FACULTY SENATE
Minutes of January 26, 1999 - (approved)
E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

The Faculty Senate met at 2:00 PM on January 26, 1999 in the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:

1. Approval of the Minutes of December 8, 1998
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report of the Elections Committee
4. Report of the President/Provost
5. Second reading of two resolutions related to the issue of the Department of Statistics
6. Guided discussion on the Hay Report on Centers and Institutes
7. Old/new business

Item 1: Report of the Chair

The Chair added the following comments to his written report which was distributed with the agenda:

• UB’s Mission Review document is overdue to SUNY; the Academic Policy and Programming Committee is reviewing the document; Faculty Senate discussion will likely be scheduled for the Senate meeting of February 23 by which date the document may have already been sent to SUNY
• there will shortly be a call for nominations for honorary degrees; to be eligible one must not have received any other honorary degrees from SUNY and should have some connection with UB; nominations are due on March 19
• the Chair asked Professor Adams-Volpe to comment on the rank of Distinguished Librarian. She noted that the establishment of the rank of Distinguished Librarian makes SUNY a leader in fostering the highest potential of faculty status for librarians in academe. Candidates for the rank must have made contributions national or international in scope and transformational in impact and have held the rank of Librarian for at least five years. The addition of this rank will stimulate the development of SUNY librarians

Item 2: Approval of the Minutes of December 8, 1998

Professor Swartz questioned the accuracy of the Minutes in attributing to Provost Headrick the following statement: "Decision making authority and responsibility should be shifted more to the Schools and Departments..." His recollection of the Provost’s remarks was that authority would be devolved to the Deans, not to Schools and Departments. Subject to the Secretary’s checking the audio tape of the Provost’s remarks, the Minutes of December 8, 1998 were approved. (Following the meeting the Secretary listened to the Provost’s remarks and verified the accuracy of the Minutes.)

Item 3: Report of the Elections Committee

Professor Kramer announced that the nomination process for the 1999-2001 term of Chair of Faculty Senate had produced one candidate, Professor Nickerson. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee drafted a resolution for Faculty Senate adoption, directing the Secretary of the Faculty Senate to cast one vote for Professor Nickerson. The resolution, having been moved and seconded passed unanimously. There was congratulatory applause for Professor Nickerson.

Item 4: Report of the President/Provost

There was no report from the President/Provost.

Item 5: Second reading of two resolutions related to the issue of the Department of Statistics

The Chair set the stage, reminding Senators that Professor Boot introduced two resolutions related to the issue of the Department of Statistics at the December 8, 1998 Faculty Senate meeting. The first resolution’s last paragraph reads: "Be it stated that any and all aspersions cast on Dr. Guttman’s tenure as Department Chair from 1993 to 1998 are an outrageous assault on the truth." The second resolution says: "therefore the faculty, speaking via the voice of the Faculty Senate, censures the administration for not following their own rules and the system-wide prescribed rules pertaining to the actions taken; censures the administration for its brazen disregard of input via established faculty governance councils, and censures the administration for the actual steps taken..." Professor Densmore, Archivist of the University, could find no evidence on any prior Faculty Senate motions of censure; such a censure motion is a very serious step.

The Chair noted that the discussion at the first reading of the resolutions was mostly favorable to the resolutions. To give balance to today’s deliberations, the Chair invited Vice Provost Goodman, an ex-officio member of the Senate, to speak against the resolutions.

Professor Goodman made the following points:

• will not address the first resolution, only the second
• a motion of censure will result in negative national, state-wide and local attention which will injure the University
• the resolution’s use of the term "the administration" is a rhetorical device that allows blame to be assigned in the abstract without the naming of individuals whose contributions to the University can thus be ignored
• the resolution states that the decision to fold the Statistics Department into the SPM Department was made de facto in 1995; to the contrary the Provost in a letter to the Vice Provost and the Dean of the Graduate School dated January 27, 1998 asks that a group be put together to consider "a new structure to insure the continuity of statistics teaching and research, an institute or similar multi-school, multi-departmental structure...." Although they were ultimately not adopted, in the Winter of 1998 there were discussions of these possibilities in which Professor Guttman participated
• the resolution states that the Ph.D. program in statistics has been deactivated; to the contrary the Ph.D. program has been temporarily suspended which is an action taken at the University level and which precedes the next two steps of deactivation and discontinuance of a program which require the involvement of Albany
• the resolution states "there has been no input from the faculty, speaking via the Faculty Senate governance channels, into these decisions despite the ample time available since 1995 to solicit such input"; however, it is pre-eminently the prerogative of the Chair of the Faculty Senate to decide what issues and when are considered by the Faculty Senate; the Provost’s letter cited above was copied to the Chair as were all other significant documents in the Statistics Department dossier; furthermore the Chair served on the most recent committee which considered the issue of the Department of Statistics and (although there is controversy as to whether Professor Nickerson was serving in his role as Chair of the Faculty Senate or as a member of the Medical School faculty) he made sure that the committee consulted with the Department’s faculty and with Professor Guttman, doing all the things a reasonable Chair of the Faculty Senate would do; it is ludicrous to censure the administration for the failure of the Chair to bring a matter, on which he was adequately informed, to the Faculty Senate for a vote
• the resolution lists a variety of factors which it claims were not considered in making the decision; to the contrary, the decision was made only after extensive study of those factors and more
• the resolution states that the administration did not follow "their own rules and the system-wide prescribed rules pertaining to the action taken"; assuming the reference is to the document Process for Temporary Suspension of Admissions, Deactivation and Discontinuance of a Degree Program, the process followed is in substantial compliance with those rules; for example the rules require that the Faculty Senate be notified ten months before the temporary suspension of a program, whereas, assuming that notice to the Faculty Senate is satisfied by notice to the Chair of the Faculty Senate, the Senate was notified eight months before the suspension
• agree with the resolution that is not desirable to lack a significant presence of statistics, but to preserve the luster of the University it is necessary to give scarce resources to areas that have the greatest chance of success
• the censure motion is unnecessary since the Faculty Senate has already expressed itself in the resolution adopted at the last Senate meeting that declared the Senate’s "extreme displeasure...that proper Charter procedures...were not followed"
• if the Senate disagrees with the content of the decision on the Department of Statistics, pass a resolution recommending another course of action rather than a resolution of censure

The Chair asked Professor Boot to speak in favor of his resolutions. Professor Boot, focusing on his first motion concerning Professor Guttman, made the following points:

• resolution necessary to redress the slights of omission and the slurs of commission suffered by Professor Guttman
• the administration asked that this resolution be considered non-debatable and am willing to accept that restriction, but would like Senators to comment on the resolution before voting
• hope for a unanimous vote supporting Professor Guttman

There were comments from the floor:

• who asked that this resolution be non-debatable? (Professor Malone
• urge you to comment on the motion if you so wish (Professor Boot)
• have no problem with recognizing Professor Guttman as a fine scholar deserving gratitude for his service during very troubled times; however, not willing to say that documents malign him without reading the documents so will abstain from voting on this resolution (Professor Malone)
• resolution speaks to "any and all aspersions cast;" it does not assert that there were aspersions (Professor Schack)

Professor Baumer moved (seconded) to table the resolution. Professor Malone suggested that a more effective motion would be to postpone indefinitely. The Chair then ruled the motion to table the resolution out of order, and Professor Malone’s resolution to postpone indefinitely was seconded. There were comments from the floor:

• have seen the documents in question and support the resolution (Professor Albini)
• resolution asks us to make a statement on facts we don’t have; postponing the vote till evidence is available is appropriate (Professor Bisson)
• Professor Guttman has been extremely let down by UB; an expression of appreciation and respect by the Faculty Senate is the minimum we can do to redress this (Professor Schack)
• if the motion to postpone fails, Professor Schack should move to amend the resolution to simply express appreciation and respect (Professor Swartz)
• the resolution throws aspersions into the air in the expectation that they will stick on somebody not named who can not, therefore defend against the aspersions (Professor Baumer)
• the report contains slights of omission (never naming Professor Guttman but referring to him impersonally as the Chair) and slights of commission (saying he is not an agent for change) (Professor Boot)

The motion to postpone indefinitely passed.

Professor Boot then spoke to the second resolution making the following points:

• in rebuttal to the timeline offered by Vice Provost Goodman for when the decision to shut down admissions to the Statistics program was made, the shut down occurred before Professor Nickerson joined the review committee
• the resolution is needed because the administration has made no expressions of regret, and also it will provide a paper trail
• the net harvest from the six Department of Statistics lines vacated is one assistant professor of biostatistics in SPM who alone cannot be the "vibrant unit" described to SUNY-Central by our administration in its description of the new structure for Statistics and one full time person without a terminal degree in statistics who covers the undergraduate teaching load
• Provost Headrick proposed adding four additional biostatisticians to the biostatistics unit, but there are no resources to fund these additional lines
• he also proposed that the biostatistics group be responsible for a professional masters degree in statistics, for specific undergraduate statistics courses and for a statistical consulting laboratory, but that is precisely what the Department of Statistics did (and did well) before it was shelved
• undergraduate education in statistics has been fatally stabbed and graduate education in many fields has been severely handicapped

The Chair called for further discussion of the second resolution:

• Vice Provost Goodman made repeated comments about the conduct of the Chair of Faculty Senate; would the Chair step out of his role and respond to those comments? (Professor Schack)
• this experience makes clear that when and how the Faculty Senate plays its role in advising the administration on academic restructuring is not a settled matter; believed service on Triggle II Committee was as a faculty member of the School of Medicine having expertise in the matter from service on the Medical School’s committee which reviewed the issue of the Statistics Department; difficult to know when the matter was ripe for Faculty Senate discussion and how to ensure an informed discussion of a complex question; have some blame to bear but don’t know what would have done differently (Professor Nickerson)
• Vice Provost Goodman says the Chair was notified of the suspension of the statistics program 8 months before the suspension was effective; is that accurate (Professor Bisson)
• don’t remember without going to look at the correspondence (Professor Nickerson)
• there is a letter to Dean Triggle from Provost Headrick which announces the decision to suspend admissions to the statistics program, is dated January 27, 1998 and is copied to many people, including Peter Nickerson; the effective date of the suspension was September 1998, so the Chair, though not participating in the decision making, was informed of it eight months prior to the effective date of the suspension; not blaming the Chair since the role of the Chair is to make sure the rights of the faculty are respected and Peter did so; 99 % of undergraduate statistics teaching is done in Statistics 119, 111 and 112 at a pre-calculus level so it is not inappropriate for that teaching to be done by someone without a terminal degree in statistics; that was the situation under Professor Guttman also (Vice Provost Goodman)
• the resolution should name the responsible parties, not just charge "the administration"; Provost Triggle urges us to rewrite the resolution, naming names who can then respond to the charges; would suggest naming Dean Naughton and Provost Headrick as the culpable parties, demand that they retire, and since they already have done so, we can declare victory (Professor Malone)

Professor Baumer moved (seconded) that we return the resolution to the FSEC for reformulation. There was discussion of the motion:

• normal usage allows "the administration" to be censured; want to censure acts of omission (not speaking up) as well as acts of commission so not limiting the motion of censure to a few named persons is appropriate (Professor Boot)
• censure means both that the decision was in error and that the person making the decision was in error; a motion of censure should, therefore, name the person; if the thrust of the resolution is only that we disagree with the decision made, the resolution needs to be reformulated to condemn the decision and perhaps the process (Professor Baumer)
• departmental reorganizations are resource shifts, having nothing to do with the discipline itself; disagree with giving scarce resources to athletics at the expense of academics; the resources of the Department of Statistics were diverted to the Department of SPM in part because the administration was trying to keep the Chair of SPM who had an outside offer; need separate budget to meet these offers so the priorities of the University don’t get twisted around; if Dean Naughton had been reviewed by his faculty this situation wouldn’t have developed (Professor Doyno)
• oppose sending the resolution to FSEC since the Faculty Senate is part of the problem; we have learned the lesson that the Senate must not wait to be asked to investigate but must be more pro-active (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• the arguments in favor of the resolution all depend on the resolution not meaning what is seems to say; the only alternative to killing the resolution is to send it to FSEC for redrafting (Professor Harwitz)
• "the administration" is a well defined entity which is responsible for major decision making; if disagree with a decision, it is appropriate to cite to the administration (Professor Schack)
• it is clear what is meant by "the administration;" the important step of bringing a plan for reorganization to the Faculty Senate was omitted by whomever was in charge (Professor Albini)
• can’t keep silent when hear a member of the faculty speak about censuring an idea because that is not an acceptable statement at this University; the discussion today should be about process and collegiality and have spoken to FSEC about how they were wounded in the handling of the Statistics Department matter, but keep in mind this is a twenty year saga; it would be shameful for the Senate to fob aside Provost Triggle’s request for a resolution naming names that would enable him to address the Senate on this issue (President Greiner)

The motion to return the resolution of censure to FSEC for redrafting carried.

Professor Welch suggested that the President be next on the agenda. The Chair said he wished to move expeditiously to the Hay Report because of the presence of several guests invited to speak on Centers and Institutes. The President left the meeting.

Item 6: Guided discussion on the Hay Report on Centers and Institutes

The Chair noted that he had promised Provost Headrick that the Faculty Senate would discuss the Hay Report by the end of the Fall Semester, and we’re running late on that promise. The Research and Creative Activity Committee, the Tenure and Privileges Committee, and the Educational Policies and Programs Committee have looked at the Hay Report and raised a number of issues. The Chair then asked Professor Oak to say a few words about the Report.

Professor Oak highlighted some of the concerns of the Committee on Interdisciplinary Structures. While interdisciplinary activities are critical to UB’s future, they should not diminish disciplinary activities. Different grounds of faculty and the pooling skills and talents are the hallmarks of interdisciplinary activity, not the crossing of decanal units. Faculty should continue to hold appointments in academic departments, while staff could be appointed to interdisciplinary units. Funding and recognition of an interdisciplinary structure should reflect its intellectual worth and institutional value and not its ability to generate income. It is necessary to invest not just in the structure of an interdisciplinary unit, but also in its leadership. At present evaluation is targeted at the interdisciplinary units, but for interdisciplinary activity to flourish, administrative decision makers must also be held accountable for their success in fostering interdisciplinary activity. The first recommendation of the Committee was that the University take an inventory of existing interdisciplinary activity since we don’t know what we already have.

The Chair, noting that the Senate committees found it helpful to hear the voice of the Senate, asked for comments from the floor:

• highly appropriate for the faculty to know specifically how accountability of interdisciplinary units has been handled in the past and then to have a discussion of the policy for the future (Professor Swartz)
• the Environment and Society Institute has a Director and a Steering Committee which exercises control over policy issues; the Director reports to the Vice President for Graduate Education and Research; the Institute has been authorized for three years and will undergo review in the middle of the third year for further authorization; there were three years of prior negotiation for authorization to form the Institute, and the Institute underwent outside review; the Director is paid to devote a quarter of his time to the Institute, there is a half time administrative assistant, and other members operate on good will (Professor Meidinger)
• have run the Toxicology Center for ten years; in order to make the departments comfortable with having faculty do interdisciplinary work it is important that academic departments keep credit for all the work of their faculty, including interdisciplinary work; there is an organizational barrier to this in that can’t count the same dollars both in the center and in the department; important that centers arise from the interest of the faculty rather than administratively establishing a center and then trying to interest faculty in it (Professor Kostyniak)
• the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender took ten to fifteen years to establish and arose from faculty interest; the Institute has a three year sunset provision, though it is unclear how the Institute will be evaluated at the end of the three years; the Faculty Tenure and Privileges Committee has been considering problems of appointment and promotion related to the multi-disciplinary units; contributions to a center should be adequately documented in a promotion dossier (Professor Arcara)
• speaking as Chair of the Research and Creative Activity Committee, the Hay Report seems to preach status quo; it affirms that interdisciplinary units are important to the University, but faculty appointment, promotion and tenure remain in the departments, no new resources are allocated, institutional problems about credit sharing and resource sharing are ignored, and all the problems remain on the table; the best thing about centers and institutes is their flexibility, but to the extent that faculty demand entitlements the flexibility diminishes; speaking about own experience in a center, the Surface Science Center had a three year authorization with a mandate to get outside funding for future support within the three years; the Center was successful and is now in its eleventh year and hoping to continue to survive; the Center tries not to attract the attention of University administrators who might threaten the Center’s flexibility; the University rule that requires a group to be cross decanal in order to be recognized as an organized research unit is violated every day (Professor Baier)
• the University needs to improve its Directory so that outsiders could find the Centers and Institutes; organized research units are each going to have different concerns; for example the Research Institute on Alcoholism is state funded and has to comply with state rules and regulations (Professor Smith)
• wasn’t attempting to down play the importance of accountability; the reality is that organized research units get evaluated more frequently than is recognized; the Hay Report does make recommendations for change; for example, the Report recommends increased resources for organized research units while recognizing that it is a zero sum game in which some centers will have to be sunsetted in order for more distinguished centers to be adequately funded; Responsibility Centered Management seems counter to the ethos of interdisciplinary activity and that was of concern to the Hay committee; the Report does recommend that organized research units should not be required to be interdecanal in order to be recognized; the Report outlines a scheme for crediting that would allow the "green sheets" to reflect the fostering of research that the Centers do but for which they are not credited (Professor Oak)
• 175 faculty members voluntarily affiliated with the Environment and Society Institute; need to turn that potential into projects and action; the Institute’s evaluation criteria were negotiated and explicitly stated; they include a measure of expanded research activity attributable to the Institute but do not include any commitment to dollars generated; the Hay Report uses terms like "clear academic advantage," "intellectual rather than fiscal contribution" and "institutional value," as evaluation criteria, but the meaning of those terms will have to be worked out as centers and institutes are evaluated (Professor Meidinger)
• Resource Centered Management seems to be regarded by many faculty as something which will hinder interdisciplinary activities by devaluing altruism and fostering selfishness; there is something wrong with the basic idea, but we regard it as something we can do nothing about (Professor Swartz)

The Chair thanked the participants in the discussion for giving the Senate a good view of the reality of organized research units and of issues the Senate needs to follow up on.

Item 7: Old/new business: Guidance for SUNY Senators on the issue of General Education

The SUNY Board of Trustees adopted a required general education curriculum at its December meeting. There will, undoubtedly, be discussion of the requirement at the February meeting of the SUNY Senate, and our SUNY Senators have asked for our advice.

There were comments from the floor:

• there will almost certainly be a motion of no confidence in the Board of Trustees at the next SUNY Senate meeting; it is not clear from the document released by the Board exactly how many courses are required but the Board is encumbering roughly thirty credit hours; for programs with rigorous requirements of their own, this will be a problem; furthermore, the curriculum is dated in content; the Board relies on letters from SUNY faculty who are members of an organization called the National Association of Scholars to satisfy the need for faculty consultation; twenty one faculty were listed for UB, but upon follow up, one seems not to exist, two are not involved with undergraduate education, six are retired, and the remaining nine are in the same department; would like a sense of the Senate on how to vote if there is a motion of no confidence (Professor Malone)
• Policies of the Board of Trustees states that faculty are in charge of curriculum and that there must be consultation with faculty of matters of curriculum (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• the talk at the UUP Delegate Assembly was that neither Vince Aceto, Chair of the SUNY Senate, nor any other official of the Senate was consulted; the SUNY Senate’s Undergraduate Academic Programs and Policies Committee was not consulted; SUNY Central Administration was not consulted; the Chancellor was shown the document but was not permitted to make any changes; the document was put together by a subcommittee of the Committee on Undergraduate Education, but the subcommittee bypassed its parent committee and went directly to the Chancellor with the report; the Trustees were required to vote on the document with no prior discussion; urge the Senators to support a motion of no confidence; unfortunate that FSEC passed a resolution that praised the consultative efforts of the Trustees (Professor Meacham)
• FSEC wrote its resolution in the belief that the SUNY Senate’s own records confirmed there had been a number of meetings on the issue of undergraduate curriculum; the FSEC resolution expressed regret that there had been no consultation on the text adopted by the Board of Trustees; know some of the signatories to the National Association of Scholars letter, and they did not anticipate the use to which the letter was put (Professor Baumer)
• the SUNY Senate should produce a carefully crafted response to the Board’s action which will be effective in influencing its intended audience (Professor Swartz)
• the Board of Trustees has already made up its mind on this issue and is not otherwise persuadable; even more disturbing than the adoption of the curriculum is the fact that the SUNY Central Administration will design a test to see whether we have taught the curriculum the way they wanted us to teach it, and using RAM they will be able to do performance funding; that is a real threat to academic freedom; hear the sense of the Senate not to support a motion of no confidence (Professor Malone)

The Chair asked for any other old/new business. He then said he would apologize to President Greiner for not allowing the President to give his report out of agenda sequence. The Senators urged him not to do so. Professor Easley said that to the contrary it would be more appropriate for the President to apologize to the Chair.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 PM.

Respectfully submitted

Marilyn M. Kramer

Secretary of Faculty Senate

Present:
Chair: P. Nickerson
Secretary: M. Kramer
Architecture & Planning: H. Hata
Arts & Letters: M. Frisch, J. Ludwig, M. Wickert, B. Ault, F. Pellicone
Dental Medicine: R. Baier, M. Easley, M. Neiders
Engineering & Applied Sciences: D. Benenson, R. Barnes, S. Mohan, R. Sridhar
Graduate School of Education: B. Johnstone, L. Klenk, T. Schroeder
Health Related Professions: L. Gosselin, S. Nochajski, J. Tamburlin
Law: L. Swartz
Management: J. Boot, J. Newman, C. Pegels, R. Ramesh
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: B. Albini, E. Fine, W. Flynn, S. Gallant, B. Noble, S. Rudin, F. Schimpfhauser, D. Swartz, C. Smith, S. Spurgeon, B. Willer, J. Yates, A. Vladutiu
Natural Sciences & Mathematics: M. Bisson, S. Bruckenstein, M. Churchill, M. Cowen, J. Faran, M. Ram, K. Regan, S. Schack
Nursing: J. Thompson
Pharmacy: T. Kalman, R. Madejski
Social Sciences: W. Baumer, H. Calkins, L. Dryden, M. Harwitz, P. Luce, J. Meacham, S. Singer, B. Smith, L. Vardi
SUNY Senators: J. Adams-Volpe, D. Malone, C. Welch
University Libraries: W. Hepfer, D. Woodson, M. Zubrow
University Officers: William Greiner, President
Guests:
N. Goodman, Vice Provost
M. Arcara, Chair, Committee on Faculty Tenure and Privileges
S. Wuechter, Reporter
E. Meidinger, Environment and Society Institute
P. Kostyniak, Toxicology Center
L. Oak, Hay Committee

Excused:
Arts & Letters: J. Holstun
Information & Library Studies: G. D’Elia
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: D. Amsterdam, A. Saltzman
SUNY Senators: J. Fisher

Absent:
Architecture & Planning: S. Vassigh
Arts & Letters: M. Hyde
Dental Medicine: G. Ferry, R. Hall
Engineering & Applied Sciences: S. Ahmad, R. Mayne
Graduate School of Engineering: C. Hosenfeld
Law: I. Marcuse
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: M. Alashari, S. Awner, J. DeBerry, S. Gallagher, S. Greenberg, A. Michalek, J. Sulewski, A. Wakhloo
Natural Sciences & Mathematics: J. Berry
Nursing: M. Johnson, P. Wooldridge
Social Sciences: J. Dewald, J. Lawler, E. Segal
University Libraries: C. Densmore, H. Booth

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