FACULTY SENATE
Minutes of March 23, 1999 - (approved)
E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

The Faculty Senate met at 2:00 PM on March 23, 1999 in the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:

1.  Approval of the Minutes of February 23, 1999

2.  Report of the Chair

3.  Report of the Provost - "UB or not UB: Challenge and Change in the 21st Century"

4.  Report of the President

5.  Report of the Bylaws Committee

6.  Old/new business

Item 1: Approval of the Minutes of February 23, 1999

The Minutes of February 23, 1999 were approved.

Item 2: Report of the Chair

The Chair emphasized several items in his written report:

• the Faculty Senate schedule was included in today’s packet; it is accurate so far as we know
• he has used the Faculty Senate e-list several times in the past two weeks; if you did not receive those messages, please inform Anna Kedzierski of your e-mail address
• under new business we will discuss a Faculty Senate resolution of no confidence in the SUNY Board of Trustees; please stay for that item

Item 3: Report of the Provost - "UB or not UB, Challenge and Change in the 21st Century

Provost Triggle began his discussion of change in higher education and at UB with the somber invocation of one who stands at a cross roads, one road leading to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction, asking for the wisdom to choose correctly.

He illustrated his topic with slides that made the following points:

• "Knowledge factory" is a term which inelegantly describes a significant amount of what is being addressed in contemporary universities. Increasingly universities are seen as having significant impact on economic and social development
• at the same time there is an increased demand for higher education; currently there are 12 M FTE students attending some 3,500 institutions of higher education, but in the next ten years FTE’s will increase to 20 M, which by traditional standards would justify building an additional 650 campuses at the cost of $100 B; this will not happen; alternative ways of providing education are being developed
• new information processing and communication technologies are of great interest because of their rapidly decreasing costs, some states have bet their credibility on using new technological approaches to providing higher education
• higher education is becoming increasingly stratified; there are the name brand institutions like Harvard, Vassar, MIT, etc. which can be characterized as having very well established name recognition, whose products are highly credible and valued, who have large endowments, and whose tuition is usually very high; there are the "7-11" institutions such as Phoenix University, Open University, etc., which serve very large populations, rely on electronic communication and offer courses the clock round; finally there are thousands of institutions in the middle (UB included) trying to define missions and goals and to remain competitive; differentiation is the key to survival in this sector
• since the 1970’s performance indicators have become significant in higher education; by 1997 32 states had performance indicators in place for higher education and by 2001 all states are likely to have such performance indicators; consumer skepticism about the role of education and increasing educational costs which have regularly outstripped the cost of living are the issues driving the adoption of performance indicators
• state policy issues are performance and outcomes assessment, development of new methods of accountability, the improvement of productivity and the refocus and revision of campus missions; continuing program evaluations will ask what is the mission of a program, is the program still worth carrying out, and if the program didn’t exist, would we establish such a program de novo
• institutions must be nimble on their feet to respond to opportunities to establish programs at a competitive advantage
• the academic decision making process is slow and that often leads to missed opportunities; we tend to focus on the process of decision making and not the content; we tend to make too many individual decisions rather than acting cooperatively which would enable us to make greater progress
• these global statements may seem simplistic, but they express widely shared sentiments

The Provost tried to summarize these issues in his Mission Review Overview. Our Mission Review response is in four parts: UB’s Mission Statement, drafted several years ago; Provost Headrick’s Planning Document; his own document which offers a broad overview of where UB is, set in the larger context of higher education; and an abstract responding to SUNY’s 37 questions. That packet concludes the first iteration of the process.

The Provost then turned to the issue of enrollments. Enrollment performance drives $190 M of our base budget. Although UB’s entire budget is close to $700 M, when we don’t pay attention to enrollment, we take a quick base budget hit. In composite for the 1998/1999 year we missed out enrollment target by .6% in the Fall and by 2.8 % in the Spring. At the undergraduate level we were actually .8% above budgeted enrollment; the deficits were caused by low professional and graduate admissions. UB lost $2.5 M because of this enrollment shortfall, $1.1 M in lost tuition and the remainder in state tax support. The deficit is felt in two ways. First, there is the overall problem of running a negative number budget. Second, there is the issue of how to link resources in the schools and faculties to performance.

The Provost has made enrollment the focus of his Office. He has spent much time trying to improve UB’s attractiveness and the recruitability of both undergraduate and graduate students. We have committed many resources to make the UB undergraduate experience more pleasant and enduring, in part to increase retention rates. Surveys show that as many as 50 % of incoming freshmen are interested in taking advanced degrees at UB, many targeting the Master’s degree. This is a tremendous opportunity for us, especially since upper level and graduate students are more lucrative for the University. The momentum of recruitment needs to be sustained down to the department level. The enrollment target for 1999/2000 is 23,941 which number will give us our projected revenues. We have the physical space to accommodate even larger numbers of students. With luck and hard work we can meet that target.

We may not want to increase enrollment in all fields. For example, programs with clinical requirements may be limited by access issues. Hospitals are shrinking, while managed care organizations have begun to charging for providing students with clinical experience.

We must make UB an attractive place, and we must examine our priorities for the next decade and look towards reorganizing a number of programs to set us on track for where we want to be for the 21st Century.

The Mission Review Document summarized some of these issues. It described what and where our strengths are. It also described empowering disciplines and technologies, i.e. those which have the power to transform associated disciplines.

The Provost received some faculty responses to the Document. They were reflective of the different views of the writers. The Provost likened them to the diverse headlines that newspapers would produce on the approach of an asteroid: the Washington Post’s would be "Presidential aids knew of impending impact;" USA Today’s would be "We all die - late sports on C2;" New York Post’s, "God to city - drop dead;" Los Angeles Times’, "No traffic on thruway tonight;" Time Magazine’s, "The end of time;" the Buffalo News’, "Impact site is ideal for new Bill’s Stadium"

The Chair asked for comments:

• are there meaningful steps we can take to increase graduate enrollment? (Professor Malone)
• in some disciplines graduate stipends are inadequate by very significant amounts; the Legislature has been unwilling to provide increased funding for stipends; the University has directed some of its own resources to the Presidential and Woodburn programs, but that is money diverted from other uses; we have too many small programs that are not attractive to potential students; students are looking for programs that span a greater breadth of discipline; many students are attracted to Master’s programs (Provost Triggle)
• we are not responsive to market demand; in Engineering the program that gets the most applications has the smallest number of faculty and there are no plans to grow the faculty (Professor Mohan)
• we are too wedded to traditional disciplinary models; we should be able to reorganize to reflect current conditions (Provost Triggle)
• having the Provost address Faculty Senate is very valuable and should be an annual occurrence; does the 7 % increase in freshman enrollment and a decrease in continuing students projected by your figures reflect a significantly large graduation rate or is retention down? (Professor Welch)
• the decline in continuing and returning students has to do with a reclassification of students; for example, the Pharmacy Dept.’s switch from an undergraduate to a doctoral program means that students who would have been classified as juniors are now classified as graduate students; the increase in freshman is to compensate for shortfalls in graduate and professional students (Vice Provost Goodman)
• alternative choice would be to take smaller numbers of undergraduate students, accept the decline in graduate enrollments and downsize (Provost Triggle)
• your call for nimbleness in decision making needs to include the administrative as well as the academic side of the University; in response to the call for Master’s programs, drafted proposals for two new programs; the process was difficult because of the lack of models, and the proposals have been bouncing around the University for 18 months (Professor Bisson)
• that is an atypical experience; the University has put 15 new Master’s programs in place in the last several years; we ask for detailed information in order to avoid problems in Albany (Provost Triggle)
• are we looking at distance education to increase recruitment? (Professor Heffner)
• we do some distance activities, e.g. School of Nursing, School of Pharmacy; need to do more (Provost Triggle)
• our support of post-docs is at the expense of graduate student support and may contribute to declining applications (Professor George)
• post docs are more common in the sciences, but the decline in graduate applications is across all disciplines; another reason is the national decline in non-U.S. applications(Provost Triggle)
• the University is a thought factory in addition to a knowledge factory; students react negatively now to the impersonality of the University and ask for smaller classes and more interaction with faculty (Professor Vardi)
• personal instruction is very expensive; need to use our resources to give New Yorkers access to an experience that combines the thoughtful use of technology with personal instruction; the new undergraduate housing under construction on campus affirms that we are trying to make this a more residential experience for undergraduates (Provost Triggle)

Item 4:. Report of the President

The President related a conversation he had with an undergraduate Engineering student who was taking 19 credit hours, only 6 of which meet for conventional classes, the remainder being independent study and distance learning courses. This is the wave of the future. Every room in the new housing going up on campus is wired for private phone access and computer access.

Opportunities for distance education are greatest in graduate professional programs. Engineering is already offering distance education courses, the School of Social Work is planning a program in the Southern Tier which will use distance learning techniques to supplement traditional teaching.

The President displayed the Mission Review product. First, is Provost Triggle’s 23 page document giving answers to SUNY’s 37 questions. The President urged faculty to read the questions and answers to see what the administration was facing in responding. The questions were one size fit all, and while SUNY needed answers to their questions, standing alone that would not have been an adequate response for UB. Second is Provost Triggle’s overview document that makes some very challenging statements with which we should engage as an institution. It should be the foundation for a continuing dialogue on campus. Because it is on the web, every member of the University community has the opportunity to participate in the debate, not just members of APC and FSEC. Third is Provost Headrick’s Planning Document. The first two documents are logical outgrowths of the Planning Document which provides their foundation.

The prominence Provost Triggle gives to information technology was unsettling to some of the faculty who responded to his Mission Review overview. But we are already in the midst of change driven by information technology. Other responses were concerned that the Provost highlighted four broad areas of science and engineering for development. These are areas in which we already have strengths that cut across the entire campus: the biological sciences, computing and information science, environmental science, and materials science. These areas will not be developed to the exclusion of other areas, however. While the overview document is selective in its approach, the Headrick Planning Document is exhaustive in reviewing all areas of the University.

Concern about the timing of the request for faculty consultation on Mission Review was expressed in other comments. However, the overview document was available to APC and FSEC on the web before it was in its final form, which seems an appropriate method of consultation. It is important now to focus on the content of the documents, rather than the process. This is an iterative process with opportunity to further discuss the overview’s content

At the conclusion of the President’s remarks, Professor George asked whether the President’s mea culpa about the Statistics Department was offered with contrition. The President on bended knee assured Professor George that "I feel your pain."

Item 5: Report of the Bylaws Committee

Professor Hopkins summarized the report of the Bylaws Committee on the George Resolution which proposed that the Senate have the same kind of oversight of graduate affairs as it does of undergraduate. At the request of the Faculty Senate, the Bylaws Committee reviewed the Resolution. The Committee’s primary conclusion was that the Charter of the Faculty Senate explicitly gives the Senate power to "make recommendations" about graduate and professional affairs; by comparison, the Charter gives the Senate power to "establish standards" for undergraduate affairs. The Committee believes that the Senate simply needs to exercise the power it already has with regard to graduate and professional affairs rather than amending the Charter.

The Committee next concluded that the language of the George Resolution was not inconsistent with other provisions of the Charter. However if the aim of the George Resolution is to achieve parallelism between graduate and undergraduate review, it will be necessary to draft another section which lists activities and responsibilities for graduate affairs.

The Committee considered alternate wording to the George Resolution, viz., removing the limitation to undergraduate affairs of the current section II.2.B of the Charter. This simpler approach would on its face give the Senate responsibilities currently borne by the Graduate School and the various professional school councils. The Committee decided against recommending the substitute wording, but included it in its report.

Professor George then spoke. He characterized the Committee’s report as finding the Resolution a reasonable thing to do and not destructive of the integrity of the process. In light of the bleak picture painted by the Provost he questioned whether one would conclude that they way we have been doing things is good. In the last few months, for example, we have been brought to the brink of censuring the President because of our inability to respond adequately to initiatives in the graduate program. Nor is there an adequate alternate review mechanism since the Graduate School and its committees consist of selected, not elected, members. There are administrative structures in place, e.g. decanal graduate committees, which will continue to play an important role in graduate education. But who speaks for the faculty? The Annual Meeting of the Graduate Faculty is very poorly attended, running as low as 15 faculty, and a quorum requires 150 faculty, so it is not an effective faculty oversight body. The Faculty Senate, most of whose elected members are also members of the Graduate School, is only given the right to meddle in graduate affairs. Had there been effective faculty oversight of graduate education, the Statistics debacle and the drafting of the Mission Review Document would have played out very differently.

The substitute wording considered by the Bylaws Committee is beautiful. In effect it says that the Faculty Senate is responsible for all the University’s academic programs. He intends to offer it as a substitute motion if no one else does.

It was moved (seconded) to substitute the Bylaws Committee’s language for the George Resolution. The Chair asked for discussion; being none the motion was voted on and the Chair ruled that it passed. The Chair then asked for discussion of the substituted motion:

• is this an action item now? (Professor Swartz)
• it is a second reading (Professor Nickerson)
• plead surprise; substituted motion includes oversight of professional schools and there has been no discussion on this topic (Professor Swartz)
• agree we shouldn’t rush the discussion; postpone the vote until the April meeting (Professor George)
• where is the substitute wording? (Professor Harwitz)
• it is on page 3 of the March 9 report of the Bylaws Committee which was appended to today’s agenda (Professor Hopkins)
• question the haste with which the substitute motion was adopted (Professor Wooldridge)
• ruled out of order (Professor Nickerson)
• the substitute motion means the Faculty Senate would be taking over many of the existing prerogatives of the Graduate Faculty which in its Bylaws established the non-elective committee structure being complained of; the professional schools also have councils composed of faculty which address the issues we are proposing to expand into; this is not just a matter of taking over a lacuna (Professor Wooldridge)
• we are the Graduate Faculty, and the Graduate Faculty is us; the question is not one of stealing prerogatives but of finding the most effective way to exercise our responsibilities in the governance of the academic programs; the Graduate Faculty was at one time an effective governance body but is not longer so; the non-professional schools have the same right to review what is going on in the professional schools as the professional schools do to review the College of Arts and Sciences (Professor Baumer)
• how do other schools, especially other SUNY schools handle the oversight of graduate and professional education? (Professor Sridhar)
• there was discussion of the appropriate parliamentary procedures to allow a vote on the substituted motion to be postponed till the April meeting

Professor Baumer moved (seconded) to postpone the vote on the motion until the April meeting. The Parliamentarian explained that a motion to postpone does not cut off discussion of either the motion to postpone or of the main motion. There were additional comments from the floor:

• the substituted motion says that Faculty shall, not may, establish standards; it would be our responsibility to do so (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• we voted on only a possible restructuring of II.2.B of the Charter; understand that we could suggest other language (Professor Wickert)

Given the seriousness of the proposal and the importance of an item that will come up under New Business, Professor Welch moved (seconded) the previous question, shutting off debate on the motion to postpone. The Parliamentarian affirmed that the motion to move the previous question was itself not debatable, and if it passed the Senate would move immediately to vote on the motion to postpone, with the only debatable matter then being whether to postpone, but not the merits of the proposal. The motion passed by a two thirds vote. There was then a vote on the motion to postpone. The motion carried.

Professor Schack protested that the Parliamentarian had ruled earlier that a vote to postpone would not cut off debate on the merits of the main motion. His vote on the motion to postpone was based on that assurance. He, therefore, asked for a continuation of the debate. The Chair ruled against further debate.

Item 6: Old/new business

The Chair announced that an item of new business coming jointly from the SUNY Faculty Senate and the UUP had arrived in yesterday’s mail. There is a news embargo on the item till April 20 when there would be a news conference. The Chair asked if there were objection to voting on the item today since our next meeting is on April 20.

• this is a matter of very great significance for SUNY and for UB; voting with no prior notice and limited time for discussion seems highly inappropriate (Vice Provost Goodman)
• if we treat today as a first reading, could we vote by mail after further discussion and reflection? (Professor Harwitz)
• voting by mail is possible; the document asks for action no later than April 9 (Professor Malone)
• we have talked about the issue of censuring the Board of Trustees in earlier meetings, so the issue is not totally new (Professor Schack)
• should have an emergency meeting of the Senate; with prior notice and full consideration, any motion we adopted would carry more weight; mail ballot would not be taken seriously (Professor Frisch)

Professor Baumer moved (seconded) that there be an emergency meeting of the Faculty Senate no later than April 13 to consider the item as a second reading. The motion carried.

Professor Malone then spoke. At the last SUNY Faculty Senate meeting a motion to censure the Board of Trustees was considered. As a preliminary step the Senate communicated with the Trustees and asked for accommodation of a variety of issues including giving the President of the Senate the right to speak on issues pertaining to academic affairs at meetings of the Board of Trustees and for representation on certain committees that are being formed. The Board of Trustees ignored that request. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee, therefore, decided to proceed with censure, and UUP’s participation was solicited to give the action more weight.

Professor Malone said that while he supports the motion, he is unhappy that all the Trustees are condemned. He believes that those Trustees who voted against the General Education Requirement recently adopted by the Board should have been exempted. Professor Malone also disagrees with including the removal of the teaching hospitals from the University in the list of particulars since there is substantial support for this action in the Legislature. He believes that it is accurate to state that the Board has violated its own policy of consultation with faculty on curricular matters. Although the Governor will most certainly not replace the Board, it is time to stop letting the Board ignore its own precepts and fail to meet its academic responsibilities. There will be a substantial effort to make the President of the SUNY Faculty Senate a member of the Board; UUP will support that effort, abandoning its prior opposition.

Professor Malone noted the drafters’ request that there be no prior publicity before the April 20 announcement. He asked that reporters present consider our discussion to be off the record.

The Chair asked for discussion:

• concerned about the request that the press refrain from reporting on this discussion; our colleagues need to be informed and their input sought; the public ought to have a chance to comment; dislike the precedent of shutting off press coverage of the Senate’s business (Professor Swartz)
• our approval of the motion is the news worthy item; it surely will be an open secret that such a motion is being considered, so feel no obligation for secrecy (Professor Wickert)
• we discussed the issue before requesting privacy so that horse is already far outside the barn and we’re too late to request privacy; this is an open meeting, and if the drafters want us to do something about the issue, they have to expect us to play by our own rules. ask that the Chair find out what besides a demonstration is planned for moving the issue forward (Professor Schack)
• when the President and Provost speak to FSEC they frequently ask that their comments be off the record and their requests are honored, so have no problem with requesting that this discussion be off the record (Professor Meacham)
• there has been no discussion of the merits of the motion; is that because we think it is obvious that the Trustees are doing their best to destroy SUNY? (Professor Bisson)
• we should consider writing our own version of the resolution rather than being trapped in someone else’s words (Professor George)
• passing it in a timely fashion is more important than the exact wording (Professor Albini)
• so long as we pass the declaration of no confidence, we don’t have to accept all the whereas clauses (Professor Wickert)
• the whereas dealing with the hospitals should be removed; it is a political statement driven by UUP; those schools which have teaching hospitals don’t necessarily think they’re a good arrangement; inappropriate for us to comment since UB doesn’t have one (Professor Saltzman)

The Chair then asked if there were any other old/new business. Professor George moved (seconded) a special order for the April 20 meeting of the Faculty Senate that we discuss and vote on the Charter amendments immediately after the Chair’s report. The motion carried.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Marilyn M. Kramer

Secretary of Faculty Senate

Present:
Chair: P. Nickerson
Secretary: M. Kramer
Arts & Letters: M. Frisch, M. Wickert, B. Ault, F. Pellicone
Dental Medicine: R. Baier, E. Davis
Engineering & Applied Sciences: S. Ahmad, W. George, R. Mayne, S. Mohan, R. Sridhar
Graduate School of Education: C. Hosenfeld, B. Johnstone, L. Klenk, T. Schroeder
Health Related Professions: L. Gosselin, S. Nochajski
Information & Library Studies: G. D’Elia
Law: L. Swartz
Management: J. Boot, J. Newman, C. Pegels, R. Ramesh
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: M. Alashari, B. Albini, D. Amsterdam, S. Awner, J. DeBerry, E. Fine, W. Flynn, S. Gallagher, R. Heffner, A. Michalek, R. Noble, S. Rudin, A. Saltzman, F. Schimpfhauser, C. Smith, J. Yates, A. Vladutiu
Natural Sciences & Mathematics: M. Bisson, S. Bruckenstein, M. Churchill, R. Vesley, J. Faran, M. Ram, K. Regan, S. Schack
Nursing: M. Johnson, P. Wooldridge, J. Thompson
Pharmacy: T. Kalman, R. Madejski
Social Sciences: W. Baumer, L. Dryden, P. Luce, J. Meacham, S. Singer, B. Smith, L. Vardi
SUNY Senators: Judith Adams-Volpe, J. Fisher, D. Malone, C. Welch
University Libraries: H. Booth, C. Densmore, W. Hepfer, D. Woodson, M. Zubrow
University Officers: William Greiner, President, David Triggle, Provost

Guests:
N. Goodman, Vice Provost
J. Hopkins, Chair, Bylaws Committee
S. Wuechter, Reporter
W. Coles, Chair, Professional Staff Senate
W. Fischer, Vice Provost
K. Levy, Senior Vice Provost

Excused:
Arts & Letters: J. Holstun
Health Related Professions: J. Tamburlin

Absent:
Architecture & Planning: H. Hata, S. Vassigh
Arts & Letters: M. Hyde, J. Ludwig, P. McKenna
Dental Medicine: M. Easley, R. Hall, M. Neiders
Engineering & Applied Sciences: D. Benenson
Law: I. Marcus
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: S. Greenberg, D. Swartz, S. Spurgeon, J. Sulewski, A. Wakhloo, B. Willer
Natural Sciences & Mathematics: J. Berry
Social Sciences: J. Dewald, J. Lawler, E. Segal

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