FACULTY SENATE
Minutes of March 13, 2001 - (approved)
E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

The Senate met at 2:00 PM on March 13, 2001 in the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:

1. Approval of the minutes of February 6, 2001
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report of the President/Provost
4. What’s new in the School of Nursing - Associate Dean Karen Radke
5. Second reading - Faculty Senate Grading Committee’s recommendation on the Fresh Start Policy - Professor William Baumer, Chair
6. Classroom Quality - Professor Joseph Zambon, Chair, Committee on Classroom Quality and Attributes, Mark Greenfield, Web Development Manager, CIT
7. Old/new business

Item 1: Approval of the minutes of February 6, 2001

The minutes of February 6, 2001 were approved.

Item 2: Report of the Chair

The Chair’s written report was distributed with the agenda.  He requested:

1. an update from the Elections Committee
• Professor Michael Cohen was elected the 2001/2003 Chair of the Faculty Senate; Professor Judith Adams-Volpe was elected to a second term as SUNY Senator (Professor Kramer)
• it is an honor to be elected Chair; look forward to getting to know the Senators; having read the Bylaws, the Charter, the Senate’s Resolutions and the minutes, am impressed that the advice of the Senate is solicited on such a wide range of University matters; hope to be an active Chair (Professor Cohen)
• will assist in the transition (Professor Nickerson)
2. that faculty consider nominating themselves for membership on the University Faculty Senate’s Standing Committees
3. that Professor Mollendorf, Chair of the Faculty Senate Research and Creative Activity Committee, report on the Committee’s survey
• survey asks what is on the minds of faculty regarding research and creative activity at UB; 242 responses have been received to date; there is still time to respond (Professor Mollendorf)

Item 3: Report of the Provost

    Having recently been told that her lawn sprinkler system would not be turned on until May 5, the Provost rhetorically asked Senators the question universally pondered in Western New York in March.  She wondered when Spring would come.
    She reported that the search for a Dean for the College of Arts & Sciences is under way to replace Kerry Grant who has assumed his duties as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School.  An Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs is being recruited to help him.  The Vice Provost will be responsible for both undergraduate and graduate academic affairs and also for the quantitative and qualitative assessment of academic programs and classroom teaching required by New York and various accreditation agencies.  The re-established Office of Teaching Effectiveness will also be under his purview.
    Space planning for the 2003/2008 Capital Plan has begun under the direction of Ann Newman.  UB will be aggressively seeking funding to expand its space.
    There were comments from the Senators:

• the Office of Teaching Effectiveness is much needed and there will be strong faculty support for it; what is the timetable? (Professor Meacham)
• looking for space for the Office of Teaching Effectiveness near the Educational Technology Center and for an Assistant Vice Provost to administer the Office (Provost Capaldi)
• the Faculty Senate Committee on Teaching Effectiveness will be happy to work with Vice Provost Grant, perhaps as an overseeing board for the Office; in the belief that the Office would not be operational immediately, the Committee is planning another workshop on teaching effectiveness for this semester (Professor Gentile)
• Vice Provost Grant will be happy to hear from the Committee (Provost Capaldi)

Item 4: Second reading of the Faculty Senate Grading Committee’s recommendation on the Fresh Start Policy

    There was a motion (seconded) to adopt the Grading Committee’s resolution on the Fresh Start Policy.  The resolution was unanimously adopted.

Item 5: What’s new in the School of Nursing

Associate Dean Radke, substituting for an ailing Dean Cranley, reported on the state of the School of Nursing.
• The School is growing academically
• has 500 students and offers baccalaureate, Master’s and D.S.N. degrees
• began offering a post-baccalaureate certificate program in case management; such training is highly desired by health management organizations, e.g. Independent Health
• has inaugurated a post-Master’s advanced certificate program in psychiatric mental health
• is involved in international nursing education, e.g. works in partnership with the Ministry of Health of Tortola, British Virgin Islands and the H. Levity Stout Community College providing a baccalaureate program for R.N.’s and is discussing helping Chulalongkorn University in Thailand to establish a doctoral program has received a federal educational training grant which will support M.S. programs for acute care nurse practitioners and for geriatric nurse practitioners and also an outreach service for Native American school children
• its nurse anesthetist program is ranked sixth in the U.S.
• The School is positioning itself to respond to an acute shortage of nurses
• developed a clinical program for graduating seniors with the Kaleida Health System; often leads to long term employment
• for the Summer of 2000 Kaleida paid a stipend and the School offered a tuition scholarship to graduating seniors who participated in a Summer clinical program; the intent was to capture long term employees for Kaleida and graduate students for the School
• for the Summer of 2001 Kaleida is offering a stipend for a clinical experience for students who have completed their junior year
• the V.A. Hospital is applying for funding for similar programs
• The School’s faculty are engaged in diverse research
• the NIH National Institute of Nursing Research is an important funding agency for nursing research
• publication rates and rates of grant submission are up as are grants awarded
• The School’s faculty are engaged in community service
• work with administrators, teachers and students in three schools to promote health
• partner with the M & T Bank and the Visiting Nurse Association to provide flu shot clinics
• involved with senior centers, health fairs, etc.
There were questions for the Associate Dean:
• is recruiting undergraduate nursing students difficult? (Professor Nickerson)
• when there is a nursing shortage, nurses work; when there is a nursing glut, they come to school to upgrade their credentials; since Buffalo is experiencing a nursing shortage, it has been more difficult to recruit students; however, applications for the Master’s program have been increasing; the undergraduate program remains stable (Professor Radke)
• what type of research is being done by the faculty? (Professor Nickerson)
• faculty collaborate internally and externally; for example, Professor Jean Brown does collaborative research on lung cancer and nutrition; Professor Mary Ann Jezewski is a nurse with a Ph.D. in anthropology who does end of life research and is nationally known for her theory of culture brokering; Professor Carol Brewer does research on economics, nursing shortage patterns, and organizational structure and satisfaction (Professor Radke)

Item 6: Classroom Quality

    Provost Capaldi introduced Professor Zambon, Chair of her Committee on Classroom Quality and Attributes, to report on the Committee’s recommendations which she has funded for summer implementation at a cost of $800K.
    Professor Zambon explained that the Committee consists of faculty members from various schools and professional staff, many with long experience in classroom issues.  Professor Zambon, himself, was appointed as Chair in October 2000.  The Committee made the following recommendations to Vice Provost Sullivan:
• broken furnishings, including broken tables and coat hangers, bulletin boards, and desks above a room’s capacity, should be removed from classrooms
• as part of IT upgrades and classroom renovations, equip classrooms with swipe card locks that can be opened using the UB card
• classrooms have had significant equipment loss due to theft
• classrooms, especially those in the Ellicott Complex, are used as after-hours lounges, increasing the need for maintenance
• swipe card locks with timers would automatically open in the morning and lock again after 6:00 PM; after 6:00 PM classroom access would be by swipe card; locks cost about $500 plus installation
• install locks as equipment upgrades and renovations are done
• equip additional classrooms with video cabinets containing TV monitors and VCR’s
• 56 classrooms lack any educational technology besides overhead projectors; equip 12 of these classrooms with video cabinets
• equip 7 medium sized classrooms (3 on the South campus, 4 on the North campus) with e-tech podiums
• will avoid having to schedule medium sized classes into large IT equipped classrooms
• will cost $321K, 42% of total budget
• upgrade existing technology equipped classrooms
• need to upgrade IT equipment on a 3/5 year cycle
• replace 5 CRT projectors, replace all Infocus projectors, add 7 visualizers, add SUN workstations, add wireless mice to 25 classrooms and wireless microphones to 5 rooms
• will cost $247K, 32% of total budget
• renovate and upgrade newly acquired and other centrally scheduled classrooms
• institute a university-wide program to replace chalkboards
• chalkboards are wearing out
• do a pilot project in which different kinds of chalkboards are installed; after one year, survey faculty who used the classrooms for their preferences
• install additional chalkboards in Fronczak 454, Norton 218 and Baldy 101
• equip classrooms with a free standing lectern, a desk with a drawer and a chair for the teacher
• hire students to audit classrooms for problems that are not being dealt with by maintenance staff
• consider line-of-sight and special needs access in classroom renovation and upgrades
• School of Architecture is developing a prototype universally accessible IT cabinet
 The Committee will continue to work defining what attributes classrooms should have in terms of lighting, heating, etc.
There were questions and comments:
• design IT cabinets that don’t block students’ view (Professor Cadenhead)
• lower design will make cabinets more accessible and also free up sight lines (Professor Zambon)
• am afraid of not having a swipe card and so being locked out of a classroom (Professor Radner)
• timers will automatically open the locks in the morning; swipe cards will be necessary only from 6 PM to 6 AM; the UB card is the swipe card (Professor Zambon)
• report cites a low request rate for videocabinets as a reason for only equipping 12 additional classrooms with them; the request rate is low because in frustration departments have bought their own equipment and move it to and from classrooms, a practice that raises safety issues (Professor Campbell)
• hard to quantify the number of such work-arounds; equipping all classrooms would cost $100K; let us know specific classrooms involved and will try to equip them (Professor Zambon)
• how will you accommodate mixed usage of classrooms when defining basic classroom attributes, e.g., faculty who use the blackboard and are frustrated by the presence of a video cabinet in front of the blackboard? (Professor Faran)
• will be looking at basic set of furniture, recognizing that some classrooms, e.g. labs, won’t fit the pattern (Professor Zambon)
    Mark Greenfield toured the newly updated UB Classroom Web Site <http://wings.buffalo.edu/faculty/classrooms>.  The site will inform faculty about what is happening with classrooms and will be an avenue for faculty and students to provide feed on classroom problems.  The site is based on user intuition rather than requiring knowledge of UB’s hierarchy.  The site contains a variety of information: e.g., a section on classroom news, a section on the classroom planning process, a scheduling section, a classroom inventory of the attributes of centrally scheduled space which is fully searchable by equipment type, a section on classroom technology.  There is also a feed form.

    There being no old/new business, the meeting adjourned at 3:00 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Marilyn McMann Kramer
Secretary of Faculty Senate

Present:

Chair: P. Nickerson
Secretary: M. Kramer
Parliamentarian: D. Malone
Architecture: H. Steiner
Arts & Sciences: W. Baumer, L. Bian, B. Bono, A. Cadenhead, J. Campbell, W. Chang, M. Churchill,
    J. Dugan, D. Eddins, J. Faran, C. Fourtner, E. Kazmierczak, J. Meacham, A. Petrou, D. Radner, J. Reineck,
    E. Scarlett, E. Segal
Dental Medicine: M. Easley, E. Davis, L. Ortman
Education: R. Gentile
Engineering & Applied Sciences: D. Malone, J. Mollendorf, S. Ramalingam, W. Anderson
Health Related Professions: S. Nochajski
Law: L. Swartz
Management: S. Gunn, C. Pegels
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: D. Amsterdam, W. Flynn, M. Kulaylat, B. Noble, R. Noble, S. Ohki,
    C. Pruet, S. Rudin, A. Vladutiu
Nursing: T. Obst, E. Perese
Pharmacy: T. Kalman
SUNY Senators: J. Adams-Volpe, J. Boot, P. Nickerson
University Libraries: A. Booth, W. Hepfer, J. Hopkins, S. Tejada
University Officers: E. Capaldi, Provost

Guests:

J. Lewandowski, Reporter
K. Radke, Associate Dean, School of Nursing
J. Zambon, Chair, Committee on Classroom Quality and Attributes
M. Greenfield, CIT
K. Purdy, The Spectrum

Excused:

Arts & Sciences: L. Kurdiel-Formato
Education: J. Ernest
Law: E. Meidinger

Absent:

Arts & Sciences: H. Bennett, J. Bono, J. Conte, S. Elder, J. Ellison, T. Gregg, J. Holstun, M. Jardin, H. Luo,
    A. Markelz, C. Mele, J. Pappas, C. Smith
Dental Medicine: B. Boyd, E. DeNardin
Education: J. Hoot, L. Malave, T. Schroeder
Health Related Professions: G. Farkas
Management: G. Hariharan, J. Ogden
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: M. Alashari, P. Bradford, M. Caty, M. Dryjski, B. Grant, S. Greenberg,
    T. Guttuso, J. Hassett, V. Li, F. Loghmanee, F. Mendel, R. Sands, P. Spurgeon, A. Sohl, J. Suklewski,
    L. Wild
Nursing: J. Brown
SUNY Senators: H. Durand
University Libraries: M. Zubrow

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