FACULTY SENATE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Minutes of October 7, 1998 (approved)

E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee met at 2:00 PM on October 7, 1998 in Capen 567 to consider the following agenda:

1. Approval of the Minutes of September 16 and September 23, 1998
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report of the President/Provost
4. Charging the Faculty Senate Promotions and Tenure Committee
5. Talloires Declaration
6. Charging the Faculty Senate Research and Creative Activity Committee
7. Approval of the agenda for the Faculty Senate Meeting of Oct. 13, 1998
8. Old/new businessItem 1: Approval of the Minutes of September 16 and September 23, 1998

The Minutes of September 16 and September 23, 1998 were approved with minor corrections.

 

Item 2: Report of the Chair

The Chair welcomed Professors Harwitz, Baumer and Swartz to FSEC.

The Spectrum published an article on the FSEC discussion of grade replacement. The article contained a number of inaccuracies, including the attribution of a statement advocating the policy to the Chair. The Chair must be impartial in the conduct of a meeting and must step down as Chair to take a position on a topic. Michael Tackett, the undergraduate member of the Grading Committee will write a letter of correction to The Spectrum.

Currently the UB Telephone Directory listings include only name, rank, department, UB address and UB telephone number. In the past the listing has included such additional information as degrees held, home address and telephone number and spouse’s name, but only about 40 % of the listings provided such additional information when the option was available. Dr. Petro, who is planning for the next directory, asked for FSEC ‘s advice on whether to include additional personal information. There were comments from the floor:

• easy to query faculty member by e-mail for additional personal information (Professor Hoeing)
• provide personal information as an option (Professor Malone)
• Dr. Petro warned that such an option would be significantly more work (Professor Nickerson)
• the directory needs to be improved; it should be consistent in format and content; the directory is very frustrating for outsiders to use and gives a poor impression of the University; move the formation of a FSEC ad hoc committee to consult with Dr. Petro on the directory (Professor Smith)
• amend the motion to provide that the ad hoc committee report to the FSEC (Professors Welch)
• before the ad hoc committee advises Dr. Petro it should be able to persuade FSEC as to its recommendations; the listing of members of departments was very helpful; because of pressures of timeliness, the ad hoc committee might give recommendation for the next edition following the pending edition (Professor Schack)
• the forms used for generating corrections could include space for the provision of optional, personal information (Professor Wooldridge)
• amend the proposal so that the ad hoc committee would make general recommendations for future directories only and also request that the pending directory give no option for personal information, but include a listing of faculty by department (Professor Baumer)
• amendment seconded (Professor Schack)
• the University may be moving away from the paper directory to on-line information; the content of department listings is inconsistent because some Deans provide additional information while others do not (Professor Adams-Volpe)

FSEC voted to accept Professor Baumer’s amendment to the main motion and then voted to accept the amended motion. The Chair will appoint an ad hoc committee.

The Chair reported that the Budget Priorities Committee, chaired by Professor Hamlen, met Monday October 5. A simulation of the various items affecting the Resource Allocation Methodology (RAM) was demonstrated. Items discussed were consultation with student governments on recent fee increases, SUNY Trustees guidelines on athletics funding and a draft proposal for uniform administration of endowment funds. At its next meeting the Committee will begin discussion of a resolution, proposed by the Faculty Senate Affirmative Action Committee, on discretionary salary allocations. The Academic Planning Committee is actively working on the issue of the reorganization and elimination of the Department of Statistics and its incorporation into the Department of Social and Preventative Medicine. The Affirmative Action Committee will meet on October 9.

The Chair outlined some agenda items for future meetings: FSEC--October 21, Computer Services Committee; October 28, Resolution of Consensual Relations; and December 2, Academic Planning Committee on the Statistics Department. Faculty Senate--November 10, Resolution on Consensual Relations (second reading); and December 8, Academic Planning Committee on the Statistics Department. There were comments from the floor on the agenda item Resolution on Consensual Relations:

• since the Resolution on Consensual Relations is one on which there are sharp differences of opinion and since the Resolution may have been substantially revised since the first reading, to ensure best decision, treat the November 10 reading as a first reading (Professor Swartz)
• prefer to decide procedure at the October 28 FSEC meeting at which the Resolution will be discussed; there is precedent for a third reading(Professor Nickerson)
• the effect of calling the November 10th reading a first reading would be to prevent a vote being taken on the Resolution; would prefer treating this as the first Resolution to insure full discussion (Professor Schack)

 

Item 3: Charging the Faculty Senate Promotions and Tenure Committee

Professor Arcara, Chair of the Faculty Senate Promotions and Tenure Committee, reported that the Committee has completed its look at the evaluation of teaching in the promotion and tenure dossier. She believes the Report of the Interdisciplinary Structures Committee (the Hay Committee) raises the question of how to evaluate candidates for promotion in a way that encompasses all activity, not just activity in the home department. This would be an appropriate issue for the Committee to take up. The Chair asked for comments from the floor:

• the Hay Committee believed that both the department chair and the director of the interdisciplinary unit should write annual reports on a shared faculty member, with both reports going into the promotion dossier; the promotion decision would then be made by the next level of administration (Professor Baier)
• the Hay Committee was not that specific; the Committee only recommended that a faculty member’s activities in an interdisciplinary unit be taken into serious consideration for promotion and tenure (Professor Malave)
• who would be responsible for creating the dossier?; what is the status of the Resolution on including teaching in a dossier? (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• the Resolution was passed by the Senate and is in the hands of the administration (Professor Nickerson)
• the dossier should be jointly put together by the department chair and the director of the interdisciplinary unit ; because the dossier will be reviewed by the School before it goes to the Provost’s Office , the department chair will probably be given more weight than the director of the interdisciplinary unit (Professor Schuel)
• at promotion what consideration should be given to a hiring agreement negotiated between a department and a candidate who is interested in also working in an interdisciplinary unit about the amount of the faculty member’s time belonging to the department? (Professor Arcara)
• the agreement should be given full consideration (Vice Provost Fischer)
• faculty already in place may develop an interest in working in an interdisciplinary unit, so agreements should be negotiable at any time during a faculty member’s career; if a faculty member’s interest shifts away from the interdisciplinary unit’s work, the agreement should not be used against the faculty member in promotion and tenure considerations (Professor Schack)
• only in exceptional circumstances should activities outside the department significantly influence promotion and tenure (Professor Sridhar)
• past practices should not preclude more flexible arrangements from being worked out (Vice Provost Fischer)

The Chair requested that the Committee aim to make at least a preliminary report of its work on this topic to FSEC in February 1999.

 

Item 4: Report of the Provost

In the Provost’s discussions with the Deans about their five year planning projections, several Schools expressed interest in integrating the Summer session into the overall academic year budget. This would allow Summer FTE’s to count toward a School’s enrollment target and the revenue generated would be treated not as IFR revenue but as regular tuition. Teaching patterns might be changed so that faculty would teach fewer hours during the Fall and Spring semesters but also teach in the Summer as regular, not add on ,academic load. This proposal would be a part of the mission review submission to SUNY. The Provost asked for comments:

• in some programs summer programs are restricted to insure students will enroll in the Fall and Spring semesters when the students count toward enrollment targets (Provost Headrick)
• will Summer session be structured more like a standard semester? (Professor Schack)
• restructuring is not part of current thinking (Provost Headrick)
• what is UB’s Summer enrollment? (Professor Woodson)
• UB enrolls 5,000 students and 1,700 FTE’s; those figures would increase if Summer session were more actively promoted (Provost Headrick)
• most faculty have nine month appointments; spreading the teaching load over twelve months would raise union issues; teaching two out of the three possible semesters might be more workable (Professor Wooldridge)
• in small departments arranging schedules to provide adequate coverage, especially for graduate students, would be difficult over a twelve month period (Professor Hyde)
• increased Summer enrollment might support additional faculty (Provost Headrick)
• Summer enrollment for some Schools will not be attractive; for example in Engineering students use the Summer to get work experience (Professor Sridhar)
• seek faculty who will volunteer for Summer teaching; don’t impose it by administrative fiat (Professor Wooldridge)
• for the Graduate School of Education this would be an important change since teachers form a natural student body for the School; if UB doesn’t offer an attractive Summer program, prospective students will just go to local competitors (Professor Malave)
• will the State fund Summer programs? (Dr. Cole)
• Albany will be difficult to convince and will look at SUNY Binghamton’s success with its Summer program (Professor Baumer)

The Provost then turned to Millard Fillmore College. MFC has been losing enrollment precipitously, and UB has struggled with defining MFC’s mission. One approach would be to do away with the distinction between day and night programs. Departments could offer regular courses whenever students wanted them. MFC could be incorporated into the College of Arts and Sciences to serve its non-traditional student clientele with both day and night classes.

President Greiner added that MFC would continue to exist and would be located with a Dean and faculty who have the most interest in and affinity for MFC programs. Engineering and Management would run their own programs for non-traditional students. MFC would be the specialist in distance learning but might partner with other Schools who wanted to mount their own distance learning courses.

The Chair asked for comments from the floor:

• MFC should not be coupled with the College of Arts and Sciences but should be encouraged to aggressively pursue continuing education programs; Management and Engineering have not been entrepreneurial in response to community demands for courses, but MFC has (Professor Baier)
• some of the fall off in MFC enrollment may be caused by School’s offering classes under their own aegis which in the past have been treated as MFC classes (Professor Sridhar)
• MFC should continue to focus on traditional degrees; the entrepreneurial side should be a separate entity focusing on certificate programs, etc. (President Greiner)
• seems more natural to have MFC as separate, transdecanal entity rather than a component of the College of Arts and Sciences, especially if MFC is to be the distance learning specialist (Professor Schack)
• UB needs to more aggressively market its non-traditional programs (Professor Schuel)
• rather than marketing a single program like MFC, UB needs to do a much better job of selling itself in toto (President Greiner)

The Provost announced that the interim appointment of John Wright As Dean of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences has been made permanent at the request of Vice President for Health Affairs Bernardino. Dean Wright’s appointment will preserve continuity during the major restructuring of the School’s practice plan and in negotiations with the hospitals. Professor Boot protested the appointment of such a senior University official without an affirmative action search and without proper procedures. He asserted that there is pattern of such high level hirings without affirmative action searches and that it sets a bad example for the rest of the University. The Provost denied that there is such a pattern and pointed to the recruitment of the Deans of Management, Education, Social Work and the College of Arts and Sciences. The President added that Dean Wright’s appointment without an affirmative action search is an exception to the rule, and that Dean Wright’s appointment is in the best interest of the University and the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. A full scale search could take about three years and the pressure on Vice President Bernardino is too intense to wait that long.

 

Item 5: Talloires Declaration

Professor Welch introduced the Talloires Declaration, drafted in 1990 by the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future. Signatories to the Declaration pledge to take a leadership role with respect to environmental protection by undertaking a series of actions with their curricula, research and outreach. President Greiner has already received advice on signing the Declaration from the Professional Staff Senate, the Student Association and from the Environmental Task Force. It would be appropriate for the Faculty Senate to also offer its advice. President Greiner noted that he would be prepared to sign the Declaration on behalf of the University, having received wide-spread endorsement from many constituencies on campus. The Chair will schedule a first reading of the Declaration at the October 13 Faculty Senate.

 

Item 6: Charging the Faculty Senate Research and Creative Activity Committee

The Chair introduced Professor Baier, Chair of the Faculty Senate Research and Creative Activity Committee, Associate Vice Provost for Research O. T. Beachley and Joseph Cusker, Executive Assistant to the Vice Provost for Research. The Chair asked Professor Baier to discuss issues arising from the Hay Committee Report that would be appropriate for the Research and Creative Activity Committee to consider.

Professor Baier began by talking about indirect cost recovery(IDS) funds. For the last four to five years, UB has been flat in generating IDS monies (at about $15 million.); for FY 1998, however, the forecast projects a $1 million shortfall from FY 1997. As a consequence, the University will have to subsidize its research and creative activity accounts by about $229,6xx, whereas in FY 1997 the General University Financial Plan received about $890,000 of IDS monies. In relation to the Hay Committee report, Professor Baier pointed out that from a total take of $12 million, only $820,xxx is budgeted for organized research units. The Research and Creative Activity Committee could be charged to look at whether the distribution of investment can be adjusted to enhance our scholarship and productivity.

There were comments from the floor:

• how does UB’s distribution of IDS funds compare with sister institutions? (Professor Harwitz)
• the Research and Creative Activity Committee was unable to get distribution figures; could only get amount of IDS generated (Professor Baier)
• Stony Brook uses its IDS monies to fund activities that UB supports from state funds, being further ahead in its shift from hard to soft money budgeting; RF money has different spending constraints than do other funds available to the University, so historically some of the RF money has been spent in ways other than direct support of research; however, UB has also historically supported research with other than RF funds, for example funding for set ups, funds to retain faculty who are being recruited by other institutions, funds for rehab of facilities, etc.; rather than looking exclusively at how IDS funds are distributed, it would be more meaningful to look at the total funding package for research and creative activity at UB (Provost Headrick)
• why is the total of IDS dropping? (Professor Baier)
• UB is submitting more proposals, but getting fewer and smaller hits (Provost Headrick)
• UB applications to the National Institutes of Health have been coming up short although NIH funding is increasing; focused new management in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences may improve this (Professor Baier)
• UB’s high indirect cost rate is a problem with funding agencies other than NIH and NSF; consider lowering or being more flexible with the indirect cost rate (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• perhaps decentralizing to the Schools responsibility for indirect cost rates and indirect cost waivers would be good (Provost Headrick)
• is UB applying in well funded areas? (Professor Schack)
• Dr. Landi’s analysis is that we are putting in the same number of applications but for smaller amounts and in untargeted areas; the Office of Sponsored Research has not done a good job in helping faculty find where the money is (Professor Baier)
• what is SUNY’s take from IDS; at other institutions what percentage of overhead money is being invested in faculty to make them more competitive? (Professor Schuel)
• SUNY takes 11.9% of IDS monies (Professor Baier)
• UB is not supporting and teaching faculty how to apply for grants; the bureaucracy of Sponsored Programs impedes long nurtured relationships between principal investigators and sponsors which are very important to consistently getting grants (Professor Malave)
• it is important that departments have seed money available to support initial research because sponsors are increasingly requiring pilot projects to demonstrate a project’s feasibility before they will fund it. (Professor Wooldridge)
• University is spending over $300,000 a year on pilot grants (Provost Headrick)
• the University has not done a good job of technology transfer marketing or of licensing patents; there is potential in this area to generate revenues (Professor Sridhar)
• UB is upgrading these areas (Provost Headrick)
• IDS money comes with no restrictions on use and may be the only source of funding available to the administration for certain difficult projects; funding for pilot projects ,etc., does not have to come from IDS money, but may come from state operating funds, so argue to change overall priorities to funnel more state money into support for research; federal sponsors by law can not refuse to fund a project because of high overhead costs, but privates may do so (Professor Baumer)
• research is much more contract oriented with precise goals of questionable academic value and UB may not want to embrace the Calspan culture (Professor Smith)
• is it still University policy to accept grants with little or no overhead when a private/industrial sponsor refuses to pay overhead? (Professor )
• UB is flexible (Associate Vice President for Research Beachley)
• best way to educate oneself on grant writing is to be a grant reader; UB needs to be more aggressive in supporting faculty in learning how to apply for grants (Professor Malave)
• small pilot projects are no longer sufficient to win major grants; there needs to be a substantial paper trail on the topic before large grants are obtainable, so UB must be prepared to invest significant funds in this preliminary process (Professor Schuel)
• UB has overvalued getting grants without reference to the quality of the research being required by the grant; we should encourage faculty to follow their own research and self interest will lead them to find funding sources (Professor Schack)

Professor Baier found the discussion helpful in focusing his Committee’s future work. The Chair asked for a preliminary report from the Committee in February.

 

Item 7: Approval of the Agenda for the Faculty Senate Meeting of October 13, 1998

The Agenda was approved.

 

Item 8: Old/new business

There was no old/new business.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 PM.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Marilyn M. Kramer

Secretary of the Faculty Senate

 

 

Present: Chair: Peter Nickerson

Secretary: Marilyn Kramer

Arts & Letters: Martha Hyde

Dental Medicine: Robert Baier

Engineering & Applied Sciences: Ramalingam Sridhar

Graduate School of Education: Lilliam Malave

Health Related Professions: Judith Tamburlin

Information & Library Studies: George D’Elia

Law: Louis Swartz

Management: John Boot

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: Boris Albini, Herbert Schuel, Cedric Smith

Natural Sciences & Mathematics: Melvyn Churchill, Samuel Schack

Nursing: Powhatan Wooldridge

Pharmacy: Nathan

Social Sciences: William Baumer, Mitchell Harwitz

SUNY Senators: Judith Adams-Volpe, John Fisher, Dennis Malone, Claude Welch

University Libraries: Dorothy Woodson

Ex-Officio: Robert Hoeing

 

 

University Officers:

William Greiner, President

Thomas Headrick, Provost

 

 

Guests: O.T. Beachley, Assoicate Vice President for Research Joseph Cusker, Executive Assistant to the Vice President for Research

Christopher Connolly, Pre-Professional Special Interest Housing

William Coles, Chair, Professional Staff Senate

Sue Wuetcher, Reporter

Margaret Acara, Chair, Faculty Senate Promotions and Tenure Committee

William Fischer, Vice Provost

Kenneth Levy, Senior Vice Provost

 

Absent: Architecture & Planning: Shahin Vassigh

 

© Copyright University at Buffalo Faculty Senate | UB Home | Accessibility | Legal Notices | Website Acknowledgements