The Meeting Convened Atapproximately 2:45P.M
GovernanceCouncil
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
2:45PM
UNH306
Karin Reinhold,Chair
Minutes
PRESENT:Earle, Keith; Moore, Chris;Nowell, Greg;Poehlmann, Chris; Reinhold, Karin; Schmidt, John; Sergay, Tim; Yan, Zheng.
GUESTS:
The meeting convened atapproximately 2:45p.m.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
Once quorum was reached, the minutes of February 15were unanimously approved.
CHAIR’S REPORT– Karin Reinhold
Representation of contingent faculty representation:
On Feb 15th I received the following e-mail regarding the changes to the bylaws that were implemented 2003-04 by a Bylaws AdHoc working group:
I've attached the tracked changes document that was circulated to show the changes to the bylaws before the main meeting at which the vote was done in late 2003. The article in question was II.2.2, which was amended to say that half the at large faculty (4 seats) should be from the professional rather than the teaching ranks. The rationale as I recall it was that because units elect their senate reps, the senators representing units tend to be teaching faculty disproportionately. When the bylaws document was circulated, there was then a request that non-voting contingent faculty have some similar representation. That was added as a rider on the original bylaws bill and I think voted on at the same meeting. My recollection is that "2" was selected as half the representation which had been explicitly reserved for professional voting faculty, thus avoiding the appearance of giving more seats to non-voting than voting faculty (since of course it was voting faculty who had to agree to this). Of course regular unit senators can be professionals as well, so there are usually more than 4. Since students aren't voting faculty either, there is no real reason to have more student senators than part time senators, but the ugrad student senators already existed before the bylaws change and it didn't make sense to disenfranchise them.
Carolyn MacDonald
Professor, Physics
Feb 16th: Update to the Senate website. The report on shared governance was not on a place easy to find so now it has been moved to the Committee on Assessment of Governance and Consultation’s page, within the Governance Council’s page. There are number of other issues with the website. Governance is charged with maintaining the website so we should be working on improving it.
On Feb 17th, Gov discussed by email the language for the proposed Bylaws amendment regarding contingent faculty. I emailed HR for the definition of part-time.
On Feb 20th, I emailed Cynthia Fox, YeniselGulatee , Rebekah Tolley, Holly McKenna and Jim Collins for further clarification about representation. At issue was a) the number of people that would be without representation if the amendment in consideration referred to “part-time” and b) if it is acceptable to part-time faculty the current situation, where a full time professional that is also teaching part-time is one of the part-time representatives. Jim estimated that the number of contingent faculty that would not be represented if we use the terms “part-time” would be less than 5%. Holly McKenna communicated that part-time faculty would like to be represented by truly part-time faculty.
Feb 21st: the Forum of Shared Governance was held with a distinguished panel of speakers representing the diverse facets of governance: Chair of the Senate Dr. Jim Collins; Interim Provost & VP for Academic Affairs Dr. Darrell Wheeler; Holly McKenna, representing contingent faculty; Assistant Director of Community Relations Greta Petry, representing professionals; Associate Professor Paul Stasi, representing faculty and UUP and Jarrett Altilio, representing the Student Association. The representative for GSA was not able to attend. We had a lively discussion emphasizing that shared governance is not a one-time event, that is constructed day to day with open communication and the involvement of all parts. Keys of shared governance: Participation, presence, listening, communication, and commitment.
Feb 24th: Meetings with Presidential Search Firm to help craft a vision of who we want our next president to be.
Tentative date for Forum on Identity: April 3rd.
Feb 27thThe forum on the role of arts and humanities was well attended.
Feb 28th Cynthia Fox, Jim Collins and I met with CEO Bruce Szelest & Interim Provost Darrel Wheeler. We continued the conversation about assessment of administrative units, the Senate website and having support for updating it, updates on CNSE and Wadsworth, support for a as part of shared governance and topics about diversity and inclusion such as coordinating efforts and sharing of information as well as a request that on-going training needs to be an initiative embraced by faculty.
Chair Reinhold added the following to her written report:
- She had met with Joe Brennan from Marketing and had set up 2 forumson the University at Albany identity as follows: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 in the morning at the uptown campusCampus Center Assembly Hall; and 3:00 p.m. at the downtown campus. The Chair urged members toencourage participation.
- On March 7 she had met with the Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff, who were spearheading website changes, working with University Archivist Greg Wiedeman.
- Chair Reinhold discussed proposed changes to the Senate website and reviewed with GOV members research she had conducted on other websites.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORTS
Liaison and Elections Committee (LEC) – Christian Poehlmann, Chair
Nothing to Report
Chair Poehlmann reviewed his written report, submitted as follows:
Last month, Karin Reinhold and I did the annual apportionment of senators to each college. This allocation is done using information from a PeopleSoft query. When I attempted to run the query, I discovered that HR had deleted it because the table it used to retrieve data was outdated. HR was agreeable to recreating the query, but the request went into their scheduled workflow and it wasn't available to me until Monday of this week. In the interim, I was able to run a query that generated results that were consistent with the information retrieved last year, but of questionable accuracy. However, it was the best information available.
Assessment of Governance and Consultation Committee (AGCC) – Greta Petry, Chair
Nothing to Report
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
GOV members discussed the need to request technical support for Senate meetings. Chair Reinhold agreed to bring the issue to the Provost as part of shared governance concerns.
Representation of contingent faculty
GOV members continued the discussion on Bylaws amendments related to contingent faculty representation.
A motion was made and unanimously approved to support a Bylawsamendment granting voting rights for part time faculty to vote for their own Senate representative, as follows:
Bylaws Amendment:
Article II. Section 2 — Composition of the Senate
2.2.1 There shall be eight Senators elected at large from the eligible Voting Faculty, of whom four shall be from among the Professional Faculty.
2.2.2 In addition there shall be two Senators elected at-large from among the part-time faculty. These senators shall be nominated by the faculty and elected by the voting faculty and the part-time faculty. Nominations for part-time Senators are restricted to part-time faculty who do not also hold a full-time concurrent position within the university.
Rationale:
Senate Bylaws Article II, Section 2 titled “Composition of the Senate” describes the various members of the Senate and who elects them: the Voting Faculty elects Faculty Senators and students elect students Senators. This has created the awkward situation that part-time faculty cannot elect their own part-time At-Large Senator representative.
Members then further discussed Chair Reinhold’s drafts ofa separate Bylaws amendment to increase the number of Senate representatives for contingent faculty. Chair Reinhold suggested that GOV table the discussion, as there was not much support for the proposal primarily due to issues with reaching quorum at Senate meetings.To address the recurring issue, Senator Schmidt proposed amending the Bylaws in a different way.
A motion was made and unanimously approved to support the following Bylaws amendment:
Article II. Section 7 — Calendar and Meetings of the Senate
7.6 The quorum of the Senate shall be 50 percent of its voting membership plus one. In all other matters of procedure, Robert's Rules of Order shall be followed, except where the Senate has established a rule of its own.
Chair Reinhold asked members to consider what would be involved with broadcasting Senate meetings live or video recording meetingsfor posting on the Senate website. GOV discussed potential support for the idea, on the conditionthat technical support staff assist with AV needs. Members agreed that Chair Reinhold would draft a proposal of support to be voted upon e-mail, and the result would be forwarded to the Office of the Provost.
NEW BUSINESS
Approval of Senator Apportionment by Schools
LEC Chair Christian Poehlmann shared updated Senator apportionment figures for each college. A motion was made, following discussion, and unanimously approved to accept the changes.
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting adjourned at 4:21p.m.
Respectfully submitted by
Elisa Lopez, Recorder