Chair Sohmer called the session to order at 6:30 p.m. in Room 614B of the BMW Building of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Present were Senators from the following campuses:

Baruch: Hill, McCall, and Pollard; BMCC: Friedman, Neis, Price, and Young; Bronx CC: Gonsher, Read, and Tanaka-Kuwashima; Brooklyn: Bell, Jacobson, Kahn, London, Shapiro, and Tobey; CCNY: Crain, Sank, and Sohmer; CSI: Foleno, L’Amoreaux, Yousef, and Alternate Petratos; CUNY Law School: none; Graduate School: Baumrin; Hostos CC: Canate and Pam; Hunter: Doss, and Steinberg; John Jay: Davenport, Kaplowitz, Lanzone, Rodriquez, and Alternate Davenport; Kingsborough CC: Farrell, Galvin, Goodkin, O’Malley, Richter, and Alternate Barnhart; LaGuardia CC: Beaky, Gallagher, Mettler, Reitano, and Alternate Davidson; Lehman: Feinerman; Medgar Evers: Harris-Hastick, Umolu, and Alternate Leocal; NYC Technical: Hounion, Walter, and Alternate Richardson; Queens: Diamond, Kulkarni, and Savage; Queensborough CC: Barbanel and Weiss; York: Kirkpatrick and Alternate Necol. Governance Leaders present: Appleman (QCC), Baumrin (GSUC), Feinerman (Lehman), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Lynch & Mettler (LaGuardia), O’Malley (KCC), Perlstein (BMCC), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Excused were Senators Baumrin (GSUC), Kahan (Brooklyn), King (GSUC), Pearson (CCNY), Levine (CSI). Newly elected senators present were Horelick (NYC Tech) and Manassah (CCNY). CUNY Faculty members Dahbany-Miraglia (QCC) and Fred Lane (Baruch) attended. Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela and Secretary Blanchard were present. 

1. Approval of the Agenda: Resolution on the Integrity of Top Level Searches was added under New Business as item VB. The agenda was then adopted as amended.

2. Approval of the Minutes of March 27, 2001: The Minutes were approved as distributed.

3. Reports: [recorded in Reports & Deliberations].

a. Chancellor (oral).

b. Chair (oral).

c. Representatives of the Board Committees (written).

4. Nominations for 5 Members-at-Large of the Executive Committee [recorded in Reports & Deliberations].

5. New Business

a. Panel on Board Committee’s Report on the Community Colleges with Presidents Gail O. Mellow, Eduardo Marti, and Byron McClenney [recorded in Reports & Deliberations].

b. Resolution on the Integrity of Top Level Searches – Postponed until May.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:45 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps

a. Chancellor: Governor Pataki just announced several days ago a $1 million grant to expand the CUNY Photonics Center for Advanced Technology. We are very pleased with that. For those of you who have followed such things, there were five grants announced. We were one of the five to receive $1 million. We’re crossing our fingers for the major Star Center that we have been lobbying for, which would also be located at City College. This is in line with the Structural Biology Center. We are watching that very closely. Not only was the Governor helpful on this, but certainly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Joe Bruno.

We invited the Governor at the end of March for a joint convocation and conference with Local 1199, the Health and Hospital Workers Union. Dennis Rivera and I have worked with the Governor’s Chamber in securing $3 million to refurbish the old Caldor site on Fordham Road in the Bronx. That is going to be a center where we are going to start a number of activities at CUNY. We are trying to develop these extension centers associated with each of our campuses. Much of what we are going to do is going to be informed by the very good work of a member of our faculty, John Mollenkopf, who continues to do splendid work by looking at the implications of the 2000 census.

We are trying to determine where population shifts have occurred in the City, and how we can reach the people living in those areas who may have difficulties getting to some of our campuses. Fordham Road is one area that we have already identified. We are very pleased with that project. I announced last night at the Board of Trustees’ meeting, that we are in the process of establishing a task force at the University to look at nursing. There is a dire nursing shortage, not only in the City of New York, but nation-wide. Some decisions were made in the past that closed nursing programs, which was unfortunate. As a member of two hospital boards, I have been told by the CEO’s of those boards that nurses right out of school start with an average salary of $46,000. After that the salaries go up very quickly. They can go up to $70,000 within three years. The economics of this for our students, who are interested in a profession, is that it is valued and pays well. We should be looking to help that nursing shortage. That is the good side. The downside is we have recently received preliminary results of the NCLEX exams, and we have not done well as a University. I don’t know what is going on, but if you look at the data, over the past few years you can see a constant shift down in the performance of our students across the board. Across the board there is a diminution in the grades of the NCLEX exam. We are looking to find out why this is happening. We will get to the bottom of this.

I have appointed a task force that is being chaired by Antonio Perez, the President of Borough of Manhattan Community College. It is going to be staffed by Rosa Gil, who is the University Dean for the Health Sciences. We will have very prominent members of hospitals and other health care providers, people from regulatory bodies, nursing professionals, and members of our faculty to advise me on a number of things. First, we have to look at our nursing curriculum across the University to make sure that those curricula are current, rigorous, and have associated with them the clinical practices that all of these nursing programs have to have. Secondly, I want an analysis of whether we have sufficient numbers of full-time faculty in these programs. I think if you scratch anywhere in this University, that same theme is invariant across disciplines. We probably don’t have enough full-time faculty. I am also interested in determining whether we have the proper affiliations with hospitals. I want to help our students pass this NCLEX exam, by doing whatever we need to do to put resources in those programs to help our students prepare. Third, on the public relations effort, we need to express to the wider community that nursing is a valued profession, and ask ourselves why aren’t more students coming into these programs.

There is nothing to report new on the State budget. I have put into motion what I indicated last time that I would put into motion. It is old news, but you do know that the State budget is a month late. There has not been a reconciliation of revenues between the Senate leadership and the Assembly leadership. The good news is that the Senate majority has named its conference committees with some key people who are very close to the University. These are people we are working with. Ken Lavalle is heading up the Higher Education Committee, Roy Goodman is heading up the Economic Development Committee, Serphin Maltese is on the Higher Education Committee, and Guy Valella is on the General Conference Committee.

I indicated to you that I thought the strategy that all of us need to follow, in addition to everything else that we are doing, is to target the New York City Republican cohort of the Senate. We continue to do work on the campuses, in Albany, and with people involved in business and labor. The Bill that the Senate provided is paltry at best. There is virtually nothing in it for CUNY other than restorations from what was taken out by the Governor. On the other side of the house, the Assembly bill is a very strong bill that provides, if enacted, a tremendous boost for the University. It is an extraordinary boost. When you look at these two houses, they are very far apart. Clearly the result will be something in between. Our friends in the Assembly who have gone way out ahead on this will be there and we will continue to work with them.

We really must work with the New York City Republican leadership in the Senate. We are still waiting for the Assembly to name its Conference Committee members. We expect that that will happen soon. I continue to work with City Hall. Joe Lhota, who is Deputy Mayor in the Giuliani Administration, will be up for confirmation in May, joining the Board of Trustees. I have had a very good relationship with Joe Lhota. He is a very smart, hard-working guy. Hopefully he will be a good Board member. He will just take the remaining term of Ron Marino, who was not reappointed. I think there are two or three years left on that term. We will watch that very closely. I spent a fair amount of time with Deputy Mayor Lhota a few weeks ago, really asking him to intervene on our behalf with the Mayor, as the Mayor’s budget gets final advancement, which will happen at the end of this week. At that time the Mayor will come forward with his Executive budget.

On May 11^th, the University will host a convocation of the recipients of the City Council’s Academic Achievement Scholarship Program. Speaker Valone will be there, Finance Chairman Berman, and Chairwoman of the Higher Education Committee, Helen Marshall, will receive awards for their initiation and support of the program. We are delighted that they will be there.

I will be releasing the Math Commission Report to Harold Levy sometime in early May. On the day that that is released, there will be sufficient copies to distribute to the members here. We can also put it up on the web.

Tomorrow, a story written by Karen Arenson will appear on the latest teacher certification results. We are looking really good. Three to four years ago at City College, the pass rate was 40-46%. City College’s pass rate now is 87-88%. All of the campuses, with the exception of one, and one other that is a very small program, have gone up. It is a very wonderful story for CUNY. It is really our faculty working with our students in these teacher education programs that is getting those results up to an acceptable level.

Some of you have heard stories about price gouging at some of our campus bookstores. At one campus there was some notoriety about what goes on at this particular campus. I have instructed our Office of Internal Audit to do a review of all of the bookstores and the administrative vice presidents are very much involved to ensure that there is fair pricing of books and other materials for our students.

I don’t know if any of you were at the April 5^th reception for the Honors College, which took place at the New York Public Library. If you were there, you would have had a smile on your face. There were 600-700 people in the audience. There was a father who came up to me and introduced me to his triplet daughters. He said that they all got into Barnard, and the cost to him would be $462,000. He asked, what would you do if you had these girls? I said, that is your decision, but we would be very pleased to accept them. Just to see the rich diversity of the students, the parents who are excited, and the guidance counselors was great. We are starting to raise some serious money to help support that Honors College.

Joan Mahon Powell, who is an employee of the Board of Education, will be replacing Larry Edward, as the Deputy to the Chancellors. This is a position that Harold Levy and I created to break through the bureaucracy of the Board of Education. Joan is a fine young woman who has had a long career at the Board of Education. She is a Hunter College graduate. She will start very soon in that capacity.

I continue to be elated, as I am sure you are, with our colleagues on the faculty who continue to bring great distinction to this University. John Corigliano, for those of you who know him, he just won the Pulitzer’s Prize for his Symphony Number 2 for String Orchestra. It is a beautiful piece of music, as is the music for The Red Violin, for which he won an Oscar. I met with him a couple of weeks ago, and we are going to try to do more with music around the integrated University. If you haven’t read the book The Chief, do so. It’s great. David Nasaw, has now won the Bancroft Prize, and the Jay Anthony Lucas Book prize, for that book. It is a great read. So many other faculty are also bringing great distinction to this University.

The result of this input was that the faculty felt there was no strong candidate, but of the two choices they preferred one, Dr. Reinstein. The students who appeared at that meeting pleaded quite eloquently that they felt it was not fair to make a decision based on the two candidates we were given. They felt that the candidates did not represent the best of what City College needed. Both candidates were narrowly focused, both coming from the area of law. The students pleaded with the faculty to recommend that neither candidate be considered and that the search be re-opened. What I am asking is, why was there such a rush? You mentioned last month that there were 40 candidates. Couldn’t you have easily added a candidate? Even more so, there was a questionnaire that was distributed at the two meetings with the two candidates. When I asked what happened to that questionnaire, I was told that they promised not to look at that questionnaire. They gave it to the Board of Trustees without the faculty at City College knowing what the faculty had indicated in those feedback comments." /

Chancellor Goldstein - You are covering a lot of terrain. First of all, we have a wonderful new president at City College. We should all be pleased that Gregory Williams is going to join in that important role. I’m sure that he will be welcomed, and he is going to do a great job. The City College Search went on for 10 months. This was not a rush to judgment. Let me give you the facts. The structure of the committee was as the committees are for every other search. They are mandated by guidelines that we have on presidential searches. There were a number of very attractive candidates that surfaced early on. Those candidates, who I would deem to be very attractive, were genuinely interested in City College, but had family problems that were irreconcilable. Therefore they decided not to go through with the process. At the end of the process, three candidates emerged. One of the candidates dropped out early. I asked him to reconsider. I met with him, he decided to come back into the search, but on one of the last days before the formal visits were to occur, he called and said that his wife just didn’t want to come to New York.

That was the end of it, so we were left with two candidates. We had Bob Reinstein, who graduated from Cornell with a degree in Physics, and then went onto the Harvard Law School. We had Gregory Williams, who has both a law degree and Ph.D. Both of them are deans of law schools. Gregory Williams is the dean of the Ohio State Law School and Bob Reinstein is the Dean of the Temple University Law School. What I was deeply concerned about was losing one of these candidates. I am not going into the details, but one of these candidates was being actively pursued by a number of important universities. Unless we got this done quickly, we would have had zero degrees of freedom, which I don’t think would be appropriate. Nor do I think City College should have sustained a lengthier process than it did. I think the important result is that we have a great president. I think that he is going to do well. In any kind of search, there are people who are unhappy, and there are people who are very happy. You have to balance all of these and come to a judgment, and we did, and that’s the end of it. /

Professor Sank - "I don’t think you answered my question, which was two-fold. One concerned what happened with the faculty...." / Chair Sohmer - Please, you may not do this. / Professor Sank - "On past occasions, people have asked follow-up questions of the Chancellor." / Chair Sohmer - Not tonight, we have a very long agenda. / Chancellor Goldstein - If you are requesting a piece of information, e-mail it to me and I will see what I can do. / Professor Sank - "No, I am requesting it publicly. The faculty and students did not support the candidate that was chosen. Did you support that candidate?" / Chancellor Goldstein - Yes, it was my recommendation. / Professor Sank - "Then what is the purpose of the faculty and students recommendations?"/ Chair Sohmer - Sorry, we need to move on.

Professor Perlstein (Governance Leader, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - "On the agenda for Faculty Council tomorrow are two proposals. One is to allow Business Administration to offer a program entirely in the evenings and on the weekends. The other is for Liberal Arts to offer an AA degree entirely in the evenings and on the weekends. In my department during the day, half of the sections are taught by adjuncts. I am wondering how we can offer a degree program and guarantee that a student will ever see a full-time faculty member. This can only happen if we hire people initially who are committed to teaching on Sunday. I wonder what the Chancellery’s position on this sort of thing is. I am concerned about the quality of education." /

Chancellor Goldstein - When you say "Faculty Council" you mean your faculty council? / Professor Pearlstein - "Yes." / Chancellor Goldstein - I am unaware of these programs. There is a balancing act here. Before we would approve any new academic program, we would want to insure that the there was an adequate set of resources that the college could bring forward. We will ask those questions, if it comes to the Academic Affairs Office at the Central Administration. / Professor Pearlstein - "What do you mean by adequate resources?" / Chancellor Goldstein - We’re not going to want to have an academic program that is taught exclusively by adjuncts. I don’t think that would be appropriate. The second thing is, there are plenty of people who live in this City who want access to this University. They can’t come during the day, and they may not be able to come during the week. They want to be able to come on weekends. We should be able, as a University, to try and do the best that we can to make the University available as we do during the day, on evenings, and on the weekends. It’s a real balancing act that we have to reach that challenge, and I hope that we can.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) - "I was wondering, when you create your charge for the people looking into the nursing program, could you include some kind of report of their assessment of the test itself? I’ve been to conferences and talked to nurses who don’t have the greatest faith in the test. They don’t think the test is measuring what they think nursing should be all about. If we start gearing all of our resources toward the test, we may be producing nurses who we are less proud of than we would like. I know that with the School of Education at City College, one way that we got higher test scores was to not accept students into the program who we thought would not do well on the test. We have lost a lot of potential teachers in this process. From what I can gather, no one has found any correlation between the teaching test and performance as a teacher. What does this mean?" /

Chancellor Goldstein - You are bringing up a very serious issue here. It is something that I am sympathetic about. The fact is, however, that the teacher can’t go into the classroom and become certified unless they pass these exams. It is an issue beyond what we deal with at the University. This is a regulatory issue promulgated by the State Education Department here in this State. The NCLEX is more of a national examination. I know a little more about the teaching exam, because two years ago when I came in, this was a very hot agenda item. I asked to see those exams, and wanted to see what was required of the students. I have never seen the NCLEX exams. You may very well be right, that it is not a good lens on what nurses really need to use. The fact is, these students are not going to be able to get jobs unless that examination is either thrown away or changed. I don’t see that in the horizon. Unfortunately, I see more testing. I am not as sympathetic to all of this testing, as I think you sense. /

Professor Crain - "We do have some impact on the State." / Chancellor Goldstein - There are hundreds of organizations. They are doing well. On the Teacher Certification Examination, we have always done poorly relative to the rest of the institutions in the State. However, on the NCLEX, there are lots of institutions across the State, if you look at the data, that are doing poorly. I am going to look into it.

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) - "I have two quick questions. One, this new CUNY Extension Center in the Bronx, will that be associated with a particular college?" / Chancellor Goldstein - The only people who are going to teach at those extension sites are members of the faculty of the City University. / Professor O’Malley - "Will it be part of City College if it is in the Bronx, or Bronx Community College?" / Chancellor Goldstein - This is a very targeted program for members of Local 1199 who need courses in Allied Health Programs. I would imagine that the dominant faculty who will be teaching there will be from Hostos or from Lehman College, which have fairly extensive programs. /

Professor O’Malley - "My second questions is, the 6% PEG cuts for the community colleges, are those cuts a reality, or just an exercise? Will we find that out when the Mayor releases his budget?" / Chancellor Goldstein - We will find it out when the Mayor releases his budget. There is an insidious thing about these PEG reductions. You have to go through and understand how maintenance of effort is calculated. At the end of the day, the base on which you derive your maintenance of effort calculations, is essentially the last day of the fiscal year where that budget was in place. One could act in a very insidious way and have an end of the year budget cut, and therefore it would be carried over through Maintenance of Effort. We have to be very careful about this. I don’t have a lens on it, but we have done the best we can to get this overturned in our favor.

Professor Necol (Fine & Performing Arts, York College) - "My question concerns Writing Across the Curriculum. Only full-time faculty are invited to the University-wide Writing Across the Curriculum Committee’s Professional Development Seminar in late May. They will receive $600 for participating. CUNY faces a crisis with the end of senior college remediation and problems of student retention after the CPE is inaugurated. Over half of CUNY’s classes are taught by adjunct faculty, who themselves constitute over half of the teaching force at CUNY. How is it possible that a seminar that plans to help faculty help students write more effectively can be conducted without including adjuncts? Have we no contributions to make? It seems counter productive to me to exclude us when students’ futures are at stake." / Chancellor Goldstein - I don’t know anything about the conference. I will look into it. I promise to get back to you. When is this conference? / Professor Neckle - "It is on May 29^th, it is sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs and the Graduate Center. It is titled, "Writing in the Disciplines." / Chancellor Goldstein - I will get back to you. Before you leave, make sure that I get your e-mail address.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) - "You mentioned the bookstore issue. You said that you have directed the University auditors to do an audit and review the pricing. I’d like to thank you for that. You just reported that you asked the vice presidents for administration to look at the pricing. I’d like to ask you to expand on that effort. There are not only pricing issues, but performance issues. Only faculty know about them because we order the books and use the books. Our students know about them because they need to buy the books. Perhaps an internal task for us would be to include faculty and students in a discussion. Some of us, including myself, have learned more about bookstores at CUNY more than we ever wanted to know since the NY1 story first was broadcast. We are learning that there are more questions to be looked at than we even realized. The practices are so divergent. Best practices are not necessarily being followed by each campus. Campuses don’t necessarily know how to design a good RFP in the bidding process. Part of the problem seems to be that the campuses themselves aren’t serving the students well, because we don’t know how to design good RFPs. We don’t know what to ask for. I am not just talking about pricing processes, but performance. Once the contract is set, we don’t know what is in it. I just read the contract from John Jay’s Barnes & Noble Bookstore. I’ve learned about contractual obligations that no one knows about. They are very nice, and they helped us win the bid. No one informed us that certain procedures and facilities are available." /

Chair Sohmer - Let me respond. I have arranged for us to receive all of the RFPs and all the contracts for all of the bookstores in the Executive Committee. We will go over them. / Chancellor Goldstein - Under law you can see these. I’m surprised that you don’t have them already. The reason the internal audit was done, was that we know what the obligations are under the contract. The internal audit is to see adherence to the language in the contract. I think there are many other issues that will not necessarily show up in an internal audit. That is why we have asked all of the administrative vice presidents on individual campuses to get into the other areas you are talking about. / Professor Kaplowitz - "I ask that the vice presidents be asked to include faculty. Perhaps they can include faculty governance leaders in a consultative way." / Chancellor Goldstein - I have no problem with that at all. I think that is a great idea. The audits will be available when they are completed.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate Center) - "There are definitely going to be needed additional resources in the nursing programs and in the education programs, which are both worthy. This question is triggered by Jim Perlstein’s question about the weekend and evening college proposal at Borough of Manhattan Community College. We have witnessed a remarkable attenuation of the regular liberal arts departments over the years. I don’t really see, particularly if there is no increase in the budget, that these departments will be replenished. They may also diminish even more if you are going to move incoming resources into these other areas. If there are no incoming resources, you will be moving present resources into those areas. At the end of this there is supposed to be a question. It is very difficult to phrase it as a question, but you know what it is." /

Chancellor Goldstein - Let me respond. When I was at City College last week, Bill Crain was there. I said the following thing, this is a very poorly funded University. You know it, I know it, and we all know it. We all start from the same platform. What we desperately need to do is to work as hard as all of us are capable of to get those resources restored to the University. It is a long process. It is going to take many years because we have a lot of catch-up to do. This quite frankly was the whole motivation when I came forward with the flagship environment. I was very much opposed to setting up flagship campuses. I knew that would take away resources from other worthy institutions. That is not what I think is appropriate.

What I think we need to do is think of ourselves as an integrated University. Therefore there is an obligation, until we get the resources that we desperately need, for better management of our resources, by the presidents of our campuses. That to me is where to start at this University. It hasn’t happened that well. I think a president needs the best advice and council that a president can get from constituencies. The faculty have to be very much involved in helping to advise that president on resource allocation. If one thinks about a flagship environment, and marries that concept with the integrated University, there is an approach to make this University stronger than it is now. We can incrementally improve now, until we get the infusion of dollars that we currently don’t have.

You ask, how do we balance this? One of the most important things a president does, other than being a person of integrity and honesty, is to allocate resources intelligently. There are intelligent ways to allocate resources, and dumb ways to allocate resources. Every institution is different. When I was at Baruch, the way that I allocated resources would not be appropriate at Hunter College. They are very different institutions. I can’t answer that question globally, but I can say that in the appointment of presidents, that has to be a very high priority. How you balance it is about the texture, mission, reputation, opportunities, and capacities of individual institutions. / Professor Baumrin - "On this question of the liberal arts and sciences, the two people you mentioned at the beginning of your remarks -- one is history, one is music."

Professor Read (Business, Bronx Community College) - "I’m referring to the CUNY Board of Trustees Committee Report on the community colleges. One of the challenges that they listed for community colleges says, "developing a range of traditional and non-traditional offerings to keep pace with rapidly developing technologies and demographic shifts." It seems to me that one of the problems in responding quickly is, you have to do something in a bureaucracy that responds so slowly. To get a new program approved takes not months, but years. What we know about modern management organizations is that they need to be flatter with fewer layers of management, with decision-making spread out closer to the people who view the customers. It seems that what we are seeing at this University is a University that is building in more layers of management. It is happening at our college as well as at 80^th Street. We are seeing micro-management by the Board of Trustees. I was wondering if you could comment on that." /

Chancellor Goldstein - Let me tell you what my view is. My view is to have much less central control, and much more authority given to the presidents to manage the affairs of their individual institutions. That’s the way that I deal with presidents. I make it very clear that I don’t want to run their institutions. The problem that we have had, without telling tales out of school, is that we have not had some campuses managed effectively. The faculty have been hurt by this, and certainly the students have been hurt by this. The reputation of the institution has diminished, enrollment has declined, students don’t want to go, and they can’t recruit faculty. That is where I have to intervene. I have, and I will continue to intervene.

The last thing in the world that this Chancellor wants to do is to interfere in the management structure of a campus. The only thing that we need to insure is that the rules of the University are followed and that bloated bureaucracies don’t develop. I have been concentrating on the academic life of this institution. That is where I felt my experience and interest resided. Shortly, I am going to be very actively involved in the management of this University. Quite frankly, from where I sit, this is a rather arcane management structure. We have replicated every conceivable kind of operating unit that is an academic or administrative support for the same kind of things. We have spent a tremendous amount of money needlessly. I mentioned this at City College and I am mentioning it here. I’m very serious about this.

When you talk about what the Chancellor does, the Chancellor has to be very much involved in maximizing potential for resources. I have to allocate those resources to the campuses in the most equitable and intelligent way. What I see is, we are really not doing that because we are so heavily burdened by very large administrative structures at all of our campuses. It doesn’t have to be that way. I would like to reallocate those resources into the academic life of the institution. That means resources for more faculty, more support in the classroom, equipment, instrumentation, supplies, etc. The central office cannot be accused under this administration of establishing new layers of bureaucracy. If anything, what we are trying to do is to give more authority to the campuses. The campuses have to be prepared to do the job.

Professor Young (English, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - "Reading Heather McDonald’s two-part diatribe in the Daily News about CUNY, particularly her second one in reference to your Chancellorship, in which she chided you severely, except for your turning the community colleges towards a vocational focus. I would like to ask you a heartfelt question. For the last three years I have suffered the indignities of opening the tabloids and seeing one no-nothing attack on CUNY after the next. Recently, for example, in an editorial in the Daily News, we were referred to as an academic desert. This was written by the news room of the Daily News, with an editor whose wife will soon be taking over Hunter College. I would like to ask you if you would like to spend some of your free time writing a riposte to these endless, mindless, and repulsive attacks on this excellent University. This is the University that you always tell us is such a wonderful and remarkable place. I would like to see you lead us out of the despair. I am getting depressed by these endless and mindless attacks. Could you write a 700 word Op-Ed piece for the Daily News? I’m sure that they would print it. Could you lead us, please?" /

Chancellor Goldstein - If you look at the last couple of years, the press has been much more favorable than it has been in prior years. I would say that we had a very good run with the press. The Heather McDonalds of the world will be there. It is the price of living in a democracy. You will see responses to that piece. Those two articles are laden with huge factual errors. This whole business about changing the score on the ACT examination was reported originally by Karen Arenson. I called her the next day, there was a withdrawal of that in her second article. Places like the Daily News and the New York Post hide in the high grass waiting. The business about not giving data on SEEK is wrong, and it is not true. What you do is, you either want to have a fight with the press, which is motivated in certain ways, or you respond in ways that you think are appropriate. We will respond to those two pieces. In general, with the exception of a little flare here or there, I think that the press has been very favorable to CUNY, especially The New York Times.

Professor Steinberg (Health Sciences, Hunter College) - "I would like to ask if you can expand your investigation beyond the bookstores, to include contracts covering food service facilities and other auxiliary services that students use." / Chancellor Goldstein - Has that been a problem? / Professor Steinberg - "Yes. It appears that the prices for students are higher than if they were to go to the surrounding delis, restaurants, and cafes. Our students can ill afford that. Also the quality is a problem." / Chancellor Goldstein - I will look into that.

Professor Manassah (Senator-elect,, City College) - "I heard you when you came to City College to speak about the administration and the management. I heard you today speaking about that. I really commend the position that you are taking on that. You are asking for the faculty to play a role. I know that within our governance we have a certain role to play in terms of advising the presidents about resource allocations. I think it would be good if we could have ceilings for how much of a percentage of the expenditure can go into certain items. We should have guidelines that the colleges can work within. I have looked over the past week into the administrative budget at City College. I am not an expert on management in general, but I have never seen this kind of percentage being spent on certain activities at the college. If I may suggest, could you make some ceilings for expenditures on certain items? Some of them are outrageous." /

Chancellor Goldstein - We are going through a very formal review in my office concerning the overall operating budget. I continue not to be happy with the way that the budget is allocated. We are bringing in some consultants to think this through. The first time I really got involved with this on a University-wide basis was when we did the Committee on base level equity. That resulted in some changes, but it was really on the margin. I think we have to understand what this University does. This University teaches students and it helps faculty expand their opportunities to create knowledge. That’s what Universities are about. Everything else needs to support that activity. On some of our campuses we’ve lost that very basic principle. That’s why I am interested on a University-wide basis, in finding a way to operate our support services, registrar, financial aid, computing centers, facilities management, and personnel management in a way that will be responsive to the needs of our public. We need to do it in a much more cost effective way. We need to use those kinds of savings to re-deploy, to what I think is the very basic core of our business.

Our core business is not about some administrative support service. Our core business is about keeping students in our classrooms, getting them to get excited about disciplines, expanding their minds, making them curious, and getting them excited about learning. We want them to leave with not only a joy of learning, but with skills to support themselves and participate in society. We must do the same for our faculty. We must give our faculty the time and resources to do what they came into this profession to do. Faculty love to do research and they love to teach. That’s what we are about. That’s where I want to see money spent.

b. Chair: The May 15^th meeting will be at the Graduate School on the 9^th Floor. There is an election coming up which means that we need nominations. Let me thank the following people who will not be with us at the next meeting or thereafter. They are: Jane Young (Borough of Manhattan Community College), Gerard Haggerty, Donald Landolphi, and Yedidyah Langsam (Brooklyn College), Karen Svenningsen (College of Staten Island), Felix Cardona (Hostos), Holly Clarke (John Jay College), Darius Movasseghi, Leroy Hawkins (Medgar Evers College), Peter Deraney, John Donoghue (New York City Technical College), Jack Diamond, Nancy Hemmes, Eric Marshall (Queens College), and Vicki Kasomenakis (Queensborough Community College). Their terms are up. We should thank them for their service.

We believe that the following campuses have not sent in their election results: Baruch, Graduate Center, Hunter, LaGuardia, Lehman, and York. Since the election is taking place in two and a half weeks, it would be good if the members from those campuses are present.

Professor Richardson has an announcement to make.

Professor Richardson (Nursing, New York City Technical College) - "There is a letter that has been addressed to the Board of Trustees. The letter to the Board of Trustees has to do with raising money through a fundraising drive. That will be $1 billion that we want the Board of Trustees to help us to raise in order to provide some money for the University. Bernie Sohmer was involved in the original meeting, Fred Philipp, who chairs the FAC of the Research Foundation, and Ward Hindman, who was the Vice Chair of the UCRA. Unfortunately I was not able to go to that meeting. What came out of that meeting was this letter that will be addressed to the Board of Trustees. We are looking for signatures on that letter. I will let you know that the website, for anyone who wants to sign-on electronically, is 148.14.1. 40/endowment_now.html." /

Chair Sohmer - The principle of this is that universally one of the characteristics of trustees is that they are somehow or other supposed to support the University. This collection of trustees seems not to have gotten around to that. This will encourage them to behave like real trustees. / Professor Richardson -"Fred Philipp went to the boards of many of the large public universities in different states. All of them were involved in some kind of fundraising. That is also mentioned in the letter." / Chair Sohmer - If you read the university material, you will find that many public universities in the past couple of years have done significant endowment raising. We seem to be out of that loop. / Professor Richardson - "The Executive Committee is planning on writing a letter of support. I think there are already 117 signatures. You can either sign electronically, or download the letter, sign it, and fax it back."

Chair Sohmer - We had a resolution prepared for this body. It essentially is a resolution rising out of Professor Sank’s concerns about search committees. It is distributed, but we will take it up at the next session. We have nominations and guests on the agenda now.

Professor Richardson - I would just like to announce that we are still looking for people to serve on the UCRA. We are still looking for resumes to be submitted. We could use people in all areas. In some areas we don’t have anybody. We need people in Engineering, Earth and Environmental Science, History, Library, and Political Science. We could also use some people in Ethnic and Area Studies. Please speak on your campuses and try to get people to send their resumes.

Professor Mettler (Chair of the Elections Committee) - I am going to be succinct and expeditious in moving forward with this very important item on our agenda. This is the first call for nominations for the positions of members-at-large on the Executive Committee. I think all of you are familiar with the procedure. I think all of you have received a letter with your packet on procedures. We are going to call for nominations from the floor. We have five positions which will be voted on at our Plenary on May 15^th at the Graduate Center. Let’s proceed. I will just remind you that you should take your place at the microphone. If you are nominating someone other than yourself, please make sure that you have the prior consent of that nominee. These nominations are to be made without comment. Nominations are open until May 15^th, and can be submitted in writing up until that time. The only earlier deadline that we have is that if you are a candidate and wish to make a statement of no more than 250 words to support your candidacy, and if you would like for it to be printed and distributed by the UFS Office, you must have that statement into the office by this Friday, April 27^th. If you bring such a statement with you in the quantity of 100 copies on May 15^th, that is fine. If you want the UFS Office to take care of that for you, please make sure you get it into the office by Friday. That being said, nominations are now in order. If people want to fax their statement the number is (212) 794-5508.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) - "I’d like to place a nomination for Anne Friedman."

Professor McCall (English, Baruch College) - "I’d like to nominate Lenore Beaky of LaGuardia Community College. I would like to remind people that you can self-nominate here."

Professor Richter (English, Kingsborough Community College) - "I have the permission of the candidate to put the name in nomination of Michael Kahan of Brooklyn College."

Professor Feinerman (Math & Computer Science, Lehman College) - "I’d like to nominate Martha Bell from Brooklyn College."

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate Center) - "I’d like to nominate myself."

Professor Umolu (Humanities & Speech, Medgar Evers College) - "I’d like to place a nomination in the name of Dr. Eda Hastick of Medgar Evers College."

Professor Shapiro (Mathematics, Brooklyn College) - "I’d like to nominate Sandi Cooper of Staten Island."

Chair Sohmer - Are there any other nominations to be made today? The nominations for today are over. We will continue the nomination procedures as the rules apply.

Professor Richter (Moderator) - Good evening, everyone. I would like first of all to welcome the panelists here, Dr. Eduardo Marti of Queensborough Community College, and Dr. Byron McClenney of Kingsborough Community College. I am grateful for you consenting to come and talk to us about a very important matter. Dr. Gail Mellow from LaGuardia Community College is supposed to be here too. She said that she is going to be a little late, because she had to go to a reception. As soon as she gets here, she will join our group.

As you all know, the final report of the community colleges by the committee of the Board of Trustees, came out, and was submitted to the Board of Trustees, whose members accepted it. They said that it would become the blueprint for further discussion and implementation. That is why we invited presidents of the community colleges to talk about their plans in terms of implementation, their reactions, and how this will affect the community colleges. First of all, to start us off, I wonder if you can tell us in terms of the report, what kind of priorities you have for the individual colleges within the context of the general goals or missions of CUNY.

Dr. Marti (President of Queensborough Community College) - If you look through the report, there is a lot about Queensborough. I hope that you have read it. I think that has a little bit to do with the fact that before my return to CUNY last July, I was at SUNY. As part of my duty at SUNY, I was involved in the community college report for the State University of New York. When that was completed, with all of its faults and all of its greatness, I invited Trustee Ruiz to meet with the community college committee of the State University of New York. I think that’s what started the process in CUNY of creating some sort of report for the community colleges.

I think that this document is not a list of priorities for the campuses. I think that what this document does is provide you with a framework, from where to develop your own priorities on the campuses. I can tell you that at Queensborough, I have been very clear from Day One that our college needs to move in the direction of providing and responding to the community’s needs, whether they be in the general population, in the social services population, in the union population, or in the business population. We need to find ways in which we can respond to those needs in a very rapid and effective manner. I also have a little bit of an interest here, because when I was in Ithaca, New York, I lived in the area where all of the Cornell professors lived. They all had mansions. Ithaca at one time was the capital of the black and white film industry. These professors all had these wonderful houses. I often wonder what the salaries of the Cornell professors are. I found out that the salaries of the Cornell professors are not that much higher than the CUNY or SUNY professors. However, there is a lot of opportunity at Cornell to do work outside of the classroom.

I believe that there are opportunities in providing modular instruction for faculty to be able to work at market rates. Faculty should be able to not only have time to produce their work, but time for consulting. We all know that the contract allows for 8 hours a week of consultantship. Let’s use that consultantship time in the community colleges to provide the type of training, education, and services that the community wants. Let’s charge what the market will bear. At Queensborough we are moving in that direction, and we are starting a Business and Training Center that will enable us to do some of that.

Dr. McClenney (President of Kingsborough Community College) - Let me thank you for the invitation tonight. As Eva knows, I have a handout. I am going to go ahead and share that. What I’d like to try to do is to put in context what the report actually has to say to us about community colleges in CUNY. The context is a much broader one. I think there are some themes that run throughout. The major points that I would make is to say, as I look at the report, I don’t find anything in the report that is particularly objectionable. I think that within the report, there is a lot of room for individual colleges to plan their own futures. That is the way I am talking with people at Kingsborough. As you will see when you get my handout, there are some themes that are hitting us from a lot of different perspectives. There are themes that emanate from our accrediting body, the Middle States Association, the CUNY Master Plan, the Executive Compensation Plan, and this report itself. For the community college audience, the National Association recently adopted six strategic priority areas for the future of community colleges in America.

From that list of six, I’ve mentioned two that seem to me to be in the realm of what we need to be talking about in community colleges in the City University of New York. I offer this to you to provide a broader context. I am quite confident that at Kingsborough, there is more than ample latitude for us to plan the kind of future that we need to have to respond to the area that we are in business to serve. The area is essentially Brooklyn. We draw students from all over the borough. As we look at Brooklyn, what are the needs of those people who need post-secondary education? How should a community college in that borough be responding to those needs? I find plenty of elbow room within the report to do what needs to be done for our college, given its history and heritage. There are some things that we can talk about in particular, but I just wanted to start with this broader context. I will stop there to find out what kinds of questions people have.

Dr. Marti - There is latitude in this document, but there are also some restrictions. I think that the faculty of this University has to be very conscious and aware of the pitfalls of this document. For example, this whole issue of remediation, and the possibility of either making the community colleges the point of access to the university’s remedial centers, or the possibility of privatizing remediation. This is a major issue. I think the faculty need to be very vigilant in how we protect professional remedial services with integrity within our University. Without them, people will not have access to this great University. There are some pitfalls here.

Professor Richter (moderator) - I think that there will be a great many questions for both of you. I think perhaps we should get at some of the major concerns here. You touched on one, the question of remediation and the possible privatization of it. Time limits have also been mentioned as a possible restriction upon remediation, and these are things that we definitely do have to talk about. The other thing that the report concerned itself with, which Dr. Marti has touched on, is the question of certificate programs, both credit and non-credit. There is the question of where the community colleges fit in with the offering of such programs, especially with continuing education as another possibility for these same programs. I wondered if either one of you would like to comment on that.

Dr. McClenney - I think that clearly, if you look at several of the documents that I referenced on the handout, there are references to certificate programs. In the Master Plan you will see references both to credit and non-credit certificate programs. I would say that we should not overreact to that. I think there is an important place in a comprehensive community college for certificate programs which, for me, would be the first step toward an Associate in Applied Science degree. Increasingly across the United States, it is also a step towards a four year college and a baccalaureate degree. Increasingly across America, AAS degrees are being articulated with four-year colleges and universities to give students that additional option. The way I tend to conceive of certificate programs is that the first 30 hours of an AAS degree could be a certificate, the second half leading to AAS, and after that the potential for transfer to four-year colleges and universities in a number of fields.

There are a host of program areas where certificates make sense. There may be others where they don’t make sense. I was in a departmental meeting at Kingsborough this afternoon, where the faculty of that particular department was talking about the potential of Allied Health programs. They were discussing how it would make a lot of sense in Allied Health programs to have a certificate, and an AAS, that could potentially lead to a baccalaureate degree for people who had the ability and the interest. I think that the directive is clearly that we should be considering certificate programs. The way we do them is what is most important. I certainly think there is an important discussion that has to be held about the role of general education in a certificate program. I am not talking about a certificate that is absent of basic skills and general education components. I’d like for us to talk about what a certificate could mean, and what maybe it doesn’t mean in our context.

Professor Richter (Moderator) - I would like to welcome President Mellow. Thank you very much for being here. We started the conversation without you, I’m afraid. Obviously we have now come to the question of certificate programs. Just before that, presidents Marti and McClenney were talking about priorities for the community colleges within the context of the report and the aims of CUNY. Perhaps you could tell us what your priorities are.

Dr. Mellow (President of LaGuardia Community College) - "I am sorry that I am late. We had a wonderful recognition of the Department of Corrections folks who worked with LaGuardia’s Continuing Education Program to provide instruction in the prison. I’m a passionate and life-long believer in community colleges. I am sorry if I am saying things that Eduardo or Byron have said already. My sense is that this is the only American form of higher education that exists. It exists because we have a real commitment to access and to social justice. We do this by bringing the students who are in our community who might not think of themselves as college material and letting them really raise their aspirations and get connected with the college. At LaGuardia we have story after story, about people for whom a GED was a stretch when they began. They start with us with a GED and then somebody connects with them and turns them on. They think, maybe I’ll try a course, and they go through with it. That whole progression takes place. You now see people who say, now I have my Master’s degree, and I want to start teaching at LaGuardia. We all have those extraordinary examples. That happens throughout the United States.

One of the things that I have been very interested in, and I think it is a difficult dialog in CUNY, concerns quality. We are certainly working with the University’s Master Plan, and working to combat a very pointed attack that was very public. You all lived through it, and I just read about it in the New York Times. It was all about quality. I think that it is very important to talk about quality and excellence, and raise again the standard throughout the community colleges, and throughout CUNY. The other piece that is hidden is the real change in student demographics, which I call the new American college student. I have been doing some speaking nationally on this. One of the things that is very important to understand is that half of all of the undergraduates who are currently enrolled in higher education are community college students. It is also important to understand that when you look at people in four-year institutions, increasingly they look like people who are going to community colleges. They are people who are going part-time, they have multiple roles in their lives with family, work, and elder care, etc. They are individuals who stretch out their education for a long period of time.

When you ask me what my priorities are, my priorities are to provide the best damn education possible for an incredible population for whom we are often the only place, and the best place, to do that. I think we have extraordinary achievements that we can turn to and celebrate. I also don’t think it is time for us to rest on our laurels. The world is changing very rapidly. What does general education mean when it is stretched out over eight years? What does general education mean when you take one course at a time in the evening and you have never seen a full-time faculty member? I do think those are tough issues, and they are probably tough issues throughout CUNY, but particularly at the community colleges.

We need to wrestle with these issues. They are curricular issues that require us to thoughtfully engage with our students. How do our students actually engage with us? How do they use us? One of the things that I would encourage you all to do is to randomly take 22 transcripts of students who have 20 or fewer credits and look at them. How are they using the college? I think you’ll see that students have created their own certificates, whether we bless them or not. Those students are really using the colleges in ways that make sense to them. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes that’s bad. I don’t think we should judge that a priori. I think it is important to say that those three classes were exactly what they needed to keep house and home together. They were very productive and they are really moving ahead. If they had a good academic experience, they will come back to us. There are other students who should have been caught and told they can really be a chemistry major. Don’t just take Topics in Chemistry, take the four-credit class. Put yourself through this program. We will help you. I think those are the issues that we need to struggle with.

My priorities are really the priorities that I imagine Byron and Eduardo have talked about before. They are to maintain and enhance the diversity of our student population, faculty, and staff. We need to make sure that we really build a community both within our institutions and extending outward. We must do that in such a way that we maintain the high standards of excellence that we’ve always had.

Professor Richter (Moderator) - I guess that one of the concerns that we all have is with the excellence of our students and the possibilities that they have open to them. I am talking about possibilities such as the quick completion of the programs that they have undertaken. We are wondering whether the community college report means doing anything new or different from what we have done before. Certainly the emphasis on certificates is one area of concern with regard to this.

Dr. Marti - President Mellow made some wonderful statements. I think this report can be used to attack the issue of funding for community colleges. I think that if you look on page 34 of this document, it very plainly describes that we are such an under-funded institution. Parenthetically let me say, I don’t know the context of the letter that you are sending to the Trustees, but the idea of having the $1 billion campaign for CUNY I think is a wonderful idea. If the whole University gets behind that, including the development offices of all of the colleges, I think that we can easily make it.

The issue of general education is important. Let us not forget ever, that we are not in the business of just training students, we are in the business of educating first, training second. There is a need to ensure that the faculty and the processes of the colleges are very much engaged in the development of any of these activities. This is whether it be certificate programs, credit or non-credit, modular courses, or asynchronous learning. I think we need to be concerned about having a uniform curriculum across the University. I think that each college has its own flavor. I think for us to have a common numbering system might be possible in some courses, but that could be a slippery road to go down if we have a centralized curriculum for the University.

I think the message that I would really like to send and engage in a discussion about is the fact that I think this report should be used by the faculty of each of the six community colleges to develop the individual priorities of each campus. It should not be done as a fiat. This gives us the framework, and we create the direction at individual colleges. The Chancellor said it before, and I think he has stood by his word. He said he is going to leave me alone, and he has. I haven’t had a single meeting with him. I think that he really believes that each campus has to be managed on its own.

Dr. McClenney - Let me pick up on one of the themes that I think Eva talked about, which is in reference to performance indicators. Part of what I wanted to illustrate earlier is that performance indicators is a theme that is not just a CUNY theme, but running across all of higher education in the nation. There are over 30 states today that are working hard to tie funding to outcomes on performance indicators. That movement is not going to go away. That is a real movement that governors are talking to each other about and legislators are talking about across state lines. When you see that kind of emphasis in this report, I just want to emphasize that there is nothing special about it. It is a nation-wide phenomenon that I believe is not going away.

If you look at that first statement I gave you, drawn right out of the Middle States criteria, you will see what is expected of us to be an accredited institution. I don’t know how you can be more explicit than that. If we are about that business, we won’t have any trouble dealing with the kind of issues that are raised in the Community College Report. We will do just fine. I think that one of the things that I hope will happen, is that as we do more data collection across the community colleges, we will come to understand better than we have in the past, how different these six colleges are. We have commonalities, but each of us serves different student populations and different communities. With outreach efforts, different sets of priorities will emerge as a result. Students with different kinds of needs are showing up on our campuses. One of the outcomes of focusing on data will just be that we will come to a better understanding of how different Kingsborough and Hostos are, for example. I hope we don’t get too bothered by the emphasis on performance outcomes or accountability. I think that it is here, we have to deal with it, and we are going to deal with it. I am not worried about dealing with it.

Dr. Mellow - Having had this battle recently in New Jersey on how those measures are created, I do think it is important that we engage very clearly around the realities of students’ lives, as we do the measurement. My favorite measure is time to degree. When Governor Whitman was in office in New Jersey while I was there, I was in a meeting with her and she was emphasizing how important it was to have this as an outcome measure. I said to her, "I really see that as saying, let’s fire the students." She asked, "What do you mean?" I explained that there isn’t the kind of financial support to the colleges or the students that is needed. During this time we were also arguing for part-time student aid from the state. Students are working. The mentality is to presume that you are all at Princeton, you are going full-time, and that the only reason that you are not graduating is because the faculty don’t want to teach that one course that is needed for graduation. It is a very bizarre sense of what is going on. I think it is important for us to derive those measures carefully.

One of my favorite stories is when a student came in whose goal was to pass developmental Math, English, and Reading. Why? Because this person, for their whole life, wanted to get into the Air Force. That’s what the Air Force said it would take. We did that. By every standardized measure that I could find, that student is a dropout, a failure, etc. In that student’s perspective, that is exactly what the student wanted. Four years later the student came back. The student went to the Air Force, it was great, but it wasn’t a life after a while. They realized that they needed college. I think the way in which we craft those indices is very important. I think one of the things that we need to do is to think about how technology and our connection with students allows us to ask questions like, what do you want? What are your goals? We have to both support that student and challenge those goals. You do want more for students. I know that every faculty member, if you are worth your salt, and I presume you are in this room, has inspired a student to do more than they thought they could do.

I think this issue of community college students, although I imagine CUNY in general is more like community colleges than not in my perspective, is to understand what those indices mean. I think that we need to take a very realistic look at what it means to be a global higher education community. In addition, what does it mean to be a multi-state and multi-sector institution? All of the data that we collect and evaluate ourselves on tends to be in-State only. At CUNY they tend to look at only CUNY data. They tend not to really examine what is happening with students’ lives. On the other hand, we haven’t asked those questions well ourselves either. I do think that it is incumbent upon us if we care about our students to know what is happening with their lives, and to know where they are going. We often don’t know. I think we need to carefully craft those. I think there is a major role for us to figure out what we really want to know. What means something to our students? We should then collect the data. The one piece of information that I never see, it is a value-added one, is change in family income. I know that at LaGuardia, change in family income upon graduation is something like +17%. I always say, I want to put that up against Harvard. Anyone who has probably just put their kids through Harvard probably has a -17% change in income.

It’s real important what we do, and how we frame it. I absolutely agree with Byron, this is not going to go away. In a way, so what, we do great work? We just have to figure out how to name it and follow it. We want to know those areas where we don’t think we are living up to the kinds of things we are doing. We want that data so we can continue to improve. We need to frame it so that somebody else’s clothing isn’t forced on us. Then they say, "you don’t look very good in that." I think it is a struggle to define those data elements appropriately. I don’t think anyone should think accountability is going to go away, and be afraid of that. It is information that we want to know.

Dr. Marti - I think I heard applause earlier this evening when somebody asked the Chancellor to do an audit of the bookstores and the food services. Ask yourself the question, why was there applause? It is because you lost confidence in the ability of those entities to do the work that they are supposed to be doing. I think the reason for the call for accountability throughout the country is rooted in the lack of trust between the public and the academy. I agree with both my colleagues that it is not going to go away. We have to find a way to regain their trust, not by trying to fit into their clothing as you so aptly put, but by designing our own clothing, and making sure that the public at large understands. The person who talked about the Daily News article I think was right on target. We not only have to market our anecdotal successes, but our institutional successes. We need to make certain that our public understands that we have integrity. The data is there and the data will always be needed; we want it ourselves. As faculty members you are always crying, I’m certain, for more information on your students. You want to know what their skill levels are, how they have been advised, and what happened to them after they left. Let’s make certain that that data is not politicized, although it might be a little now.

Dr. McClenney - Let me give a quick example of how data can tell a powerful story. We have just had a data exchange with Brooklyn College. We have tracked every transfer student from Kingsborough to find out how he or she did at Brooklyn College. We examined every student who took at least 24 credit hours and transferred from that to Brooklyn College, as well as those who completed the associate’s degree and transferred to Brooklyn College. The bottom line is clear. It is the same bottom line that I have found every place that I have worked. It is that students who transfer do just as well as the native students who enter Brooklyn College as freshmen. Think about how powerful that is, because our entering students are not at the level, in most cases, that would allow them to be admitted to Brooklyn College in the first place. Something has happened in their lives that has prepared them for full competition in the university sector, and they are competitive. They do just as well as the native students at Brooklyn College. We ought to care a lot about that and build on that. That speaks to access and excellence. That is what we ought to care about.

Professor Richter (Moderator) - "I found myself very heartened that everyone is talking about the individuality and the right of the individual colleges to determine performance indicators, but what I would like to know from all of you is, how are these measures going to be elicited? How are they going to be determined? What is going to be the role of the faculty in all of this?"/

Dr. Mellow (President of LaGuardia Community College) - I think it really calls for leadership. I have yet to come and have this discussion about accountability with a faculty member where somebody hasn’t said, "I don’t know, you can’t really measure it." That is not going to be an OK answer. I think engaging and saying, what about this, or what if we looked at these things compared to those things. I think we need to engage in a productive dialog about what we want to know. You need to get the data that will really be meaningful to you. You should engage as faculty about what you really want to know. I think then we need to craft reasons and support that process. There are the kinds of things that Byron has talked about. We haven’t, to my satisfaction, disaggregated how students are moving through. We look at who comes in and often not much else. We don’t break down who is leaving after 15 credits, or after 5 credits. What are those students’ lives like? How do we need to respond to those students? I think it is a very important area for a lot of rich dialog. I think faculty leadership on this really has a need for this data. When I have taught, it is helpful to me to know what is happening, where the students are going, and how they feel about that. Those are data that are very important.

Dr. Marti - Let’s be real about this. We are a system of different colleges, which is under one Board of Trustees. No matter how much we dislike that -- everyone wants to be their own boss -- the fact of the matter is that we have one Board of Trustees. To answer your question in terms of how this will be used, my impression is that at one time or another the central institution is going to use the performance indicators to determine either rewards or punishments. That central administration is going to be moved in that direction by the Board of Trustees. This is not anything against our Board of Trustees, it is just a fact of life. I believe that what has been said here makes a lot of sense in terms of us controlling that destiny, if we as individual colleges and faculty engage in the process of determining our performance indicators and measures of accountability. If we don’t do it, and it sounds horrible, we are abdicating our responsibility and permitting others to do it for us.

Dr. McClenney - I think it is inevitable that the community colleges and the senior colleges are going to be compared on a number of variables. I will mention a few. It is inescapable that we are going to be compared on the basis of a six-year graduation rate. This will be computed by taking an entering cohort of students, and determining how many of them six-years later have graduated from the community college, how many have transferred prior to graduation, and how many are still enrolled. All of that can be billed as student success. If the student is still persisting, has graduated, and/or transferred, we will be compared on the percentage of the entering cohort. I think that is inevitable. We are going to be compared on things like Fall to Fall retention. Of those students who enter in the Fall of 2000, how many are back on our campuses in Fall 2001. Those are the kind of comparisons that are going to be made. Of the students who graduate from our colleges and transfer to the four-year colleges, how do they perform once they transfer? This is the kind of study that I illustrated with our Brooklyn College work. When they enter the workforce, how do employers assess the skills they possess when they enter the workforce? Those kinds of things are going to be the sorts of things that are used as a base for comparison.

Professor Richter (Moderator) - I would like to call on the faculty now to ask questions.

Professor Perlstein - "I’d like to thank the three of you for finding the time to discuss the report with us. At the same time, I want to express my deep disappointment that President Perez of BMCC couldn’t see his way to getting here. He was the one president who was officially a member of the committee. When the report dropped on us a month ago, the Chancellor was insistent at last month’s Plenary that this was just a basis for a discussion, the opening salvo of what would be a protracted debate and discussion. Yet, the comments that you have made this evening, all of your references to flexibility notwithstanding, seem to take this report as the framework within which everything else will take place. I don’t want to appear falsely naive, but I’m a little bit disturbed and confused by that. I have uncomfortable feelings because we were told that the Schmidt Report was something similar. Now it has the force of the Ten Commandments. I am wondering whether you would comment on this process, and the extent to which you see this as an open process, where the framework itself can still be changed."/

Dr. McClenney - I am not going to defend the process. In no way would I defend the process. I think it was hurried and caught a lot of people by surprise. What I tried to say earlier, which I want to try and reinforce, is that many of the themes that are in this report are consistent with themes that I have tried to illustrate for you out of Middle States criteria and out of the Master Plan that has been approved. In fact Kingsborough faces a State audit a week from tomorrow. The State Education Department people are coming in to see whether or not we are carrying out the Master Plan in CUNY. There are expectations in the Master Plan that are consistent with many of the ideas in the report. Maybe it is in that context that you are hearing some of what you are hearing from us. What I would add is, I feel very comfortable at Kingsborough with the latitude that we have to create a plan for our future that responds to the needs of Brooklyn. I don’t feel impeded in that effort at all. I think that if we were to all create plans that were in some way responsive, they would be six very different kinds of plans among the community colleges in CUNY.

Dr. Marti - This is a framework and I really mean that. I think that the words in this document are not going to be changed. I think the words that Dr. McClenney has said are absolutely true. If each campus develops its own set of strategic objectives for the future, and uses this as a framework, we will be in good shape. I don’t believe that this is going to be utilized item by item. I think it is an enabling document rather than a restricting document. That being said, I have to share what has been said before in terms of the opportunity of the occasion of the document.

Professor Crain - "I will tell you what I think. I think all of this talk about accountability based on the experience of the last four years is meaningless. The Board of Trustees don’t care about data. They will use data as they want to use data. We presented data until the cows came home on the success of remediation at both the community colleges and at the senior colleges. Their own data indicated that students who complete remediation at the community colleges graduate at slightly higher rates than students who did not need remediation. They did not care; they shelved that data. They cared about graduation rates. If you want to increase graduation rates, take in wealthier students, and those who don’t need so much remediation. You will increase graduation rates, retention rates, and all of the measures they are going to use to judge you. What is the retention rate at Harvard? For four years, it is probably very high, around 95%.

Graduation rates correlate almost perfectly with family income. This whole conversation is kind of unreal to me. The powers that be are not going to be listening to that. Every part of that document to me is a tremendous political danger. I think the data is friendly. I agree with you. I want the data. I still have this idea in my mind that the data matters. The data is the truth and we are dedicated to that. The concern that I have at the moment is, we have immersion institutes, continuing education, and certificate programs. Does this foretell the death of open admissions? Are students going to be moved into these programs rather than having a place in the University? A place in the University, as I understand it, does not mean a place in an immersion institute, continuing education, or certificate program, it means a place in a community college. Do you want to know how many hours we have put into arguing with this Board of Trustees? The Board ignore all data. Now David Lavin cannot get data from CUNY. He came up with the phrase early on that the Board is "data proof." / Dr. Mellow - I think we understand your point and take it very well. /

Dr. Marti - At my last post, we had a great prison program. We taught students in four years for $15,000. We got them a baccalaureate degree. When the State did away with that, I went to our Assemblyman and gave him the figures. I told him that it costs $30,000 per year to house an inmate. He stopped me and said, "it’s not about the data, it’s about the politics."

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) - "I am looking at a very interesting document, which is a press release on the Community College Report. I want to raise a complaint that you have probably heard before, but being new to your positions you will hear many more times. It is that faculty had virtually no input in this report. The faculty was barely involved in discussions, they were greatly outnumbered by others on the committee, and they had no actual part in the writing of the report. The main piece of faculty input is Eva’s Minority Report, which is attached to the report. I think that shows up in a number of ways. This is how this University has chosen to present this Community College report to the public. I find some things in here duplicitous. They talk about reasons that students go to community colleges, "to get more personalized attention." At community colleges, where professors have to teach 30% more than they do at four-year colleges, it is not really clear which colleges they are talking about. They teach larger classes, but I don’t think that is quite honest. A number of the points in the report are fine. Who could argue with developing new support services? Redeploying recourses obviously has to be done as well.

There are others, however, that I have a problem with, specifically establishing performance indicators. I am not nearly so sanguine as people on the panel are about doing that. The final point seems to me rather spurious, which is developing programs of excellence within the flagship environment. I don’t think that is going to matter as much with the community colleges. What strikes me when I look down this list is that there is nothing about the center of education. It is all about the management of education. This is because faculty were not involved in the preparation of this report. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, but when you have the managers write a report, you get a report about management. Management is certainly a crucial part of the educational experience. Things have to be well managed. This is a community college report which is supposed to look at the very core of how we educated students. I find nothing about that. This is extremely problematic. I hope that at your respective campuses, and at the other community college campuses, when this report comes to be implemented, faculty are finally given a fine place at the table." /

Dr. McClenney - Let me just respond to part of that. Eva sits on a planning committee at Kingsborough that met at noon today. That committee is going to lead a campus wide discussion about our priorities for the future. It is a representative committee. It has students on it, it has faculty members on it, and staff members. They will talk about the future of Kingsborough in terms of the needs of our students and the needs of our community. We are going to create a plan for Kingsborough that does get at the heart of what we should be doing to educate students at Kingsborough. There is nothing to prohibit us from that. /

Dr. Marti - If I may add, today we finalized our strategic plan for the next three years at Queensborough. That process started last September. We have had three open hearings for faculty to respond to it. The Advisory Committee of Planning has been composed primarily of faculty. It has been distributed to every faculty member for comments and discussion. I guess my point is, that at least my campus is interested in bringing in faculty to the planning of the future of the campus. You said something about performance indicators that I can’t let go. You said that you were disappointed with the fact that we were all in favor of performance indicators. / Professor Gallagher - "No, I just said that I was not as sanguine as you were." / Dr. Marti - Forgive me for misinterpreting. We need to be very clear about the fact that performance indicators are here to stay. What we need to protect is the misuse that comes out of the use of performance indicators." /

Dr. Mellow - I am actually going to echo what was said. Tomorrow about 80 campus people, and about 30 people from outside of campus, of which about 40 of whom are adjuncts and full-time faculty, along with students and community members, are going to come together to begin this process that you have heard both Marti and McClenney talk about. I think we need to stay clear about the heart of what we do, and make sure that faculty voices are there. It is something that we are very committed to, and not naively. We want to know the data, but also the politics. When we are clear with where we want to go, I think if we believe certain strategies are ineffective, it behooves us to think about what an effective strategy is today in this environment. We really need to pursue those strategies so that we continue to be the kind of living organizations that we’ve been. I know that it is tough, because you feel that you must respond to these attacks. I said to you before directly, I think that we need to get out in front of them. We need to define our own future, and then push those strategies forward, and I think it is possible. It is possible throughout America and in New York. /

Professor Manassah - "You are talking about performance criteria. I want to ask about performance criteria, given the fact that three presidents of community colleges are here. What are the community colleges doing for their faculty, so that they double-up professionally, so that they can do research? I know in terms of senior colleges, we have the graduate programs, and ways that we can pursue our research. I am a strong believer in the fact that you can’t do good teaching without good research. I do not see a support system within the community colleges to allow my colleagues in your colleges to have the same opportunity to double-up professionally. This is very important. I teach in one of the most fast-paced areas of technology at this time, in both electrical engineering and computer engineering. I would wish that there would be a way that each one of you as president would find a way to allow faculty members who are teaching to come participate with us in our activities. Right now if they want to do it, they have to do it on their own time. There is no incentive system. There is no way that you are allowing people to double-up intellectually. You want faculty to give, but sometimes faculty need the opportunity to receive. At the senior colleges we are privileged. Community college faculty do not have that privilege. My question is, do any of you have a program to address this problem?" /

Dr. McClenney - I’m impressed with the quality of the work being done by the faculty at Kingsborough. Now being through a cycle of reviews, people who are up for tenure, promotions, and sabbatical, as I look at them I am very impressed. My point is that I am impressed with what they have been able to do against pretty tough odds. There is no question about that. One of the priorities that I am hearing at Kingsborough loud and clear has to do with the realm of professional development. We will be working long and hard on that. I agree with a lot of what you said. We’ll being doing a lot of work to ensure that we help as best we can. The teaching load is tough in our setting compared with the four-year setting. That won’t get changed easily. I wouldn’t argue with the plea or the call for more professional development opportunities.

Dr. Marti - I am always amazed -- 27 hours a year, a Ph.D. to start with, publications required for promotion, and time to do research, committee work, and advising students. It is a 70-hour week. It is a tremendous load. We are exploring how to provide release time for junior faculty. Brooklyn College does this. The first year that you are there you are given a course reduction to get acquainted and to get your research started. I think that that is something that we are going to look into at Queensborough. It is expensive, but I think it is important. The other part that I think President McClenney is talking about, is that at community colleges, in addition to having disciplinary requirements, our overall discipline is pedagogy. We are master teachers.

I have said from the very beginning when I got to Queensborough, I want Queensborough to be a place where other teachers come to learn how to teach. I want us to have national conferences so that people can learn how we do it in CUNY and how we do it at Queensborough. That type of professional development is important. It is the distillation of a process that is so very difficult at community colleges. Remember, we are teaching a bi-model curve. We have students at different levels. I taught a class in Human Genetics, and I had 8 students in the class. The only reason I had 8 students in the class is because I was the president, so I did it for nothing. This was in Connecticut. I had one student with a fourth grade reading level, and I had one student with a Ph.D. in the class. How did I keep those two things going? /

Dr. Mellow - My only comment again is to agree with you. It is something about which we have to do external fundraising. We certainly do support sabbaticals to the extent we can. What I have been very amazed with is the way that LaGuardia faculty have gone after grants. It is within that funding that they have developed extraordinary pieces of research in lots of different ways. Against all odds, I would say that there are extraordinary levels of professional development going on. It is through the creativity and effort of faculty themselves in creating those. We need to find external sources. I am really not optimistic internally.

Professor Reitano (Social Science) - "I would like to get back to Brian’s question about the core at the community colleges. What do you think the Board’s emphasis on responding to short-term job market needs will have on the long range academics of the community colleges? Is there a danger that the report is redefining community colleges as job training centers rather than as institutions of higher education?" /

Dr. Mellow - I don’t think so, because when you talk to employers, what do they say they need? Critical thinking, excellent oral communication, and good writing skills. In other words, the short term labor needs as they present themselves now, are not to say, "if I know how to program this one simple program, I can go in and be a programmer for your company." It doesn’t work like that anymore. / Professor Reitano - "That is what the report assumes." / Dr. Mellow - I think when you talk about responding to current job needs, when you look at what those are, they dovetail with the best general education requirements. You have to be complex and you have to be problem solvers. However, if you are a nurse, it is also necessary to know how to take blood and vital signs. If you are a nurse on the floor you are going to be faced with things that you have never seen before.

It is really that critical thinking and problem solving that you and I know is developed through the process of general education, that has to be there. I don’t believe that this redefines the mission of community colleges. We’ve been saying that we really hold that sacred. The best programs are really not mindlessly one way or the other. They really have to have both of those pieces. If we are going to get great physical therapy assistance and terrific nursing students and great graphic artists, they will be well grounded in general education. Otherwise they will only be employed for two months. That kind of dichotomy I think is a false dichotomy, based on an old sense of what the job market really is.

The job market is about being on your feet, being able to interact with people, doing problem solving, and being able to do problem identification, knowing the next software, or CPA rules, all go into making a good employee. These things don’t frighten me or take us in a different direction. We’ve always been interested in getting students jobs, if that is their interest at the end of two years, or even at the end of two semesters. However the job market has changed so that you can no longer say, "we will give you these skills, and you can go out and be an assistant accountant, and that will be it." It doesn’t work that way anymore. /

Dr. McClenney - Let me just offer one challenge that I think is important that we haven’t touched upon yet, and that is the articulation between community colleges and four-year colleges of CUNY. Let’s take something like that and become world beaters. If you believe what I just shared with you, the data between Kingsborough and Brooklyn, there is no reason for any faculty member at any four-year college in CUNY to be concerned about a student transferring from one of the community colleges to one of the four-year colleges. Let’s whip that one together. We could do that and the Board would be thrilled.

Let’s find the things that can be positive. That is one that I think we could solve almost overnight if we chose to. We are going to solve it between Kingsborough and Brooklyn College. I would like to solve it between Kingsborough and all of the others. I would bet that my colleagues would feel the same. We still have problems that can be solved and that report calls for us to solve that one.

I am not worried about the sort of thing you are talking about. We are not going to become vocational training centers. That is not the idea of a community college. I see no threat of that at all. To the contrary, I see us building even stronger programs preparing students for transfer, and the report reinforces that. There is nothing that takes us away from that. That does not in any way take away from the work that we might do with continuing education, or with a building block approach where certificates are the first step to an AAS degree.

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) - "Let me follow up on these answers and Joanne’s question. I was very glad to hear from Dr. Marti that you place education first and training second. In the Master Plan, there is a lot about very specific partnerships between some of the community colleges and specific corporations, Cisco Systems, for example. I guess my specific question is about the Incubator Program. How do we maintain something at the moment when it is hot, and not get burned when it is no longer hot? Particularly for incubators and very close relationships between the community colleges and very specific companies, how do we maintain this core of education? LaGuardia’s Co-Op Education has done surveys of employers, and we found out exactly what you said. They want students and workers who can read, write, think, and speak. How do we make sure that is what we give them and not specific software skills?" /

Professor Marti - I just have one phrase, "faculty involvement." At Queensborough, we have a very specific program with Verizon. It was developed very specifically by our faculty with Verizon. If you have that you will protect the integrity of the academic endeavor. The other thing that you have to remember is, we have a core that has to be protected. That core is the integrity of the academic program. Around that core you might have ancillary elements that can come and go. That could be the Verizon Program. That ancillary program has to contribute to the core, so that the integrity of the system is maintained. In the development of the program you must maintain the interests of the college, and not sell out to the corporation. You don’t want to sell out; you want to provide a service.

Professor Doss - "I’m interested in data. I think we should have data, but I think it is important to design that data so that we can tell the story that we want. I don’t think that it is that difficult, except that it requires will and money. There have been times that we have been very good at institutional research. I see 6 zeros under "unencumbered funds" at community colleges spent on research here. It is not just if you want equipment, but if you want any funding for research whatsoever. We need to spend money on that sort of thing. I think that when you have an admissions form, you have to ask what the students want, what their objective is, and how long do they plan to obtain it. Sure, everybody else has six-year graduation rates.

Dr. McClenney - We do spend a good deal of money on institutional research and we are going to spend more. It is important to know what is happening to students. Your suggestion about finding out what their objectives are up front is important. However in a community college setting you have to realize that that changes very quickly. So many students come to a community college not knowing what they are capable of doing. As they become aware of the fact that they can learn and achieve, they begin to adjust. That is what I want them to do. I want them to see more options opening up in their lives. We’ve got to be thinking about that as we track students. It is not just a one-time question. It’s what happened after that first semester and whether you have gained confidence and are ready for that next step. It has to be continuous. /

Dr. Mellow - I agree that we have to tell our story. We can’t forget about qualitative data. The stories themselves are so compelling. The faculty at LaGuardia have just put in a FIPSE Grant for an electronic student portfolio. One of the pieces it has is, "why are you here?" It asks that every single semester. Until we get to that point, we can’t track the kind of extraordinary changes that happen because the student in your class is not getting connected. It’s not beyond us anymore. I think it is time for us to get serious about this. I agree with you.

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) - "I want to thank the three of you for coming. I learned a lot and I feel very encouraged. I have a question about general education. Given that CUNY community college students transfer at a very high rate, we have to pay a lot of attention to general education, given our transfer rates. What is general education? Is it skills, competencies, performance indicators, disciplinary experiences, a body of knowledge? What is general education? I know it is a loaded big question." /

Dr. Mellow - One of the things that I would encourage you all to do is to look at the research data, if you already haven’t, on the impact of general education data on students, especially for students who are a year or two out. There is information that suggests that certain kinds of curricular structures produce lasting changes in both meta-cognitive skills and in a perception of truth and beauty, the areas of the humanities that I think we are interested in our students having. I think often we don’t do a good enough job of looking at that data, and we fight turf wars. I think that too often general education is faculty turf wars. Inside our own campuses, what does it really mean for our students? How is general education different for a 17-year-old student who just graduated from Aviation High School and immigrated from Peru two years ago, to a 42-year-old Dominican woman who has been in the United States since she was 10 years old? We have not grappled with those questions in ways that I think we need to. I think it is rich and important to struggle with the questions, what is general education, and what does it mean for our students? What does it mean within the context in which we teach?

Dr. Marti - If I had a priority, and had a magic wand, I would concentrate on precisely what President Mellow has said. I think we need to engage our brains within our campuses, shutting out the outside world, and determine what we mean by an educated student. What do we mean by education vs. training. This argument has been going on for a long time in medical schools, law schools, engineering schools, etc. We really need to do it, and get away from the discipline oriented Germanic model, and look at the holistic approach. It is tough. I am very encouraged by the learning communities movement. We can look at students as part of a learning community, rather than looking at an individual who has to go through a number of hoops to prove that they have had that experience. It is a huge issue. If I had a magic wand, I would do away with budgets, physical plant, faculty contracts, etc. and concentrate on general education. In previous posts, I had my own Board of Trustees and unions within the community college to deal with. When we negotiated a contract, we had to do so with the faculty union within our college, and then present it to our Board of Trustees and county legislature. Now that there is a certain distance between my campus and that process, I am much happier. /

Dr. McClenney - What I want people to talk about is, what should students know and be able to do when they complete an AA, AS, or AAS degree on the Kingsborough campus? That is a faculty discussion. If we are clear about that, and clear about how we are going to determine how students are going to achieve at that level, we are going to be just fine. If we spend our time and energy working on those kinds of discussions, we are going to be just fine.

Professor Richter (Moderator) - Thank you very much, all of you, the presidents who came so generously and spent their time and their energies with us in this very important discussion. I really appreciate everything you said. I think it was extremely informative, certainly for me. I have felt much less concerned than I was an hour or so ago. I also want to thank the faculty also very much for your participation and concern. I don’t think that this is going to be a one-time discussion. There is obviously going to be much more discussion about this. It is going to be something that develops over a period of years. What I am particularly heartened by is the emphasis by all three of you on faculty involvement. I sincerely hope that this carries through. Thank you so much.