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MINUTES OF = THE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEENTH PLENARY SESSION
OF THE UNIV= ERSITY FACULTY SENATE
OF THE
February 28= , 2006
The meeting w=
as
called to order by UFS Chair O’Malley at 6:35 p.m. in Room 9205/6/7 at
the
Baruch: Present =
8211;
Hill, Martell, Pollard, and Vora. Absent –
Freedman, Myers, and Smith. <=
span
class=3DGramE>Vacancies – 2.&=
nbsp;
BMCC: Present – Agwu, and <=
span
class=3DSpellE>Rani. Absent – Belknap, Friedman, Martin, Price=
, and
Roy. Wimberly
Professor Liesl
Jones (Lehman), Syd Lefkoe=
(
Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Coo= per (CSI), Dreyer (NYCCT), Kaplow= itz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Martell (Baruch), Mettler (LaGuardia), Pecorino (= QCC), Savage (Queens), Tobey (Brooklyn) and Tronto (Hunter). Parliamentarian Andr= ea McArdle, Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were also present.
I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda= was adopted as proposed.
II.
Approval of the Minutes of January 2006: The Minutes were adopted as propos=
ed.
[T=
he order
of business was modified. It =
is
recorded as stated on the agenda for consistency.]
III. Reports: (Recorded in Reports &=
amp;
Deliberations)
A. Chair.=
B. Representatives to Board of
Trustee Committees (written)
IV. Panel on
“Restructuring Science Education at CUNY?”: Recorded in Rep=
orts
& Deliberations.
V. New Business:
=
A. Resolution on Campus Academic Free=
dom
Committees:
Professor Bobbie Pollard, Chair of the UFS Academic Freedom Committee propo=
sed
the following resolution. It =
was
unanimously adopted by 69 voting members present.
University Faculty Senate Statement=
as to
Why Each
Should Have a Standing Academic Freedom Committe=
e
The Unive=
rsity
Faculty Senate has long taken the position that academic freedom is fundame=
ntal
and essential to our academic community and that,
therefore, it is necessary that faculty be vigilant and committed to active=
ly
upholding and preserving principles of academic freedom. Consonant with the
views of the University Faculty Senate, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, in his
October 2005 Message on Academic Freedom, also stated that “the princ=
iple
of academic freedom is so essential to colleges and universities that it co=
uld
be said to be part of the genetic code of higher education institutions.
The University Faculty Sen=
ate
has long had a standing committee on academic freedom, as do many colleges =
in
CUNY and around the country. The existence of an academic freedom committee
demonstrates that the faculty understands and acknowledges its responsibili=
ty
to uphold academic freedom. It is important to have a standing committee in
place in order to explore academic issues on a particular campus.
Therefore, Be It Resolved,=
that
in order to uphold and preserve academic freedom, the UFS Committee on Acad=
emic
Freedom urges each CUNY college to establish a standing committee on academ=
ic
freedom if it does not already have one. The purposes of this standing
committee might include:
· to monitor, examine and r=
eport
annually to the faculty of the college on the status of academic freedom at=
the
college;
· to investigate possible
violations of academic freedom;
· to address issues of acad=
emic
freedom through the college’s existing channels of communication and
governance structures; =
· to make appropriate
recommendations regarding academic freedom policies and practices to the
college’s governance bodies and, as appropriate, through those bodies=
to
the University Faculty Senate.
There being no further busi= ness, the meeting was adjourned at 8:25 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Bill Phipps
Executive Director
THE THREE HUNDRED AND
SIXTEENTH PLENARY
SESSION OF THE UNIVERS=
ITY
FACULTY SENATE
OF THE
February 28, 2006
III. Reports:
A. Chair, Susan O’Malley: First, bef=
ore
I forget, the PSC buys one thousand AAUP memberships and everyone in the UFS
may be a member of AAUP. I th=
ink
many of you do not receive Academe and are not in the AAUP. If this is true--I just determined=
that
there are two hundred places going begging -- sign your name on this purple=
paper
and where you would like Academe sent to you.
I have some start notices. One is that Baruch is
looking for a provost, and that John Jay is looking for a provost too. Also
NYCCT, and so, if you have any ideas, contact Karen Kaplowitz at John Jay <=
st1:PersonName
w:st=3D"on">kkaplowitz@jjay.cuny.edu, and Terrence Martell=
at
Baruch terrence_martell@baruch.cuny.edu, and Lois Dreyer at NYCCT
ldryer@citytech.cuny.edu.
At the Law school there are three finalists for
dean. The faculty will report out, I believe, on Monday? The three are:
Michelle Anderson, law professor at Villanova. Catherine Abate, who is
president of Health Care network, and a past state senator; and
Margarita Rosa, executive director of the Grand Street Settlement. I’=
ve
met all three candidates, and I think they’re superb. They used no se=
arch
firm, none, zero search firm. I have never seen such wonderful
candidates in any search that I’ve participated in, over the past four
years.
Lobbying Day, March 21, come to
Other things.=
span> I don’t have mu=
ch to
say about the I also need to tell you abou=
t the Online B.A. Degree,
OLBA. It did pass the Board of
Trustees yesterday. I had a statement very similar to the statement that I =
gave
at CAPPR. It’s appended to the minutes that are in the back of the ro=
om.
It will be entered into the record of the board about the UFS opposition to
OLBA: the curriculum is much too thin, for a BA/BS degree, faculty need to have true <=
span
class=3DSpellE>consortial positions, governance needs to be reworked=
both
for OLBA itself and for the School of Professional Studies; and the budget =
will
be coming from tax levy funds to support an online degree whereas the Schoo=
l of
Professional Studies had promised to give money to support graduate student=
s,
which is apparently not happening. At the Professor
Stefan Baumrin (Philosophy, Professor
Sandi Cooper (History,
Chair
O’Malley-
OK, about flash enrollment. It’s interesting to see what’s up a=
nd
what’s down although you can’t really trust it because it is a
flash enrollment. First time freshmen are quite down in numbers, part-time
student numbers are way up, particularly at colleges that have the poorer
student bodies. / Unnamed Speaker- Do you mean this current semester or the
fall? / Chair O’Malley- I’m talking about the current term.
Graduate student numbers are down, I think that’s particularly educat=
ion
at Professor
David Bloomfield (Education, Chair
O’Malley-
Any place else in terms of graduate students? I do think that The conference will talk about how the survey
got started, the genesis of i=
t, and
then we’ll move, looking at four or five questions into best practice=
s,
to try to understand why there is such an enormous spread between the highe=
st
and the lowest scores. Why are some faculty so unhappy and others relatively
happy and try to understand that. We will also look at CUNY measured agains=
t a
national survey of faculty satisfaction to see how we stack up. Dean, do you
want to say anything about the conference? Professo=
r Dean
Savage (Sociology, Queens College) - I got a call from David Crook, the Dean of
Institutional Research, and he wanted a rapid update because he was having a
meeting in an hour with Vice-Chancellor Botman,=
who
wanted to be brought up to speed on this survey. So I think that you know f=
or
whatever reason this has worked out very well, and I said, “David, you
know the obvious direction to go on this is to repeat this on a regular bas=
is
and have it built into the performance assessments of how college presidents
are doing?” and he said, “Yes, we’re looking into how that
might be done”. So I think that even if they don’t decide to go
ahead with it, this body should go ahead with this survey because look what=
it
has done-- it succeeded in getting the attention of administrators in a way
that is not all that common at CUNY. Now, in terms of what we’re going to have
ready for the conference, the fabled comparison with the national data, I
haven’t had time to do it-- I’ve had three promotions and two
searches and I’ve been completely consumed on my campus. Ned Benton h=
as
done some national comparisons and I hope that he shows those; and we may n=
ot
have a full complement of national comparisons but we do have everything in
hand to go ahead and work on some of the best practices kind of issues. And=
I
think that there’s certainly a lot to discuss in terms of how some
campuses have used it. I found it quite amazing and interesting that the
campuses ranked at the high end have been the ones who embraced the survey =
and
decided to work on those few things in which they fell somewhat short, but =
that
colleges like City at the low end found the task simply too daunting - and
would have to deal with almost everything - and have apparently dropped the
project. But it’s focusing attention and I=
think
that’s a very useful kind of development. Chair
O’Malley-
If people have ideas on the conference do email us or go to the mic right n=
ow. Professo=
r Eda Hastick-Harris (Behav=
ioral
Sciences, Medgar Evars College) -- We devoted some time at Medgar, during the Faculty
Development Conference, to looking at the survey and we also invited one of=
our
colleagues, Professor Pecorino to present on academic freedom. I won’t
take your time talking about what we are doing at Medgar as much as to ask =
you
to guard against using the survey, and taking a giant leap into seeing what=
is
happening nationally, I am suggesting strongly that you not use outside
speakers to come in and explain what’s happening within CUNY and then
making general statements about CUNY versus national, and so on. Secondly, /
Chair O’Malley-I think you’re right about that. / Professor
Hastick-Harris- I also think that we underestimate the intelligence of our
students by saying that they do not have opinions. Students are very
opinionated. They might not s=
how
it, but they have their own opinions and their observations. Chair
O’Malley-
Finally, Perez. At the governance meeting on Friday we did a lot of talking
about Perez we talked about the campuses that are really struggling, the
campuses that have no problem with Perez. maybe a
little tweak here and there, and those in the middle. We want to help those
campuses that are having problems implementing the Perez decision. If you c=
all
the UFS, we can address some of the problems with you. Perhaps the problem =
is
getting a system with alternates so that you have a quorum and perhaps
it’s revising your governance plan. Many of them are very old and if =
you
have 202 people in your faculty governance body, maybe governance should ta=
ke a
look at that (Hunter has 202 members) and have a more workable number if it=
is
not working. Perhaps there should be fewer students if the students do not
attend. Certainly there shouldn’t be more students than faculty, as is
true on one campus. It’s time to look at our governance plans and make
them stronger and more functional. Professor
Diane Sank (Anthropology,
City College) - I just wanted =
to add
a few points that I should have added when it came up earlier, first of all=
in
terms of graduate enrollment. At
City we have had a big drop in graduate enrollment and they haven’t b=
een
able to figure what… / Chair O’Malley- What programs? Education? / Professor Sank- They didn’t indicat=
e the
specific programs. / Our education program seems to be very good but they
didn’t specify. But what we have had is a big influx of undergraduate=
s,
general undergraduate enrollment but then we get that tremendous drop off, =
and
I just wondered what was happening at the other CUNY colleges regarding tha=
t.
Do they lose students after the first or second year -- we seem to be losing
them tremendously. The other thing is to clarify about the faculty experien=
ce
survey, we did have a meeting with the president last week regarding the
faculty experience survey, the heads of several committ=
ees
academic freedom and so forth met with him, and after that meeting we
questioned whether we would meet again. There was no discussion, but it
wasn’t as negative as perhaps was indicated earlier-- it was sort of
neutral. The third thing is I=
would
love to find out about other CUNY colleges; the history or the tradition has
been that student surveys of teacher evaluation and course survey, student
teacher evaluation and course evaluation, has historically been done for
non-tenured non-full professors, but about two years ago our administration
said we want everyone evaluated, tenured, full professors, whatever. I was =
just
wondering what’s happening on the other campuses, if this is true on
other campuses. / Chair O’Malley- That would be a good question to put
out on the Listserv. / Professor Sank- At City, the tuition was raised quite
dramatically for the school of engineering and the school of architecture. =
If you could find out, if the drop is in those programs becau=
se
there is the differential tuition increase. It would be important to know when
proposals come forward, if they do, for tuition increases whether there is a
connection between them. Professo=
r Lois
Dreyer (Dental Hygiene, NYCCT) - I want to do the survey again on our campus. We
had a different president, in house at the time the survey was done, and a
very, very low response rate. /
Chair O’Malley- You could administer it yourself. / Professor
Dreyer-Also, in terms of best practice and the conference I’d like to
look at campuses and what they’re doing in terms of mentoring. Botman had talked about this when she first came, som=
ething
about mentoring. It seems to me that on our campus, there has been a shift =
in adjuncts
and hires to a caliber that no longer reflects what we would like to see as
teaching faculty and that they need more mentoring. I’m not saying
they’re not good people and they’re not smart, but they’re
coming with a lack of educational savvy, classroom smarts, language problem=
s,
interpersonal relation problems. I have to tell you the number of students =
and
emails that I get are going to be different than yours as chair of council, and the number of faculty that complain to me=
are
different than the ones that complain to you. All I’m saying is that =
as
educators wouldn’t we want to mentor these people? I’m not sayi=
ng
we shouldn’t hire them but I’d like to know what other campuses=
are
doing to help raise the level. / Chair O’Malley- =
Again,
that might be a question for the Listserv and we also might include =
it
in, Professor
Frances Ruoff (English, Kingsborough)- I did a survey through=
out
the college for the adjuncts and mentoring was a question and the most freq=
uent
response was “What mentoring?” That was college wide, that
wasn’t just within the department. / Chair O’Malley-Thank you Professor
Julian Aronowitz (Math &
Computer Science,
Professor Karen Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College ) - I think it would be interesting if=
at
some point we looked at the student satisfaction survey that CUNY administe=
rs
and see if there’s any correlation between what the students at each
campus say and what the faculty at those campuses say. / Professor Savage- =
We
can take a look at the questions. Generally they tend not to be the same
questions, the student satisfaction surveys that have been done both by CUNY
central and on individual campuses, ask about the library, the bursar’=
;s
office, about satisfaction with the registrar. They tend to ask about
satisfaction with instruction. The
students don’t have an opinion, they’=
;re
not competent to answer, when you ask them what do you think about your col=
lege
administration, it’s simply not part of their universe. / Professor
Kaplowitz- I know, but some of the questions are about how much time they s=
pend
on their courses --&nb=
sp;
I’d have to look at it again./ Professor Savage- Oh, th=
ere
were some questions that I think have a possible kind of room for expansion,
put in some questions there on, you know, how much students actually put in=
for
each course and how much you think they actually put in. They did have some
questions in NESE which was administering the national survey of student
engagement, which asked all of the students how many hours do you actually
invest for each hour of class; of course the national ranking was the
professors say 3 hours for every hour of class, what do you think you get, =
an
hour and a half, students say “I put in half an hour”.
Professo=
r Phil
Pecorino (Philosophy, Queensborou=
gh)
- Jus=
t as
we’re going to gather best practices with regard to faculty involveme=
nt
in governance, I propose that over the next year I would head up working wi=
th a
standing committee or a special committee to develop a model Comprehensive
Faculty Development Program that would be submitted here, and if this body
adopts it, as a recommendation for the individual campuses to emulate in ac=
tual
practice. / Chair O’Malley- This sounds great. It’s in the minu=
tes;
we have a record of this / Professor Pecorino- I’ve already got a lot=
of
material on it. / Chair O’Malley- This is good, particularly as
Professor Katherine Richardson (Nursing, NYCCT) =
I’d like =
to ask
the faculty to encourage the faculty on their campuses to become UCRA liais=
ons
or members. We’re looking for people in the following areas: Anthropo=
logy,
Chemistry, Computer Science, Education, Health and Human Services, Health
Sciences, Psychology and Sociology. And the closing date is Friday, April 2=
8,
so there’ll probably be only one more Senate meeting before that to
encourage people to ask their faculty. The other thing was that we had a ta=
sk
force last semester and I don’t know if Bill Div=
ale
is here tonight / Chair O’Malley- I don’t think Bill came. /
Professor Richardson- Anyway Bill Divale was ch=
airing
this UCRA task force, and basically one of the things that we came up with,
which is no surprise to anybody, is that there isn’t enough money in =
the
PSC/CUNY grant awards program, and we were looking at different ways to get
more money into the program. The results I assume were brought to the
Chancellor, and I have a letter here to Bill Divale
from the Chancellor. And I’m not going to read it because of time
constraints, but basically what the Chancellor is saying is that it’s=
not
really the university’s problem, it’s the PSC/CUNY’s prob=
lem.
And where is the money coming from? So, what Susan and I were speaking about
before was there’s a pool of money and that pool of money is not going to increase. So the pool of money can be =
used
for the Welfare Fund, it can be used to increase salaries, it can be used f=
or
the PSC/CUNY grant program, and that’s the way it’s being looked
at. I don’t know how fair that is but I think that’s the way
it’s being looked at at this point. / Chair O’Malley- Right, I
think what we need to do is have a meeting with the Chancellor and try to f=
ind
other sources of money; instead of having the Chancellor blaming the union =
and
the union saying we don’t have any more money. I think you should sign up to be o=
n one
of the UCRA panels. Chairs of
panels get paid, I think we can get some money and it’s kind of fun. /
Professor Richardson -- It’s $6,000.
That’s to make up for the fact that you can’t apply for a PSC/C=
UNY
grant. These grants lead to o=
ther
larger grants, which is really very beneficial. / Chair O’Malley-
What’s the percentage? It’s pretty high, 47%? / Chair
O’Malley- 47% of the PSC/CUNY grants lead to more external funding, w=
hich
is not bad, given that a lot of faculty in the Humanities have a hard time
finding any external funding.
IV=
. Panel on
“Restructuring Science Education at CUNY?”: Chair
O’Malley-
Thank you. Let me say what this is about.&=
nbsp;
Outside evaluators were brought to look at the possible restructurin=
g of
the Doctoral [Sciences] at CUNY. The UFS was asked to name six people, and =
we
did. The scientists got organized and did the most incredible job at their
meeting with the outside evaluators. Our team consisted of Liesl
Jones of Lehman, Al Levine of CSI, Bob Engels at Queens College, Spiro
Alexandratos from Hunter, who was coming tonight, but his mother is not wel=
l,
Shirley Rapps from Hunter, Nan Lo from CSI. The evaluators were led by Dr. Rob=
ert
Sibley, Dean of Science from MIT.
He was a most impressive man. Tonight Professor Panayiotis Meleties, co-Chair of the Chemistry, Biology, Biochemistry Discipline Council is also with us. I think it’s very important =
that
faculty know what is happening in the reorganization of doctoral science.
Professo=
r Liesl Jones, (Biology, Lehman College) -- I had a unique
position on undergraduate research and I spoke on this because I am also
coordinator of the MARC program at Lehman College, Minority Access to Resea=
rch
Careers; it’s an NIH funded program that’s trying to increase
minority students going on to Doctoral programs I also coordinate the SCORE
program, which is the faculty research program given to minority institutes.
Essentially, my job was to try to help the evaluators to understand how the
consortium model that we have for our Doctoral Program in Sciences benefits=
the
undergraduate students. So, essentially the information I gave them was that
most of the graduate students that come into the consortium model mentor our
undergraduate students and that the hallmark of all of the minority research
programs, are the research programs that we can provide these students and =
the
fact that most of these students do go on to doctoral programs and in order=
for
undergraduates to get into doctoral programs at tier 2, tier 3, and tier 1
institutes, they all have to have a research background. And if they want t=
o get
into tier 1 programs they have got to have publications and presentations u=
nder
their belt when they’re applying to these schools and the same is tru=
e of
medical schools, and for Master’s programs and for Form D programs, a=
nd
this is just the way the world is moving and undergraduate research is
required. It’s so important that schools like Bronx Science and some =
of
the other magnet schools have research programs built into their high school
science curriculums, and I’ve had several students that have come from
around the Bronx area that have worked in my lab and have gone on to Harvard
and Columbia, and my graduate students have helped mentor undergraduate
students that are now going on to Cornell, Harvard, Albert Einstein. So our
undergraduates are getting into very good graduate programs based on
undergraduate research, and if we do what the Chancellor wants to do, which=
is
to dismantle the consortium model and put the programs on lead campuses, on=
e of
the things that I explained to the evaluators is that that makes specialty
science programs on the campuses. And what ends up happening is, instead of=
a
biology department, in my case you have a plant science department and you
cannot educate kids going on to medical school, kids going on to graduate
programs in Bio medical sciences with a plant science department. It also
hampers your ability to recruit young faculty to your department and you al=
so
then lose faculty from your department who are in programs like Neuroscience or MCD or EEB =
that
can no longer have collaborations on their campus or that have a difficult =
time
getting funding. And I also pointed out that NIH will then remove programs =
like
MARC and RISE from particular campuses because there will no longer be enou=
gh
bio-medical research on-going at the campuses for them to fund these progra=
ms
on the campuses. The evaluators actually agreed with that, and they felt th=
at
that would happen if this did happen with the consortium model. And it was =
my
understanding from when we left, and I think you’ll hear more, is that
the evaluators felt that the programs itself, the doctoral programs itself
worked well in the way they were but that there were certain administrative
problems and that the administrative problems if addressed would help the
doctoral program remain prosperous and work even better and some of those.
I’m sure you’ll be discussing what the administrative problems =
are.
/ Chair O’Malley- Let me give you some background. Two years ago the
Chancellor had a meeting with all of the Science Executive Officers at the =
If this happens, Lehman would lose=
Liesl because she would go elsewhere because she woul=
d have
no graduate students and no lab. / Professor Jones- They did meet with grad=
uate
students from the programs and they were extremely impressed. I was very lu=
cky
because my graduate student got to speak with them and they were very
impressed. He’s a minor=
ity
graduate student and he came up through the ranks, he started at Lehman Col=
lege
in the biology department, was a research technician in my lab and went on =
to
the Doctoral Program and he’s currently being fought over by several
post-doc positions at Mount Sinai and a couple of other places. And we also
have, a=
span>
young man by the name of Chris and he’s someone that I don’t th=
ink
you’d ever see come through this school again. He is a double major b=
io-chem with a math and physics minor and he is a 4.0 an=
d he
has 5 acceptances and he’s been accepted at UCSD,
Professor
Panayiotis Meleties, (Chemistry,
Chair
O’Malley for Spiro Alexandratos- Spiro=
b> Alexandratos is a very impressive scientist. At the meeting with=
the
evaluators each person presented.
When it was Spiro’s turn, he takes an article from the New York
Times, published a few years ago, reads it to the evaluators: “For years, there has been talk about elevating one =
or two
colleges of the City University=
span>
of New York to flagship ca=
mpuses
with research capacity, prestige and drawing power like that of the Berkeley
campus of the University of California.&nb=
sp;
But CUNY officials have found it difficult to make the case. Top-ran=
ked
research institutions are extremely expensive.
Alfred
Levine, (
Stefan
Baumrin (Philosophy,
Professor
Liesl Jones, (Biology, Lehman College)- My understanding though was that the evaluators hav=
e a
huge say in this, that if the evaluators felt that this would be detrimenta=
l to
undergraduate and graduate education at CUNY, then this would not happen or=
the
plan that they have and the plan that the evaluators have is an administrat=
ive
plan, and the administrative plan is not to change the consortium model. I
don’t know if you are aware, but we are not the only group of schools=
in be how Lehman does it for the most part, which is adju=
nct
teaching time, or tech time or off of a research grant. So that was one of =
their
ideas. The other that came out of this was also that the graduate students
would have dual memberships so to speak, that they would have ID’s bo=
th
at the
Professor
Alfred Levine
(
Professor
Sandi Cooper (History,
Professor
Jones- I
think most of the E.O.’s in Science were a=
gainst
changing the consortium model, and the graduate students were against chang=
ing
the consortium model and all of the faculty that showed up. As well as, I k=
now
that the Dean and the Provost at Lehman’s campus were going to support
the consortium model, both of them are Scientists, and so I’m pretty =
sure
that they were showing up to support the consortium model. As far as the So=
cial
Sciences, Psych would be involved in this. And Psych will move off to a lead
campus and would have reduction. So yes, Psych is involved.
Professo=
r Dean
Savage
(Sociology, Queens College) - The three items that are mentioned here--one =
of
them is reducing the number of Doctoral students, another one is introducing
Master’s programs for all of the programs here (a number of the PhD
programs already offer a Master’s degree, so it won’t be new for
certain programs), and then the third item is the one we started with, whic=
h is
concentrating science research at City College primarily but also perhaps at
Hunter College. And somehow number three is the one we started with but
that’s kind of fallen by the board and all of a sudden we’re
talking about Master’s students supporting a reduced number of PhD
students. I don’t see the connection between the first two and the th=
ird,
so that’s one thing I’d like to hear from the panel about. But =
then
there’s another issue, and that has to do with the number of Doctoral=
Students
and what the market will afford right now. I actually had been frustrated o=
ver
the years with the job placement success of lost generations of Sociology
Doctoral students, so first I went ahead and constructed a complete list of=
all
of the Doctoral students in Sociology and where they got placed, and then I=
was
dissatisfied with that so I decided to go and expand my research to cover a=
ll
5300 PhD’s at the City University between 1965 and 1994 and I unleash=
ed a
team of Grad students (burned out quite a few of them actually), to go and =
find
CUNY PhD’s by looking through the faculty listings of every college
catalog in America. We succee=
ded by
dint of a really serious labor outlay in finding 1500 of the 5200 doctorate=
s,
30%. What I found was is that the placement rate for business PhD’s w=
as
70% in academic positions, terrific, the low program is German- 4% placement
rate in academic jobs. The other programs are strung out all the way up and
down the line. So then I went ahead and said, OK, we’ve got some prob=
lems
in some programs, if you figure out that only 50% of the people who start a=
PhD
finish, and then only half of them get an academic job, that’s one in
four, that’s really something that the students need to know about wh=
en
they start out. So I’ve been telling them but I’m not sure this
information is widely shared in all programs, an=
d one
of the things that I found particularly interesting, I also found out that =
in
response to the fiscal crisis of higher education, in response to the massi=
ve
drop in the number of academic positions, the privates cut back. The
SUNY’s and CUNY did not cut back. There’s no market mechanism
operating here, but I think we could stand to cut back on the number of PhD
students.
Professor
Levine- Dean,
I usually agree with everything you say, but this time I don’t. In the
case of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, you have the problem that you’=
;re
looking in Academia. Twice as many of our graduates go into industry, in the
case of the Physics PhD’s that I’ve dealt with, most go out to
industry, only a small number have gone into Academia. There are jobs, and
furthermore there is a national redistribution that we need more PhD’=
s in
science. When I made my comment about that I believe that the economic well
being of this country requires more PhD’s in the laboratory sciences =
- I
really mean that.
Professor
Jones- We
have in the Biology areas, pharmaceutical companies go to the conferences; =
just
to hand-pick the graduate students off their posters. I have seen this happ=
en,
Kevin being one of them who was hand picked by a
couple of pharmaceutical companies, because of the research they’re
doing. There’s a lot of real good research going on within CUNY so a =
lot
of companies are pulling the students right out of the labs. The problem is=
not
placing them, the problem is recruiting them to come here and we do have a
difficult time because we’re sitting in New York City which is one of=
the
most competitive cities - other than California as a state and Chicago - for
lab, bench top research. And being in the neuroscience program, I can tell =
you
that we compete with
Professor
Savage- To
follow up, that sounds like a program that really works, the number of PhD
programs that only accept doctoral students that they can fully fund is not=
a
very large number. We accept all kinds of people. I’ve seen the numbe=
rs
on loan, borrowing and going into debt and all that. We have lots and lots =
of
people, including people who really should be counseled otherwise, who are
going and borrowing to the hilt and then they’re coming out the other=
end
and they do not have a job. I will not argue that there are some programs t=
hat
absolutely do deserve to continue at exactly the rate they’re going, =
but
I think it’s not probably unlikely that there are some that maybe sho=
uld
go ahead and get a review.
Professo=
r Bill
Crain (Psychology,
City College of New York) - I know in terms of African-American and Latino
students in the PhD lines, percentage wise that CUNY is probably not much
better than anybody else in the nation.&nb=
sp;
Are we a leader in the nation in terms of absolute numbers in terms =
of
minorities that are getting PhD’s?&n=
bsp;
My instincts are that cuts will hurt students of color.
Professor
Liesl Jones, - I don’t know if we’re leading in
number of minorities -- no not in granting PhD’s. We do have many of =
them
come in. We have an interesting problem at CUNY which is retention at all
levels, and even within our doctoral programs we have retention problems, a=
nd
that’s an issue that needs to be addressed across the board whether
it’s undergraduate, master’s or doctoral students. I would imag=
ine
that there are other institutions that probably grant more minority doctora=
tes
just from the fact that they grant more doctorates to begin with. And that =
we
probably take in more minority students than some other programs, but it ta=
kes
many of our doctoral students longer than the five to seven years that̵=
7;s
average.
Professo=
r Eda Hastick – (Behavioral Science,
Professor
Leslie Jacobson (Health & Nutrition Science,
Professor
Francis Ruoff (English, Kingsborough Community College) – May I suggest that the
Chancellor look at an article that was in Time magazine about two we=
eks
ago about the dumbing down in America and the lack of sciences in this coun=
try.
And the article said that we are going to be in big trouble if we do not
encourage more students in the sciences, and help them in schools so
they’re not leaving here and going off to
Chair
O’Malley - Are there any more questions? I would like to thank our panel. Their comments will be transcribed=
. I didn’t realize how importa=
nt the
transcript was, until I saw Richard Pizer’s
report on the state of science. And what did he do? He quoted the transcript of the
University Faculty Senate when the Chancellor answered a question about the
reorganization of doctoral sciences.
President William Kelly when asked “How do you know so much ab=
out
what goes on in the university?” He said I read the transcript of the
University Faculty Senate.
Professo=
r Tom
Kubic (Science,
John Jay College) - On this Perez business, at the=
last
minute one of the Faculty Senators spoke to the Vice Chancellor about the t=
otal
vote once a quorum is present. She spoke about the General Construction Law=
and
my understanding was that Schaffer was going to get back to us on that vote.
Because I notice today for instance you counted, abstentions. Has anybody h=
eard
from him about that vote? Because my understanding of the general parliamen=
tary
procedure is once a quorum is present a majority vote only has to be those =
who
are voting and I have it in Roberts’ Rules right here if you w=
ant
to see it. My understanding is once a quorum is called and is present accor=
ding
to Roberts’ Rules, when you then have a majority vote all you =
need
is the majority of the people voting. Abstentions do not count. I have it r=
ight
here for Stefan if he wants to see it. That’s the general rule. Now
whether the statute in
Professo=
r Pat
Kolb =
(Sociology
& Social Work, Lehman College)– I just want to support the sugges=
tion
by Eda Hastick that there be follow-up discussion, perhaps with people from
additional schools to talk about the controversy about the plans for the
science graduate programs. And that includes discussion about what we can do
back on our campuses. / Chair O’Malley – OK / Professor Cole
– To help involve people on the campus with interest in this in terms=
of
advocating. / Chair O’Malley – If you have any ideas on how we
should do that, whether it should be a plenary, if it should go through the
Academic Policy Committee with a presentation, or in a report, I would
appreciate your ideas.