FACULTY SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Minutes of May 10, 2000 - (approved)
E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

    The Faculty Senate Executive Committee met at 2:00 PM on May 10, 2000 in Capen 567 to consider the following agenda:

1. Report of the Chair
2. Report of the President
3. Report of the Faculty Senate Information and Library Resources Committee - Professor Vardi
4. Report of the Faculty Senate Tenure and Privileges Committee - Professor Schack
5. Old/new business

Item 1: Report of the Chair

    The Chair reported that:

1. he will meet with Provost Capaldi next week; he will ask her to meet regularly with the FSEC; he will tell her about the Faculty Senate resolution on the assessment of IT that the Faculty Senate just passed and will ask if she is comfortable having the Vice Provost for Educational Technology report to her
• tell her to hold administrators to a standard of excellence (Professor Schack)
• she should communicate with faculty on an ongoing basis (Professor Sridhar)
• the Vice Provost for Educational Technology will increasingly be responsible for curriculum design, so a direct reporting relationship with the Provost it is important (Vice Provost Fischer)
• Provost is responsible for academic issues, including Educational Technology, so it is irrelevant whether she is comfortable with it or not (Professor Schack)
• should not have said comfortable; the issue is making sure that the Faculty Senate and the Vice Provost for Educational Technology are involved in creating the mechanism for IT assessment (Professor Nickerson)
2. nominations for the President’s Review Board are needed
3. Professor Harold Strauss has resigned as Chair of the Research and Creative Activity Committee; nominations for a new Chair of that Committee are needed
4. the Academic Planning Committee reviewed its deliberations on the Department of Oral Health and Informatics; Professor Welch will report under new business
5. SUNY has still not provided UB with the Memorandum of Understanding on Mission Review
• will probably be another month in arriving (Professor Malone)
6. the Tenure and Privileges Committee reviewed the new promotions checklist and the teaching portfolio requirements; Professor Schack will report later in this meeting
7. the Information and Library Resources Committee has drafted several resolutions; Professor Vardi, Chair of the Committee, will discuss them with the FSEC today for a timely response
8. the Computer Services Committee talked about how to implement the Faculty Senate Resolution on IT assessment; it also is working on a base line for faculty computer access; it will meet with the finalists for the position of Vice Provost for Educational Technology

    The Chair asked for questions and comments:

• the UB chapter of the National Residence Hall Honorary inducted six honorary members, including Professor Nickerson (Mr. Celock)

Item 2: Report of the President

    There was no report of the President.

Item 3: Report of the Faculty Senate Information and Library Resources Committee

    Professor Vardi, Chair of the Faculty Senate Information and Library Resources Committee, introduced a series of resolutions advocating increased support of the Libraries in funding for collections, staff and space.  The first resolution urged the University administration to give the Libraries an inflationary increase of 8%/10% to maintain electronic, print, and serial collections at their present level.

• the Libraries did not receive inflationary money last year, taking a hit of $.75 M; the loss of $.5 M this year would have significant impact in the Libraries’ purchasing power (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• can’t libraries get together to pressure publishers about high prices? (Professor Fourtner)
• academic libraries have been working together to control price increases by resource sharing arrangement; subscription costs are higher for libraries than for individuals because of the number of users of the library copy, and publishers are not likely to abandon that pricing model; university presses are beginning to publish scholarly journals in competition with high priced commercial journals; faculty are resigning from editorial boards of high priced commercial journals in protest; there has been some small progress in pressuring publishers not to raise prices (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• the resolutions need to be supported by figures: how much money is involved, what will the impact of the loss of that money be, what intermediate positions are possible; all of UB has lacked inflationary money and has suffered, so I am not comfortable giving the Libraries priority without serious discussion (Professor Schack)
• the Libraries were not asked to provide such information in the drafting of these resolutions, but they certainly would be able and willing to do so (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• money spent on the Libraries benefits the entire University since the Libraries serves all departments (Professor Easley)
• figures would be helpful in explaining the Libraries’ needs; for example, the general inflation rate has not been at the 8%/10% rate requested for the Libraries; has inflation been greater for the Libraries? what amount of increase for the Libraries does the Committee recommend (Dr. Coles)
• the Libraries are facing an immediate financial threat, the dimensions of which are not yet clear; in other years inflationary money was earmarked specifically for the Libraries, but this year there is a lump sum for inflation; the Committee drafted these resolutions quickly to demonstrate to the administration before it decides how to distribute the money that the faculty support the Libraries receiving inflationary money (Professor Vardi)
• have never seen inflationary money earmarked for the Libraries; these resolutions are asking us to buy a pig in a poke; need some indication of the impact of the resolutions on the rest of the campus and some evidence of a real threat to the Libraries’ budget (Professor Baumer)
• the budget that went to SUNY contained a sum for inflation, but SUNY intends to distribute the money as incentive for increased research activity rather than to target inflation, allowing individual campuses to decide how to use the money; prior to last year there had been a specific legislative grant of money to the SUNY libraries for inflation; the loss of that money last year lead to journal cancellations; if the Libraries receives no inflationary money this year the impact will be compounded; agree that figures to support the case are needed, and agree that money that goes to the Libraries is not available for other purposes; faculty are increasingly unwilling to serve on Libraries’ advisory boards because of the conflict of interest in advocating for the Libraries to the detriment of their departments (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• departments can use a variety of strategies to gradually absorb inflation, such as increasing class size and funding faculty travel less generously; for the Libraries the only strategy is to not buy as many books (Professor Meacham)
• librarians who have tried to actively work to control prices have been threatened with legal action by publishers; ironic that it is a priority for the University to acquire the latest versions of software, but not to acquire library materials (Professor Jorgensen)
• the five resolutions lack focus; keep only those resolutions that deal with the budget and give faculty, who lack real knowledge in this area, hard data about the budget and document the threat to the budget (Professor Cedric Smith)
• the purpose of these resolutions is to inform faculty of the difficulties facing the Libraries, and the Committee was working under a time constraint (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• this is the last opportunity this year for the FSEC to act on the matter (Professor Nickerson)
• the Faculty Senate passed a resolution saying that future resolutions should contain information about the financial impact of a proposed resolution; the first four resolutions in particular need such information; they are ill formed and do not contain adequate budget information for me to support them; the fifth resolution urging that faculty be consulted about decisions affecting the libraries has no budgetary implications, and I can support it, but the first four resolutions should be returned to the Committee for amplification (Professor Schack)
• am deeply shocked by this discussion; these resolutions are straight forward statements in support of the Libraries’ mission; they reflect what the library staff told me; I believe my role as co-chair of the Committee is to bring these matters to the attention of the faculty; money spent by the Libraries would not necessarily be otherwise available for other purposes; getting mired in the details of the Libraries’ budget will not be useful (Professor Vardi)
• the resolutions are an example of "one item budgeting" that tells the administration to spend money on an item without addressing where the money is going to come from; expect the Committee to provide a budget analysis, and if that takes time, so be it (Professor Malone)
• the normal procedure would be to present the resolutions to the Faculty Senate for two readings; is some other procedure being proposed? (Professor Schroeder)
• the FSEC can act for the Faculty Senate in matters of urgency, sending forward resolutions in its own name; if the FSEC does not act now, the first resolution dealing with inflationary money will be moot (Professor Nickerson)

     Professor Baumer moved (seconded) that the report be received and filed for the record.

• it is not sufficient for the Committee or the librarians to just say "trust us"; the FSEC does not deal with other matters in that way (Professor Schroeder)
• the FSEC should not speak from a position of ignorance just to have input in issues; these resolutions are demands for expenditures without any knowledge of how much money is involved or what else will be cut, and if we offer them to the President and the Provost, we will be portraying the faculty as ignorant and lacking in judgment (Professor Schack)
• a motion to receive and file for the record does not relegate the report to the wastebasket; if the Committee should choose to do so, it can reconsider the report later (Professor Malone)
• the inflationary issue will be decided within the next few weeks, and the Libraries desperately need faculty support for its request for inflationary money; agree, however, that the FSEC can not accept the report lacking any financial analysis; however, even if all the financial information were in front of us, we would still not know what the exact impact of giving the Libraries $500K would be (Professor Adams-Volpe)

    The motion passed.

Item 4: Report of the Faculty Senate Tenure and Privileges Committee

    Professor Schack reported on the Tenure and Privileges Committee’s discussion of the revisions to the Faculty/Staff Handbook concerning promotion.  The impetus for the revisions came from Professor Nyberg, Chair of the Presidential Review Board; Senior Vice Provost Levy and Vice Provost Fischer also worked on the revisions which incorporate many suggestions from the Faculty Senate.  In general the Committee felt the revisions were welcome and made the document clearer.  However, the Committee had three major concerns.

    First, the Committee felt that the size of the new teaching portfolio is too long.  Some committee members felt it will cause a shift in emphasis in promotions away from research and towards teaching.  The Committee believes that the Faculty Senate should review the impact of the teaching portfolio after a year or two.

• in my field, the twenty page limit is too short (Professor Meacham)
• the Committee felt that the teaching portfolio overemphasizes syllabi which are often the work of the department rather than of the faculty member; there was also concern that a large teaching portfolio sends a subtle signal to outside evaluators about our priorities; the requirements are so vague that young faculty will find it difficult to construct a teaching portfolio (Professor Schack)
• there is significant literature about teaching portfolios, and the Committee should have done more homework rather than concluding that it is impossible to know what such a portfolio should contain (Professor Cedric Smith)
• the Committee’s concern was that there are no plans to educate faculty and chairs about how to construct a teaching portfolio that is discipline appropriate (Professor Schack)
• the teaching portfolio is intended to be summative rather than developmental, and the modest twenty page limit is appropriate for that purpose; the research portion of the dossier should be substantially larger than the teaching portfolio ensuring that outside evaluators will focus most on research (Vice Provost Fischer)
• including 20 pages about teaching in a dossier will not tip the balance away from research; the absence of any material about teaching sends the message that all UB cares about is research (Professor Schroeder)
• am concerned that a size limit on the teaching portfolio will restrict faculty prerogative in developing a portfolio; in my area faculty develop scholarly courses, the syllabi of which often give insight into their research as well as their teaching (Professor Fourtner)
• have a really good article about teaching portfolios which I would be happy to share with anyone who is interested (Professor Meacham)
• the Office of Teaching Effectiveness had good information on teaching portfolios which is now housed in the Educational Technology Center; the Committee on Teaching and Learning is talking about having a workshop this fall on teaching portfolios (Professor Tamburlin)
• each discipline should decide on an appropriate length for the teaching portfolio; the cover letter to an outside evaluator can state the weight to be given teaching and research (Professor Sridhar)
• incongruous to ask outside evaluators to comment on teaching solely on the basis of documentation; dossiers are already so long that people don’t read the entire dossier now; the teaching portfolio is just more paper that won’t get read (Professor Boot)
• should not send the teaching portfolio for outside review; disagree with the Committee’s concern that a twenty page teaching portfolio is disproportionately long (Professor Baumer)
• the Committee was most concerned not with the length of the teaching portfolio or the weight it may be given, but with the lack of plans to educate faculty about it; would be good to mount materials about teaching portfolios on the Faculty Senate web page; outside evaluators should not be asked to comment on the teaching portfolio since what is a good course at UB might be considered insubstantial at another institution (Professor Schack)
• there has been growing concern in research universities that teaching is given too little importance; the intent of asking for outside evaluation of the teaching portfolio is to give teaching more credibility and visibility through the mechanism of peer review; a summative portfolio should be composed of existing material like syllabi, tests, papers, etc., so its compilation should not be difficult or confusing (Vice Provost Fischer)

    The Committee’s second major concern arises from the requirement that a candidate for promotion provide separate statements on research, teaching and service, totaling a maximum of eight pages.  The Committee believes this is too burdensome a requirement in that a candidate will feel pressured to write the full eight pages even though shorter statements might be adequate.  The Committee discussed having just one statement, or alternatively decreasing the maximum number of pages permitted.  The Committee suggests that the Faculty Senate review this provision by consulting in a year of so with a cross section of faculty who have actually gone through the process about how the requirement impacted them.

• is a statement from the candidate required now? (Professor Sridhar)
• a candidate can choose not to provide a statement, but the inclusion of a statement on research has become more common (Professor Schack)
• there is no intent to impose a rigid template for dossiers; department practice will vary; for example, faculty in the English Department do not commonly perform service as it is defined in the Faculty/Staff Handbook so their statements on service will be brief (Vice Provost Fischer)
• when faculty did not have the opportunity to contribute a statement on their research they were concerned that the dossier preparer would not be sympathetic and informed about their research (Professor Welch)
• the Committee did not question the value of the candidate’s statement but only felt that the maximum pages permitted should be reduced (Professor Schack)
• for many candidates, the concern about the research statement is not how to write three pages, but rather how to trim it down to three pages (Professor Baumer)
• need limits on the candidate’s statement; am not concerned that the maximum length will be treated as the required length; statements are valuable tool for explaining one’s focus (Professor Schroeder)
• might phrase the requirement as "one to three pages" (Professor Meacham)

    The Committee’s third concern is about a change in the letter sent to outside evaluators.  The prior letter read:  "In your opinion are the candidate’s professional accomplishments of the same caliber as those of others in the discipline who have recently been promoted to the rank of full professor/associate professor with tenure in distinguished departments or professional schools, and especially in distinguished public universities?"  The letter now reads:  "In your opinion are the candidate’s professional accomplishments of the same caliber as those of others in the discipline who have recently been promoted to the rank of full professor/associate professor with tenure in departments and professional schools at other leading research universities?"  The first phrasing was adopted by the Faculty Senate in response to faculty concerns that the distinguished departments were not always at distinguished universities.  The changed language no longer recognizes the distinction between distinguished departments and distinguished universities and tightens the focus of letter too much.

• outside evaluators at private universities understand the difference between private and public schools and respond appropriately; would not change the language (Professor Sridhar)
• who decides which are the distinguished departments in a discipline? (Professor Malone)
• the preparer of the dossier would determine that and should explain his choice in his explanation of how outside evaluators were chosen (Professor Schack)
• in my Department we find the people best qualified to judge the candidate and just ask whether the candidate would be promoted at their institutions (Professor Fourtner)
• the information sent to an outside evaluator is not sufficient to judge whether the candidate would get tenure at another institution; the question of whether the candidate’s accomplishments are of the same caliber of others in the discipline who have recently been promoted is answerable (Professor Schack)
• dislike asking for a comparison to faculty at "distinguished" institutions since that often elicits an emotional response based on a single institution; the change to "leading" institutions is better; questions to be asked should be optional (Professor Cedric Smith)
• should not ask if a candidate would receive tenure at the outside evaluator’s institution since the resources available there may be much greater; the comparison should be to like institutions (Professor Sridhar)

    The Committee felt that given the dissimilarities of teaching faculty and librarians, there should be separate procedures and criteria for the two.

• did the Committee discuss the role of the advocate in regard to PRB? (Fourtner)
• the document makes clear that in the dossier the advocate’s letter follows the Chair’s letter; no one appears before PRB (Professor Schack)
• in my promotion process, the Department asked whether I would receive tenure at the outside evaluator’s institution; that question violates principles of employment law for publicly funded institutions, leaving UB vulnerable to law suits (Professor Easley)
• the President distributed to the campus the form of a letter to outside evaluators which has been reviewed by legal counsel; am not aware that departments vary from the language of that letter but there may be individuals who do (Senior Vice Provost Levy)
• PRB is the final review board, not the first, but could survey past chairs and members of PRB as to whether it would be helpful to have the department chair and advocate address PRB (Professor Baumer)

    There was a motion (seconded) to transmit the sense of Professor Schack’s oral report for the Committee to the President and Provost.  The motion passed unanimously.

Item 5: Old/new business

    The FSEC asked the Academic Planning Committee to reconsider its favorable recommendation on the termination of the Department of Oral Health Sciences and Informatics.  Professor Welch, Chair of the Academic Planning Committee, reported on the Committee’s re-examination of the matter.  The Committee agreed that there were no new data available to it, that its examination of the issue in September 1999 was procedurally adequate, and that, based on a memo of the Provost to Professor Nickerson, resources are not available to reactivate the department.

    The FSEC’s request for reconsideration arose from a concern that the Committee was not systematically and consistently applying the criteria applicable to departmental reorganizations.  The Committee has four grounds on which to examine a reorganization.  First the Committee looks for a clear statement of academic benefits and draws; a justification based solely on economics would not be acceptable.  Second, the Committee looks for a consultative vote by the affected faculty.  Third, the Committee looks at the adequacy of the budget and resources available in the revised unit.  Finally, the Committee looks at information about comparable units at other leading research universities.  The Committee has developed significant expertise in applying these criteria, having looked at a number of re-organizations.

    Next year the Committee should further refine the four criteria.  It should thoroughly review the Memorandum of Understanding that comes from SUNY.  It is interested in examining the issue of TA/GA stipends.  Most importantly, the Committee needs to be involved in proposed reorganizations at an early point in the deliberations.

• the implementation of the merger of the Pharmacologies has not resulted in the outcomes promised; the educational programs of the new department are not clear, nor are the courses and students to be taught; the budget commitments have not been realized; the advantages and disadvantages of the merger are not at all clear (Professor Cedric Smith)
• ditto for Anatomy and Physiology (Professor Tamburlin)
• FSEC asked for a reconsideration of the Department of Oral Health Sciences and Informatics’ dissolution because there was not the same kind of faculty input as there was administrative input in the Committee’s decision making (Professor Fourtner)
• Professor Easley and Professor Goldberg met separately with the Committee prior to its vote with the agreement of all parties; while a number of administrators participated in the faculty vote on the dissolution, they were faculty members who also held administrative titles and were entitled to vote by the Bylaws of the School of Dental Medicine (Professor Welch)

    Fearing a loss of quorum, the question was called on a motion to receive the report.  The motion passed unanimously.

• I felt it was inappropriate that the Committee meet separately with Dean Goldberg and myself since I could not challenge the Dean’s misrepresentation of the history of the Department; more faculty from the Department should have been allowed to speak to the Committee rather than just the only untenured member of the Department; the Committee should have heard from the chair of an internal panel that was looking at how to restructure the Department; the meeting at which the faculty voted was scheduled at lunch time to ensure a small turnout of faculty; the dissolution did not result in any savings since all the Department’s faculty were moved elsewhere in the School, but the dispersal of the Department’s faculty has made it difficult to provide classes in the field; the Dean never appointed a permanent chair in the Department’s seven year history; he took resources from the Department and then criticized its lack of resources (Professor Easley)
• the Academic Planning Committee is concerned about planning by attrition where units have been allowed to atrophy and are then terminated because they lack resources; the Senate needs to insist on being included much earlier in deliberations on reorganizations; Deans should be encouraged to adequately consult with their faculty on reorganizations (Professor Welch)
• Provost Triggle had agreed to an earlier role for the Faculty Senate in matters of reorganization; will now need to renegotiate that with Provost Capaldi (Professor Nickerson)
• the current Provost’s word should bind the next Provost; the Faculty Senate should perhaps consider how to strengthen the operation of faculty governance in the units; for example, the College of Arts & Sciences’s Planning Committee still does not have its full complement of members, and elections for Faculty Senate will not be held till late Fall (Professor Baumer)

     There being no further old/new business, the meeting adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

Marilyn McMann Kramer
Secretary of Faculty Senate

Present:

Chair: P. Nickerson
College of Arts & Sciences: W. Baumer, C. Fourtner, J. Meacham, S. Schack, Charles Smith
Dental Medicine: M. Easley
Engineering & Applied Sciences: S. Ramalingam
Graduate School of Education: T. Schroeder
Health Related Professions: J. Tamburlin
Information Studies: C. Jorgensen
Management: J. Boot
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: Cedric Smith
Nursing: E. Perese
SUNY Senators: J. Adams-Volpe, J. Boot, H. Durand
Parliamentarian: D. Malone

Guests:

W. Fischer, Vice Provost
K. Levy, Senior Vice Provost
C. Welch, Chair, Academic Planning Committee
L. Vardi, Chair, Information and Library Resources Committee
J. Celock, Red Jacket Hall Council
W. Coles, Chair, Professional Staff Senate

Excused:

Secretary: M. Kramer
SUNY Senators: J. Fisher

Absent:

Architecture: R. Shibley
Law: L. Swartz
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: B. Albini
Pharmacy: N.
University Libraries: A. Booth
 

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