GovernanceCouncil

Monday, December 14, 2015

2:45PM

UNH306

Jim Collins,Chair

Minutes

PRESENT:Alford, Julia;Collins, Jim; Dutta, Saurav; Early, Bryan; Gulatee, Yenisel; Janiszewski, Caitlin; Kressner, Ilka; Malavasic, Jolene; Moore, Chris; Reinhold, Karin

The meeting convened at2:45p.m.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

The minutes ofNovember 9, 2015 were unanimously approved.

CHAIR’S REPORT

Chair Collins had submitted to Bill Hedberg's office on November 20th the amended list of nominations for the University Excellence Committees which GOV members had approved via e-mail. As part of the Senate leadership I met this past Tuesday, Chair Collins reported, with Assistant to the Provost Deborah Salinas. We have a working group on Applied Learning as part of a statewide effort in the undergraduate curriculum. The Provost put together this working group with a large number of administrators and some administrators who are also faculty. In support of that we want to make recommendations for faculty representatives who are not administrators. Chair Collins contacted Karen Kiorpes from UAC, and she has made some recommendations.

At the Senate Executive meeting on November 30th, GOV was alerted that we need to populate 2 committees from UPPC that have not been existence for 2 years and were allowed to lapse:Resource Analysis and Planning, and University Facilities. Chair Collins had been working with Yenisel Gulatee to craft a Senate resolution to allow for automatic, minor, non-substantive changes to the Charter, for instance for the renaming of offices. Chair Collins would format that over the breakand e-mail it to members for review,to then send to the SEC for its next meeting.

SUBCOMMITTEE REPORTS

Assessment – Karen Reinhold, Chair

We are making progress on the new survey. We are almost done and have a great committee which is working very well and expediently. We should have a version very soon. Chair Collins had looked at the survey and thought it was good. We plan to invite Joel Bloom to the next GOV meeting on February 1st for his input.

Liaisons – Yenisel Gulatee, Chair

Chris Moore has taken the lead in developing a mailing list to communicate with emeritus and part-time faculty. He had a meeting with ITS. We can create a dynamic distribution group for the part-time population which always automatically picks up changes.For the emeriti group who may not use their University at Albany accounts, we will be using a listserv and asking the Emeritus Center to send us a list of those who interested in subscribing to this list. We need to a protocol to verify that they are members and also need to come to an agreement about who will manage the list. It was proposed that the Senate Secretary and the Staff Support jointly manuallyupdate the emeritus listserv a couple of times a year.Chris Moore will send in directions to the committee on how to make a formal request for a listserv. There was discussion on regarding sending Outlook reminders of upcoming Senate meetings to the general public as has been done in the past.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

CAA: Academic Program Review Committee

Chair Collins would distribute the original amendment and related e-mails for a decision to be voted upon at the February 1st GOV meeting.

CARE: Council on Administrative Review & Evaluation

Meeting materials from the shared One Drive on the background and related to John Schmidt's report at the past GOV meeting were reviewed.Periodic review would be conducted on a five-year cycle. Discussion on the matter included questions on who gets see the report, terms of people serving on committees,criteria for Chair, how to tailor survey’s to the relative audience, and the desire to cooperate with the administration. Chair Collins would consult with Bruce Szelestin Institutional Research.Chair Collins would prepare a draft updated Charter amendment of the one from 2013 based on the meeting discussion and would e-mail members by the end of the week asking them to review and comment on the new draftas soon as possible. He would then send around a pollon approximately January 10th, for members to vote on a final draft by January 14. In that way the revised amendment could be forwarded to the SEC by January 16th before its 1st meeting of the spring semester.

UUP: Proposal for University Ombudsperson

Members Bryan Early, Saurav Dutta and Caitlyn Janiszewski had met and reviewed the proposal.There was skepticism about if the person would have the expertise to provide detailed insights, for instance on other departments than their own. The proposal was for a more narrow scope of authority, restricted to the tenure issue, comparedtoOmbdudspersonoffices at Binghamton and Stony Brook. There was also concern around the ‘shuttle diplomacy’ language: If faculty members cannot communicate directly with an administrator,it would then require a more serious body than this external person.An ombudsperson office for graduate students on our campus does exist but with a low profile. We found evidence that we are also supposed to have an office for undergraduates, but we were unable to locate one operating. If we do decide we need this role we recommendthat it might be more efficient, because of the much more narrow scope, to potentially add to the pre-existing office that already has an ombudsperson. We would want to get a sense of how much services are actually used by the graduate students. We noted that there was Senate legislation approved in what looks like December of 2006 signed by George Hearst regarding the undergraduate ombudsperson.The structure of it suggests that GAC, the Senate Chair,the Provost's Office and GSA need to get together to decide who this person will be. The same mechanism was proposed for the undergraduate person. Member Janiszewski had been in touch with the GSA ombudsperson's office and would discuss with Betty Shadrick how it has been utilized in the past. There is supposed to be a report to the Provost's office, and it is recommended that Chair Collins asks the Provost if he receives this report. GOV would consider either revising existing ombudsperson bills or drafting a resolution in support of an ombudsperson whose role should include faculty concerns regarding the tenure and renewal process and who would be part of a broader portfolio of responsibilities like at other universities.

NEW BUSINESS

At the last Senate meeting there was a report from the Panel on Contingents presented by Provost Stellar, a report on the Contingents from UUP presented by Chapter President Brett Benjamin, and a Graduate Student Stipends report presented by Dean Kevin Williams. Chair Collins propose that governance put forward a forum together with you UUP in early Marchto discuss the results of those reports, noting that there would be a sustainability forum in February and a CAFFECoR forum in late March.

Chair Collins asked if GOV members or their constituents had questions for the Provost or President to be asked at the Senate meetings. This would be a regular request per Senate Chair Fox.

GOV was asked to recommend a Senate representative to serve on or co-chair the Engaged Scholarship Working Group.

Lastly, Chair Collins stated he had met with Deb Galinas and asked that GOV recommend, preferably out of the Undergraduate Affairs Council, representatives to serve on the SUNY-wide Steering Committee for Applied Learning. UAC Co-Chair Karen Kiorpes sent a list with 2 recommendations which GOV supplemented with additional recommendations.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting adjourned at 4:23 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by

Elisa Lopez, Recorder