Minutes of the meeting of February 8th 1999
Chair George Browder called the meeting to order at 4:02 PM.
1. A quorum was present and the Agenda was approved unanimously.
2. The minutes of the December 14th 1998 meeting were approved unanimously as amended.
3. Dr. Dennis L. Hefner (President's report): I hope the spring semester has started well for you. The first announcement I wanted to make today was to congratulate the English department. They are the first department to have made an offer to a full-time faculty member, which was approved this morning. I assume knowing their efficiency the offer has already gone out, but congratulations Bob. It's kind of nice to be well along.
Also, I received the paperwork just this afternoon, about twenty minutes ago, that the bio-chemistry program is now signed sealed and delivered. This was a letter from the State Department of Education, so it's all registered and all set to go. There are no problems with that at all.
I had mentioned at the all campus meeting that there was going to be a meeting of all of the SUNY presidents. We did meet about two weeks ago and we talked about a number of issues. I thought I would just share several with you today. We of course spent a lot of time talking about the budget and as you all know the governors budget was a little disappointing. We thought that there was an agreement between the governor and the Board of Trustees. At least the trustees thought there was an agreement that we would be receiving at least the funds necessary to keep us at a status quo basis. This would cover the contractual amounts and a handful of other smaller items. Those weren't included in the governors' budget. He just basically said the exact same money as this year. We have talked about strategies. There will be a lot of lobbying going on. As a matter-of-fact, I'm going to Albany tomorrow for the first of what will be a series of visits to meet with legislatures. Tomorrow afternoon the Chancellor also will be testifying to both of his committees on higher education. He'll be talking about the funding from the governor's budget. This is the beginning of the process, not the end of the process.
I've already heard from all of our local legislators that the TAP restoration is basically a done deal. I don't see that as a problem and I'm glad that is out of the way so now we can focus on SUNY. Otherwise, TAP kind of gets in the way of some of the lobbying. I think it will end up coming out to be a reasonable budget for next year. I don't have any reasons to think that it won't, but we are going to have to be really diligent throughout this semester to make sure that happens.
We spoke a bit about general education, as you may be aware, the system has now formed a special General Education Task Force that will be advisory. The task force is chaired by Murial Moore who is the President of Buffalo State. On the total task force there are five presidents, five faculty, five chief academic officers and five students. They are going to be reviewing the GE resolution from the board and will be coming out with something in a couple of months. That will, at least, be an avenue for providing some input into the process. I have taken the materials that were prepared by the GCP committee for the cover letter and already forwarded that to Murial Moore so she can be sure and share that with the task force early in their deliberations. I would say that uniformly throughout the presidents meeting there was a bit of indignation over the general education resolution. Not that the final subjects in there were a problem and so forth, but the process was horrendous and I think we though very inexcusable. I'm hopeful that this will work its way out during the coming semester.
We spent some time talking about the matching money. Those are funds that we'd like to get our hands on so that we can do a little bit more construction. There are guidelines that will be coming out in about three weeks. I think that's moving along now finally. We spent some time talking about the chancellor search. You've probably heard that Chancellor Egan has indicated that he wants to go back into retirement. He will be going back sometime this year. He said the longest he would stay in New York is through this December. If someone is hired prior to that time he will leave prior to that time. I have had a chance to chat with him for a few minutes and he has indicated that it will be a national search and that they will be moving foreword. They are now going around asking people for characteristics of what should be in the next chancellor and so forth, and that it will be a full national search. I've been told by several people in the system office that there are no significant internal candidates and the board keeps talking about going out of state. I think that's a good move, quite frankly. We'll see how that goes.
I did want to also share with you; this wasn't at the presidents meeting. You probably saw an article in the Leader. I'm not referring to the one about a license being pulled at a certain bar, even though that gives me great joy. That was in this weeks Leader. In last weeks Leader there was an article about Cranston Hall and some of the construction possibilities. That was very preliminary, but somehow the students got wind of it, I think through the student cabinet, I've mentioned some of it in student cabinet. We've had this on the books for sometime, and we already have the money to do a major renovation of Cranston, which would upgrade that dining facility. That was in the last capital projects bill. We've been talking about building a new facility that would be a bookstore and also talking about a new facility that would be a residence hall. We are now full in the residence halls. As the discussions have been going on and we've been looking at the cost of these particular projects there have been some brainstorming that perhaps we could do better if we put an addition on the back of Cranston. This would include both the upgraded dining facility and then an upper floor, we'd have a multiple story building, would include residence halls. That would then free up the front part of Cranston, which would, quite frankly, be a pretty nice place to have a book store. It's a nice location. It's on the street. Lots of windows, and would save a lot of money in doing that type of construction. It's very early in the thinking stage, but I wanted to at least mention that to you.
On applications, there is a backlog at the central application pool and they've given us some guestimate figures. Right now, we are about six and a half percent ahead on freshman. They said once the backlog is cleared up we are going to be at least eight and a half percent ahead of where we were at this time last year in applications. Remember last year we finished with freshman applications ten percent ahead of the previous year. It looks like in a two year period we are going to be up about twenty percent from where we were two years ago in terms of applications this year. It's looking very good, very strong. We won't have any difficulty with our targets.
I did want Mike Dmitri to speak briefly, because he had given me a quick update on the application pool. This will take thirty seconds. He's got about three or four numbers that I asked him to share with you. We are hoping with a larger pool, even though we are going to take a few more students in, to push the quality of the pool up a little bit.
Mike Dmitri: Right now, we've accepted two thousand and sixty-eight freshmen. The average SAT score for this group that we've accepted is 1112. That's up from the total number last year. High School average of the incoming class is 88.7, again an increase from last year. The ACT score is up to 24 and 18.1 students of the students we have accepted are in the top ten percent of their graduating class. This increase in numbers is significant.
President Hefner: Yeah, all of those figures are up from where we were at this time last year. I think it's a very good sign that once the students finally arrive here on campus we should see some improvement over the next years. With those good numbers, that ends my report. I'll take any questions.
Dick Reddy: One issue is in terms of timetable on general education. If, in fact, there is an advisory group, which is going to be making some recommendations, does that change the timetable for implementation?
President Hefner: Well, one the items that was in the memo to them was that the timetable for implementation doesn't work very well for a number of campuses including our own. We have a two-year catalog. Our two-year catalog has just gone off to the printer. I don't like changing the general education program mid-catalog, so in the letter I was very specific and said that campuses should be given more flexibility on implementation on any change we have in GE. I think fall of two thousand one is a much more sensible implementation date rather than fall of two thousand, which is what was in the resolution. I'm hoping the committee will come back with some recommendations on that issue as well.
Mike Dmitri: The figures on admissions were focusing exclusively on Fredonia. Do you have any feeling for what is taking place statewide?
President Hefner: Statewide the applications look very good for campuses. There are two campuses that are doing better than us: Brockport and Oneonta. Both of which have had big drops the last couple years, but they've come back. They are both in over ten percent at the moment, and then most of the other campuses are on the plus side. There are only a few of the university colleges in the negatives, as I recall, it was Potsdam, Plattsburgh and Geneseo. Those are the only three that are down. This is in the freshman applications. It's still too early in the transfers. The university centers overall were on the plus side too. There are a few that are slightly down. It looks like SUNY is doing very well in terms of attracting students.
4. George Browder (Chairpersons Report): I'll try to keep my own note of address brief. I'm now in a position where I have to reveal one of my deep dark secrets; I'm no longer going to be able to keep it under wraps. I'm a namolexic. If I were to pass Bob Deming in the hall and I've known Bob for thirty-four years and he said, hi George. It might take me halfway down the hall to be sure I had his name right before I could say it. Some of you may wonder why I don't use names very often and that's the reason. My wife knows, of course, but she assumes I don't introduce her because it takes me a while to be sure of other people's names. There have been times however when I've had clutches with her name too. I will try to conger names quickly, but it's purely hit or miss. Somebody I know very well may just simply be hey you. So I'm sorry, now by the same token whatshisname here has a similar problem. Being isolated over there in Rockefeller, he does not get to know all of you, but he has to know your name in order to get it on the record. So please every time you speak, give your name. If you don't, I'll ask for it. Please don't be embarrassed or don't hold me to blame if I have to just point.
I hope most of you heard me state my two personal agenda at the faculty meeting. First of all I do think we all should work together and I'm going to try to recruit your support for these two agenda: to re-stimulate faculty and staff involvement in campus governance. I know we can't do much about people's sense of being over worked and I know we all have priorities that do come before governance, real priorities. We can attack the sense of ineffectiveness of the council and the committees, and we must work at doing that. We can also attack our colleagues' sense of personal responsibility and priority so that governance and advice come higher on that list.
In order to do this I need your suggestions. Any ideas you've got, that might be done, to do this. Ways of increasing communication and awareness and a sense of effectiveness. Also, if you can help in outreach by being more careful to consult with your colleagues and constituents when there is an item on the agenda. Get feedback from them, give them a sense of what's going on and that you want to know what they think about issues, especially important ones.
The other thing that I am concerned with is curriculum reform and the defense of faculty control of and responsibility for the curriculum. I will try to maintain with the executive committee an activist role in conjunction with the GCP committee and the academic affairs committee to provide guidance and especially support for the president, the Faculty Senate and the SUNY GCP Task Force. A copy of the task force membership is in your agenda, and I asked that it be put there so you would see those names. I'm hoping, for the sake of intelligence gathering, that some of you know some of these people or have contacts with them. That you can provide me with some feedback on whatever kind of leverage we might use to increase our voice with that task force. Also we will collaborate and conspire with the UUP in every way we can on this issue and on all other issues that are of common interest among us. Any questions?
5. The membership of the search committee for the director of the library was approved unanimously.
6. Mojtaba Seyedian (Faculty Senators Report): There is a lot going on at the senate level, and I just don't have enough time to tell you everything. As usual, you will soon see my detailed written report. Let me just say that the most important thing on the minds of the senators was this issue of general education. At the meeting of the four-year college centers, we came up with a drastic motion, and the motion was approved unanimously. The motion was to appoint managers to prepare articles of impeachment against the board of trustees for the reasons that we all know. For example, not fulfilling their official responsibility in upholding the public higher education. Also, their meddling into the faculties business: intervening with the faculty's freedom of deciding what is the right way for general education. That motion was brought to the floor of the Senate, but was tabled for the time being because we had Peter Salins, the provost, there. He made a speech and answered questions and, although he didn't go on the record to directly criticize and chastise the board or the provost, he was very sympathetic to the faculty and senators there in regards to all these issues. From performance indicator and assessment issues all the way down to general education issues. I'll give you a more detailed report next time.
Dick Weist: When does this come off the table?
Moj Seyedian: The executive committee had the idea of makeing a subcommittee to pursue that issue on impeachment, so I don't know exactly when its going to come up.
Dick Ready: Just an observation, in terms of parliamentary procedure, it can be taken off at any time by any member with a second and a vote to be taken off the table.
7a. Cheryl Drout (GCP Committee Report): The GCP Committee met during two sessions over break and drafted a response to the Board of Trustees guidelines. Copies of that have been distributed here and it's also on reserve in the library. Also distributed here are copies of a summary of the GCP directors' report on the spring 1998 consultation with academic departments. That will be available in the library as well. Also on reserve there is the Board of Trustees proposed general education policy, the final report of the SUNY joint taskforce on general education and, a more recent report, the provost's report. Those are all additional reading available to you in the library.
The committee also wanted to make clear that we intend to bring reports and models that are under discussion to the Faculty Council, on an informational basis, for discussion. I think there has been some concern over how formal proposals have been introduced.
The GCP committee has had recent meetings. We are currently meeting with President Hefner and Vice-President Reck as well as Assistant Provost for Academic Planning and Evaluation Joseph DeFilippo, discussing general education and these proposed core guidelines, if they are taking place. Any questions?
Jon Kraus: How many people read things that are left on reserve in Reed Library? Do you have any idea? Do they have to sign it out? I know that's been a means of communicating with faculty, it just strikes me as an incredibly great way of making sure the stuff is not going to be read. I wonder if it would be possible, if the documents are not too long, to send at least one set of materials to each department.
Cheryl Drout: Sure.
Jon Kraus: The president would be delighted to pay for it on his copy budget.
President Hefner: No, this general education comes out of Academic Affairs.
Chair Browder: We've also discussed putting anything that's digitized on the web, giving more open access to it.
David Ludlum (Academic Affairs): No report
Amin Sarkar (Professional Service): No report
7d. Jon Kraus (Planning & Budget Report): We've not met since November, however we will be meeting in February on the academic master plan, and in March on recruitment of students.
7e. Idalia Torres (Governance Report): I just wanted to report on the results of the elections. For the Graduate Studies Committee we ran elections last semester and Greg Harper and Jackie Swansinger were elected for a three year term. For the Faculty Council elections, in Arts, Education, and Humanities we have Ruth Antosh, Jeanette McVicker, Jackie Swansinger, Karen Mills-Courts, Kenneth Lucey and Scott Johnson. For Natural and Social Sciences: Nancy Boynton, Lawrence Maheady, Lucy Kabza, Dick Reddy, Cynthia Smith, Jane Romal, Amin Sarkar and Jon Kraus. For the professionals: Mike Conley, Lisa Marrano, Carolyn Briggs, Vincent Courtney, Martha Smith, James Jackson and Marianne Eimer.
We are in the process of running a call for nominations for the Planning and Budget Committee because their terms run out in March. Those elections are coming up and then after that there is going to be elections for the rest of the committees.
Student Affairs: No report 8. The meeting was adjourned at 4:35PM
Attendance:
Professional Staff/Management Confidential:
[x] Susan Besemer
[x] Carolyn Briggs
[E] Sylvia Clarke
[E] Robert Colegrove
[x] Mike Conley
[x] Vincent Courtney
[x] Marianne Eimer
[x] James Jackson
[x] Lisa Marrano
[ ] Gregory Prechtl (on leave)
[x] Carol Schwerk
[x] Joyce Smith
[E] Martha Smith
[x] Terry Tzitzis
[x] Charles C. Davis
Arts, Education, and Humanities:
[x] Ruth Antosh
[x] Patricia Corron
[x] Charles Davis
[x] Robert Deming
[x] Daniel Ihasz
[x] Scott Johnson
[ ] Kenneth Lucey
[ ] Jeanette McVicker
[ ] Karen Mills-Courts
[ ] Malcolm Nelson
[ ] Stephen Rees
[x] Theodore Steinberg
[x] Jackie Swansinger
Natural and Social Sciences:
[ ] Seyed-Mahmoud Agazadeh
[x] Nancy Boynton
[E] Roger Byrne
[x] Michael Grady
[x] Lucy Kabza
[x] Jon Kraus
[x] Lawrence Maheady
[x] Kenneth Mantai
[x] Dick Reddy
[x] Jane Romal
[x] Amin Sarkar
[x] Cynthia Smith
[x] Richard Weist
Student Members:
[ ] Jennifer Farnham (SA President)
[ ] Jason Enser, proxy, (V.P. SA)
[ ] Annette Sophia, Senior Rep.
[ ] Justin Azzarella, Junior Rep.
[ ] Pam Wright, Sophomore Rep.
[ ] Leslie Marino, Freshman Rep.
[ ] Todd Catalano, Graduate Rep.
Ex. Officio Member:
[x] Dennis Hefner (President)
[ ] Tracy Bennett (VP, Admin.)
[E] Jean Malinoski (VP, Development)
[x] Michael Dmitri (VP, Student Affairs)
[x] Una Mae Reck (VP, Academic Affairs)
[x] Len Faulk (Associate VP, Academic Affairs)
[x] Paul Schwartz (Dean, Arts & Humanities)
[x] Stephen Stahl (Dean, NSS & PS)
[x] George Browder (Chair, Faculty Council)
[x] Nancy Gee (Council Vice-Chair)
[x] Patrick Rocheleau (Council Secretary)
[x] Idalia Torres (Governance Chair)
[x] Mojtaba Seyedian (Faculty Senator)
[ ] Jefferson Westwood (Parliamentarian)
Guests:
Cheryl Drout
Peter Schoenbach