right now recruitment is one of our most important tasks, and we need to get moving on it as rapidly as we can because every day that passes this fall eff ects our enrollment for next fall. [As this graph shows] things are not looking as good as they should. I don't think they have to continue this way. I think we can up that applicant pool for next fall, and we ought to do everything we possibly ca n to see to it that happens. There's no reason why this fine institution has to settle for somewhere in the neighborhood 5,000 applications. We ought to raise it at least a thousand a year, for the next few years. We've got the programs to do it, and we've got faculty and staff in place. You'll be hearing more from me on that subject, but this o committee is already engaged in some important initiatives which I'll share with you at a latter date. So stay tuned for more reports from your Stud ent Recruitment Advisory committee, and I hope you'll understand if I associate myself with them in a very close and energetic way. Dr. Deming: No, but it was established upon the recommendation of the Planning and Budget Committee, but it now an advisory committee reporting directly to the President.
You all received a copy of the charge that as chair I sent to the Academic Affairs Committee soon after our last meeting in May.
[Dr. Deming then asked if anyone from the committee was present to give a progress report on the committee's work and a member of the committee indicated that it was scheduled to meet the next day.]
Dr. Deming: According to the by-laws the Faculty Council Chair is elected in October, and the Faculty Council Secretary is elected sometime before the beginning of the second semester. [Dr. Deming then called for nominations. Several names were put forward, including Jane Romal, Bob Deming and Jefferson Westwood, but none felt in a position to accept.] The executive committee would of course be interested in hearing any further nominations, and also since I brought it up, nominations for Facu lty Secretary. Now you'll recall that the by-laws require that we hold an election among the entire faculty if there are two candidates for College Senate Secretary. On another matter, the search to fill the multicultural position continues. It's been altered somewhat by adding to it affirmative action. Dan O'Rourke will assume the affirmative action duties this fall until his retirement in December and then af firmative action will continue to report as it should to the office of the president. I think that's a change we'll be workable.
Would you put on your calendars, the dedication of Williams Center for October 16th, at 10 a.m. We'll be circulating a program about that in the near future.
I've circulated also to you a "SUNY Performance Reporting and Academic Mission Review." This initiative is going be with us for quite some time I predict. You may know that the state Education Department is going to do a report card on every public and private higher education institution in the State of New York. I've seen the state Education Department get into things like this and very often there's a lot of mischief that goes on, and I think the University central office probably had no o ther choice than to [participate.] It was also in "Rethinking SUNY" that we would examine ourselves. This [evaluation] process is going to move forward following the outlines that are in the material I just handed to you.
Dave Hess said "Let's hope they don't ask for 48-hour turn around on a lot of data that maybe we don't have, and have to get," and I agree, but we'll work with them on it. We'll all be involved in this before it's over and that's as it should be. S o read it carefully I think I underlined about half of it. It's loaded with stuff that we ought to know about and be concerned about.
Finally, we're moving forward on the Chancellor's Award Committee, Connie Willeford has sent names to the chair of faculty council, to serve on those five committees and well move forward on that front. Other than that Mr. Chairman that concludes my report unless there are questions Thank you.
5. Chairperson's Report (Dr. Robert Deming):
Let me clarify something about the planning document that Dr. Beal referred to. This is a document which was developed in consultation among the vice-presidents presented to the President, and then presented to the executive committee. We have esse ntially approved it, but we have referred it for appropriate committee approval to the Planning and Budget Committee, and we'll expect that at some time they will in fact bring it to Council to say whether planning and Budget approves it, is that cor rect Dr. Kraus? [Affirmative Nod]
Also let me make note of the fact that we will once again have a Faculty Council List-Serve, though the necessity for a list serve this year during the period of this interim President is probably not going to be as necessary as it has been in the pa st, since documents that he circulates to the cabinet and to me he also circulates as I see it, to you. For example, this document that you just received on SUNY performance reporting: under Dr. Beal's predecessor it would have gone to the Cabinet a nd to me, and then I would have to put it on the list serve and then put it in the library, I hope you will take note of the difference. If there are however documents that come to me from the President's office or elsewhere, I will put them on the list serve.
In a memorandum of the 23rd of May, President MacPhee wrote to me saying that he is recommending that the activation of a process to solicit nomination for Distinguished Professor be deferred until his successor can follow through on the process. Pr esident Beal has in fact clarified the status of the new Student Recruitment Advisory committee. The members of this ad-hoc committee reporting directly to the President are: Dean Sharon Zablotney, Dennis Bolton, Tracy Bennett, Karen West, Laura St onefoot, Nancy Bowser, faculty representatives Mary Charbonnet, Kevin Fox, and Planning and Budget representative Jon Kraus.
Question: Is this a sub-committee of Planing and Budget?
That concludes my report. Is there any report from the vice chair.
6. Vice Chair (Jane Romal):
Dr. Romal asked for a status report on the new library stairs which had been under re-construction all summer. Vice President Burdette reported: The old stairs have been ripped out, they've been redesigned. There will be stair railings, but actually it will require the same awkward gait to [walk up or down them.] The work should be completed by the end of October or in November.
7. Presidential Search Committee (Jefferson Westwood):
There was a very short article on the front page the most recent edition of the Campus Report, that is very succinctly, and very accurately put in terms of the overall place where we are right now. As of today we have 21 candidates under active consi deration. The deadline in the ad that ran in the early August edition of the Chronicle [of Higher Education] had a cut off date of September 15th so we will be meeting as a committee very soon thereafter to try to narrow the current pool down to pro bably two to three candidates to bring to campus. It may be more if we feel they are very highly qualified, but our aim is to have candidates here for on-campus interviews in October. Is starting in January a condition for application? Questions?
Dr. Mantai: Is starting in January a condition for applications?
Mr. Westwood: I cannot remember if that was listed in the ad, but I believe that it was. This is something that will be discussed with the candidates before they would be brought [to campus] and probably even before any kind of preliminary interview s. But there is some flexibility in that it doesn't have to be January one exactly.
The committee is not entirely clear about the expectations of the current board of trustees and the current Chancellor in terms of the number of names we might send forward.
Rose Klassen: Are any of the original candidates part of the current pool?
Mr. Westwood: Yes, one is. Over the summer as the Campus Report indicated we did have some preliminary interviews with some people in the original top twenty set, and one of those remains in the pool of consideration. Question: Was that or was that not someone who was here interviewing with us before?
Mr. Westwood: Nobody who the committee talked to before either on or off campus came back this summer or is still under active consideration. Question: Can you make any comment about the possible connections to people at Fredonia High School that was reported earlier?
Mr. Dimitri: I would prefer not to comment on the direction of the investigation, because at this point in time it's just an investigation. But we don't have anything conclusive that I can share with this group at this point in time. But as soon as it reaches conclusion I'd be more than happy to comment, and brief everybody on the extent of the investigation and the outcome. But at this point in time it would be speculation and I would prefer not to involve the As you'll recall on Friday at the faculty meeting, Dr. Hess announced that as part of the technology initiative, he has approved the establishment of a Teaching Learning Technology Round Table. And I think the most obvious question that most people asked is why would we want to do this? As you know two years ago we approved the Technology Plan, and part of that, the major emphasis of that, was really getting technology on campus. The Unix Network, getting computers on our desks, getting this type of equipment into our classrooms, and our student laboratories are all example of this.
The question were all faced with now, that we have some technology on campus, is really how is it going to interface with our teaching and learning mission? And that is really the role of the Round Table. The American Association of Higher Educatio n has forwarded this as a national initiative, and has encouraged all institutions of higher education to use this as a strategy, to fully integrate technology into our curriculum and our teaching strategies. So that is our proposal. On the back of the handouts you have there is a discussion of both the mission of the Round Table, as well as four application areas and how it will interface: the technology and teaching, the technology and learning, the technology and scholarship and the technol ogy and instructional delivery, all of which impact every single one of us on campus. Dr. Amiran: I think that some professionals have a very strong interest [in the GCP] and in some professional areas on the campus basically do not.
Dr. Karen Mills-Courts: I think what we're mucking around here is concerned about whether or not that there's broad enough representation from the faculty in various areas, for this kind of carefully articulated program. We want to make changes in this program, or at least I presume we do, as the constant pressure to examine suggests that. And I'm questioning whether four faculty are enough to do that. Given that it impacts every single program on the campus. I would strongly support profess ionals on the committee particularly from some of the areas impacted by registration and advising. But I think you might need to reconsider the number of faculty.
Dr. Deming: At this point unless your going to refer this back to
Question: Do you know how many women there are in the current pool?
Mr. Westwood: I don't know the answer to that. If it's in line with before it's probably about twenty percent female, but that's a guess.
8. Governance Committee Report (Steve Rees):
At the May 8th meeting of the Academic Affairs Committee it was recommended that there be an amendment made to the by-laws of Faculty Council, which would amend that document to create an additional standing committee, to be known as the General Coll ege Program Committee. At this time I'd like to put that amendment on the floor for a vote. You should have copies which were distributed [with the agenda.]
Dr. Deming: You will recall that at our May 13th meeting this was the only recommendation of the GCP Revision Committee that we approved, and instructed Governance to draft this language for our by-laws amendment. This is our second chance to look at this, to say whether we want this committee as a standing committee or not. We said yes in May, and referred everything else of the recommendations to Academic Affairs. Discussion?
Question: Is there not a committee already in existence?
Dr. Deming: There is a GCP sub-committee of Academic Affairs.
If this amendment is approved by council and then subsequently by the faculty and the GCP Committee is [elevated] to become a standing committee. When elections are then held, the GCP sub-committee of Academic Affairs will go out of business. President Beal: I assume, in reading the proposal, that the committee will take upon itself the job of doing a rather thorough study of our General College Program. I think that's implied; am I reading this correctly?
Dr. Deming: Our hope is that the charge to the Academic Affairs committee will be the beginning of this process at which point the Academic Affairs committee will turn over whatever documentation it has to the standing committee once it's elected an d is in place.
Vivian Conover: In section 3-F, could you tell me how this sentence relates to the previous sentences, namely, the part that says "these representatives shall serve staggered three year terms?"
Mr. Rees: The idea is to allow these six members to serve staggered terms so that there can be continuity of membership. The initial election would be set up so that x number of members will serve a one year term, another set of members a two year t erm, and the third set a three year term. Then as those terms expire each subsequent election will then have a three year term. Does that make sense?
Dr. Deming: This is done the first time the committee meets by drawing lots. It is a small committee, so it makes the choice of who is elected rather crucial, so you've elected the best person, without regard to constituency, department, school, field, etc.
Dr. Amiran: The original GCP Committee had five faculty members representing the five traditional areas. I wonder about the inclusion of a member of the professional staff, on the committee plus four faculty members, instead of the original five. What was the Governance Committee's thinking?
Mr. Rees: The original thinking was that there not be any professional staff at all.
Mr. Westwood: It appears that [the committee structure] is set up to follow the standard model for other committees. Dr. Amiran: I'm not expressing an opinion, I'm asking for a reason so to speak. When the [GCP] committee was set up we already had the Arts, Education, and Humanities and the Natural & Social Science division. [For the make-up of the GCP committee] we decided to go with the Fine, and Performing Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Education. We decided to go with that arrangement for curricular reasons, so we are already not following the existing template.
Dr. Deming: All I can say here in defense of this arrangement is, this reflects the arrangement of the college, at least as far as this body is concerned. In terms of the templates which are used for constituting committees, and I would personally say, I'm outside my office now, I would personally say that to exclude professionals presumes that they have no interest in GCP, and I would not agree with that.
Governance it would be appropriate to amend it in the way we want it to read, and let us vote on the amendment. Are we prepared to make an amendment?
Dr. Mills-Courts: I'd rather refer [the item] back for further discussion and reconsideration, unless someone else has any further. Tom Malinoski: May I call your attention to the second sentence in section 3? It says the committee will make recommendations back to the Faculty Council. How will the committee begin to do that. Harry Jacobson: I would suggest that maybe we could have three representatives, from the divisions of Arts, Education, and Humanities.
Dr. Mac Nelson: I move to amend in 3-F-1: Two representatives in line two becomes three representatives, and two representatives in line three becomes three representatives.
Motion was seconded.
Jon Kraus: To clarify, we're raising the number of representatives from each division from two to three?
Dr. Beal: I note that the committee is able, under section four, to create all the sub-committees that they feel they need so I think would expect that they would want to do that. On the other hand I'm not opposed to the three recommendation either . Because sometimes people are so involved that you might be shorthanded, if you only you had two.
Amendment passed. Main Motion, as amended, passed.
9. Academic Affairs:
Dr. Deming noted that the committee's 1995-96 Annual Report had been distributed with the agenda. 10. Planning and Budget (Jon Kraus)
There is a long range plan in sub-committee that met repeatedly during the last semester and determined that it would be useful to have a committee that worked on strategies to recruit new students. The long range planning sub-committee recommended the formation of such a committee. I think what concerns us particularly is the attention of the President. The Student Recruitment Committee did meet during the summer. The Planning and Budget Committee, will meet hopefully for the first time on Friday. For the long range planning committee, I'm been trying to elicit people's available hours. Our first several meetings will be on devoted to the problems of retention, in order to find ways of reducing attrition.
11. Teaching and Learning Round Table (Dean Zablotney):
So we are proposing, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs has supported this, the establishment of a Round Table. Question, who should be on a Round Table? This is just a beginning of this Round Table. The abbreviation is TLTR. You can see [from the overhead and/or handout] that it really involves a variety of offices: AIT, Administrative Information Technology, telecommunications (which are the people who connect us to the outside world), the Computer Services Planning and Priorities Advisory Board (this is the one that designed the information technology), the Learning Center, the Student Association, and the Arts and Sciences Steering Committee that is putting together many of our workshops, our summer institutes, a nd continuing to work on those. The library is an integral part of this as well, the CAP committee who funded many of our student laboratories. Other groups include Thompson User Group, Houghton User Group, and the HumanIt (the Fenton Hall Humaniti es user group).
As you'll remember when we put forth the staff proposals this last year, the SCAP committee asked everybody to look at user groups, to form user groups within buildings. The HumanIt is an example of that. Also a Thompson user group has functioned at times when they needed put SCAP proposals together. And the Houghton Group has also functioned in that way. The Learning Center has worked with various departments around campus, in order to put that proposal together. The idea is to bring togeth er the people who are responsible in many regards for providing our access to this, with the people who are using it and solve some of the issues, and help work together to design the next stages of our entire system.
So this is what were proposing, and this is the basic structure. There will probably be additional user group (from Mason Hall or McEwen, for example) and all will be added as they would like to be added to it.
[Dr. Zablotney introduced Sandra Lewis who proceeded to give a demonstration of the TLTR home page using the Fenton 105 Smart Classroom projection system. She demonstrated a variety of utilities, including the ability to look up e-mail addresses for individual administrators, faculty members, and students. Among highlighted items were links to the Library of Congress, USA Today, and faculty/staff members who have agreed to serve as resource people on particular software packages, such as Windo ws, or Work Perfect. Sandra noted that the address of the TLTR home page is http://www.fredonia.edu/tltr.]
12. New Business: Jan McVicker asked if there was any kind of update on the investigation from the cross burning. Vice President Dimitri: Very quickly, it's an ongoing investigation. It hasn't been completed yet. The task force is still together. At this point in time, I cannot really share any additional information, other than saying that the investigation is ongoing, and were following every single lead that has come up. college in that kind on speculation. I hope you can understand that.
Dr. Mantai: Is the college involved now, or just external agencies?
Mr. Dimitri: The college is still involved. The task force is chaired by Ann McCarron Burns. It does involve the FBI. It does still involve the local police and sheriff's department. Nothing has really changed other than I don't have a final out come. I wish it was more simple, I wish I could share some additional information with you but at this point I can't. We hope to have a conclusion as soon as possible. I thank you for your continued interest. Question: I would like some clarity about how the affirmative action position will relate to the duties of the multi-cultural position as outlined in the President's report. Dr. Beal: There will be one person with two responsibilities reporting to two different places. The new posit ion will report to Vice President Dimitri for multicultural aspects, and to the President for affirmation action matters.
Meeting adjourned at somewhere near 5:20 p.m.
Attendance:
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[x] Sylvia Clarke
[x] Fabrizio Daloisio
[ ] Susan Maloney
[x] Kevin Michki
[ ] William Ortega
[x] Martha Smith
[x] Charlene Wiles
[x] Vivian Garcia Conover
[x] Thomas Malinoski
[E] Lisa Marrano
[x] Jerome Moss
[x] Patrick Rocheleau
[x] Terry Tzitzis
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Minda Rae Amiran
[ ] Robert Deming
[x] Carl Farraro
[x] Rose Klassen
[x] David Ludlam
[x] Lawrence Maheady
[x] Malcolm Nelson
[x] Robert Klassen
[x] Stephen E. Rees
[ ] Candice Brown
[x] Janet Fairbairn
[x] Harry Jacobson
[x] Kenneth Lucey
[x] Ringo Ma
[x] Karen Mills-Courts
[ ] George Sebouhian
Natural and Social Sciences:
[x] Nancy Boynton
[x] Jon Kraus
[x] Kenneth Mantai
[x] Amin Sarkar
[ ] Mario Vassallo
[x] Nancy Gee
[x] Gary Lash
[x] Peter Mattocks
[ ] Greg Prechtl
[x] Brenda Joyce Stephens
[x] Deborah Welch
Ex Officio Members:
[ ] Julius Adams (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] Dallas K. Beal (President)
[x] Stephen Rees (Chair, Governance Committee)
[x] Sharon Zablotney (Dean, Arts and Sciences)
Guests:
Melinda Karnes
Nancy Bowser
Ron Ambrosetti
Sandra Lewis
Respectfully submitted,
Jefferson Westwood, Secretary