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Faculty Senate Executive Committee

Minutes of October 29, 2008

(unapproved)

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee met at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008, in the Jeannette Martin Room of Capen Hall (567) to discuss the following:

1. Report of the Chair
2. Report of the President/Provost
3. Report of the Vice President for Research – Jorge José and Edward Zablocki, Research Subjects Protection Administrator
4. Report of on the State of the Libraries – Steve Roberts, Associate Vice President for University Libraries
5. Old/New Business
6. Executive Session (if needed)
7. Adjournment

Item 1: Report of the Chair

Last Thurs afternoon, the Faculty Senate Library Committee met and we will have a report about that today, the chair announced

The chair also reminded the senators that the 3rd phase of the physical master plan will be presented on South campus on Nov 19.

The chair encouraged all the voting faculty to attend the Annual Meeting of the Voting Faculty on Nov 4 at 2pm at the Center for Tomorrow

The chair reported about his conversation with Dennis Black about making free parking available to senators who attend the FSEC meeting every week. Dennis Black will see what he can do despite the difficulty to reserve places in the paid parking lot because of special events going on every day.

The chair also mentioned the reconstitution of the Bookstore Advisory Committee, which had gone defunct because of lack of faculty and staff participation.

He reported that one of UB’s Honors students has been selected for a Marshall fellowship

Item 2: Report of the President/Provost

The Provost said that it appeared that the exact figure for university cuts would not be clear until SUNY Trustees meet on 11/18. Nevertheless, he added, a differential unit-level cut would be put into place in response to the anticipated $21 million budget cut from SUNY.

Item 3: Report of the Vice President for Research – Jorge José and Edward Zablocki, Research Subjects Protection Administrator

Following a faculty member’s complaint about how the Internal Review Board (IRB) is too restrictive, Chair Hoeing invited the Vice President for Research to speak to the senators about his office’s function. Jorge José explained that IRBs exist in all universities nationwide in order to oversee research involving human subjects. He offered a brief history of how IRBs came into being in 1972 following horror stories that appeared in The Washington Post and The NY Times about the shameless exploitation of African American subjects involved in research. “The IRBs were created to protect humans when experiments are done with them—to protect their interests and let them know what they’re being studied for,” Jorge emphasized.

Other significants milestones Vice-President Jorge José mentioned:

1972 Center for Disease Control Syphilis Study exposé

1974 National Research Act mandates Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

1979 Congress created a National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research established basic ethical principles: respect for persons, justice, beneficence (Belmont Report)

1981 DHHS and FDA issue human subject protection regulations

1981 - 1999 IRBS function on the peripheries of universities and other research organizations approving research in a largely routine fashion with little federal oversight

The Last Decade of Human Research has involved increasing concerns and Interventions, Jorsé explained:

Congressional Hearings in 1999 in response to high profile research volunteer deaths

Subsequent federal studies highly critical of the human subject protection process

Calls for increased federal oversight

Shutdowns of all research at Johns Hopkins, Duke, Harvard, and others

In addition, the response to the concerns raised entailed:

Mandatory education for all involved in human research

Review boards (IRBs) exercise increased diligence in applying ethics and regulations

Institutions create centrally funded Human Protection Programs

Threat of increased federal oversight leads national research organizations (AAU, AAMC) to develop accreditation program

The Authority of the IRB: Federal regulations grant IRBs authority to

Approve research

Require modifications in research

Disapprove research

Suspend or terminate research

Observe the conduct of research

Observe the consent process

After outlining the consequences of serious violations of Human Research Regulations as well as the criteria for IRB approval, Vice-President José gave an account of UB IRBs specifically and their history. UB once had 12 separate IRBs, José said (5 health-related schools; 4 affiliated hospitals; 1 education; 1 social & behavioral sciences; 1 RIA. High profile research stoppages lead then VPR to visit all IRBs in 2001. The decision was made to consolidate into Health Sciences IRB and Social & Behavioral Sciences IRB. In 2004, the Children & Youth IRB based at WCHOB was added.

UB IRBs, Vice-President José emphasized, must review ALL research involving human subjects. Today:

Children & Youth IRB reviews biomedical research involving minors (280 active studies)

Health Sciences IRB reviews biomedical research on adults (644 active studies)

Social & Behavioral Sciences IRB reviews behavioral, educational and social research (826 studies)

José explained that the composition of the IRB is dictated by federal regulations and includes:

At least 5 members

Member of both sexes

At least one member whose primary concerns are in nonscientific areas

At least, one member whose primary concerns are in scientific areas

At last one member who is not otherwise affiliated with the institution

The Vice-President discussed the creation by UB of the Human Research Protection Program in response to heightened scrutiny. The UB HRPP includes an Educational component that

Requires education for PIs, research team, IRB members and administrators

Uses CITI Protection of Human Research Subjects on-line tutorial courses (CITI is the premier educational option available—choice of more than 900 organizations including all of SUNY, RPCI, and VA of WNY

requires a refresher course required every 3 years.

4850 UB research personnel and students have completed online tutorials, Dr José said. In addition, UB is seeking accreditation from the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Program (AAHRPP). The latter was formed in 2001 by leading research organizations such as AAU, AAMC, Dr. Jose explained, and it established rigorous standards of program quality and subject protection. Accreditation is an important symbol of excellence to research participants, PIs, Sponsors, regulators and the general public. 42% of research universities are accredited today. UB is the first institution in SUNY to begin the accreditation process in 2006, José said, and there has been intensive effort to revamp the program to meet AAHRPP standards. The initial application was submitted May, 2008

Dr. José concluded the presentation by giving the URL address for more information on UB’s Human Research Protection Program and IRBs http://www.research.buffalo.edu/rsp/default.cfm

Robert Burkard, School of Public Health and Health Professions, objected to the requirement that seasoned researchers undergo the same online training as their students and research assistants. He said that researchers have to sit through 7 hours of an online program from which they do not learn anything. Vice-President José responded that this was necessary because UB is trying to uphold the highest ethical standard and that an hour a year to re-establish a commitment to the subject is a small price to pay. Gayle Brazeau, associate dean for academic affairs, inquired whether publishing information collected from her students’ course evaluations would require the same kind of approval as people whose research mentioned sensitive personal or medical information. Charles Hershey, professor of Medicine, remarked that the number of active studies reviewed by the Health Sciences IRB—644—seems far too low, especially considering the number of UB medical residents, each of whom must conduct a research project involving human subjects. A lot of minor research must be “going on without IRB approval,” Dr. Hershey said. Professor Bradford, SUNY Senator asked about the process of selection and screening through which the member from the community on the IRB gets chosen.

Item 4: Report on the State of the Libraries – Steve Roberts, Associate Vice President for University Libraries

Representatives from the University Libraries attended the FSEC to discuss the implications for the Libraries of the budget cuts. In response to UB’s anticipated $21 million budget cut from SUNY, the Libraries are expecting a 5 percent budget cut as part of Provost Tripathi’s plan to implement differential unit-level cuts. A 5 percent budget means approximately $400,000 to $500,000 reduction in the libraries’ overall acquisitions budget, Steven Roberts, associate vice president for university libraries, explained. This is compounded by the fact that the library collections incur 8 or 9% inflation every year, so the cut actually signifies 13 to 14 % less buying power than last year for the Libraries. Roberts added that the Library directors also realized that for the next two years, things will be at least as bad if not worse: “Our subject specialists are out working with the departments and individual faculty to figure out what is absolutely needed and what perhaps in this situation we can live without.” In addition, he said, the libraries are in the midst of quick and tumultuous transformations as they are moving from paper-based resources to electronic ones (over ½ of the acquisition budget is spent on electronic resources). “The manner we deal with services and operations is changing quickly,” Roberts added, “and it is stressful, since we are also confronted by a series of financial problems.”

H. Austin Booth, director of collections, took the floor to address the steady rise in the cost of peer-reviewed journal subscriptions for the past 30 years. “Subscription prices increase by nearly 10 percent each year,” she added, “a rate that’s approximately two to three times greater than the rise in health care costs.” She pointed out that demand remains “exactly the same,” however, even as prices keep going up. Booth then announced that journal subscriptions will soon be “provisionally cancelled” (based on their low usage and availability via interlibrary loan for instance) and that the UB Libraries will be circulating a list of these “provisional cancellations” to faculty and staff for feed. Other cost-cutting measures include plans to increase coordination between the SUNY institutions such as avoiding the duplicate purchases of publications by major university presses. Booth also highlighted a greater reliance on electronic books as a cost-cutting measure and explained that some of the electronic material will only actually be bought when a patron clicks on a link to consult it. In addition, a new graphic designer has been hired to help expand online tools for instruction outreach. Last year along, 20,000 students were instructed through online tools, she added.

Dorothy Tao mentioned the new Multi-Search tool that allows the library to aggregate databases and to perform a single search of all databases under a single interface instead of 5 different searches.

The issue of institutional repositories was also raised as a cost-cutting measure. Instead of scholars giving away their materials to publishers for profit, these would be deposited in some kind of repository that could be overlaid with a search engine. That would save the cost of access.

Another initiative is an e-book initiative that involves purchasing certain kind of materials in electronic book version. Students can find them within 20 minutes of their appearance in the catalog without any promotion. Professor Melvyn Churchill expressed concern about how secure the access to electronic material really was. The directors reassured him that materiels are now ed up in a way they weren’t, and that is a matter of checking carefully the perpetual access laws and that every electronic journal the Libraries make available has a license behind it.

Last but not least, the discussion moved on the issue of improving the learning spaces at the libraries and making these more attractive for people to study and work collaboratively. The entrance area in Lockport was rehabilitated to look more attractive. Wireless access is available, and faculty and students can meet there informally. The remodeling of the entrance is important since 3.5 million people were estimated to have entered the libraries last year.

Item 5: New/old Business

Item 6: Executive Session (if necessary)

Item 7: Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Carine Mardorossian, Secretary of the Faculty Senate

 

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