COUNCIL AND COMMITTEE SUMMARIES
Meeting of the University Senate, March 9, 2015
As submitted to Yenisel Gulatee, Senate Secretary, University Senate
UNIVERSITY SENATE CHAIR’S REPORT –Joette Stefl-Mabry, Chair
Informational
To work towards initial compliance of the Faculty Bylaws of the University at Albany Senate
Article I. Section 2.2.2:
2.2.2. The Faculty shall be informed and given opportunity to discuss at the earliest
possible stages in their formulation, and shall review and provide formal consultation on,
prior to adoption, all proposals regarding:
(a) Creation, renaming, major re-organization, or dissolution of academic units and
programs
(b) Goals and formal plans directing the future of the University
(c) Policies or standards governing speech and assembly on the campuses of the
University
(d) Plans for development of new campus facilities, or major modifications or closure of
existing facilities
2.2.3. The Faculty shall provide ongoing consultation on institution-wide budget or
business initiatives that affect the teaching, research, or service programs of the University.
Detailed annual reports shall be provided on actual budget expenditures.
the Senate Chair and Vice Chair have been meeting regularly with the administration:
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01/06/15 Senate Chair and Vice Chair met with Provost Stellar
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01/12/15 Senate Chair and UUP Chapter President met with Provost Stellar and Chief of
Staff Wirkkula
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02/25/2015 Senate Chair and Vice Chair met with Chief of Staff Wirkkula
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02/26/2015 Senate Chair and Vice Chair meeting with Dean David Rousseau has been
rescheduled
These meetings do not take the place of formal consultation. In fact, these meetings are to ensure
that formal consultation does occur. Formal consultation is defined as:
2.4 The Faculty executes its responsibilities directly, as authorized by Section 2.2.1, by
formal consultation as required by Section 2.2.2, and by advising. Faculty participation in
such decision-making is to be done via the appropriate governance body as defined by the
Senate, or by its Executive Committee, except as provided in Article I, Section 5. These
modes of participation are:
2.4.1 Formal Consultation. The Faculty shall engage in formal consultation with the
President and the administration, as outlined and limited by the Policies of the Board of
Trustees, and further characterized by the Chancellor’s Statement on Governance
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[Faculty Handbook, Section III, p. 1]. Formal consultation is required for matters
covered by Article 1, Section 2.2.2. Either the President or the Faculty shall be able to
request formal consultation on other matters.
Except where precluded by contractual or other legal restrictions, minimally, formal
consultation with the faculty on these proposals shall entail consultation between
administration and University governance bodies. Formal consultation shall require
communication, preferably in writing, specifying the area or issue for which
recommendations are being solicited and accompanied by sufficient information as
necessary for an informed recommendation. Formal consultation should occur as soon
as issues needing resolution are identified. The faculty shall be given adequate time to
respond. A written response to final Faculty recommendations shall be provided,
indicating what decisions were made and the basis for such decisions; this should be
particularly detailed in instances where faculty recommendations are not followed.
2.4.2 Advice. A group of Faculty may offer an informal expression of opinion or may
review and offer recommendations on proposed policy or actions. The advice may be
initiated by a governance body or requested by an administrator. The administrator shall
communicate the decision and the rationale for it back to the advisory group.
2.5 Faculty Participation in Advisory Groups Outside of Governance Bodies.
Administrators may choose to advance their leadership vision for the University by
constituting special committees and task forces, selecting individual faculty members
because of their experience or expertise. Ideally, such advisory groups shall be constituted
in consultation with the Governance Council of the University Senate and lines of
communication with relevant governance bodies shall be enunciated. In any case, such
groups do not represent the Faculty as a whole and advice from such groups does not
replace approval by or formal consultation with the Faculty. Such groups may freely
provide advice; however, for such groups to be considered part of the formal consultative
process, a majority of the faculty members must either be appointed by, or their
recommended appointment approved by, the Senate Governance Council, as specified in
Article 2, Section 5.5, and specific faculty members must be designated to regularly report
to the Senate. The Chair and Vice Chair of the Senate shall be consulted in the composition
of all major University level search committees and committees to select honorary degree
recipients.
2.6 Consultation with Constituent Groups. All Faculty Governance bodies have a
responsibility to communicate regularly with their constituency as noted in Article II,
Section 1.6, and Article III, and to be responsive when a request for consultation comes
from Student Groups.
II. Reports of Actions
N/A
III. Recommendations for Actions
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That CGLs at the University at Albany (Senate Chair, Vice Chair and Immediate Past
Chair) attend SUNY Plenaries:
April 23-25, 2015, 170th Winter Plenary, Hosted by SUNY Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh NY,
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Executive Committee, Committee Chairs, Senators, Campus Governance Leaders.
October 2015, 171st Fall Plenary Meeting, Hosted by SUNY Buffalo State, Buffalo NY
Executive Committee, Committee Chairs, Senators, Campus Governance Leaders
UFS (University Faculty Senator’s Report) –Danielle Leonard, J. Philippe Abraham &
John Schmidt, SUNY Senators
Report from the UFS Winter Plenary at SUNY Farmingdale, Jan 22-24, 2014.
The plenary occurred the same week as the Chancellor’s State of the University Address and the
release of the Governor’s budget for SUNY. In fact, Chancellor Zimpher gave her address in the
morning and drove down to Long Island to talk to the UFS the same afternoon. This meant that a
lot of new developments occurred and were considered, the major ones of which are listed
below.
1. The Elsevier Contract. SUNY’s contract for their bundle of journals, including electronic
access (“Science Direct”) was renegotiated for $44M over the next 5 years. This covers almost
all SUNY Campuses and is the major budget breaker for SUNY Libraries. Doctoral Institutions
pay 74% of this total cost and the cost of this and other blocs is escalating due to the
monopolistic publisher practices, and will continue to be a budget problem. SUNY System in
past years contributed $1.2M, and will continue to supply $0.6M per year plus another $2.5M
over 5 years.
The wider view concerns what SUNY and other large systems nationwide can do to alter
the dynamics of journal subscriptions. The current system is held in place largely because
publication credits for promotion and tenure revolve around high impact journals, which these
giant companies monopolize. Open access journals are being pushed by NIH and other agencies
so that results can be made available to all users without charge. However, this means that
publishing costs are pushed over to authors in this model, and these can be set very high (and
possibly predatory) by publishing corporations as well. The only real solution would be if large
systems such as SUNY could get together and establish reputable, high impact, open access
journals.
2. SUNY Budget in the Governor’s budget proposal. The outlook is quite a bit brighter than
in the previous year when the cost of UUP raises were not funded (even though the state had
previously agreed to a maintenance of effort), but the new money this year would come with
strings attached. The highlights of the Governor’s budget includes $50M for recruiting Master
Innovators/Researchers (Full Professors) to spark SUNY’s research efforts, especially in clusters
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of excellence. In addition there is an additional $50M for a SUNY Innovation Fund, and both of
these are slated to continue at the same rate for 5 years. There is a $30M loan to support Open
SUNY’s expansion of online courses and degree programs. The rationale for the loan is that it is
expected to bring in more students (and tuition), which should eventually he able to repay the
loan. It would pay for infrastructure for Open SUNY such as a common 24 hour hot line and
servers, etc. There is only $2M extra in the main budget, but an additional $18M for SUNY
Excels Plan (more below). On the capital fund side, there is $200M (this year and continue for 5
years), almost all of which is to cover a backlog of critical maintenance for SUNY’s old
buildings.
3. SUNY Excels. As you will recall, this is a set of metrics to measure SUNY’s commitment to
excellence and to year-to-year improvements that the Chancellor envisions as a way to convince
the Governor and the Legislature that funds spent on SUNY are a good investment for New
York, and worthy of further investments. Already tuition at SUNY is substantially lower than
comparable State University campuses, and our degree our BS/BA completion rates are
substantially higher than the national average. There are a total of 17 metrics in 5 categories,
labeled “Access, Completion, Success, Inquiry and Engagement.” Since SUNY has 32 campuses
ranging from University Centers, Medical Schools, special schools (optometry, maritime,
agriculture), tech schools, 4 year colleges, etc., some of the metrics will apply more so to some
campuses than others. For the coming year, each campus will formulate a plan including which
of the 17 metrics they will concentrate on, and what measures they will take to improve their
scores. Campus governance should be included in the formulation of this plan. There will be a
pot of money, which will include not only the $18M above but a 10% withholding of state tax
revenues (since our support is about 35% state tax money and 65% tuition, this would be about
3.5% of our state funds budget). A variable amount of this money will then be reawarded back to
the campus according to SUNY central’s rating of our plan this year (meeting in December to
disburse funds), and in future years according to our progress in meeting the goals we set this
year.
The Chancellor also committed, in her State of the University presentation, to increase
the total number of SUNY degrees granted per year from the current 92,000 to 150,000 by 2020!
This would mean more than 60% increase in only 5 years, presumably through ramping up
online degrees in Open SUNY.
Announcement:
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SUNY Voices on Shared Governance, MARCH 20-21, 2015 AT Onondaga Community
College in Syracuse. This is the second conference of this series, and the deadline for submitting
topics for individual papers, panel discussions or roundtables has been extended to Feb 17 (1—
250 word descriptions of innovative or challenging shared governance practices on campus or
research findings).
Go to http://www.suny.edu/about/shared-governance/sunyvoices/conference/.
Two keynote speakers:
Dr. Susan Resneck Pierce, author of Governance reconsidered: How boards, Presidents,
Administrators and Faculty can help their colleges thrive and On being presidential: A guide for
college and university leaders.
Dr. Steven C Bahls author of Shared Governance in times of change: A practical guide for
Universities and colleges.
Conference themes include:
Integration of technology into the governance process
“Best Practices”
Student leadership and institution wide governance
Engaging stakeholders
Incorporating shared governance into strategic planning
Recruitment and support of campus governance members
Challenges and solutions for multi-campus and system-wide shared governance
Changing roles of presidents and provosts in shared governance
GSA (Graduate Student Association) – Caitlin Janiszewski, GSA President
The GSA is having a great semester so far. We recently submitted a bid to the National
Association of Graduate-Professional Students to host their summer Leadership Summit. The
theme of our proposal was Sustainability and Leadership. If focuses on integrating the value of
sustainability into all levels of student and community leadership. We eagerly await a response
from the NAGPS to see if we have won the bid. In the meantime if anyone is interested in co-
sponsoring this event we are seeking co-sponsorships to ensure that we have a successful
program. We believe this program could serve to raise the profile of our University across the
nation. Holding this kind of event makes us eligible to be recognized by the NAGPS which
would certainly help to communicate our reputation and identity to prospective graduate students
across the nation.
We are also happy to announce that we were finally able put on our Contemplative Leadership
Workshop on February 25th which was delayed due to the weather last month. Lee Riddell from
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the SUNY Leadership Institute offered a great workshop on self-awareness. It was very well
received and we hope to bring her back in the future.
Also, on February 25th we participated in two campaigns; Adjunct Awareness Day and
GradHaveDebt2 campaign. Many graduate students wore green ribbons to raise awareness about
adjunct working conditions and others participated in the GradHaveDebt2 tweet/message
Congress day when graduate students across the nation reached out via social media to their
representative regarding student debt, the elimination of lifetime learning credits for graduate
students, and the need to more research funds to be appropriated for NIH, NSF, NEH, etc.
We will be following up these efforts by sending GSA representative to the NAGPS Legislative
Action Days in Washington D.C. in March to receive advocacy training and lobby our
representatives. We also hope to have reps at the SUNY SA advocacy days in DC and Albany in
the next two months. On April 8th we will be holding advocacy training and participating in the
GradsHaveDebt2 call Congress day. We are very excited to finally be capitalizing on our
proximity to to the Capitol while also thinking broadly and engaging with a national network.
Also, on February 25th I was lucky enough to be one of just over a dozen SUNY students who
won a lunch with Chancellor Zimpher in downtown Albany. During this lunch we breached the
topic of adjunct faculty. Chancellor Zimpher spoke on the issue suggesting that a lot of attention
needs to be paid to this constituency for many of the same reasons that President Jones, former
Interim Provost Mulcahy and current Provost Stellar convened the Blue Ribbon Panel on
Contingent Faculty. Chancellor Zimpher promised us (the student reps) opportunities to speak on
the issue at the system level. I will be working with Lori Mould the President of SUNY Student
Assembly to follow up on this opportunity.
Finally, we also continue to develop a strong working relationship with our new Provost Stellar.
His openness to student input has been a catalyst to sharpen our vision and goals for the graduate
student body. We recently met about a new initiative/idea which we hope will serve graduate
student needs as well as the mission of the University and vision of President Jones. Loosely
grounded in the framework of experiential and engaged learning we are developing the idea of
Publicly Engaged Professional Development (PEPD). Dr. Stellar has given us the opportunity to
organically develop this idea through the graduate student body, but of course as we mold this
idea we will be quick to request feedback from faculty, staff, administration, and undergraduates.
Regardless of what direction this idea takes off in, it has already facilitated wonderful
opportunities for graduate student to connect with University leadership.
SA (Student Association) – Marc Cohen, Student Association Representative
Academic Affairs
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Looking forward to planning an event in coordination with University Police as an
expression of our gratitude for their presence on our campus. It will be similar to last
semester’s “APD Appreciation Night” which was held in conjunction with the City of
Albany Police Department.
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Communications
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Bridging relationships with other Student Governments of Universities in the Capital
District.
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Continuing to work with local newspapers and stations, gathering contacts.
Community Engagement and Outreach
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In the preplanning stages of our Relay for Life initiative, helping the organization
promote the annual event in April.
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Progressing towards the semi-annual Pine Hills Cleanup.
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Working with Pine Hills Neighborhood Group on implementing a trial program,
coordinating with organizations to recruit volunteers interested in more regularly cleaning
up the Pine Hills neighborhood in smaller groups at a time.
Dippikill
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Working to expand the department beyond Dippikill Outreach and in the direction of
environmental sustainability.
Legislative Affairs
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Working on regularly bringing elected officials to campus to speak and meet students
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Planning the details for an upcoming Forum hosting several local officials, creating a
venue for students and representatives to continue the conversation on education.
Marketing
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Successfully Marketed Part 1 of this Semester’s Speaker Series- The event is sold out!
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Continuing to work with Student Groups across campus, helping promote events.
Multi-Cultural Affairs
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Working on our “Ravel Unravel” Campaign, a multimedia campaign on religion.
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Planning for our annual Cultural Carnival expected to be in April.
Programming
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Busy preparing for our Speaker Series event featuring Common, Golden Globe and
Academy Award winning artist and actor featured in the 2014 film Selma.
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Stay tunes for upcoming announcements!
Student Group Affairs
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Planning for our yearly Purple and Gold Awards
CAA (Council on Academic Assessment) – Deborah Bernnard, Chair
The Council on Academic Assessment met on Wed. Feb. 11. We approved Council committee
reports which reviewed the assessment component of the Natural Sciences General Education
program and the assessment component of the Criminal Justice Program. Recommendations
were suggested for improvements to some portions of these assessment efforts.
CAFFECoR (Committee on Academic Freedom, Freedom of Expression, and Community
Responsibility) – Carol Jewell, Chair
CAFFECoR will have its March meeting on March 12, 2015.
CERS (Committee on Ethics in Research and Scholarship) – Susanna Fessler, Chair
Nothing to report
COR (Council on Research) – Kajal Lahiri, Chair
A new center for the School of Business “Center for Advancement and understanding
of Social Enterprises (CAUSE)” was approved.
13 of the 44 FRAP applications have been approved for funding at a total of $121,499
(the Division for Research has agreed to provide the additional amount over the usual
$120,000 budget) from a wide variety of departments across campus.
Three Excellence award recipients were also selected, and notifications for those and the
FRAP awards will be issued in the coming weeks…
CPCA (Council on Promotions and Continuing Appointments) – Sanjay Putrevu, Chair
The next CPCA meeting is on March 11.
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GAC (Graduate Academic Council) –Abebe Rorissa, Chair
Nothing to report
GOV (Governance Council) – Cynthia Fox, Chair
I. Informational
1. Gov met on February 6 and February 20.
2. Chief of Staff Leanne Wirkkula has invited GOV to submit nominations for membership of
the search committee for a new Chief Information Officer to replace Christine Haile, who plans
to transition out of this role by June 30. The administration seeks to put together a committee
roster that is representative of the key stakeholders and members who are sufficiently
knowledgeable about the breadth of institutional IT operations as well as conversant in some
aspect of the comprehensive role of IT in a comprehensive university. This search does not
require the approval of the University Senate, and GOV appreciates that the administration has
sought our input nonetheless.
2. Chair Fox will represent the faculty at the University Council meeting in New York City on
February 27.
3. GOV will meet on March 2.
II. Actions taken
1. Based on input from the SEC, minor changes were made to the language of the proposed
Bylaws amendment that addresses the Administration’s request that we consider removing voting
privileges from ex-officio members of the Senate who serve by virtue of their administrative
position.
2. We began discussion of a parallel amendment to the Charter, with special attention paid to the
question of the possible effect on quorum should voting privileges be removed from
administrators who serve as ex-officio members of Senate Councils, Committees, and Sub-
committees.
3. We reviewed procedures for the up-coming Senate elections.
4. We began discussion of additional Charter amendments that we have been asked to consider
by CAA, LISC, GAC and UAC, respectively.
III. Recommendations for Actions
1. That the Bylaws amendment be distributed to the Voting Faculty and placed on the ballot
during the Senate elections that will take place online from March 30 to April 5.
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LISC (Council on Libraries, Information Systems, and Computing) –Boris Goldfarb, Chair
The Library Committee and the IT Usage Policy Committee will report on their work during the
next LISC meeting scheduled for March 30.
UAC (Undergraduate Academic Council) – Robert Yagelski, Chair
The Undergraduate Academic Council met on February 5th. The meeting was devoted to a
discussion of university policies regarding prerequisites and restrictions on admission to majors
and minors, an issue that the Council first addressed at its last meeting in December. The main
question the Council took up was the extent to which departments have authority to set
prerequisites for advanced courses in their majors. An existing policy, adopted in 1978, stipulates
that “individual departments have the authority to require a ‘C’ or ‘S’ grade in courses that are
prerequisite for advanced courses in that area.” In 2013 UAC proposed a policy stipulating that
departments had to justify to UAC any restrictions they impose, including prerequisites, that
might create obstacles to students as they proceed through the major. This proposal (Senate bill
1213-05) was passed by the Senate. Taken together, these policies mean, in effect, that (1)
departments have the authority to require grades of C or S in any courses that are prerequisite for
advanced major courses; however, if departments wish to require grades higher than C or S in
such courses, they must seek approval from UAC by providing a compelling rationale for such
requirements and demonstrating that the requirements would not serve as de facto restrictions to
students progressing through the major curriculum.
This discussion was initiated by a request from the Physics Department to set a requirement of
B- in 300-level courses that are prerequisite for advanced courses in the major. The discussion
served to clarify existing policies, and the Council did not see fit to propose any changes to those
policies at this time.
The next UAC meeting is scheduled for February 19th.
ULC (University Life Council) –Michael Jaromin, Chair
The ULC met on February 3rd and Brad Bunzey, Project Manager in the Office of Architecture,
Engineering and Construction Management presented on the status of the Campus Center
Expansion Project. Our next meeting is set for March 2nd.
UPPC (University Planning and Policy Council) –David McCaffrey, Chair
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At its February 19 meeting, UPPC discussed the proposed Graduate Certificate in Homeland
Security, Cybersecurity, and Emergency Management submitted by the Department of Public
Administration in Rockefeller College. After an initial discussion, Rockefeller College revised
the proposal, with the revision to be reviewed at the UPPC meeting of March 12.
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