University Faculty Senate 172Nd Plenary January 21-22, 2016 Stony Brook University

University Faculty Senate
172nd Plenary
January 21-22, 2016
Stony Brook University

Thursday, January 21

Comprehensive Colleges Meeting

Friday, January 22

I.  President’s Report – Pete Knuepfer

a.  Board of Trustees conversations about SUNY Presidential Search Process, process for appointments to the search committee. Faculty membership on committee is for the faculty to decide. Diverse set of faculty. Process outlines process on campus and system engagement.

b.  Campuses were directed to produce performance improvement plans (SUNY Excels). Pete sent around an example from different institutional data. Key point-two projections forward for fall 2018 and fall 2020 showing campus projections and suny projections.

c.  Budget issues with requests happening during the summer (excluding faculty and student engagement). Governor in exec budget has proposed another round of performance funding of 18M and we'll know by April 1 how much that shows up in the actual budget. Reach out to local legislative leaders to fund SUNY and not put burden on students.

II.  Executive Committee Report and Presentation of Resolutions– Gwen Kay

a.  Report-process in place for UFS to visit campuses to help with tensions, conflicts between governance and administration on campuses.

b.  University Faculty Senate Resolution Recommending the SUNY Wide Implementation of Gender Inclusive Spaces

c.  University Faculty Senate Resolution Recommendation the SUNY Wide Implementation of Preferred Name and Gender Identity Applications on the Registration, Email, ID cards, and other Identification Systems

d.  Other resolution adopted by Executive Committee, so not bringing it to the floor. Resolution to adopt the Undergraduate Academic Programs and Policies Committee report entitled “Service-Learning in SUNY: Current Status and Strategies for Implementation”

III.  Budget Report – Eileen McLoughlin

a.  Request to return money "borrowed" from faculty salaries, request to increase investment and Performance fund, 9.5% reduction in higher education.

b.  Comprehensives-Loss of 4.7 M in salary support, 10M for a Clean Energy Workforce Opportunity Program.

c.  Executive Budget proposed, and be amended for 30 days, testimony in February, Negotiations in March and enact budget April 1.

IV.  Sector Sessions

V.  SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman H. Carl McCall

VI.  Focused session on High Impact Practices and Applied Learning

Elise Newkirk-Kotfila, Director of Applied Learning – SUNY System Administration

Allison Puff-Acting Assistant Provost, Professor of Visual Communications, SUNY Farmingdale

Janet Nepkie, Distinguished Service Professor – SUNY Oneonta

Nancy S. Goroff, Professor and Associate Provost for Integration of Research, Education and Professional Development

a.  Elise NewKirk-Kotfila: The SUNY Applied Learning Initiative-Feb 15th, inventory from campuses; April 2016, data collection and reporting, faculty engagement, student engagement; May 2017, Feasibility Study, Collaboration Plan, Graduation Requirement.

b.  Allison Puff: High Impact Practices-Benefits to Faculty and Students

c.  Nancy Goroff: Experiential Learning at Stony Brook-contract for specifications on experience.

d.  Janet Nepkie: Internships and Co-ops-Updated 2007 guide (added co-ops), example of Music Industry program at SUNY Oneonta showing that the profile of students in these programs is higher; guiding principles for SUNY Internships; Instruction and Support; Faculty role; Updated Guide coming by end of the month.

VII.  Liaison Reports

a.  Faculty Council of Community Colleges – Nina Tamrowski, President

b.  SUNY Student Assembly – Tom Mastro, President

c.  CUNY Faculty Senate – Terry Martell, Chair

VIII. Vote on Resolutions

a.  University Faculty Senate Resolution Recommending the SUNY Wide Implementation of Gender Inclusive Spaces. Passed by Majority.

b.  University Faculty Senate Resolution Recommendation the SUNY Wide Implementation of Preferred Name and Gender Identity Applications on the Registration, Email, ID cards, and other Identification Systems. Passed by Majority

c.  Other resolution presented in report, so adopted as part of report. Passed by majority. Resolution to adopt the Undergraduate Academic Programs and Policies Committee report entitled “Service-Learning in SUNY: Current Status and Strategies for Implementation”.

IX.  Sector Reports and Responses– Nancy Zimpher, Chancellor

a.  Comprehensive College Sector Report, Joseph Marren, SUNY Buffalo

The Comprehensive College Sector report from the January 2016 plenary at SUNY Stony Brook will focus on the questions we asked the chancellor and her responses, but it will also focus on the genesis of the questions.

First, though the questions and her answers (paraphrased) are given below. Following them will be an explanation of the context in which the questions were formed:

1.)  The comprehensive sector is experiencing a drop in enrollment.IsSUNY consideringa system-wide rational, strategic enrollment plan that would help reduce inter-sector and intra-sector competition, provide enrollment stability to all SUNY campuses, and helpcomprehensive colleges support their mission to increase thechances in attracting a diverse population off students, faculty and staff?

Answer: The comprehensives need a strategic enrollment plan. It took her a long time to realize enrollment is a strategic opportunity and, with new staff in the SUNY Provost’s Office, SUNY is trying to be less competitive, more stable, and more diverse overall. She is optimistic that as administrators at the comprehensives think about how to increase enrollment flow it will result in increased completions. The provost is working hand-in-glove with college presidents in the sector to resolve issues and that presidents understand that enrollments matter. She thinks that we need a strategic enrollment plan for all that is less competitive, more diverse and more stable. As a result of thoughts on how to increase completion, there are conversations about enrollment capacities, etc. “We are on it.” And it is on the top of our list.

2.)  Support is naturally going to be declining with declining teachereducationenrollments in the comprehensive sector. How will SUNY supportresources to teacher preparation programs that will ensure this sector will beable to maintain excellence?

Answer: The entirety of the year was spent on TeachNY as an all-college experience for the individual campuses and the sector. Yet there is: A.) a need to work more closely between education schools and departments in the arts and sciences, and B.) the colleges are not doing a good job of market analysis and we all need to do better job of that and stop under producing in STEM, and language acquisition, among some others.

3.)  We have heard much about certificates, badges and layered credentialing.What do you see asthe role of the comprehensive colleges in providing this programing?

Answer: There is a task force trying to unbundle the degree. There is a task force now exploring what “unbundling degree” means; is it based on time? competencies? The sector can work working hand-in-glove with community colleges and Empire State College to figure out implications for everyone else, which means the presidents/chairs of the faculty groups can expect to work together on this issue.

Context

The reason we asked those questions is because our sector is being squeezed on enrollments (i.e., they are declining and we have had to compete with others in the sector for markets that are new to us). So a need for a coordinated SUNY-wide enrollment plan seems obvious and essential. But to do that we have a duty to our students and communities to make sure we are inclusive and diverse in many ways. How do we measure success in both areas (in mission and support), and what resources can SUNY provide to help the campuses?

One of the main duties of the comprehensives was teacher education. Yet we see declining enrollments in our programs, so what is the system going to do to ensure that SUNY-educated teachers become change agents in their communities and help break cycles?

There seem to be several thoughts on this:

·  Be more innovative and look at ways to do things differently in teacher ed (e.g., mentoring, high-impact programs) with the smaller number of education students?

·  Try out new ways to create a different curricula through newer programs such as 4+1 (pairing majors + minor, or majors + certificate(s); or 3+2 programs.

But that all brought up a discussion about what the chancellor meant in her State of SUNY address when she spoke about “layered credentialing.” Does it mean attracting new students? Are there resources to invest in this? Or do we have to redeploy resources to grow strategically here? What will badges/certificates mean for some programs such as social sciences/computer science?

Implications

In her answer the chancellor mentioned “unbundling,” This causes some concern among our senators because there may be tension between that and academic freedom/shared governance, including how contingency affects both. As one senator suggested, it may be something we should focus on in future plenaries.

Here’s why, as explained by a colleague: “It would probably be useful for us to do a quick Google search of "unbundling" in the context of higher education. There is a great deal of literature out there on the concept. Unbundling is a management tool used by administrators to reduce and weaken faculty authority. Unbundling means unbundling faculty roles and responsibilities. This is code for reducing faculty control and organization of the curriculum. It means faculty will not necessarily advise students on what courses or programs to take. In the end it means that adjuncts and possibly even machines can effectively deliver content.

“The idea of badges and certificates and competencies relates back to the notion of the *student as customer* model wherein the *customer* purchases what they want when they want it. It relates to the recent ideas coming out of Stanford and other places that predict "on demand" learning as the future of HE. Behind the unbundling movement in HE is the assumption that knowledge and information is no longer the property of the university or its professoriate. It is worthwhile to look into the meaning and purposes of the concept.”

Finally, in light of ineffective communication between senators in the sector we tried some new techniques to communicate with each other. We may continue to do things this way for the future with modifications as needed:

·  use the listserv and the Thursday night meeting (for those who can attend) to come up with questions for the chancellor

·  use the listserv to "go around the table" and talk about individual campus concerns

·  use the Friday sector meeting to talk (briefly) about a targeted issue(s)

·  use the Friday meeting to give a few minutes for potential sector reps to talk about their vision

X.  Provost’s Office report - Alexander Cartwright, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor

Appendix I. Presidents Report and Documents from President Knuepfer regarding SUNY Excels

Appendix II. Committee Reports

Diversity Committee – to be determined

Ethics Committee – Carlie Phipps

Governance Committee – Peggy De Cooke

Graduate and Research Committee – Rosalyn Rufer

Operations Committee – Tom Sinclair

Programs and Awards Committee – Bruce Leslie

Student Life Committee – Kelley Donaghy

Undergraduate Committee – Dan White

Appendix I. President Knuepfer's Report

Greetings and Happy New Year to all!

Welcome back to a new semester and to our Winter Plenary meeting at Stony Brook University. We will have a busy meeting, as always. We will be joined by Chairman McCall, Chancellor Zimpher, Provost Cartwright, and Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Eileen McGoughlin. We’ll welcome State Senator Ken LaValle, chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, who will join us for dinner on Friday evening, and to whom we will bestow the Friend of the Senate award. We’ll focus some of our discussion on high impact practices, particularly as they relate to applied learning. And those of us who enjoy college basketball will be able to see Stony Brook and Albany renew their rivalry.

I use this message to provide you with updates on key happenings and activities at SUNY, along with a summary of some of the key actions of the Board of Trustees.

1. Performance Improvement Plans (PIP) and SUNY Investment Fund. The PIPs were submitted by the campuses in October. Staff from the SUNY Provost’s office reviewed the submissions, and the Provost and Chancellor approved all of them by the end of 2015, in accordance with the 2015 legislative mandate. There was some give-and-take between System Administration and some campuses regarding goals; for example, at least one campus had set a goal based on initial data supplied by SUNY, only to have SUNY update the data and find that the campus had already exceeded the goal. All of the campus plans are available publicly via the SUNY website. A summary of the campus goals tied to the 17 metrics/areas in the SUNY Excels matrix, reported by sector, is provided for you as a separate document.

2. SUNY Investment Fund. SUNY announced the first phase of “winners” for the $18 million Investment Fund, coincident with the State of the University address. There are a number of themes that developed in getting to the final awards: data systems; procurement; SmartTrack for all interested State-op campuses. Also a majority are collaborative awards, some among State-ops, some including community colleges. The list that was announced on Monday is appended below. “Winners” of the other portions of the $100 million will be announced later this semester, and I’ll provide that information to you as it is made available.
3. Executive Budget Proposal. Summary from Stacey Hengsterman, SUNY’s Chief of Staff and Director of Government Relations: “This year’s Executive Budget represents a substantial improvement from last year’s in terms of a starting point for negotiations. While traditional legislative adds for specific programs and the hospital subsidy have been removed, the Governor did continue funding for the Investment and Performance Fund at $18.0M and maintained funding levels for programs such as the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), and the Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC)/ATTAIN. In addition, new programmatic funding has been provided for a Clean Energy Workforce Opportunity Program at both the State-operated campuses and community colleges ($15.0M total, $10.0M State-operated / $5.0M community colleges), an “Apprentice SUNY” Program at the community colleges ($5.0M), and an additional $1.0M for two further community schools within the community colleges. Finally, 2011’s NY-SUNY 2020 Maintenance of Effort (MOE) and Predictable Tuition Plan has been extended, providing for continued resident undergraduate tuition rate increases (subject to certain conditions) and flat year-to-year funding when taking into account increases in the State’s support of fringe benefit costs.”
I concur with Stacey that the Executive Budget is a much more positive starting point than in past years. As with past years, however, it does not “maintain” the prior year’s funding, despite the MOE provisions of the NYSUNY2020 legislation, in that the Governor has removed most of the “add-ons” that the Legislature included in the Enacted 2015-16 budget (though total funding to SUNY increases if you include the funds for fringe benefits). And there is certainly a lot of work to do in order to embed a true Maintenance of Effort into the budget for this year and into the future. This is where our advocacy needs to be focused. We’ll talk more about this after Eileen McLoughlin shares additional information with us at the Plenary regarding the SUNY budget proposal and the Executive budget proposal.