FACULTY SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Minutes of October 17, 2007
(unapproved)

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee met at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 , in 120 Commons to discuss the following agenda:

1. Approval of the minutes of September 12, 2007
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report on the Center for the Arts – Tom Burrows, Director
4. Executive Session: Committee Reviews
5. Adjournment

Item 1: Approval of the minutes of September 12, 2007

 The minutes of September 12, 2007 were unanimously approved.

 Item 2: Report of the Chair

The chair reported that:

1. Remodeling of the 5 th floor Capen proceeding well—he hopes to have the Martin Room by our 11/4 meeting but nothing is guaranteed….

1. FS Committees are active and convening:

• Joint Academic Planning and Budget Priorities Committees [meeting on 10/18] – Peter Nickerson will report next week on 10/24
• Academic Planning Committee (APC) – will meet with FSEC on 10/24 AND separately on 11/9
• Budget Priorities Committee (BPC) [10/22]
• Teaching and Learning [10/19] – incl. Distance Education subcommittee, policy recommendations that will come through us and then to the Senate meeting on 11/6
• Affirmative Action Committee [10/30]: M. Rhodes took the initiative to convene another meeting on 10/30 although she is stepping down
• Athletics & Recreation Committee [10/22] – the Chair has tentatively scheduled them to report here on 11/14: on the agenda, update from the Annual Report of the Intramurals program
• Grading Committee – Bill Baumer reported that the GC met yesterday afternoon and discussed issues about posting and changing grades, the question of good standing as it affects financial aid because it is possible for a student to get into serious trouble with financial aid even if the student is in good standing. Also the issue of what to do with non-matriculated students was discussed, since there is no policy on those, when if they can enroll.

1. We will need an Executive Session today: 8 committees are very active, 8 not so much so we need nominations for various committees—
2. 147 th SUNY Senate Plenary Meeting OCT 25-27 in Cortland (Ask Marilyn Kramer to report…)
3. Prof. Shibley & Brad Hovey will meet with us next week – might seem a bit repetitive but FS input is vital
4. Academic Health Center topics upcoming:

• Dr. David Holmes & Karen Devlin will talk on 10/31 about the new Spirituality in Medicine Interdisciplinary Training Program
• The chair has invited VP David Dunn to talk to the FS 11/6 about the Academic Health Center
• Also interim Dean Lynn Kozlowski will meet w/ FSEC on 12/12

1. 11/6 Senate Meeting agenda so far:

• VP Dunn/ Academic Health Center
• Approval of Distance Education Sub-Committee recommendations
• Report on the SUNY Senate Plenary Meeting
• Anything else? Please email the chair if something comes up

Item 3: Report on the Center for the Arts – Tom Burrows, Director

The chair introduced Tom Burrows by explaining that the CFA plays a critical role for the University especially as UB2020 progresses with its emphasis on community outreach. One of the best ways to involve the community and get them to come to campus is through the CFA.

Tom Burrows began by giving a history of his trajectory: Dr. Burrows has been at UB for 11 years after 20 years in Canada in the performing arts, 5 years in education at Yale University and 5 at the Shaw Festival. Dr. Burrows said that he had never worked in a finer facility than the CFA, a Center that serves indeed multiple needs for the university. When he arrived at UB, he also found that very little was happening in that facility which had only been open for 2 or 3 years. He found an excellent but a very isolated staff. It was a slow built to bring the CFA to the point it is today.

Dr. Burrows explained that there was a prevalent attitude of resentment 12 or 15 years ago toward the CFA and its location: it was seen as potentially taking audiences away from the BPO and as destroying the efforts that had gone into Shea's; what is more, its location on North Campus was criticized as being too far from the community. Dr. Burrows explained that changing this perception entailed achieving a successful balance between the mandates he had been given, namely creating an international entertainment and cultural center and at the same time being everything to the academic community concerned with the performing and visual arts (usually one of these two things fails). He explained that CFA now serves as a vital connection between the University of Buffalo and the Western NY community. It annually welcomes the citizens of the Buffalo Niagara region and beyond to experience a full range of cultural and learning experiences on the campus, but the CFA also steps beyond the campus to engage the community through several art and education outreach initiatives.

The CFA is a nonprofit entity within UB. The university provides an outstanding facility. The center operated when Dr. Burrows arrived on a $1 million budget annually. It now operates with an annual budget of $3.3 million. 61% of the budget is EARNED revenue, primarily from ticket sales, rentals, production service, and advertising sales.

CFA fulfils a dual mission that benefits resident academic departments while establishing a highly regarded professional presentation series, strong outreach programs and collaboration with other community based organizations. Training, student employment, and internship opportunities at the center enrich the educational experience of UB students. The CFA trains the students for careers in the performing and visual arts. Through the education they receive and through opportunities that the center provides for personal and professional growth, graduating students are prepared to contribute positively to their professions and to society as a whole.

CFA opened in October 1994, serving 50,000 patrons in its first 4 years. 13 years later, more than 158,000 patrons attended over 350 events held in CFA this part year. The Center has become a part of the cultural fabric of Western NY . It has been recognized for its role in expanding the presence of dance in WNY through the presentation of national and international artists, dance residencies and outreach programs, as well as hosting major national and international dance conferences each year. In addition to dance, the CFA's eclectic programming includes all major art forms ranging from jazz to folk music to broadway presentations, and comedic performances. The professional presentations represent both the best of classical traditions and the boldest of contemporary performances from around the world.

Community outreach has always been a strong focus for the center. For more than a decade, it has been involved in public service arts and educational enrichment programs. For the past 10 years, its dance residency has brought professional dance accompanies into area grade schools, high schools, and arts academies for workshops, demonstrations and performances. More than a dozen successful visiting artists and companies have provided free dance and workshops for more than 30,000 students in grades K-12.

This is a unique opportunity for students to experience the arts at first hand. Arts are often the first item cut when school budgets get trimmed, so the service visiting artist is provided at no cost to the schools as an integral part of CFA's community service mission.

Another outreach program is a school time adventure series that provides quality performances for children beginning with the pre-Kindergarten. This live theater experience is an important introduction for young audiences designed to develop and grow an appreciation for the arts. Each year this series brings over 7000 children to the center's stages, with many of the buses funded by its transportation stipend program. This summer marked our third year of offering the Explore the Arts, a unique one-week intensive summer program focusing on the technical and performance aspects of theater for youth in grades 5-8. Classes are taught by University faculty and the Center's professional staff. Full scholarships, transportation and meals are provided for Children from underserved communities and they represent 50% of the program's participants. Another community service educational initiative is the Technical Theater Summer Program. This provides training for WNY adults, high school students and college students and is taught by the Center's professional production staff on the stages and behind the scene at the Center.

A very established outreach initiative can be found in the CFA Music as Art Live at the Center, a series in its 6 th Season. This award-winning weekly series features a unique blend of cutting edge WNY musicians and visual arts from the community and from the school of visual arts. This is free and open to the public and the in house camera crew captures footage to create ½ hour TV episodes that have been broadcast on WNLO TV are currently seen on WNED Think Bright and NY network, reaching about 750,000 households.

The Center and its professional staff are essential to major University activities including the visit by Holiness Lama, Presidential Addresses, the Distinguished Speakers Series, and UB Stadium Technology. UB athletics have become a very good partner for the CFA on many levels: the CFA highly skilled production staff is called upon to provide technical services for these large-scale public events. A relatively new facet of the center's technical production capability is in the area of Video production. It took time but an in house television capability is proving very helpful not only to the center and its direct constituents but also to the university at large.

CFA has hired one of the finest editors and directors in the area. A video about the Center has been made: it is a virtual tour of the center, 18 minutes long, it is useful for recruitment and explains the University to the outside. The President's Office likes to use it for potential faculty coming in.

CFA celebrated the 30 th anniversary of Zodiac, an academic professional dance program within the department of theater and dance. Another one is planned for this coming year. CFA also shot 20 hours of beautiful footage of the Lama's 5-day visit. They were not able to do the documentary on the Lama then but may be able to do that now. Dr. Burrows brought the monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in the Atlanta area for 5 days. They created the Mandala sand painting and performed 3 ceremonies. The monks also performed “Sacred Music Sacred Dance for World Healing,” a music-and-dance concert that features their famed multiphonic singing, traditional instruments and masked dances in our theater. A footage will be available soon with superb broadcast quality and Richard Gere as one of the people commenting on this visit to the University at Buffalo .

The Video production service capability Dr. Burrows has taken this time to create has been recognized very broadly by the University. The CFA is working with the division of Athletics to create ½ hour documentary program on a weekly basis called Bulls Eye (there will be a total of 20 this year). Those have been viewed on Public Television. CFA is also doing a piece for University development that is pointed to the CAS to showcase the college and put it in the best light for those trying to bring interest and funding into the University. CFA is also doing a piece for admissions and most recently with the Office of the President for a dvd in conjunction with yesterday's State of the University Address in Kleinhans Music Hall which was also videotaped for rebroadcast on television.

Dr. Burrows proceeded to share a video with the FSEC as an indication of the kind of work being done at the Center and its commitment to “improving lives, building success, and enriching our world”:

The clip showcased, for instance, the Buffalo Law School Affordable Housing Clinic which, for 20 years, has helped community groups finance their dreams. The nationally recognized program financed the renovation of an abandoned building in Niagara Falls for homeless women and children, thus giving law students real life experiences while creating 165 millions dollars in housing for WNY neediest people.

Another example showcased in the video concerns the partnership between Buffalo Schools and UB chemistry professor Joe Gardella. By using the unique talents and resources at UB, Professor Gardella worked to make a difference and improve the teaching of science and math in School 19. UB graduate students serve as mentors for middle schoolers to ignite an interest in science and a future in college. These students also provide positive role models and thanks to the better equipment and renovated Science labs, the Science test scores in these schools are now some of the best in the district. The video offered other examples of the ways UB fulfils its mission of bringing the benefits of Science to humanity: the Smart Pill Capsule, for instance, which travels the intestinal track to gather information.

Dr. Burrows explained that he and the CFA staff were charged with the task of creating something that would carry a message for the university in a short amount of time. The CFA is now working with Dean Bruce McCombe to create something comparable for the CAS, which will assist to bring more attention and funding to the college.

UB2020, from the CFA's point of view, is a wonderfully focusing statement, effort, and series of events that are moving the university forward. The CFA and the work of the Center are in alignment with the University's plan for growth and its plans for community partnerships. The CFA and Women's Children's Hospital of Buffalo have been working together to launch a new initiative which is a comprehensive Arts and Healthcare Program that will integrate the Performing and Visual arts in the hospital setting. This program will address the needs of hospital patients, family members, and staff, providing diversion, stress reduction, and entertainment as well as an environment for academic research and curriculum development. The program will entail an Artists in residence program with 6 local artists who will be selected and identified to work in the healthcare environment by experts the CFA will be bringing in from the U of Florida in the Summer. In addition, the Center will provide performances and demonstrations in the hospital utilizing world class artists that are part of our main stage season each year. We will probably do between 6 or 10 a year. Some will be professional children's shows because we are dealing with the Children's Hospital. The CFA has already begun with one child's specialist artist who is working in the healthcare environment, and is hoping to launch the program next Fall.

The CFA hopes to document what the president hospital, the director of nursing, the staff, the parents what they would like from interaction between trained artists and the healthcare setting. What emerged were two issues: staff retention and patient satisfaction. The CFA went to someone in sociology to take their data and and over the course of the first year, to do simple surveys, document responses and then look at the data to see if there are positive effects on staff retention and if this program somehow makes the workplace a more attractive place for healthcare givers to come to. The staff working devotedly on this is already very excited by this opportunity in community.

The program fulfils the mission of both organizations while allowing us to contribute to the body of knowledge that already exists in the field of Arts and Healthcare. Implementation of the Arts and Healthcare initiative is based on the well-established and successful model Dr. Burrows discovered about 1.5 ago at the University of Florida and Shands Hospital . He has had the person who runs that program in Florida visit UB last summer to work with the CFA staff and the hospital staff at Children's Hospital to lay out the program as it has evolved there over a 14 year period. CFA is reproducing their Artist in residence model which is a vital part of the program, taking professional artists into the healthcare setting through the course of the year and creating an environment by working with their staff where some research will be desirable. Dr. Burrows believes that coursework will necessarily evolve on an interdisciplinary level as it has at the U of Florida where15 courses have been created in the humanities and some in the medical school. Dr. Burrows fondly remembered the work of late Dr. Richard L. Sarkin who was killed in a plane crash a few years ago and was a very important member of this community. Dr. Sarkin loved more than anything teaching students and was looked up to all over the country both in terms of his humanism and medical expertise. Things are also happening at Roswell where, for instance, the director of the intensive care unit expressed real interest in the program, but for the moment Children's continues to be a wonderful partner.

Dr. Burrows concluded by emphasizing that CFA is much more than a performance space and as an org mission hub of artistic excellence, education, research and service to the community, to improve the quality of life for our University and our community.

In response to a request that faculty receive information about performances well ahead of time, Dr. Burrows explained that the way CFA has to book talent, especially international talent it cannot afford with its budget, is to find people who are already on tour and booking them after they booked a great many other things. This means that bookings often occur late and that CFA is often adding things through the year. As a result, the Center is late in putting a program together, but there are two solutions: the Website is very accessible, and if faculty get on the email list, they will receive emails with the entire list of performances. This includes first notices of the fall semester as well advance announcements of anything on the program through the course of the semester. There are now 14,000 people enrolled on the list, and it is extremely easy to get on and off the list.

Peter Nickerson inquired whether the UB general student population is attending many events: Dr. Burrows recognized that this was the toughest audience in the world to please because students know what they want. Nevertheless, many more students are attending now because CFA is consistent in keeping a student price that is accessible. This means in effect subsidizing some of the attractions out of hard-earned revenue. CFA is subsidizing dance to a certain degree. Another way is to work closely with SA and their officers. We let them know what we are contemplating in a semester and so they sometimes use some of their funding to buy 600 seats for the students e.g. David Sedaris. The Chair added that he had noticed in the last couple of the years that more students were commenting on having attended CFA events. Dr. Burrows gave credit to the staff that works extremely well with SA when SA wants to have their own event there.

Gayle Brazeau inquired about opportunities for donations to CFA and his thoughts for growing the development program. Dr. Burrows explained that there are invitations many times during the year for contributions: 2 major mailings go out, but they don't reach everybody enough. The CFA has begun something some consultants call the halo effect. When an audience is particularly well received, mailings go out saying how pleased we were they attended that performance and offering an opportunity to support our programming. The CFA also has a new and excellent development person on staff as well as an advisory committee not a board of directors. The committee consists of influential people in the community who make financial contributions and are valuable in reaching into the community.

The Chair asked about marketing and advertising the program to the community. Dr. Burrows explained that the CFA is almost at the point where it will begin to welcome some attention on this initiative but until now it has been a planning period. They are working on a strategic plan they are doing with the hospital. In addition, any advertising campaign has to be cleared by the development officers. The CFA has prepared a concept letter for the Oshei Foundation, which will be reviewed by the end of the year.

The faculty representative from medicine commented that the same capabilities are in certain measure distributed around the university. The lectures to the medical school, for instance, are videotaped. There is an office with video production capability on South campus, and some faculty members have on their own produced various videos. Is there some thought being given to trying to gathering these various resources together to work together? The question was asked because in the video put out by CFA, the animation for the Smart Pill was not very good: it was not anatomically correct, and hence was not very convincing. The medical school has a medical illustrator, animator who could have done it for the CFA. Dr. Burrows explained that that animation was probably provided by the Smart Pill business, but that otherwise their door is wide open; the CFA is a great collaborator.

In response to a question about everything needing to be listed on the program (and not just the main stage events) including, for instance, the Speakers Series, Dr. Burrows explained that they tried very hard to do that but that the CFA is not responsible for the Distinguished Speakers Series. Sometimes it happens in the Alumni Arena, sometimes it happens in the facilities of the CFA, and sometimes the CFA does not know what the DSS program is until the CFA program has already gone to press.

The chair thanked Dr. Burrows and after a short break, the FSEC went into executive session to talk about committees.

Item 4: Executive Session: Committee Reviews

Item 5: Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 3:08 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:
Joseph Woelfel (P)
Melvyn Churchill (P)
Sharmistah Bagchi-Sen (A)
Stanley Bruckenstein (P)
Debra Street (A)

Architecture & Planning:
Scott Danford (P)

Dental Medicine:
Peter Bradford (A)

Educational Opportunity Center:
TBA

Engineering & Applied Sciences:
Stella Batalama (P)
Rohini Srihari (P)

Graduate School of Education:
Thomas Schroeder (A)

School of Law:
TBA

Management:
Hodan Isse (P)

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

Nursing:
Cynthia Curran (P)

Pharmacy:
Gayle Brazeau (P)

School of Public Health and Health Professions:
Peter Horvath (E)

Social Work:
Barbara Rittner (P)

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

Parliamentarian:
William H. Baumer (P)

Ex-officio:
Peter Nickerson (P)

University Libraries:
Dorothy Tao (A)

Guests:
Satish Tripathi (Provost)
Gay Lynne Samsonoff (Graduate Student Association)
Janiece Kiedrowski (Professional Staff Senate)

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