FACULTY SENATE
Minutes of September 7, 1999 - (approved)
E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

The Faculty Senate met at 2:00 PM on September 7, 1999 in the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:

    1.    Approval of the Minutes of May 11, 1999
    2.    Report of the Chair
    3.    Report of the President/Provost
    4.    Budget Update
    5.    Report of the Faculty Senate Tenure and Privileges Committee
    6.    Report of Dean Karwan, School of Engineering & Applied Science
    7.    Old/new business

Item 1: Approval of the Minutes of May 11, 1999

    The Minutes of May 11, 1999 were approved.

Item 2: Report of the Chair

    The Chair asked for a moment of silence for deceased colleagues. Supplementing his written report which was distributed with the agenda, the Chair reported that:

• the Senate schedule will be busy this year; there will be the traditional discussion of the budget at this meeting; Provost Triggle will speak on the state of the University and interact with Senators at the October meeting; most likely the November meeting will deal with the Sexual Harassment Policies
• in his capacity as Chair of Faculty Senate he has been appointed to the Statistics Oversight Committee; the future of the Division of Biostatistics and Informatics in the Department of Social and Preventative Medicine looks promising; the Chair of the Division now will occupy an endowed chair
• the Senate and its committees make good forums for policy making and communications since they span the Schools and the College; he will invite the Deans to report to the Senate of the state of the Schools; Dean Grant spoke last year, Dean Karwan at this meeting

    The Chair asked for questions:

• has there been follow up on the Princeton Review ranking of UB’s faculty as inaccessible and poor teachers? (Professor Faran)
• am trying to obtain the most recent edition of the report; will be forming a committee to look at the matter since it is a serious one (Professor Nickerson)

Item 3: Budget Update

    Associate Vice President Penksa introduced Michael Pietkiewicz, the newly appointed Director of Federal Relations, who comes to UB after five years in Congressman Quinn’s office. He is responsible for carrying the University’s agenda to Washington with our Congressional delegation and with the state agencies. He will also be available to facilitate individual faculty members’ access to appropriate decisions makers for purposes of developing grants and projects.

    She then reviewed this year’s state budget process. The Governor’s budget contained large cuts in TAP funding and left shortfalls in SUNY’s base budget, amounting to $60 M in additional funding just to maintain last year’s level of activities. In total the Governor’s budget left higher education $200 M short. The Legislature fully restored TAP and in addition funded a number of campus specific initiatives. The following UB initiatives were funded: UB/Roswell Park Center for Advanced Medical Technologies, $1 M for operations (added to the $5 M. in capital money from the Governor’s budget); UB’s Medical School, $100 K to aid with problems in its practice plan management; Division IA Athletics (which only UB has), $800 K; Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth, $350 K. Additionally the Legislature passed legislation transferring the Research Institute on Addictions to UB, authorizing changes to the South Campus master plan and making UB eligible to receive J2K funding. J2K (Jobs Two Thousand) is a major new piece of legislation which focuses on universities as centers for economic development and on their research as important to job growth in New York. Substantial funding for research will be available over the next several years.

    The Legislature did not, however, restore SUNY’s base budget, saying that the base budget was the Governor’s responsibility and pointing out reserve funds that the Governor could use to fund SUNY’s obligations.

    Senior Vice President Wagner focused on SUNY’s response to the budget shortfall. SUNY is looking at ways to cover its obligations, the largest of which is $32.2 M in negotiated salary increases. SUNY may be able to transfer funds internally and borrow from itself, but its financial plan will probably not be ready until October. UB anticipates that the base budget we received last year will be carried forward for 1999/2000, and that we will receive funding for negotiated and proposed UUP salary increases

    Given that this year the state has a $2/3 B surplus, this is a disappointing outcome for higher education. SUNY’s total budget growth is only $2.2 M on a $1.5 B base. The outlook for the 2000/2001 budget year may be even more difficult.

    There were questions from the floor:

• due to these budget constraints, the College of Arts & Sciences has imposed a hiring ban on new faculty; what kind of a research institution does no hiring in the core arts and sciences, especially when the number of students in every category in the English Department is up this year? where do we apply pressure? (Professor Bono)
• at the system level the Resource Allocation Methodology (RAM) was designed to give increased base budget allocations to institutions that increased their workload whether in number of students or amount of sponsored research while not reducing the allocation of institutions with steady workloads; RAM relied on getting new money to support these increases; this year’s budget is, however, a zero sum game so the same budget will have to be divided into differently sized slices; we must convince the Governor and the Legislature of the need to increase base budgets as workloads increase; at the local level UB is planning to allocate money in relation to revenue producing activity; since our workload is up by about 200 students, or about 1 %, base budgets of decanal units will be adjusted up or down according to the change in their workloads (Senior Vice President Wagner)
• explain the term "structural deficit"; a colleague defined it as the difference between what you wish you had and what you actually have; the structural deficit is driving decisions which undermine the credibility of the University (Professor Schack)
• UB has made allocations to individual units, which when summed together, amount to about $8 M more than UB’s appropriation; half of the $8 M deficit accrued during periods of budget reductions when budget reductions were not prorated to a unit’s allocation base, but rather a savings factor was assigned to individual units so that while a unit’s spending was restricted, its allocation base remained the same; half of the deficit was accrued in making investments in academic initiatives, e.g. the Biotechnology Initiative and building up the Development Office, for which there was no new money; this was also managed by assigning a savings factor to individual units, so that in any one year expenditures and the University’s appropriation balanced but the allocations to units was greater than the University’s appropriation; this strategy was based on the assumption that revenues would be growing in future years giving us the ability to manage the structural deficit without reducing allocations (Senior Vice President Wagner)
• how does reducing the allocation base but allowing a unit to spend its full allocation lead to units being constrained to do less hiring than when they had a larger allocation some of which they couldn’t spend? (Professor Schack)
• the structural deficit is not driving decisions about hiring levels (Senior Vice President Wagner)
• then the Senate needs to understand what is driving decisions to impose hiring freezes (Professor Schack)
• in the past had the strong sense that the Vice Presidential side of the University understood its mission was to support the academic side; in the last several years while the Senior Vice President has not changed, the staff on the Vice Presidential side has and the bean counters are taking over ; faculty, too, seem to have changed (Professor George)
• as the academic units increasingly produce their own revenue, their behavior may not be consistent with the University’s broader objectives; decisions about how resources are generated and used are increasingly being pushed down, not being made centrally, either at the SUNY level or in Capen Hall
• in the past had the sense that if one made a good case, the state would provide additional revenue; didn’t seem to work now (Professor Nickerson)
• arguing for general improvements in a broad institutional context seems not to result in funding; finding an advocate for specific investments with specific benefits seemed successful (Senior Vice President Wagner)
• agree with the Senior Vice President’s analysis; projects which produce economic benefits will be especially interesting (Associate Vice President Penksa)
• will there be additional funding to implement the Board of Trustees General Education Plan (Professor Meacham)
• no (Senior Vice President Wagner)

    The Chair introduced Professor Hamlen, Chair of the Budget Priorities Committee. Professor Hamlen pointed out that the combination of a flat budget and the need for UB to change and grow will make for difficult decisions in resource allocations. The Budget Priorities Committee plans to have a significant role in advising administration on resource allocation for the 1999/2000 budget. The Committee will also look in general at how the budget process works at UB, i.e., how policies for resource allocations are set and how the faculty can have input into those policies. Another topic of interest to the Committee is resource management at the unit level, i.e. impact on unit decisions as to what programs to provide, the impact of changing enrollments, the impact of faculty hiring and student services. A third area of interest is performance evaluation, how to evaluate and how the evaluation process fits in with the RAM. The fourth area of interest is how to communicate budget issues within the University and specifically to the Committee.

Item 4: Faculty Senate Tenure and Privileges Committee Report on Centers and Institutes

    The Chair introduced Professor Arcara, Chair of the Tenure and Privileges Committee, which was charged with looking at promotion and tenure issues affecting faculty who participate in the more than 30 Centers, Institutes and Organized Research Units at UB. The major concern of the Committee was that in the promotion and tenure processes, faculty would not be given appropriate credit for work done in such units. The Committee drafted four rules to govern the "Participation of Organized Research Units, Centers and Institutes in the promotion process for faculty who have activities and responsibilities in these units":

• When faculty wish to explore interdisciplinary activities, they should be encouraged to interact with Organized Research Units, Centers and Institutes
• All faculty appointments will continue to be made in departments. Whenever applicable, the letter of appointment of a faculty member should contain a description of the faculty member’s level of commitment to any unit other than the hiring department(s)
• Whenever a current faculty member wishes to participate in or to adjust the level of his/her commitment to the activities of another unit, his/her participation should be discussed with and agreed upon by the department chair and the head of the respective unit. If there is a disagreement with regard to the amount or kind of participation, a further discussion should be conducted with all interested parties, including Deans. The final arrangements for such participation should be documented in the offices of all involved Deans, Chairs, and Unit Heads
• Credit for teaching and research associated with other units should be given consideration by the faculty member’s department in the promotion process

1. In preparing the dossier for promotion of a candidate who has participated in the activities of another unit, the head of that unit should be consulted by the chair of the candidate’s department
2. A letter from the head of the Unit should be included in the candidate’s dossier prior to its submission at the School level
3. In soliciting letters of reference from outside and inside evaluators, the chair of the department should consult with the head of the unit for appropriate names. This should be included in the dossier
4. The head of the Unit must be invited to participate in all discussions of the promotion by the department’s voting body of record and may appear at other discussions of the candidate’s promotion case by the department

[There are no minutes of the comments of the Senate on the report of the Committee because Side 2 of the first tape of the meeting was inaudible.]

Item 5: Report of Dean Karwan, School of Engineering & Applied Science

    The Chair introduced Dean Karwan of the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. Dean Karwan reported on the state of the School.

[Tape 2 of the meeting begins as Dean Karwan concluded his report.]

    In terms of enrollment, the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is first; the Department of Electrical Engineering second, the Department of Civil Engineering third, and the Department of Computer Engineering fourth. Computer Science and Computer Engineering combined have the largest freshman enrollment nationally.

    The were questions from the floor for Dean Karwan:

• role of the Senate is one of oversight; congratulate you that the Senate has had to spend so little time dealing with concerns about the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences (Professor George)
• what is it like as Dean to get faculty to accept the new entrepreneurial model for units? (Professor Nickerson)
• have frequent meetings with department chairs and associate deans to keep them informed of new initiatives; faculty meets once a semester and we discuss university wide initiatives; faculty have concerns about how to manage our very high enrollment and also our research mission; they contribute good ideas and are willing to participate in planning processes (Dean Karwan)
• last year the Senate adopted a change to its Charter which made explicit the Senate’s oversight role of graduate education but which the President has yet to accept; understand that the Deans have expressed concern to the President that the Senate will be too intrusive; is it your experience that the Senate has been intrusive in its oversight of undergraduate education? do you have concern that the Senate will intrude in such things as course and thesis requirements? (Professor Schack)
• in the last fifteen years the Senate has not been intrusive in undergraduate education; however, the Charter specifies Senate power over admissions and curriculum and while in practice the Senate has not been intrusive in these areas, some Deans read the language of the Charter as giving the Senate the power to set curriculum and admission standards, not just the power to review them; believe there should be a group that oversees and comments on graduate education; explain to the Deans more fully what issues and policies you would be reviewing, e.g. tuition scholarship policy, program quality and not specific curriculum matters; balance your role against that of the Graduate Faculty, which over the past years has not been a policy making body (Dean Karwan)

    The Chair thanked Dean Karwan for interacting with the Senate. There was applause, acknowledging the excellence of his presentation.

Item 6: Old/New Business

    There was no old/new business.
 

    The meeting was adjourned at 4:10 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Marilyn M. Kramer
Secretary of Faculty Senate

Present:

Chair: P. Nickerson
Secretary: M. Kramer
Parliamentarian: D. Malone
Arts & Sciences: B. Bono, J. Conte, J. Holstun, E. Scarlett; J. Faran, C. Fourtner, M. Ram, K. Regan, J. Reineck, S. Schack; W. Baumer, L. Bian, W. Chang, R. DesForges, J. Meacham, D. Radner, E. Segal
Dental Medicine: M. Easley, G. Ferry
Engineering & Applied Sciences: D. Benenson, W. George, R. Mayne, R. Sridhar
Graduate Education: C. Hosenfeld, T. Schroeder
Health Related Professions: L. Gosselin, S. Nochajski, J. Tamburlin
Management: J. Boot, C. Pegels, R. Ramesh
Nursing: E. Perese, P. Wooldridge
Pharmacy: T. Kalman
SUNY Senators: J. Adams-Volpe, J. Boot, H. Durand
University Libraries: A. Booth, W. Hepfer, D. Woodson
 

Guests:

R. Wagner, Senior Vice President
J. Penksa, Associate Vice President
M. Pietkiewicz, Director of Federal Relations
M. Karwan, Dean, College of Engineering & Applied Sciences
W. Coles, Chair, Professional Staff Senate
M. Arcara, Chair, Faculty Senate Committee on Faculty Tenure and Privileges
M. McGinnis, Reporter
J. Celock, The Spectrum
 

Excused:

Arts & Sciences: L. Kurdziek-Formato
SUNY Senators: J. Fisher

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