UB Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Executive Committee

Minutes of September 24, 2008

(unapproved)

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee will meet on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM in the Jeannette Martin Room of Capen Hall (567) to discuss the following

AGENDA

Approval of the minutes of April 16, 2008
Report of the Chair
Report of the President/Provost
Interaction with the Dean of the School of Management – Arjang Assad

His vision for the School of Management, its interaction with other units on campus, as well as its role within the general context of UB 2020.

Old/New Business
Executive Session (if needed)
Adjournment

Item 1: Approval of the minutes of April 16, 2008

The minutes were unanimously approved.

Item 2: Report of the Chair

The chair thanked all for their quick and overwhelmingly positive response to his e-mail; Lisa Stephens is now the newest member of the FS Teaching & Learning Committee.
Reminder from the Vice President of Research that the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR) will be hosting a free event (including a light lunch) on Intellectual Property Issues on Friday, OCT 3, 2008, from 11 AM to 3 PM in 104 O’Brian Hall.
Bradshaw Hovey of the “Building UB” office is asking the Faculty Senate to co-sponsor a public workshop on creating a plan for UB to achieve climate neutrality. It will be held in the Student Union Theater and related meeting rooms from 11 AM until 2 PM on October 21. Co-sponsoring in practical terms entails only helping to spread the word about the workshop and having the FS mentioned as a co-sponsor.
The Graduate School Executive Committee met last Thursday. Items on the agenda included:

An update on the departmental annual reviews of academic progress of Ph.D. students;
The Fall 2008 Graduate enrollment outcomes;
An update on the Student Systems Transformation project;
A lively discussion about “open-access” vs. traditional publishing of theses and dissertations, as well as about extent of copyright and ownership and how long a student may impose an embargo on release of the dissertation. The GSEC will be seeking advice from the FS on drafting a relevant policy or set of guidelines. Perhaps this would be a charge for the Research & Creative Activities Committee.

The chair said he planned on inviting John Ho and Mick Thompson soon to provide the FS with a comprehensive update of the GSEC’s activities.

The Budget Priorities Committee met this past Monday. Associate VP Sean Sullivan updated the Committee on the implications and realities of the looming budget cut for UB, as well as more specifics on UB’s overall budget.
President Simpson delivered his Third Annual Address to the Community at Asbury Hall in Babeland this morning.
This is an ideal time, the chair said, for the FS to consider re-vamping one of its Standing Committees, the old “Public Service and Urban Affairs”. He added that he would like to re-name it the “Faculty Senate Committee for Community Outreach”, and that soon a few charges should be drafted; perhaps among these:

Surveying / drafting a list of all the various types of community service UB provides;
Which ones we might add;
How to improve interaction with the community, and the community with UB;
Nominating members from both within and outside of the University.

Item 3: Report of the President/Provost

The Provost briefly discussed President Simpson’s third annual community address in which the President outlined the potential impact of state budget cuts on UB and what would help the university achieve its plan for academic excellence: “Access without excellence is discrimination,” was a particularly memorable moment from the speech which the Provost singled out. Tripathi informed the senators that there was a link available on the web to the President’s speech.

Item 4: Interaction with the Dean of the School of Management – Arjang Assad

The Chair, who served on the search committee for the dean of the School of Management, introduced Dr. Arjang Assad as the unanimous #1 choice of the committee. Dean Assad explained that since he had been in Buffalo only 5 or 6 weeks, his “vision” for the School of Management would have to be part of a more interactive process. He then provided an overview of his ground: he was previously at the U of Maryland for his whole academic career and in the last 10 years of his stay there, he became involved at the administrative level. Specifically, he began serving on 6 or 7 university committees at the same time, which allowed him to look beyond the confines of his own school. One of the main challenges a dean has, Dr. Assad stated, is how to think beyond one’s own school about what is good for the whole university. He explained that there were three aspects of UB that stood out and that motivated him to accept the position of dean 1/ the general direction in which the university is moving at the level of the leadership, faculty, & president. Assad emphasized his excitement at getting on the path to rebuilding research visibility in SOM, making this a public research university that aims for excellence. 2/ the commitment level of the people he came across at UB, be it faculty or staff, was phenomenal. Assad could tell that people were willing to go the extra distance without expecting any personal gain, which, he added, was extremely refreshing 3/ where UB stood and where it wanted to be: Faculty, Assad commented, had the aspirations of going to the next level and were obviously ready for a collaborative style of leadership.

Arjung Assad also emphasized the difficulty of arriving at UB in the context of the budget cuts, which “would make it challenging for any dean to start.” Nonetheless, his agenda items remain:

1/ to carefully and methodically but in a measured way think about what research excellence is and how to implement that. Assad believes that this can only occur in a collaborative effort with the chair person, and he is looking forward to working with the new energized group of 7 new faculty that are joining the department.

2/ the relation to UB2020 and the ways we can live up to it beyond the ways outlined in the past. What is left to do in terms of specific initiatives is a question Dean Assad said is at the forefront of his mind; what could SOM do with the Health Sciences in general? What is the impact of technology on the Health Sciences? Business schools in general haven’t started to think about what the impact is, Assad said, and it is important to begin thinking seriously about the growing potential and share of the Health Sciences. The dean added that he hoped to put together groups, task forces, and committees to start investigating a grassroots response to these questions in order to build on a foundation.

Peter Nickerson commented that there was much interest by students in the MD/MBA Dual Degree Program and went on to inquire about the dean’s experience with international programs. Assad replied that this was certainly one of the areas he would have to examine. “The fact that you need to do something internationally is something everyone now takes for gospel,” he said. Peter Bradford mentioned the move to bring the specialty clinical practices affiliated with the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences together under the UBMD banner as a way of establishing uniform and higher-quality practice standards across the clinical departments. Dean Assad concurred that this was an important area of cooperation and said that he was meeting with Michael E. Cain, dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, sometime in October to get his perspective on this emerging site. Hodan Isse from SOM brought up the issue of the connection between SOM and international conflict resolution. The Chair asked about the ways in which the dean would work to enhance the visibility of the research program.

Item 5: Old/New Business

Item 6: Executive Session (if necessary)

Item 7: Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Carine Mardorossian, Secretary of the Faculty Senate

Attendance

(P = present; E = excused; A = absent)

Chair:
Robert Hoeing (P)

Secretary:
Carine Mardorossian (P)

Arts & Sciences:
Robert Adelman (P)
Sampson Blair (P)
Stanley Bruckenstein (P)
Melvyn Churchill (P)
Stephen Dyson (P)

Dental Medicine:
Thomas Mang (P)

Educational Opportunity Center:
TBA

Engineering & Applied Sciences:
Paschalis Alexandridis (E)
Sargur Srihari (P)

Graduate School of Education:
Janina Brutt-Griffler (A)

School of Law:
Mark Bartholomew (P)

Management:
Hodan Isse (P)

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences:
David Ellis (A)
James Hassett (A)
Charles Hershey (A)
Peter Ostrow (A)

Nursing:
Sherry Pomeroy (A)

Pharmacy:
Gayle Brazeau (A)

School of Public Health and Health Professions:
Robert Burkard (P)

Social Work:
Robert Keefe (P)

SUNY Senators:
William H. Baumer (P)
Peter Bradford (P)
Henry Durand (P)
Marilyn McMann Kramer (P)

Parliamentarian:
William H. Baumer (P)

University Libraries:
Dorothy Tao (A)

Guests:
Satish Tripathi (Provost)
Peter Nickerson (School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences)
Janiece Kiedrowski (Professional Staff Senate)
Kevin Fryling (The Reporter)
David Bray (EDAAA)
Charles Lyons (University Libraries)
Winston T. Lin (Operations Management and Strategy, SOM)