FACULTY SENATE
Minutes of October 13, 1998 - (approved)
E-MAIL: ZBFACSEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

The Faculty Senate met at 2:00 PM on October 13, 1998 in the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:

1. Approval of the minutes of September 22, 1998
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report of the President/Provost
4. Second reading of Resolution on "Grade Replacement"
5. Proposed expedited Resolution endorsing the SUNY Senate’s Resolution on "SUNY Provost’s Proposed Student Achievement Test"
6. First reading of the Talloires Declaration
7. Report on meeting of the SUNY Senate held at Delhi
8. Old/New business
 

Item 1: Approval of the minutes of September 22, 1998

The minutes of September 22, 1998 were approved.
 
 

Item 2: Report of the Chair

The Chair reminded Senators of the importance of attending or sending an alternate to Senate meetings. Last year it proved difficult to get and sustain a quorum. As a consequence some Resolutions had to be brought for a third reading before a vote could be taken. The Chair consulted with the Faculty Senate Bylaws Committee which advised him to enforce the Senate’s Standing Orders regulations regarding attendance. The Chair will be doing so from this meeting forward.

FSEC was briefed by Voldemar Innus, Chief Information Officer, on the Y2K problem and what UB is doing about it. At the request of Dr. Petro FSEC also discussed whether and what additional information should be included in UB’s Directory which will be re-issued at the beginning of the year. An ad hoc committee will be formed to work with Dr. Petro. The Chair reported that various Faculty Senate Committees have been active since the last Faculty Senate meeting.
 
 

Item 3: Report of the President/Provost

There was no report of the President/Provost.
 
 

Item 4: Second reading on Resolution on "Grade Replacement"

The Chair welcomed Professor Schroeder, Chair of the Grading Committee, and Professor Hennessey, a member of the Committee. Professor Schroeder introduced the Resolution by asking two rhetorical questions. First, what is the effect of the Resolution on students? Students would benefit from being encouraged to retake courses over which they had not achieved mastery. Second, what do students think about the Resolution? The Spectrum editorialized that the Resolution would have the effect of lowering standards. To the contrary, Professor Schroeder argued; the Resolution would have the effect of raising standards by saying that mastery of the subject matter is more important than just achieving a minimally satisfactory grade. The Spectrum editorial was concerned that in a course graded on a curve, the presence of repeat students would disadvantage first time students. Professor Schroeder countered that this would occur only in the case of a strict application of norm referenced grading in a course being repeated by a significant number of students. He believes that most faculty use criterion referenced grading in which case there would be no disadvantage to first time students.

The Chair invited comments from the floor:

• how many students would be eligible to retake an average course in any one semester? (Professor Bruckenstein)
• have no statistics to answer the question directly, but it would vary from course to course; the time and money costs of retaking a course and the risk of getting a lower grade that will discourage abuse (Professor Schroeder)
• this proposal is modeled on the University of Pittsburgh’s policy; the University of Pittsburgh is about our size, and approximately 100 students each semester take advantage of grade replacement there (Professor Hennessey)
• grade replacement artificially raises the Grade Point Average (GPA) for students coming from schools that allow the practice in relation to students from schools that do not allow it; for highly competitive graduate schools that is disturbing (Professor Easley)
• a single grade replacement will change the GPA only on the order of a hundredth of a point; the transcript will show the original and the replaced grade, so it would be possible to recalculate a student’s GPA in highly competitive situations (Professor Schroeder)
• about 1/3 of schools surveyed allowed grade replacement; our students are at a competitive disadvantage if we do not permit grade replacement; grade replacement is, however, not primarily aimed at improving a student’s GPA but rather at increasing the student’s mastery of a topic (Professor Hennessey)
• what is rationale of restricting grade replacement to students receiving a C+ or lower? (speaker unidentified)
• C+ and lower is the critical area in which a student’s mastery of the material is in question (Professor Schroeder)
• the point of the Resolution is mastery of material; since many UB departments require a minimum 2.5 GPA for a major, the departments have defacto decided what grade signifies satisfactory mastery of a course (Professor Baumer)
• move (and seconded) to strike number 1 of the Resolution which limits grade replacement to the grade of C+ or lower (Professor George)
• the Resolution could put too great a burden on the student for the effectiveness of the student’s education (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• an upper classman in order to polish her GPA could retake introductory courses in her major; how would that be handled? (Professor Bruckenstein)
• retaking courses in one’s freshman year would have a major impact on the GPA; for upperclassmen, the effect is marginal and costs time and tuition; that will be enough to discourage upperclassmen from large scale grade replacement (Professor Schack)
• after grade replacement implemented institute record keeping to track the effect of the change (Professor Harwitz)
• the George amendment to the Resolution contravenes the thinking of the Grading Committee that grade replacement should focus on encouraging mastery of a course; instead it focus on GPA polishing (Professor Baumer)
• the course mastery indicated by a B- grade may not satisfy the serious student who wants to continue in a field and UB should not put obstacles in such a student’s way ; the 2.5 GPA minimum for majors does not reflect consensus that a B- rather the a C+ indicates mastery, but is the result of administrative fiat (Professor Segal)
• nothing in UB’s current policies prevents a student from retaking a course to improve mastery of material; they only prohibit grade replacement (Professor Mauner)
• in highly popular courses what priority would be given to students who want to retake a course? (Professor Rickard)
• the Resolution doesn’t address how departments will handle repeat students in impacted courses (Professor Schroeder)
• the academic rationale for retaking a course is a separate issue from how the GPA is computed; would be more comfortable with the amendment to the Resolution if the repeat grade were averaged with, rather than replacing, the original grade (Professor Dryden)

The Chair asked for a vote on the George amendment. The amendment passed. The Chair called for further discussion of the Resolution as amended:

• does a course which is being repeated count towards full time status? (Professor Malone)
• would implement the spirit of the Resolution if a repeat course counted toward full time status (Vice Provost Goodman)
• if a student failed a course at UB but took the course again at another school, would the transfer grade replace the UB grade? (Professor Cavior)
• the later external grade would count towards the student’s overall GPA but not toward the UB GPA; both averages are important, for example a 2.0 is required for graduation both in the overall GPA and the UB GPA (Vice Provost Goodman)
• for courses that count toward the major, the department has to agree to accept a transfer course, and that will assure quality (Professor Baumer)
• when a transfer course is accepted by a department, that is a blanket decision and the department would not be asked again if another student wanted to transfer the same course (Vice Provost Goodman)
• explain the rationale for recomputing the GPA (Professor Dryden)
• to avoid having one bad semester from penalizing a student forever (Professor Schroeder)
• are upper level courses covered by articulation agreements? (Professor Harwitz)
• formal articulation agreements only cover courses in the first two years, but a decision by a department to accept a particular course from a particular institution is regarded as a blanket policy as to all future identical requests (Vice Provost Goodman)
• the ability to retake an unlimited number of courses could encourage student irresponsibility; move (seconded) to restrict to four the number of courses that can be retaken during a student’s career at UB (Professor Pegels)
• the Resolution is only extending an existing policy that allows a student to retake any course in which the student received a D+ or lower; restricting repeat courses to four means a student who does poorly in the first semester and repeats those courses is barred from retaking any additional courses later (Professor Baumer)
• if you restricted only the number of C+ and higher grade courses which a student could retake, the algorithm for computing GPA is going to become too complex (Professor Schroeder)
• students don’t generally goof off; they are responding to genuine hardships and difficulties in their lives, and we should try to help them (Professor Wickert)

The Chair asked for a vote on the Pegels amendment to the Resolution. The amendment was defeated. The Chair asked for further comments on the Resolution as amended by the George amendment:

• concerned that a student who does badly in the beginning of a course will not have the motivation to work harder to retrieve the situation, knowing that it is possible to replace the grade (Professor Dryden)
• all grades for all courses taken appear on the student’s transcript, so the student does have incentive to do well on the first try of a course (Professor Schroeder)

The Chair asked for a vote. The Resolution as amended by the George amendment passed.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Item 5: Proposed expedited Resolution endorsing the SUNY Senate’s Resolution on "SUNY Provost’s Proposed Student Achievement Test"

The Chair queried whether there was any objection to bringing a Resolution endorsing the SUNY Senate’s Resolution on "SUNY Provost’s Proposed Student Achievement Test" to a vote after the first reading. There was none.

Professor Adams-Volpe, a SUNY Senator, attended the last meeting of the Faculty Senate at Delhi and spoke to the Resolution. The Faculty Senate believes that achievement testing should be campus based rather than system based; the Faculty Senate would like to see more analysis of the efficacy of a system wide test and some discussion of what the test would measure and how the test results would be used. Achievement testing is used in only six or seven states at present. Twenty-eight SUNY institution Faculty Senates have already endorsed the Resolution.

The Chair asked for comments from the floor:

• testing for a base line mark and then retesting is not a methodologically sound way of measuring the value added of a college education (Professor Wooldridge)
• the field of labor economics has spent great effort in attempting to measure value added; perhaps Provost Salins should look at this research rather than attempting to create a new instrument (Professor Harwitz)
• what is the purpose of Provost Salins proposal? (Professor George)
• this is a very mischievous direction in which the new Board of Trustees and the Provost is taking SUNY; we should strongly endorse the SUNY Faculty Senate Resolution (Professor Johnstone)
• support the first part of the proposed UB Resolution endorsing the SUNY Faculty Senate’s Resolution; however, the second part of the UB Resolution which urges President Greiner to "respect the campus-based faculty consultative process which established and continues to monitor our general education program" is gratuitous (Professor Malone)
• the second clause is intended to give the President flexibility in the face of what will be considerable pressure for UB to participate (Professor Nickerson

The Resolution was voted on and adopted.
 
 

Item 6: First reading of the Talloires Declaration

Professor Welch gave a brief introduction to the Talloires Declaration. The Declaration arose in 1990 from a meeting of distinguished university presidents who were concerned that as heads of universities they should be taking a leadership role on one of the most critical issues facing the late 20th Century, "the unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources." There are several reasons why UB should also endorse the Declaration. First UB has already taken steps which conform to the goals of the Declaration, e.g., we have the Interdisciplinary Institute on Environment and Society and various programs which train and do research in environmental issues. UB has had successful programs to cut down on energy and paper use. Twelve of the fifty eight member of the Association of American Universities have signed the Talloires Declaration; were UB to sign we would be in a leadership position in the AAU. Other groups on campus have advised President Greiner to endorse the Declaration: the Environmental Task Force, the Professional Staff Senate, the Student Association and many other groups.

The Chair invited comments from the floor:

• although the cause seems like an excellent one, the language of the Declaration sounds coercive and could place a substantial burden on departments (Professor Cavior)
• the Declaration is a statement of aspirations not a coercive document; the Declaration would be subject to the restraint of faculty governance (Professor Welch)
• declarations like these are obviously well intentioned and obviously right in their objectives, but adopting them is dangerous because they suggest that we have excluded other issues from being considered as important (Professor Boot)
• there are many other worthy resolutions waiting endorsement; we should not be in the business of selecting among them (Professor Johnstone)
• good to put the influence of the universities on the side of this issue since there are strong vested interests that oppose environmental conservation (Professor Wickert)
• issue being put forward because President Greiner asked for faculty input on the Declaration, and we need to respond to his request (Professor Welch)
• undecided on whether to support the Resolution because do not understand the consequences in terms of resource allocation (Professor Bruckenstein)
• UB ignores the goals of the Declaration in the every day running of the University, e.g., UB does not use recycled paper although a task force recommended it for routine chores; perhaps we should not pass the Resolution before the University begins to behave as though it believes in the Declaration (Professor Schack)
• it may be correct for the faculty to endorse the concepts of the Declaration, but it might be preferable to draft our own wording rather than affiliating with this particular organization and this particular wording (Professor Johnstone)
• as a practical matter the University would not reallocate resources if it endorsed the Declaration; it is more of an affirmation of support of the ideas contained in the Declaration than an actual call to the details of the Declaration (Professor Wooldridge)
• should craft a sense of the Senate document supporting the goals of the Talloires Declaration, but not vote to endorse it (Professor Segal)

The Resolution will have its second reading at the Faculty Senate meeting of November 10.
 
 

Item 7: Report on the meeting of the SUNY Senate at Delhi

Professor Adams-Volpe reported on the SUNY Senate meeting held at Delhi October 8-10. Chancellor Ryan, Provost Salins and Vice Provost for Budget DeMarco were present at the meeting. They met extensively with the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and gave presentations with questions and answers to the full Senate. Unfortunately there was no effective communication between the Senators and the administration on the issue of achievement testing. Chancellor Ryan did say, however, that he is not involved at all in the process or the policy making on this issue and doesn’t want to be lobbied on it.

Another topic of discussion was the Colleges of Technology Alliance. The five colleges of technology are now funded and operate as one unit. There is a Council which governs although each college retains its own President. The Faculty Senate called for faculty governance representation from all five colleges on the Council; at present there is none.

Provost Salins has two main initiatives: the SUNY Virtual Library and Distance Learning and the SUNY Learning Network. He also talked about doubling SUNY research in the next five years with a focus on sciences and engineering. There was some concern that this will replace the Graduate Research Initiative.

There was a request for nominations for the Chair of the Faculty Senate. There are no apparent candidates, so there is concern for the continuity of leadership of the Senate.

The Chair asked for questions from the floor:

• what was discussed about the Resource Allocation Methodology? (Professor Harwitz)
• funding figures for all the campuses were given; there was discussion of tuition and fees remaining on campuses; the tithes returning funds to SUNY are gone (Professor Adams-Volpe)
• the written report on the SUNY Senate meeting states that Provost Salins outraged the Senators by saying that when he was a department chair he attempted to control curricular content; don’t all faculty try to do that? (speaker unidentified)
• Provost Salins as department chair tried to control the content of what others in his department taught; Provost Salins joked about this and destroyed all rapport with the Senators (Professor Adams-Volpe)

Item 8: Old/new business

The Chair asked for any old/new business.

• one reason for our difficulty in achieving and maintaining a quorum is that the business of the Senate, which is disproportionately concerned with undergraduate issues, is not very interesting to the majority of Senators who are members of the Graduate Faculty and come from departments that don’t have undergraduate students; therefore, at the next Faculty Senate meeting will make a motion in two parts: either eliminate the Graduate Faculty and transfer its responsibilities to the Senate or create a parallel Undergraduate Faculty and relegate all undergraduate issues to it. (Professor George)

The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 PM.
 
 

Respectfully submitted,
  Marilyn M. Kramer Secretary of the Faculty Senate

 
 

Present:

Chair: P. Nickerson

Secretary: M. Kramer

Architecture & Planning: H. Hata

Arts & Letters: M. Frisch, J. Holstun, J. Ludwig, J. Rickard, M. Wickert

Dental Medicine: R. Baier, M. Easley, G. Ferry, R. Hall

Engineering & Applied Sciences: S. Ahmad, D. Benenson, W. George, R. Mayne, R. Sridhar

Graduate School of Education: C. Hosenfeld, B. Johnstone, L. Malave, L. Yang

Health Related Professions: L. Gosselin, S. Nochajski, J. Tamburlin

Information & Library Studies: G. D’Elia

Law: L. Swartz

Management: J. Boot, J. Newman, C. Pegels, R. Ramesh

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: B. Albini, D. Amsterdam, S. Awner, E. Fine, W. Flynn, S. Gallager, R. Heffner, A. Michalek, B. Nobel, S. Rudin, A Saltzman, F. Schimpfhauser, H. Schuel, D. Schwartz, C. Pristach, J. Sulewski, B. Willer, J. Yates, A. Vladutiu

Natural Sciences & Mathematics: T. Hennessey, M. Bisson, S. Bruckenstein, M. Churchill, R. Vesley, S. Cavior, M. Ram, K. Regan, S. Schack

Nursing: M. Johnson, P. Wooldridge

Pharmacy: T. Kalman, R. Madejski

Social Sciences: W. Baumer, H. Calkins, J. Dewald, L. Dryden, M. Harwitz, G. Mauner, J. Meacham, E. Segal, S. Singer, B. Smith, H. Bennett

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

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

University Officers:

N. Goodman, Vice Provost
 
 

Guests:

Thomas Schroeder, Chair, Grading Committee
 
 

Excused:

Graduate School of Education: L. Klenk

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: M. Alashari

Absent:

Architecture & Planning: S. Vassigh

Arts & Letters: M. Hyde

Dental Medicine: M. Neiders

Engineering & Applied Sciences: S. Mohan

Law: I. Marcus

Medicine & Biomedical Sciences: J. DeBerry, S. Greenberg, S. Spurgeon, A. Wakhloo

Social Sciences: J. Lawler

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