FACULTY SENATE
Minutes of March 1, 2005
(unapproved)
The Faculty Senate (FS) met at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1, 2005, at the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:
- Approval of the minutes of February 1, 2005
- Report of the Chair
- Report of the President/Provost
- UB’s Plan for Assessing General Education (update) – M. Ryan, P. Gold, C. Tutzauer
- Recent developments in the Law School
- Old/New business
- Adjournment
The minutes were approved as distributed.
Item 2: Report of the Chair
Chair Nickerson’s report included:
- Candidates for the Vice President for Research position are being interviewed. Input is important, and faculty are encouraged to participate in the open sessions.
- The Faculty Senate Executive Committee (FSEC) heard a proposal for reallocation of parking for freshmen. Starting this fall, resident freshmen will be restricted from prime lots until after 3:00 p.m. on weekdays. Shuttle service will be improved.
- The FSEC met with newly-appointed Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Education Bruce McCombe. He reported that his Office will be involved with Program Review and with formulating policies to enhance postdoctoral education at UB.
- The Graduate School Executive Committee (GSEC) is soliciting nominations for a committee that will work on appropriate protocols for full reviews of graduate programs and related undergraduate programs.
- The GSEC approved a revised policy on the composition of doctoral and masters committees. Doctoral committees now require a major professor and at least two additional committee members, who also must be members of the UB Graduate faculty. Masters committees require a major professor, who can be either a member or an associate member of the Graduate faculty.
- The proposal to grant two degrees and two diplomas (rather than a combined transcript and one diploma) at the completion of a dual-degree program was approved by the GSEC.
- The Director of University Libraries told FSEC that construction of a storage facility for selected low-use materials will be started soon. The facility is needed to relieve overcrowded conditions in collections that are currently at 105% capacity.
None
Item 4: UB’s Plan for Assessing General Education (update) – Michael Ryan, Peter Gold, Carol Tutzauer
Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education Michael Ryan provided a brief history of the circumstances and events leading up to UB’s Plan for the Assessment of General Education at the University at Buffalo. In 1998, the SUNY Trustees voted to institute a core General Education curriculum SUNY-wide. The General Education Assessment Review (GEAR) Group was eventually formed and issued guidelines in 2001. UB responded to the mandate by drafting and submitting a proposal in 2002. Although it was approved by the Faculty Senate, it wasn’t accepted by SUNY because there weren’t enough details.
Carol Tutzauer was hired to be UB’s Director of Assessment in 2004. She worked with Associate Dean of General Education Peter Gold and SUNY to develop a more detailed response, which was discussed and approved by the Faculty Senate Executive Committee (FSEC) in November. The Plan (available online with related documents at http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~tutzauer/Assessment/) was submitted to the GEAR Group in February. It’s currently under consideration, but we’re reasonably confident that the new version will be accepted.
The Plan allows instructors to use course-embedded activities as the basis for assessments. Whatever faculty are currently doing in their classes should suffice, so there are no additional requirements. Multiple-choice final exams work well because there will be items that relate to the broadly stated SUNY learning objectives. Term papers, projects, and performances can be used as well, because they are also evaluated according to a scoring system. That can also be used to show how students meet learning objectives.
Only an aggregate report of percentages of students who exceed, meet, approach, or do not meet the learning objectives will be reported to SUNY. There will be individualized reports for selected instructors, however, because the feed should be helpful. Data will come from a 20% sampling of classes. Criteria will be evaluated by discipline-based review panels.
It is unclear what SUNY will do with the data that it gathers from the campuses. We except that UB will fare well with regard to learning outcomes, but comparisons to other schools will be avoided. The process shouldn’t be viewed as a competition between SUNY schools, because no one wants to embarrass the SUNY system or selected campuses.
Item 5: Recent developments in the Law School – Nils Olsen
Dean Nils Olsen focused his Law School update on two aspects: interdisciplinary programs and service teaching. Of the 57 full-time faculty, over half have additional graduate degrees apart from legal studies. There’s a 13.5:1 student-to-faculty ratio, which compares favorably to other law schools nationally.
The many adjunct instructors who teach one or two courses annually don’t displace or replace full-time faculty; rather, they free up time for them to be involved in other activities.
A new curriculum has been implemented, and around 100 courses are now being offered. Service teaching through legal clinics is a unique approach because it focuses on transactional representation of groups instead of litigation. At UB, students are provisionally licensed to practice law under faculty supervision in areas such as affordable housing, economic development, family violence, senior citizens, securities law, educational law, and environmental law.
The Law School currently offers a JD degree and combined master’s degrees with business administration, economics, social work, public health, and library science. Dual-degree programs combining law and urban planning or pharmacy are being planned. A doctoral degree in legal studies is also under consideration.
There are 750 students in the Law School. Recent years have seen an increase in the number of applicants and, subsequently, higher LSAT scores. More out-of-state (19%) and international (6%) students are now enrolling at UB.
Item 6: Old/New business
None
Item 7: Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Will Hepfer
Secretary of the Faculty Senate
ATTENDANCE (P = present; A = absent; E = excused)
Chair – P. Nickerson
Secretary – W. Hepfer
Parliamentarian – W. Baumer
Architecture & Planning – GS Danford (P), K. Mackay (P)
Arts & Sciences – R. Allen-King (P), S. Bennett (P), S. Bruckenstein (A), J. Buscaglia (P), M. Chen (E), M. Churchill (P), M. Detty (A), L. Dryden (P), D. Eddins (A), J. Faran (P), A. Graves (P), T. Gregg (A), R. Hoeing (A), C. Lamb (P), M. Lichtel (P), A. Markelz (A), N. Matthews (A), P. McDevitt (P), J. Mendoza (P), A. Monteiro (A), J. Pappas (A), S. Rothenberg (E), S. Schack (P), D. Street (P), K. Takeuchi (A), J-C Thill (A), T. Thurston (A), G. Timler (P), P. Vanouse (A), D. Wackeroth (A), R. Woodard (P), J. Yu (A)
Dental Medicine – P. Bradford (A), M. Donley (E), E. Pantera (A), J. Zambon (P)
Education – J. Hoot (A), X. Liu (P), L. Malave (A), T. Schroeder (P)
Engineering & Applied Sciences – C. Basaran (A), A. Bisantz (P), S. Chen (A), J. Crussides (P), J. Jensen (P), P. Lin (P), A. Reinhorn (A)
Informatics – J. Ellison (A)
Institutional General – O. Mixon (A)
Law – D. Filvaroff (A), R. Reis (A), L. Swartz (A)
Management – J. Boot (E), S. Gunn (P), C. Pegels (P), N. Suresh (P)
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences – D. Amsterdam (E), F. Baddoura (A), C. Cohan (P), M. Dryjski (A), J. Evans (A), J. Figueroa (A), E. Fine (E), W. Flynn (A), J. Gibbs (A), H. Hameer (A), L. Harris (E), J. Hassett (E), D. Holmes (A), T. Langan (A), V. Li (A), F. Loghmanee (A), A. Manyon (P), N. Miele (E), A. Posner (E), J. Sauret (P), J. Sellick (A), R. Stephan (A), G. Sufrin (A), F. Velazquez (A), B. Weinstock-Guttman (P)
Nursing – P. McCartney (A), P. Wooldridge (E)
Pharmacy – K. Boje (A), G. Brazeau (A)
Public Health & Health Professions – C. Crespo (A), G. Farkas (P)
Social Work – B. Rittner (A)
SUNY Senators – W. Baumer (P), W. Coles (P), M. Kramer (P), P. Nickerson (P)
University Libraries – J. Adams-Volpe (P), HA Booth (E), S. Davis (P), C. Tysick (P)
Guests – P. Balzano (Student Assn.), M. Cochrane (Reporter), P. Gold (CAS), L. Labinski (Professional Staff Senate), L. Meister (Student Assn.), M. Ryan (VPUE), C. Tutzauer (VPUE), S. Yiu (Student Assn.)