FACULTY SENATE

Minutes of November 2, 2004
(unapproved)

 

The Faculty Senate (FS) met at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 2, 2004, at the Center for Tomorrow to consider the following agenda:

1. Approval of the minutes of October 5, 2004
2. Report of the Chair
3. Report of the President/Provost
4. Academic planning & academic support planning – S. Tripathi & B. Willis
5. Report of the SUNY Faculty Senate meeting at SUNY-Maritime – M. Kramer
6. Old/New business
7. Adjournment

Item 1: Approval of the minutes of October 5, 2004

The minutes were approved following acknowledgement of a misspelled name (“Boeing” should be “Hoeing”) under Item 4.

Item 2: Report of the Chair

Chair Nickerson’s report included:

• Many academic-related events took place throughout October. The inauguration of President Simpson was held on October 15th, and the following day there was a symposium on international student mobility featuring papers from President Simpson and other educational leaders from around the world.
• The FSEC has passed a resolution calling upon the Provost, in cooperation with the FS, to form a committee that will review distance education at UB.
• The FSEC has been discussing various topics and the following FS committees have been charged to consider related academic issues: Educational Programs & Policy, Faculty Tenure & Privileges, University Governance, Teaching & Learning, Student Life, Admissions & Retention, Information & Library Resources.
• The Graduate School Executive Committee is working on the final stages of changing the appointment of newly appointed, tenure-track assistant professors to the graduate faculty. It will henceforth be automatic. Current procedures will continue to apply to clinical, research, and other adjunct faculty.
• The Graduate School Executive Committee has also been discussing UB’s outside reader policy. Under consideration is the option of having a member of the committee from within the university, but from outside the department/program, who will serve as the representative of the Graduate Dean on the committee.

Item 3: Report of the President

President Simpson said he’s excited about the ongoing UB2020 strategic planning endeavor. It’s important that we have a sense of who we are, where we’re going, and how we want to get there. A Web site – http://www.buffalo.edu/ub2020/ – has been created to facilitate this process. It’s a resource where the UB community can check to learn more about UB’s planning goals and to submit their own questions and comments.

There are two principle committees: Academic Planning, which is headed by Provost Satish Tripathi, and Academic Support Planning, lead to Dr. Beau Willis.

Item 4: Academic Planning & Academic Support Planning – S. Tripathi & B. Willis

Provost Tripathi indicated that the UB2020 Web site has lots of useful information about the planning process, and advised everyone to check it regularly to learn about what’s going on.

He is serving as head of the Academic Planning Committee (APC), which is one of the two main groups working on the UB2020 effort. Their objectives include developing a course of action for identifying and defining academic strategic strengths, evaluating criteria to prioritize strategic strengths, and involving academic stakeholders in the process. The strategic strengths will then be used to form the basis of an institutional and unit-specific academic plan.

The process is expected to last the whole academic year. The APC is still working on a list of areas that will be priorities for the process, but a first report will be done by December 15th.

The APC will be looking for academic areas that already have strategic strength. UB will make investments in those areas so we can be known for their excellence. All campus academic areas will be looked at, because the objective is to identify and highlight UB’s talent and emerging and strategic strength.

Chief of Staff (Office of the President) Willis said the role of the Academic Support Planning Committee (ASPC) will be to enable UB’s academic goals by aligning our operations with our strategic direction. It encompasses business process, enterprise technology support, campus policies, organizational structures, and delivery systems. The ASPC will be supported by project teams and task forces that will further develop recommendations, consider alternatives to various planning concepts and ideas, and analyze data and information that will help inform critical decisions. Project teams will also conduct external benchmarking and best practice reviews to support the development of their recommendations.

Questions & comments:

• There are four teams working under each committee. How can the groups work at the same time when one is dependent on the findings of another? (Adams-Volpe)
• The groups have been working very well together, and information is being shared as needed. (Tripathi)
• The presentation slides referred to “champions” and “leaders” on each project team. What’s their function? (Nickerson)
• The role of the champions is to provide support and guidance. The leaders are responsible for organizing and directing their group’s activities. (Tripathi)
• How does Mission Review 2 (MR2) relate to the planning process? (Kramer)
• MR2 is a plan negotiated between the university and SUNY. It details our intentions for the next five or so years, so it’s aimed at a much shorter time period. (Tripathi)
• Many proposals have been submitted to the planning process. One that I was associated with was rejected, but no reason was given. It would have been helpful to know why. (Welch)
• If a project was rejected, it means the dean did not forward the proposal to the next level. Some deans might have provided reasons, but you’ll need to contact yours for the explanation. (Tripathi)
• If circumstances change in a department, can proposals be modified and resubmitted? (Welch)
• Proposals can be submitted to the planning committees without going through deans. (Christian)
• Is the planning process involved in affirmative action or equity and diversity issues, or is that for a different phase of the process? (Nickerson)
• That’s an area that the whole campus should be concerned about all the time. It’s not being directly addressed as part of the planning process. However, it is an area that will be addressed by the person who is hired to be the vice provost for faculty affairs. (Tripathi)
• Strengths and weaknesses are relative to what our mission is. Is there a group that’s looking at departmental mission statements to see if they’re aligned? Are students’ interests being considered in the deliberations? (Meacham)
• Everything we do is aimed at improving our educational mission, in which student considerations are paramount. Aiming to improve the quality our education will ultimately benefit all UB students. (Tripathi)

Item 5: Report of the SUNY Faculty Senate meeting at SUNY-Maritime – M. Kramer

Professor Kramer highlighted the main topics covered at the October 22-23 Plenary Meeting at SUNY Maritime College. The SUNY Faculty Senate wants to rework the old Budget Allocation Formula (BAP) that was used through the 2003/04 budget year. That formula distributed money to the campuses based on enrollment, discipline mix, sponsored program expenditures, and other factors. When state tax dollar support was reduced by nearly $200 million, however, the formula had a disparate impact SUNY-wide. The colleges and technology institutions would have had budget increases, while the doctoral campuses would have had budget losses. To avoid this outcome, SUNY redistributed the budget more evenly to all the campuses.

The proposed new BAP retains the policy that tuition revenue generated by a campus stays at that campus. The changes include two new features: 1.) there will be Funded Functional Categories (called “baskets”) for major areas of campus activity, e.g. undergraduate, graduate, professional instruction, and research; 2.) funding will be based on attainment of realistic performance goals negotiated between SUNY and local campuses. Changes will begin in the 2005/06 academic year and be phased in over the following few years.

Mission Review 2 (MR2) was the other major topic. Like the first Mission Review, MR2 repeats the process of asking each campus to prepare a goals document that will frame campus/SUNY discussions of assessment, financial and facilities issues, etc. SUNY will then use each campus’s MR2 document (which is due December 15th) to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

Father John Cremins has replaced Candace de Russy as chair of the Board of Trustees Academic Standards Committee. He has extensive college teaching experience and is interested in more interaction between the Committee and SUNY faculty.

Item 6: Old/New business

None

Item 7: Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Will Hepfer
Secretary of the Faculty Senate

ATTENDANCE (P = present; A = absent; E = excused)

Chair – P. Nickerson
Secretary – W. Hepfer
Parliamentarian – W. Baumer
Architecture & Planning – GS Danford (A), K. Mackay (P)
Arts & Sciences – R. Allen-King (P), S. Bennett (P), S. Bruckenstein (A), J. Buscaglia (A), M. Chen (P), M. Churchill (P), M. Detty (A), L. Dryden (P), D. Eddins (P), J. Faran (P), A. Graves (P), T. Gregg (A), R. Hoeing (P), A. Markelz (A), N. Matthews (P), P. McDevitt (A), J. Meacham (P), J. Mendoza (P), A. Monteiro (P), J. Pappas (A), S. Rothenberg (A), S. Schack (A), D. Street (P), K. Takeuchi (P), J-C Thill (P), T. Thurston (A), G. Timler (P), P. Vanouse (A), D. Wackeroth (P), C. Welch (P), R. Woodard (P), J. Yu (P)
Dental Medicine – P. Bradford (A), M. Donley (E), E. Pantera (P), J. Zambon (P)
Education – J. Hoot (A), X. Liu (P), L. Malave (P), T. Schroeder (P)
Engineering & Applied Sciences – A. Aref (P), C. Basaran (A), S. Chen (P), J. Jensen (P), K. Lewis (P), D. Pados (P), A. Titus (P), R. Wetherhold (P)
Informatics – J. Ellison (A)
Institutional General – O. Mixon (A)
Law – D. Filvaroff (A), R. Reis (A), L. Swartz (E)
Management – J. Boot (A), S. Gunn (A), C. Pegels (P), N. Suresh (A)
Medicine & Biomedical Sciences – D. Amsterdam (P), F. Baddoura (A), C. Cohan (P), M. Dryjski (A), J. Evans (A), J. Figueroa (A), E. Fine (E), W. Flynn (A), J. Gibbs (A), H. Hameer (A), L. Harris (P), J. Hassett (E), D. Holmes (P), T. Langan (A), V. Li (A), F. Loghmanee (A), A. Manyon (P), N. Miele (A), A. Posner (P), J. Sauret (A), J. Sellick (A), R. Stephan (A), G. Sufrin (A), F. Velazquez (A), B. Weinstock-Guttman (P)
Nursing – P. McCartney (A), P. Wooldridge (A)
Pharmacy – K. Boje (A), G. Brazeau (P)
Public Health & Health Professions – C. Crespo (A), G. Farkas (A)
Social Work – B. Rittner (A)
SUNY Senators – W. Baumer (P), W. Coles (P), M. Kramer (P), P. Nickerson (P)
University Libraries – J. Adams-Volpe (P), HA Booth (P), S. Davis (P), C. Tysick (P)


Guests – D. Christian (Academic Planning Cmte.), M. Cochrane (Reporter), L. Labinski (Professional Staff Senate)

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