FACULTY SENATE
Minutes of September 22, 1998 - (approved)
E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

The Faculty Senate met at 2:00 PM on September 22, 1998 in the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:

1. Approval of the Minutes of May 6 and May 13, 1998
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report of the President
4. Provost’s Address to the Faculty
5. Faculty Senate Affirmative Action Committee--2nd reading of Junior Faculty Retention and Mentoring Initiative
6. Old/new business
 

Item 1: Approval of the Minutes of May 6 and May 13, 1998

The Minutes of May 6 and May 13, 1998 were approved with minor corrections.

 

Item 2: Report of the Chair

The Chair welcomed Senators to the first Senate meeting of the 1998/1999 academic year. He stressed the importance of signing the attendance sheets and promised that by the next Faculty Senate meeting the attendance sheets would reflect late unit elections. Senators should supply their own and their alternate’s mailing and e-mail addresses to Anna Kedzierski, the Senate’s Administrative Assistant. A major responsibility of Faculty Senators is to communicate Faculty Senate activities to the units; this will strengthen the effectiveness of faculty governance. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee has been appointing new members to the Faculty Senate’s committees; suggestions for committee members, especially faculty who have not yet been involved with the committees, would be most helpful.

The Chair then asked Professor Welch, Chair of the Academic Planning Committee, to present the Committee’s report on the School of Information and Library Studies/Department of Communications merger. Professor Welch made two points: first, the faculty of both SILS and Communications have voted in favor of the merger; second, details of the merger are still being worked out, e.g., the name of the new School has not yet been settled, but because of accreditation requirements of the American Library Association, the word "Library" may be part of the new name. A motion to receive and file the report was passed unanimously.

The Chair asked for expressions of interest in a group purchase of academic regalia, a suggestion of Professor Baier. Regalia is expensive to purchase, but repeated rentals are also expensive. The Chair will pursue the matter.

 

Item 3: Report of the President

There was no report of the President.

 

Item 4: Provost’s Address to the faculty

Provost Headrick began his address on the academic state of the University by saying that UB’s academic state is "good and getting better." The Provost then outlined the structure of his address. The first topic is the changing role of the Provost’s Office; the second, major matters engaging the Office; and the third, a brief review of School plans.

The role of the Provost’s Office will undergo change in the next year for several reasons. First, the appointment of a Vice President for Health Affairs and a Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences will shift discussion of issues for those areas from the Provost’s Office to those officers and their faculty.

Second, the SUNY budget system has been modified so that SUNY will allocate to the campuses only state tax funds; revenue generated on a campus remains on the campus. The Provost’s Office will use a similar process, leaving in the Schools revenue generated by the Schools. This will give the Schools incentive to expand enrollment, add new programs and to generate revenue in new ways. The Provost’s Office will focus less on revenues and budget and more on issues of quality of program.

Third, because of the cut in state support, most of the money in the institution has been distributed to the Schools. The Provost’s Office manages a small amount of float with a series of revolving commitments; this year the Office has a substantial deficit, so some intended expenditures will, hopefully, not occur. The University has a deficit of $10M in state funded commitments, although with endowment income, gifts, IFR accounts, UBF accounts, the University as a whole is in the black. We must find a way to rebalance accounts within the University. As it stands now the Schools have the funds, but there are a number of commitments located with the President and Provost. In the future the Schools will have a far greater responsibility for generating their own funds and managing their own programs.

The Provost’s Office should investigate and support innovations that the Deans won’t because they are outside a School’s purview, or involve several Schools, or are programs needed by the University. The Provost’s Office should also survey the educational landscape to determine what is important for the University’s future. The Provost’s Office should be focused on planning, performance and major innovations.

There has already been movement in these directions in the Provost’s Office. Sean Sullivan, Vice Provost for Information and Academic Planning, has been developing information systems to support planning and management operations. David Triggle, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Research has developed research initiatives which operate across the several Schools. Senior Vice Provost Joseph Tufariello is overseeing the use and distribution of educational technology funds and the Access ‘99 project. The Provost’s Office is now responsible for the offices of Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Records and Registration; Vice Provost Nicolas Goodman is coordinating those activities. He is also focusing on finding ways UB can be more attractive to students and improve retention rates. Vice Provost Stephen Dunnett is involved in the development of international programs. Vice Provost Fischer will continue to be concerned with faculty development, and in particular will work with Senior Vice Provost Tufariello on the use of technology in teaching and learning.

This year the Provost’s Office has also moved to support various initiatives that cross School boundaries: the formation of the College of Arts and Science, the merger of the School of Information and Library Studies with the Department of Communications, the formation of a Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the formation of the Institute for Environment and Society, the creation of the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender, setting up a Center for Computational Research, and the development of Structural Biology as a source of strength for Western New York. The Provost also charged a committee to look at interdisciplinary studies at UB. The Provost will need a central fund, equaling 5-10% of the total budget, to support innovations and planning like these.

The Provost then turned to matters engaging his Office. Most pressing is the mission review submission required by SUNY. SUNY will be reviewing, analyzing and hopefully approving the mission of each of its campuses. The Provost sees UB as comprehensive, public, research, flagship university, competitive with other good public universities, and woefully underfunded. He will share the document with the academic deans and with the Academic Planning Committee, seeking ways to strengthen its arguments.

SUNY’s new Resource Allocation Methodology (RAM) is of major interest to the Provost’s Office. The RAM will have a positive impact in so far as it restricts SUNY to allocating only state funds, while allowing a campus to retain revenue the campus generates. This will be an incentive to develop new programs. The RAM also provides for state supplementation of external research funding. The RAM recognizes the possibility of a campus having unique missions for which extra state funding can be provided. There are, however, negative aspects of the RAM. It over rewards academic year enrollment, ignoring summer enrollment which at UB is especially important at the graduate, professional level. The RAM underfunds research. The RAM funding formulas tend to work against UB’s enrollment patterns. Under the new formulas, for example, UB will lose money on graduate education (for which UB has excess capacity and could expand), excepting medical and dental programs (which are highly impacted programs not susceptible to expansion).

Another area of interest to the Provost’s Office is the development by the four SUNY universities, Cornell, Environmental Science and the two free standing health science centers of a proposal for a five year SUNY research initiative to be presented to the Board of Trustees this Fall. Funding would be used to increase graduate stipends, to provide a pool for matching funds and to support set-ups and equipment for faculty.

Academic planning has been another major activity for the Provost’s Office. Planning has been hampered by the lack of consistently defined information across the campus; Vice Provost Sullivan has made good progress in refining UB’s information system, especially enrollment and tuition data. The Office has a reasonable take on space allocation and is beginning to develop performance data for academic programs. Excluding Medicine and the College of Arts and Sciences, the Schools have developed five year financial projections and plans. Performance measures and benchmark programs for most academic units have been identified, and reasonable benchmark information on programs is beginning to be collected on a regular basis. Student outcomes assessment needs to be strengthened. The first steps have been taken in developing a budget system related to performance and benchmarks and the overall goals of the University.

The Provost then gave a brief synopsis of the state of the academic units. Architecture and Planning successfully completed two accreditation reviews, getting high marks on the quality of their programs and their response to the changing job market for their graduates.

Management has a new dean (Dean Mandell) who has developed a new set of priorities for the School. Management has re-established an MBA program in China and strengthened its ties with several Chinese institutions. Management will gradually expand its faculty with the expectation of funding the new lines long term by increasing School revenues.

Engineering is particularly strong in its structural, civil and environmental programs. Also the National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research received a five year grant renewal. Transportation Fund money will be available to support areas in civil engineering. The School is working to develop its chemical engineering program with an emphasis on bio-engineering to combine with work done in mechanical engineering, Health Sciences and the Arts and Sciences. Engineering has been able to increase both its undergraduate and graduate enrollment; in comparison with other Association of American Universities (AAU) engineering schools it has a high faculty to student ratio. It is, however, lagging behind its peers in research.

The Law School has appointed Nils Olsen who was largely responsible for implementing the School’s new curriculum as its new dean. The School will be trying to increase its drawing power by communicating with the profession about its new curriculum.

Social Work has appointed Lawrence Shulman as its new dean. He has begun to mobilize a faculty who had become somewhat dispirited; he is committed to building a strong research base which translates that research into practice. He has appointed Brenda Miller from the Research Institute on Addictions as Director of the Research Center for Urban Social Work Practice. He is building a community outreach program. The School will have an urban focus.

The Dean of the Graduate School of Education, Jacquelyn Mitchell, has proposed focusing the School on urban education and educational technology. This should lead to collaborations with the School of Social Work, the School of Nursing, and the School of Law.

The School of Information and Library Studies is going through an accreditation review. It is also planning for the merger with the Department of Communications. Dean Bobinski will step down as dean at the end of this academic year.

Vice President for Health Sciences Bernardino has established as his first priority the reorganization of the practice plan which accounts for 1/3 of the resources in the Medical School. He is also looking at the relationship between the hospitals and graduate medical education. The Medical School educates about 700 residents and fellows who are not counted by SUNY but who are critical to the School’s program and research. Currently, the government pays the hospitals for this education, and the hospitals return about half of the payments to the School. A better system would pay the School directly for the education, letting the School pay for the space it uses in its teaching. This will be especially true as medical education moves out of the hospital setting. There are areas of great strength in the School: pediatrics, oncology in conjunction with Roswell Park, neurology, neurosurgery and rehabilitative medicine. These could become centers of excellence.

The School of Dental Medicine has set its sights on becoming the number one school of dental medicine in the country. It has a reasonable chance of accomplishing this. Its D.D.S. program is already one of the strongest in the country. It has strengthened its graduate program; it has brought in innovations in aesthetic dentistry, informatics and community outreach. Oral Biology is extremely strong in research and has a proposal for developing a major research center.

Pharmacy is a leading pharmacy school and will remain so. The School is shifting from the B.S in Pharmacy to the Pharm.D. That will require expansion of the faculty, especially clinical faculty. Pharmacy students will spend a full year in clinical practice, and will be trained to participate more fully in patient management. The School has research strength in pharmaceutics and medicinal chemistry; there is a need to integrate the various pharmacologies of the School of Pharmacy, the School of Medicine and Roswell Park.

Health Related Professions has a very strong program in occupational therapy and will be implementing a Ph.D. in rehabilitative science jointly with the School of Medicine. This should become the leading such program in the country. Occupational Therapy has a strong, externally funded research base. Physical Therapy has expanded over the last several years and is moving away from the B.S. degree to an M.S. and Ph.D. Exercise Science and Nutrition is expanding its undergraduate program. The clinical laboratory and medical technology fields have proposed moving into industrial hygiene and biotechnology assistance.

Nursing has strengthened its curriculum this year. Dean Cranley underwent decanal review and was fully supported by her faculty. However, the School has been losing students to local institutions offering the same degree but with lower standards, and faculty recruitment has been difficult. A future focus may be the School’s nurse practitioner program.

The new College of Arts and Sciences has a strong administrative group to support its Chairs and faculty. Dean Grant was tested against national competition and was clearly the best person for the job. The arts, especially digital and performing arts, offer many exciting possibilities, and the Center for the Arts is beginning to be a presence in Western New York. There have been several strong appointments in the humanities, and there will be more in the next few years. This will allow combinations that have not been possible before: languages and linguistics; art history, music history and traditional history with classics, philosophy and literature. Social sciences have made some strong appointments, but their planning process is still too focused on departments. Sciences are moving toward interdepartmental initiatives and programs. The College needs to develop its identity and a sense of its future. In the past the relationship of the arts and sciences and the professional schools has been seen as a one way street, with the arts and sciences providing undergraduate education to feed the professional schools. In the future the professional schools can find ways to support the College. One exciting possibility is creating a minor in business for students who want to major in the arts and sciences but also want a basic understanding of business. The use of benchmarks and standards across the University should facilitate the growth of interrelationships.

The Chair asked for questions from the floor:

• what are the practical definitions of benchmarking? (Professor Harwitz)
• each dean has been asked to provide a list of programs which they regard as their peers and a list of their aspirant peers, working generally within the framework of the public AAU universities; we will then analyze the various components of our programs and measure those components against our peers and aspirant peers (Provost Headrick)
• what are the proportions of monies allocated to the academic units and to overhead expenses and is that proportion the same for money generated from fees? (Professor Meacham)
• the traditional proportion is 60% to the academic units (excluding the Provost’s Office) and 40 % for overhead (Provost Headrick)
• will the University’s mission review submission contain reference to SUNY, state, and other outside expectations of us in addition to our own expectations?(Professor Meacham)
• there will be reference to both; it is, however, important for there to be a consistent theme running through the submission (Provost Headrick)
• our departments are often smaller than our peers and aspirant peers; to expand the departments will it be necessary to fund new lines with soft money rather than the traditional state funds (making recruitment more difficult)? (Professor Malone)
• most public research institutions are rethinking how they fund traditional activities; it will be common to use soft money for funding different activities than in the past; it will be important to establish a reputation to ensure continuity of soft money (Provost Headrick)
• the University and the Provost should be active in publicly promoting its image based on Access ‘99 (Professor George)
• the University has added more expertise in marketing and public relations, but probably needs more; the Provost’s Office needs to be more involved in these areas (Provost Headrick)

 

Item 5: Faculty Senate Affirmative Action Committee--2nd reading of the Junior Faculty Retention and Mentoring Initiative.

The Chair, inviting Professor Banks and Professor Rosenfeld, co-chairs of the Affirmative Action Committee, to join him, introduced the Resolution on Junior Faculty Retention and Mentoring Initiative. This is the second reading for the Resolution; it has been revised to reflect the discussion at the first reading. The Deans and the Chairs have seen the Resolution since they must support its provisions if the Initiative is to be successful.

Professor Banks commented on the Resolution. He is happy that the Resolution is color and gender blind, advocating mentoring for all junior faculty. However, the mentoring process will make more widely understood the difficulties minorities, women, and the handicapped have in getting to know their colleagues and in establishing an academic track record.

 

 

The Chair called for discussion from the floor:

• the Resolution, while admirable in its sentiment, is too vague to insure that anything more than "window dressing" will occur; a formal committee structure may not always be the most effective method for integrating minority and women faculty (Professor Swartz)
• minority and women faculty feel lonely and isolated at UB and don’t develop the kinds of relationships with their colleagues that would further their careers; a committee would at least provide a minimum support system (Professor Banks)
• recognize the concern that a formal mechanism may not fit the circumstances of every academic unit, but strongly support the Resolution to insure that every minority and woman faulty member gets some mentoring; own experience was that the first ten years at UB were lonely and isolated years; lacked the experience of participating in research activities as a student and was not prepared in the same way as traditional colleagues were for undertaking research, yet was judged by the same standards. A mentor in the early years would have made a great difference (Professor Malave)
• the failure of a junior faculty member to achieve tenure is a major loss to the University and frequently leaves a fractured, guilt ridden department in its wake; the unstructured approach of the Resolution is good in that it will allow units to develop what works best for them (Professor George)
• Resolution is called #1, is there another resolution? some departments already have mentoring processes in place; how effective are they? (Professor Malone)
• the numbering is from an earlier draft and will be removed; the Committee did not investigate how well existing programs are working (Professor Banks)
• does the mentoring committee have a role to play in the tenure decision? (Professor Malone)
• different units will use the in different ways; for the College of Arts and Sciences, envision the committee’s meeting with the Dean and their findings being a part of the Dean’s presentation (Professor Banks)
• retention is not all the problem; not recruiting enough minorities is a major reason why UB has so few minority faculty; it is important to understand that it is not the candidate who is the problem, but rather the problem is us (Professor Rosenfeld)
• the rationale for the Resolution should cite figures to document the lower retention rate for minority faculty (Professor Pegels)
• the rationale is separate from the Resolution and doesn’t add anything to strengthen the Resolution; remove the rationale from the document (Professor George)
• only the Resolution will be forwarded, not the rationale (Professor Nickerson)
• it is important that there be recognition of the serious problem of retention of minorities and women in the Resolution and its rationale (Professor Malave)
• to be effective the mentoring committee for women and minority junior faculty should include women and minority faculty who understand what their special problems are; a committee made up of traditional faculty will not be very helpful (Professor Sridhar)
• it would be useful to interview minority faculty who were unsuccessful in the tenure process to see what problems they had; it is important that minority faculty be recruited for reasons that other faculty value; for example, minority faculty are often recruited to serve the needs of minority students rather than for their scholarship (Professor Brooks-Bertram)
• the departmental Chair should be held accountable for the mentoring of junior faculty in the department; the Chair’s annual report should include a description of what mentoring arrangements are on going (Vice Provost Fischer)
• there is already a Faculty Senate Resolution calling for accountability in the Chair’s review (Professor Nickerson)

The Faculty Senate voted to adopt the Resolution.

 

Item 6: Old/new business

There was no old business. The Chair introduced Professor Brooks-Bertram who presented a request received by Interim Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs Gresham from the Chair of the City of Buffalo Charter Revision Commission. The Commission is asking for broad faculty involvement in the work of the Commission. There was no additional new business.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 PM.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Marilyn M. Kramer

Secretary of the Faculty Senate

 

 

Present

Chair: P. Nickerson

Secretary: M. Kramer

Architecture & Planning: H. Hata

Arts & Letters: J. Ludwig, J. Rickard

Dental Medicine: M. Easley,E. Davis, R. Hall, M. Neiders

Engineering & Applied Sciences: W. George, R. Mayne, R. Sridhar

Graduate School of Education: B. Johnstone, L.Malave

Health Related Professions: S. Nochajski, J. Tamburlin

Information & Library Studies: G. D’Elia

Law: L. Swartz

Management: C. Pegels, R. Ramesh

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: M. Alashari, E. Fine, S. Gallagher, B. Noble, S. Rudin, A. Saltzman, F. Schimpfhauser, A. Vladutiu

Natural Sciences and Mathematics: M. Hollingsworth, M. Churchill, M. Ram, K. Regan

Nursing: M. Johnson

Pharmacy: T. Kalman, C. Pristach

Social Sciences: W. Baumer, H. Calkins, J. Dewald, L. Dryden, M. Harwitz, J. Lawler, P. Luce, J. Meacham, E. Segal, B. Smith

SUNY Senators: J. Adams-Volpe, D. Malone, C. Welch

University Libraries: H. Booth, C. Densmore, W. Hepfer, D. Woodson, M. Zubrow

 

 

Guests:

University Officers:

T. Headrick, Provost

R. Wagner, Senior Vice President

K. Levy, Senior Vice Provost

N. Goodman, Vice Provost

D. Banks, Co-Chair, Affirmative Action Committee

G. Rosenfeld, Co-Chair, Affirmative Action Committee

 

 

Excused:

Graduate School of Education: L. Yang

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: D. Amsterdam

Natural Sciences & Mathematics: J. Faran

Social Sciences: L. Varadi

SUNY Senators: J. Fischer

 

 

Absent:

Architecture & Planning: S. Vassigh

Arts & Letters: A. Efron, M. Frisch, J. Holston, M. Hyde, M. Wickert

Dental Medicine: R. Baier

Engineering & Applied Sciences: S. Ahmad, D. Benenson, S. Mohan

Graduate School of Education: C. Hosenfeld, L. Klenk

Health Related Professions: L. Gosselin

Law: I. Marcus

Management: J. Boot, J. Newman

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: R. Batt, W. Flynn, S. Greenberg, J. Sulewski, A. Wakhloo, B. Willer

Natural Sciences & Mathematics: J. Berry, S. Bruckenstein, M.Cowen, S. Schack

Nursing: P. Wooldridge

Pharmacy: R. Madejski

Social Sciences: S. Singer

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