FACULTY SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Minutes of October 31, 2007

(unapproved)

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee met at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, October 31, 2007, in the Jeannette Martin Room of Capen Hall (567) to discuss the following agenda:

1. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 26, 2007
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report of the President/Provost
4. Charges for the FS Student Life Committee
5. Distance Education Policy Report Professor Phillips Stevens
6. Spirituality in Medicine Interdisciplinary Training Program
David Holmes, M.D. (Family Medicine) Karen Devlin, Program Coordinator (Family Medicine)
7. Learning Spaces/Design in future Pedagogy
Shirley Dugdale, AIA—DEGW North American, LLC Elliott Felix, Senior Consultant DEGW
8. Adjournment

 Item 1: Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 26, 2007

 The minutes of September 26, 2007 were unanimously approved.

 Item 2: Report of the Chair

1. Graduate School Executive Committee met OCT 15; Marilyn Kramer sat in for the chair

•  Office of Postdoctoral Scholars is operational and has developed a website

•  Individual faculty must get institutional approval before legally committing UB to any overseas initiatives

•  Several of the professional schools are exploring the possibility of permitting graduate students to take undergraduate language & culture courses for graduate-level credit in order to help prepare them for international careers

•  Priority categories for awarding Schomburg Fellowships have been somewhat modified --- the changes are aimed at creating more attractive aid offers, making fellows eligible for in-state tuition rates earlier, more fully integrating the fellows into departmental activities, and increasing the number of fellows that can be supported.

•  The Office of Institutional Analysis will be adding “customer satisfaction” questions to supplement the AAU Survey of Graduating Doctoral Students currently used at UB. The OIA will also be asked to survey incoming graduate students about their experience with the recruitment process and with the adequacy of support services such as child care and library resources.

•  Revised Transfer Credit Policy . Proposed changes to the current policy would limit the number of transfer credits that can be used towards completion of a Master's program to 20% --- the current practice allows up to 50%. Dean Ho characterized this as more of a language change than any substantive policy change.

2. The SUNY Senate held its 147 th Plenary meeting in Cortland this past week

•  UB was well represented by Senators Baumer, Bradford, Kramer, Dr. Nickerson; as well as by CAS Program Administrator Patricia Carey and the two new CGLs Janiece Kiedrowski and the chair himself; MK will report on the meeting at the NOV 6 Senate meeting

3. FS Committees :

•  The Grading Committee is very active and has a full agenda of meetings and issues. Yesterday they discussed a draft of “Grade Submission and Change Policies”. The Chair had two other meetings scheduled at the same time and was unable to attend. It is in the most capable hands of Prof. Baumer, who deserves our gratitude & appreciation for his excellent service.

•  The Affirmative Action Committee met yesterday at the same time. The chair has asked Scott Williams (Mathematics) to succeed Mattie Rhodes as Chair. They have identified issues to be discussed, including implementation of the Recruitment & Retention Handbook, examination of statistics on minority representation in the various units, and consultation with those units that have been particularly successful in minority recruitment, retention, and representation. The committee will also look at comparing UB with other institutions across the country. Pedro Caban will be invited to campus again to discuss affirmative action issues with the committee.

•  The Student Life Committee is just about ready to be re-activated; Dr. Nickerson and I have drafted charges for which we will ask your approval under “Old / New Business” --- which we will re-schedule before our first featured speaker today.

4. Ed Herman convened a special meeting of the librarians yesterday morning

•  To consider a resolution expressing their concerns about the fate of library space and the Heart of the Campus initiative;

•  Two special guests were invited --- Prof. Stephen Dyson and the chair himself.

•  It was pointed out that if UB through UB 2020 is to become a premier research university, it must have top-notch libraries --- BUT: we have been sliding down the ARL (Association for Research Libraries) scale; this must be reversed, and soon.

•  Concerns also centered around the mass transfer of materials to the storage facility, much greater than expected.

•  Ed Herman and the chair will meet soon to discuss how to proceed next.

5. We have had a National Postdoctoral Team Visit to UB this past MON/TUES

•  The team included Kathleen Flint, Project Manager of the National Postdoctoral Association, and Karen Sherman, Director of Postdoctoral Affairs for Weill Medical College / Cornell University .

•  VP Marilyn Morris invited the chair to meet with the team yesterday

•  There will be involvement of the Faculty Senate to discuss policies for postdoctoral scholars --- as yet there are none --- concerning titles, hiring, compensation, obligations, compliance with ethical conduct, complaint procedures, etc. Luckily, no timeline on this.

•  Yet another reason we will need to re-activate both the Bylaws and Research & Creative Activities committees

6. I have notified Mitch Green that I am resigning from the FSA Board

•  The chair feels uncomfortable serving on the Board

•  And would like to use the time for Senate-related activities

•  Dr. Nickerson and the chair are trying to find a replacement

7. Announcement: Board of Trustees Public Hearing [was passed around] which is to take place on Nov 27, 2007, in Federal Court Room, 3 rd floor, State University Plaza, Albany, NY at 3pm. The purpose of the SUNY Board of Trustees Public Hearing is to receive testimony and statements from concerned individuals about university issues. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees is Mr. Carl T. Hayden, State University of New York.

 Item 3: Report of the President/Provost

The President reported that he attended an AAU meeting (Presidents' Meeting) last week: they organize several symposia that feature two or three people that talk about particular issues that are of interest. One of the four the President heard over the two days was a panel discussion about what kinds of experiences a couple of people had on their campuses when inviting controversial speakers. One of them was Lee C. Bollinger who had experience not so long ago with the President of Iran Ahmadinejad coming to speak at Columbia University . President Bollinger made some forthright introductory remarks before the Iranian President spoke (see http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/09/lcbopeningremarks.html ). The President ran into similar experiences at Santa Cruz but not at UB. While he had some commentary about having Michael Moore speak here, there was nothing of concern, only a few people who had some interest in not having Mr. Moore speak. Lee Bollinger said he personally uses a yardstick of judging whether a speaker has academic relevance. If it is somebody nominated by a legitimate student or faculty or staff group and who has some academic relevance, he believes that they should be allowed to speak. Bollinger said that after approving Ahmadinejad's visit, he had pressure of almost obscene level by everything from faculty and students and people from outside the University (substantial donors) and very highly placed elected officials. He was told that if he did this, Columbia would receive absolutely nothing. He offered no apology for the way he introduced Ahmadinejad (which included calling the speaker “quite simply, ridiculous,” “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”), which was his way of dealing with the pressure under which he had been put. This made President Simpson think about what were appropriate ways of introducing speakers.

2/ The President reported that there is a Board of Trustees that was put together by the Commissioner of Health at the end of September to oversee the mandated fusion of ECMC and Kaleida. Instead of being 2 separate entities as a County Hospital and as a non-profit healthcare corporation, these have to combine by law and there has to be a plan on the table by the end of the year. Significantly, the University is fully at the table and guiding the strategy and overseeing the ways in which this Board will operate to govern the way these hospitals were joined and the way they will operate in the future. In remembered history, the University has not had the opportunity to sit at a table as a full equal partner with the governing entity of the hospital and with the governing entity of Kaleida. The commissioner asked President Simpson to convene the first few meetings to get this going. Since then, President Simpson has turned the reins over to the President of the Oishei Foundation, Robert Gioia, who is part of the Board as a representative of the community. There are two vice chairs for this group, one a board member from the ECMC Board, one from the Kaleida Board. Last and very importantly, the Secretary Treasurer of this is David Dun, Vice President for the Health Sciences. This is a harbinger of the significant involvement of the university in thinking about formulating healthcare policy in Western NY and a recognition of the fact that a first rate healthcare organization will require the involvement of the educational entity of the University. This is a very significant change in how healthcare is administered in Western NY .

The last thing the President mentioned was that the Chairman of the SUNY board of Trustees, Carl T. Hayden, who is chairman emeritus of the New York State Board of Regents, asked him to be a member of the search committee for a new chancellor. President Simpson was too glad to accept because this person has to be his partner. President Simpson commented that the process would probably entail more of a recruiting than a selection process to get the right kind of person, somebody who understands what research universities are about, what their needs and aspirations are, and how one fosters those.

Item 4: Charges for the FS Student Life Committee

 The FSSLC (Dr. Nickerson, Chair) is hereby charged to consider the following issues:

•  Extend and improve student-faculty relations and interaction;

•  Examine the problem of textbook pricing and propose possible alternatives and/or compromises with the University Bookstore;

•  Investigate the causes and extent of substance abuse (alcohol, drugs) and other social problems, including gambling addiction, and propose awareness programs and other initiatives to help reduce these problems;

•  Assist the UB Critical Incident Management team and Counseling Services in pro-actively helping students who are potentially troubled with thoughts of suicide, violence and similar emotional problems

•  Review UB student rules and regulations

--And to report periodically to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee

The Chair asked for a motion to approve of this charge. The charge was unanimously approved.

Item 5: Distance Education Policy Report Professor Phillips Stevens

Also, Phillips Stevens through anthropology took the initiative and drafted a policy concerning distance education. The main gist is fourfold:

1/ The instructional policy supplied to all courses regardless of the medium of instruction.

2/ The unit offering Distance Education must ensure adequate resources for execution and completion of the course.

3/ All services available for regular courses must also be available for distance education courses, and

4 finally, the designation of a distance education course must be made explicit in the transcript, DE for instance.

The chair included the original draft policy plus the suggestions from the CLT sub-committee on DE. Suggestions for revision were minor (mostly about moving a paragraph or two). The full report on distance education has been posted on UBLearns/Faculty Senate. Motion to approve so the draft policy can be forwarded to the Nov 6 Senate Meeting for its first reading. The motion was unanimously approved.

 Item 6: UB Spirituality and Medicine Interdisciplinary Training Program

 David Holmes, MD, Director and Karen Devlin, Program Manager from the Department of Family Medicine (197 Farber Hall, SMBS) gave a presentation about their new program.

David Holmes discussed the Spirituality and Medicine Curricular Award for Medical Schools

•  managed by: The George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health www.gwish.org

•  Funded by : The John Templeton Foundation ( www.templeton.org/funding ).

•  Goal of this grant program : to expand the scope of medical education by encouraging model medical and osteopathic school courses that address the important but long neglected domains of spirituality, cultural awareness, and end-of-life issues in medical care.

David Holmes defined each term in turn.

SPIRITUALITY:

•  “. . . that which gives a transcendent meaning to one's life.”

- Puchalski and Larson, 1998

•  “Spirituality is the personal quest for understanding answers to ultimate questions about life, about meaning, about relationship to the sacred or transcendent, which may (or may not) lead to or arise from the development of religious rituals and the formation of community.”

•  Handbook of Religion and Health, 2001

RELIGION:

“Religion comes from the Latin word religare which means ‘to bind together'. This implies a sense of healing and restoration. Healing comes from the Greek word heilen which means to “set right” or ‘restore'.”

- Handbook of Religion and Health, 2001

HEALTH:

•  Health is “the condition of optimal well-being”

- American Heritage Dictionary (1995)

•  “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

- World Health Organization (last amended 1948)

The program follows the following model:

 

Whole Person Health Care
The Bio-psycho-social-spiritual Model

 

Psycho

 

 

 

 

Bio Social

 Spiritual

 WHY?

•  Medical students, residents, and attendants care for patients who have spiritual beliefs that effect their health and well-being. According to a Gallup poll (2004) 90% of American adults believe in God and 84% say that religion is very important or fairly important in their own life.

•  In the past several years, much research has been done which has demonstrated a significant association between religious practices and health.

 Why? – AAMC Standard

“Effective communication is the lynchpin in the relationship between physician and patient, as well as critical in exchanging information with families, colleagues and related professionals administering care. In order to communicate effectively with patients, physicians will also need to understand how a person's spirituality and culture affect how they perceive health and illness, and particularly their desires regarding end-of-life care.”

American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) Medical School Objectives Project 1999

 Why? – JACHO Standard

•  “Spiritual assessment should, at a minimum, determine the patient's denomination, beliefs, and what spiritual practices are important to the patient. This information would assist in determining the impact of spirituality, if any, on the care/services being provided and will identify if any further assessment is needed. The standards require organizations to define the content and scope of spiritual and other assessments and the qualifications of the individual(s) performing the assessment.”

Joint Commission of on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JACHO) Jan 1, 2004

 WHY?

1. Spiritual beliefs are common among patients and serve a distinct purpose

2. Spiritual beliefs influence medical decision-making

3. There is a relationship between faith and health

4. Many patients would like their doctors to address issues of faith and health

5. There is a historical precedent for doing so

Koenig, Spirituality and Patient Care; 2002

 WHY?

•  Ellis et. Al (1999) This study surveyed family physicians and found that barriers to addressing spiritual issues included:

•  lack of time (71%)

•  inadequate training (59%)

•  difficulty identifying patients who want to discuss spiritual issues (56%)

•  Including spirituality in medical education will help physicians overcome these barriers and will, most likely, lead to improved doctor-patient rapport and better patient care.

 WHEN?

•  Complete physical exam (part of social history)

•  new patient, hospital admission, annual physical exam

•  Patients in crisis

•  Patients with such diagnoses as chronic disease, cancer, addictions, chronic pain, depression, AIDS, etc.

 How? => HOPE

•  Hope

•  “What are your sources of hope, strength, comfort, and peace?”

•  “What do you hold onto during difficult times?

•  Organization

•  “Are you part of a spiritual community? Is it a supportive community?”

•  “What aspects of your faith are helpful and not so helpful to you? (Does your faith decrease or increase stress?)”

- Anandarajah and Hight, American Family Physician; 2001:63(1)

•  Personal Practices

•  “Do you have any personal spiritual practices, such as prayer, scripture reading, fasting?”

•  “What aspects of your faith do you find most helpful?”

•  Effect on Health and End-of-Life Issues?

“What effect do you think your faith has on your health?”

“Has being sick affected your ability to do things that usually help you spiritually?”

“Is there anything about your faith I should know about in providing your medical care?”

“How does your faith affect your decisions regarding medical care near the end of your life?”

- Anandarajah and Hight, American Family Physician; 2001:63(1)

 Karen Devlin then discussed the ways in which spirituality would be integrated into the medicine curriculum at UB.

Spirituality in Medicine Curriculum at UB

1 st year: Clinical Practice of Medicine 1

2 nd year: Clinical Practice of Medicine 2

3 rd year: Clerkships (family medicine, medicine, pediatrics)

Elective: Faith in Medicine & End-of-Life Care

 Clinical Practice of Medicine
Year 1

•  Students study the doctor/patient relationship in the context of spirituality.

•  Students learn the definition of spirituality and how to take a spiritual history using the HOPE acronym.

•  Students are required to include a spiritual history in their history and physical exam write-ups.

Year 2

•  Students are taught the role that spirituality plays in the compassionate care of their patients.

•  During a session on “Delivering Bad News” to volunteer cancer patients, students practice asking the patients about their support system and spiritual beliefs.

Year 3: Clerkships

•  Students learn whole person health using the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model.

•  Students learn the role that spirituality plays in recovering from addictions. Each student is required to attend one AA or NA meeting.

•  Physicians and staff from Hospice teach about palliative care, and end-of-life issues.

•  Leaders of different religions teach about the basic tenets of their faith and how they relate health, well-being, and end-of-life decision making.

Year 3: Clerkships

•  Pediatric death and bereavement.

•  Student's self-reflection and support in the context of death or other stressful situations.

•  Two didactic/small group sessions and one experiential learning session where students interview parents who have suffered the death of a child. Parent participation in this program is voluntary.

Internal Medicine:

•  Students participate in rounds with a hospital chaplain.

•  Learn role chaplains play in the hospital environment and when to refer patients to them.

•  Students further develop their listening skills and sensitivity to patients from various cultural and spiritual grounds.

Elective: Years 3 & 4

•  “Faith, Medicine and End-of-Life Care”

 Schedule

•  2 weeks at Hospice

•  1 week at ECMC Immunodeficiency Clinic

•  1 week at a community physician's office

•  1 session at Roswell Park Cancer Institute

•  2 sessions at a free clinic

 Student Goals – Themes

Learn more about:

•  discussing spiritual issues with patients

•  the role of chaplains

•  different religions

•  end-of-life care

 Student Comments:

•  That most patients have the willingness and desire to discuss spiritual issues.

•  Before taking this course, I knew that it was important to consider patients as people and not diseases. However, this course emphasized the importance of this even further and it also taught me that spirituality is important to consider when treating patients.

•  The importance of taking a spiritual history and addressing any faith/spiritual needs of the patient. Taking a few extra minutes to do this can greatly enhance the doctor-patient relationship . I have also learned how important it is to give to the community

•  how powerful it is to have physicians and chaplains cooperating for the patient's care/well-being

Questions put to the speakers addressed the issue of proselytizing and how to make sure that the emphasis on spirituality remain inclusive of all forms of religious, spiritual, meditative practice rather than just another name for Christianity.

 Item 7: Learning Spaces/Design in future Pedagogy

Shirley Dugdale, AIA—DEGW North American, LLC

Elliott Felix, Senior Consultant DEGW

 The chair introduced the speakers who were invited to talk about the design of future learning spaces, which is very relevant in the context of UB2020 (with its focus on the repurposing of Library Space for instance). The speakers work for DEGW, a consulting group that is part of the Master Planning Team, and that was hired to think about providing new types of teaching and learning spaces.

 Shirley Dugdale explained that what DEGW has been working on is to account for how learning is changing: how there are increasingly blended learning experiences:

• More collaborative , active learning with hands-on experiences

• Integrated , multidisciplinary

• Blended , learning takes place anywhere/anytime, mobile technology with social activity

• Immersive with simulated or real-world experiences

• Hybrid activities, combining online with face-to-face, augmented with mixed reality experiences

DEGW has been looking at a spectrum of learning spaces from the very specialized ones that are discipline driven (specialty lab, specialty type of classrooms that require higher levels of performance specification, involve specialized equipment, are owned within departments and are subject specific, and often entail higher security concerns) to the generic learning spaces (centrally controlled and scheduled, often limited in flexibility by furnishings) and on the far end of the spectrum, the informal learning spaces (that encompass a richer range of settings, allow choice, are loose fit, unscheduled and work as a network of spaces rather than singular settings, may have food!).

1. Supporting Academic Change

Shirley Dugdale explained that she mostly wanted to talk with FSEC about supporting academic change and where we want to go in terms of pedagogy in the future and the programming to support changing pedagogy: transitioning from didactic to group discovery modalities, providing settings for more inquiry-based team learning, how to integrate digital technologies into the teaching classes more effectively.

Shirley Dugdale explained that a lot of the DEGW thinking in terms of planning is pedagogy driven: they look at the different types of teaching modalities (lecture, teacher-led discussion, problem focus-led discussion, case method, problem-based learning, self-directed and embedded learning, etc.) to determine how to link space need to future pedagogy, what that means in terms of the space that is required.

The other aspect is the implications of learner-centered planning on space standards. What does it mean when one moves from space that supports teacher-centered passive learning that limits active learning activities such as small group discussion to multi-purpose spaces for enhanced effectiveness of learning that supports a variety of teaching and learning activities? This involves increasing space utilization through flexible and adaptable design; having new learning spaces with transformative impact; spaces that enable small group work within a larger class size; that encourages faculty to experiment; and that uses technology as a critical enabler.

Trying to design spaces that support a range of teaching practices includes having settings for teaching in the round; having more flexible furnishings, breakout mode with the same space, and sub-dividable partitions that retract into ceiling. All this allows one to do multiple activities in the teaching spaces, which does have an implication for more square footage, so it becomes necessary to think about strategies for smarter use of space and scheduling, to create demonstration spaces so people can test out teaching large groups with more of these techniques. Some of the experiments have been how to model different types of layouts and clustering within the envelope of the same space with the same furnishings (“learning studios” that are flexible not tiered spaces)

 The MIT classrooms, technology enhanced active learning spaces, have been very successful at increasing the learning outcomes, making faculty time more efficient, and higher attention rate for students, and they are still able to teach introductory physics in a fairly large class of students (100): each table has 3 teams of 3. The dynamics between the learning groups has been carefully thought through. Other kinds of settings are for teaching in the round with all the flexible furnishings.

Looking at different pattern making, the question is how can we accommodate multiple different things in the same footprint of a classroom. This may lead to different proportions: the same thing cannot be done in a long thin classroom for instance. A lot of what is done is driven by the audio-visual aspects also because more and more people use dual screens for comparing and contrasting information of different types.

The DEGW is focusing on thinking carefully about how to provide integrated learning support services:

•  How the Libraries can provide new types of learning spaces within them, i.e. blended facilities, incorporating complementary new functions in support of learning and scholarship;

•  how to provide support for computing & media work across campus for student who are incorporating media into their class projects for instance

•  How to think about learning support in a more organized and integrated way

•  Vision for networks of integrated learning support centers

Provide special places for group thinking, exploration that one can retreat to (that are not necessarily planned by way of a centrally scheduling system and could be very flexible)

• Shared spaces for brainstorming and group problem solving

• Flexible, multipurpose, equipped

• Nodes identified with the strategic strengths to draw disciplines together

There is a model for this at Notre Dame Business School and each class can only use the facility up to three times a semester. It was conceptualized as an open resource available to many groups.

 2. Learning Landscape: Planning Principles

 Learning Landscape is defined as the entire spectrum of spaces a student experiences on a campus including all the informal spaces where learning happens.

•  Analyze the whole campus as learning space

•  Map the hot spots of learning discourse and interaction

•  Define the balance of formal and informal learning spaces, enhance them

 Plan for informal learning activities

• Gather data about usage and performance -- with workshops, surveys, observation studies

• Analyze emerging Net Gen learner characteristics on campus

• Develop strategy to improve the network of informal learning spaces

 Support mobility

• “Touch down” settings for student to do work quickly

• Enable & support personally owned devices to become the learning tools

• Settings to spread out and work

• Power outlets everywhere; enhancing the use of mobile laptops

• Movable furnishings to enable users to modify as needed

• Recognize that learners can chose now—quality of the environment matters

Exploit Transitions

• Making the most of time between activities or classes: nature of circulation spaces changes, become ad hoc workplaces

• Encouraging serendipitous encounters: places to settle & linger, making the zones between the classrooms more effective so people can linger after class and extend that discussion out into the corridors and spaces, both with peers and faculty

• Opportunities to keep connected

Shots from MIT showcased the kinds of learning landscapes Ms. Dugdale was outlining

 Enrich pathways

• Spilling out from lecture halls & classrooms: extending discussions with faculty, “front porch” spaces

• Exploit crossroads

• Transitions from public into semi-private realms, interface with faculty offices

• Creative interaction can be increased by intentionally providing opportunities for them to become more than transit ways

Blended spaces to support blended activities

• Spaces where students can work, eat, talk, relax

• Social learning, be with others

• Support multiple activities with diverse settings

• Flexible, allow user control and manipulation

• Blending of information-based work and entertainment “multiplexing of functions” (Bill Mitchell)

 Exploit food as a catalyst

• Food as an attractor, a destination, a place to connect

• Program to support learning discourse: wireless access, marker boards, display screens, text message display

• Quality of both food and setting is important

• Bring alternative settings into the campus

e.g. MIT's Student Café where conversations are enhanced in different ways: people can text up to a display board; communication is easy with people passing by, “enlightened food approach”; the space is tiny but attracts people from around campus because of its rotating menu; gains 3 times more revenue than the previous revenue. The way it is furnished too is important too.

Support media co-creation

• Expression through visual material, mash-ups, comfort with multiple media

• Places for co-authoring activity, creating multimedia products together

• Small rooms for: editing video/audio, creating podcasts, play/viewing, practice presenting as a team

• Spaces for viewing immersive visualizations of complex data as part of both graduate and undergraduate experience

• Planning for acoustics

 Create ‘Club' settings

• Drop-in use, intermittent scheduling, with bookable space where students can come together and work together

• Highly serviced, with support and expertise available

• Choice of settings, both shared and individual

• Rich interactive environments supporting collaboration

Univ. of Chicago , Crerar Library Computer Cluster “appropriatable space” (Bill Mitchell)

 Support Collaborative Activity

• Comfortable, inviting settings

• Interactive shared wall screens: e.g. Emory: students working around an interactive big screen; Chicago and Northwestern => this is starting to impact the classroom setting as well

Support Round the Clock Use Strategies

How to gain a smarter use of space here; how to encourage experimental uses of the technology.

Protect sanctuaries

• Need for places that allow focus, concentration and reflection

• Zoning of active vs. reflective, quiet sectors

• The role of libraries

• Control acoustical disturbance with activity and proliferation of devices

3. Learning Beyond the Campus

-The Wider Community Context: what are the edges of the campus? How does learning activity bleed out to facilities in the surrounding neighborhoods in the future?

-Engaging in Global discourse

-Layering virtual learning: how do we enable new types of virtual discourse (blogging)?

Enable learning beyond the campus

• Learning and research activity is extending beyond the edges of the campus, both physically as well as virtually

• Technology tools drive desire for 24/7 blended settings often not available on campus

• GPS-enabled portable devices become tools to enable groups to come together

• New ways to enable virtual discourse: blogging, podcasting: what parts does that play in creating students' digital life and their experience at Buffalo

• Blurring of distinction between academic and real world learning experience, virtual worlds

Enable global discourse

• Need for centers where people could come together for visualization of complex data with shared equipment: hooking in remote experts into the conversations

• Support for cyberinfrastructure

• Virtual global connections for interdisciplinary discourse

• Tangible interfaces: new types of technology where we are going to be dealing with different types of physical objects

The Potential of Augmented Reality

• Layering of the virtual information onto the real for a richer experience of space

• New experiential learning tools

e.g. MIT students go out into the landscape of the campus and with handheld devices download data that is relevant to particular problems.

 The Potential of Virtual Worlds

Also part of the landscaping: Librarians offering reference services in virtual worlds; institutions offering courses; meeting places for academic dialogue, etc.

 Shirley Dugdale then turned to the faculty to ask for feed about the types of spaces they envisioned.

The Chair asked how the new design would control that the spaces that should be reserved and designated for academic use only are used that way? How can control be enforced? Easy to do in the library but elsewhere it is not easy. Felix Elliott responded that sometimes it is protocol, sometimes it is self-regulated. Also some libraries are now using certain portion of their collections that is not in use almost as wallpaper, to create a certain environment in a room that has a contemplative quality that says “quiet.” Shirley Dugdale added that students often themselves express that they want to be part of a context that makes them focus and allows them to study, the “iconic” library space, a space of inquiry and study. Dorothy Tao confirmed that this was true for both students and parents but also that the new technologies are necessitating new space requirements, space for students to work independently at computers, in twos or in groups. UB is actively exploring these possibilities at the same time as it is trying to keep the central collections that it still needs like the current periodicals. Shirley Dugdale explained that she spent a night working at Capen and one at Abbott, and she was very impressed that she had a hard time finding a vacancy that had power. Mostly it was independent work, occasionally a buzz of talking, not disturbing in any way, and this was after 9pm . There is clearly demand for seats.

Dorothy Tao said that the problem was how to incorporate all the things Ms. Dugdale mentioned into existing space, perhaps knock out a wall and help the library look like a library. Peter Nickerson asked how much we recommend that undergraduates spend studying for each hour they have in class. He said that when he mentions that to the undergraduates whom he knows, they laugh because they have to work. The other aspect is what year the students live in the resident halls vs. other locations and how that affects their learning experience. Another concern raised was upkeep no matter what design is chosen and how a replacement schedule should be established. Elliott Felix said that there was an operation side to that and a sustainability side, i.e. if things are getting designed without the appropriate level of durability and are not really achieving their full life, or are getting cleaned too frequently.

Stanley commented on two areas: 1/it would be a mistake to put too much money into designing space considering present technology: for instance, recharging or plugging in laptops will probably go away within 5 to 10 years, and one cannot really predict what will happen in the future 2/ students congregate where they are or where their next lecture is, so lots of dispersed space should be made available to them as well as quiet space located close to where the concentration of their major is. Students want to mingle with the people who are in their major and feed off one another's ideas and see faculty (especially in the past two years). The issue of the bad acoustics on campus was also raised. Park Hall was mentioned as an example of a building that seemed designed to prevent students and faculty from interacting. Peter Nickerson commented that the challenge was precisely to redesign these new spaces for the expanding the new student population while accommodating the new technologies. Right now, it is difficulty to go and forth between the technologies. Shirley Dugdale said that it would be useful for the consultants to hear about which spaces really do not function on campus. Someone asked if there was a central way of knowing how much classroom space was actually available. Chair Hoeing commented that there is plenty of space at certain times on campus and maybe things could be redesigned so that students could take courses at night in these relatively open spaces; there could essentially be 24/7 instruction. For certain types of courses, all students could be enrolled in the same course but some could work in the morning, some in the evening, and do the work at different times of the day. Students could exchange ides through blogs. Other uses of classrooms that were mentioned were study groups or student groups. Dorothy Tao mentioned the Baldy Law School as an example of how space can be redone really nicely.

 Item 8: Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 3:59 PM .

Respectfully submitted,

Carine Mardorossian, Secretary of the Faculty Senate

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