Chair Cooper called the session to order at 6:30 p.m. in the Harold Proshansky Auditorium of the Graduate School and University Center. Present were Senators from the following campuses: Baruch: McCall, Otte, Pollard, and Alternate Hill. BMCC: Friedman, Price, Reid, and Vozick. Bronx CC: Belilgne, Cummins, Galub, and Alternate Fuld. Brooklyn: Bell, London, Shapiro, and Alternate Pizer. CCNY: Connorton, Crain, Grossman, Pearson, Sank, Sohmer. CSI: Cooper S. and Levine. Graduate School: Berkowitz and Alternate Humpherys. Hostos CC: Vasillov. Hunter: Hampton, Kurzman, Matthews, Sherrill, Steinberg, Wonsek, and Alternate Baxter. John Jay: Bohigian, Brugnola, Kaplowitz, and Rodriguez. Kingsborough: Galvin, O'Malley, Richter, and Alternate Staum. LaGuardia: Gallagher, Ladden, Mettler, Reitano, and Alternate Beaky. Lehman: Feinerman, Knobloch, and Mineka. Medgar Evers: Donohue, Harris-Hastick, and Johnson. Mt. Sinai: Levitan. NY-Technical: Cermele, Donoghue, Hounion, and Walter. Queens: Brady, Frisz, Kulkarni, Rodway, Savage, Speidel, and Alternate Seley. Queensborough: Barbanel, Dahbany-Miraglia, Gellman, Greenbaum, Marti, Mullin, and Alternate Specht. York: Odenyo. Newly-elected Senator Doss attended. Senators Cooper A., Weil, and Yousef were excused. Governance Leaders present: Berkowitz (BMCC), Feinerman (Lehman), Hampton (Hunter), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Kurzman (Hunter), Levine (CSI), Mettler (LaGuardia), O'Malley (KCC), and Specht (Queensborough).Trustee Marino, Vice Chancellor Mirrer, Dean Proto, Dean Hotzler, and Dean Mogulescu, and Mr. Garvey (Academic Affairs) were guests of the Senate. Professors Straker (York), Fabricant (Queensborough), Gallagher (LaGuardia), Kelly (Brooklyn), and Wilkens (LaGuardia) were panelists. The following CUNY faculty members also attended: Professors Akst (BMCC), Benesch (CSI), Brownlee (CCNY), Gear (Bronx CC), McCormach (CSI), Rushing (LaGuardia), Ward (Lehman), and Mr. Hollander (Graduate School). The Parliamentarian was Alternate Staum. Executive Director Phipps and Administrative Assistant Pasela were present.

I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was amended to remove the report of Interim Chancellor Kimmich, who could not be present.

II. Approval of the Minutes of 249^th Plenary Session (January, 1998): The Minutes were approved as distributed.

III. Greetings of Trustee Ronald Marino: [Recorded in Reports & Deliberations.]

IV. Reports: [Recorded in Reports & Deliberations.]

a. Chair (oral and written).

b. Faculty Members of Board of Trustees Committees (written)

V. Panel on Remediation: [Recorded in Reports & Deliberations.]

VI. New Business: Professor Reitano (LaGuardia) "The Community College Caucus calls to your attention two items on Remediation which were on the table outside. One is an open letter to the CUNY community. The second is a resolution we just passed this afternoon which we request be printed into the record.

Whereas the UFS Community College Caucus reaffirms the commitment of CUNY's community colleges to open admissions and, therefore, to serving all students who want to improve their readiness for college, and

Whereas it is in the spirit of open admissions to encourage rather than discourage student learning, to include rather than exclude students from the university, to increase rather than diminish opportunities for student access to higher learning, and

Whereas remediation is a central vehicle by which many open admissions students make the transition to college level work, and

Whereas curricular decisions are and should be the By-Law responsibility of the faculty,

Be it resolved that no major policy changes regarding remediation be adopted until the principles of such policies have been discussed and approved by faculty on each campus, and

Be it further resolved that no major policy changes regarding remediation be adopted until the probable impact of such policies has been studied and made public.

Professor Karen Kaplowitz (John Jay) raised a point of information from the last CAPPR meeting concerning the resolution on admissions to baccalaureate programs and the role of faculty governance body consultation. Discussion followed on faculty purview and the membership of college governance bodies.

Professor Frisz (Queens) questioned the practice of planning long programs that often crowd out other agenda items.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:15 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

William Phipps

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

February 24, 1998

III. Greeting of Trustee Ronald Marino: This evening we are fortunate to have as a guest the Honorable Ronald Marino, a member of the Board of Trustees and chair of one of the most important committees that the Board has. I have asked him to say a few words, as long in fact as he wishes. He has agreed to take questions if you wish. Ron Marino was appointed to the Board by Mayor Giuliani and was named by the Chair of the Board as head of the committee on Fiscal Affairs. He is certainly well qualified for that post, since in his real life, that is his life where he gets paid, he works at Smith-Barney. He works in the area dealing with public finance where he is a specialist on infrastructure and transportation. Prior to that he held public positions as Deputy Commissioner in the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and in the Office of the Manhattan Borough President. He took his undergraduate degree at Iona College, but then he redeemed himself by going to Hunter for a Master's in urban planning. Those of us who have worked with him or known him since he arrived know that we are in the presence of somebody who is sharp, independent, and impossible to fool. He made his splash for his debut by taking the previous Chancellor on in the question of a proposed building at one of our campuses. He did not seem thrilled with the answer he received and went on to determine he would believe nothing that he hadn't proven for himself. That goes of course for what he hears from faculty as well as everyone. He has, however, shown some willingness to listen to all sides of issues. At a recent meeting at Fiscal Affairs he invited one of our colleagues, Ned Benton from John Jay, to deliver a presentation on a proposal for changing CUNY funding. We have I think, fortunately, an able, devoted, and dedicated public servant here. Please welcome Ron Marino.

Trustee Ronald Marino: Good evening. I really appreciate the opportunity that you as my former teachers afford me to come and speak to you. Sandi was very excessive in her introduction. I have spent about eleven years in the public sector, and what Sandi did leave out, I was a Junior High School teacher at 163rd and Morris Avenue from 1970-1973. I taught seventh and eighth graders. I have a little bit of a sense of the pedagogical life, but I also would have loved to come to CCNY for my undergraduate degree, but I only got about 1260 on my Boards at that time. I think in 1966, you needed a minimum of a 1300, 88 average, top quarter of your class. I was ahead on the other two but not on my Boards. So I couldn't quite cut it. Let me just say that I did have an incredible experience at Hunter. I was there in 1973-1975. It's a two year degree at Hunter, 60 credits, full-time. I was also afforded the opportunity of being a graduate assistant to Donald Sullivan, who was the director of the program. I looked up to him, mostly because Donald also came from the Bronx. He really took me under his pedagogical wing, taught me a lot about urban planning, but taught me much more about how to act and how to be a good inductive and deductive thinker. Whatever success I've had, I owe much of that to the City University of New York.

I'm the first person in my family to go to college. So I understand the plight of many of the students. My grandfather and grandparents immigrated here at the turn of the century. My father went to one year of high school, and my mother went to two years of high school. Both of them, of course, had to go to work because of the Depression. So this is truly a ladder for me. I appreciate what it is, I appreciate what it was, and I appreciate what it can be. It's driven home to me every time I sit at 80th Street, because my grandfather was a janitor at CCNY. He had a WPA job, when he lost his job, and it was to be a janitor. So it is an incredible honor for me to sit at the table that my grandfather cleaned. I understand the humility involved in that. I also understand the challenges involved in that. I will tell you of my frustrations as a trustee, and happily I will answer any of the questions you want. The only thing I will violate immediately is when Sandi said I will be short. I'm Italian; I can't be short. I will speak excessively, probably. I will be happy truly to answer any of your questions.

I think institutions at a period of time, and maybe it's every generation -- it might be every ten years, it might be every 30 years -- needs to review itself. It needs to renew what its purpose is, what its mission is, and what its intent is within the fabric of the society. I think we have that opportunity whether you want it or not; the political system has driven that opportunity towards us. I often think that the political system will fill voids when good ideas and good programs are not emanating from the institution. I think often the political system looks at that and then brings or drives those ideas and those concepts. Some of the Mayor's recent comments are clearly provocative and clearly are critical of the system and of the institution as it is structured. I think that some of that blame has to fall on the Board of Trustees because it is our job to drive the policy. It is our obligation to know where our role begins and where it ends. It shouldn't become immersed, certainly in the operations or certainly in the classroom. That isn't our role. But our role is to set broad policy and, if we don't, I think that whether it is a State administration under the Governor or City administration under the Mayor, they will. And I think they have a right to. Fifty-seven percent of this budget is delivered by the State and City of New York and about 43% from the tuition that the students pay. I think whether we want to acknowledge it or not, the fiscal has an important part in how you can both drive and deliver the programs that hopefully we help you to create.

I'm certainly not an expert in education and I look to board members who have greater experience in that area, I look to Sandi, and I look to the faculty members who come to discuss these issues with us. I do think you have a very valuable point of view, because you are the ones delivering the service. So that we need to have a dialog, a discussion. But I think we need to acknowledge in that discussion that there are forces and changes that have occurred, both in the public and private sector, over the last 20 or 30 years which this institution cannot be insulated from. It cannot isolate itself from forces. Some of those being political, some of those being policy, and some of those being economic, which have an impact on other State agencies or City departments, or other authorities or other institutions, whether they be public or private institutions of higher learning. I tend to think sometimes that we do try to insulate ourselves from those forces. Sometimes we tend to look back too much. It is valuable to look back because history does teach. But I'm not sure if the value is just to learn from the past, or try to apply the principles or theories, or the experiences, to current experiences and adapt them to the current situation.

We are never going to have the dollars, whether it is on the Federal level, State, or City level, that we once had in the 1960's and 1970's. I'll give you a reference point. When I was Deputy Commissioner of Housing for the City between 1979-1986, up until Reagan's presidency, the annual budget of HUD (Housing and Urban Development) was about $32 billion a year. The City received about $4 billion, both in up front capital and long term rental subsidies. After the cuts that went on during the Reagan administration, continuing through Bush and now to Clinton, the annual budget of HUD is $24 billion. It is a third of what it was 18 years ago, and that doesn't account for the ravages of inflation, especially during the late 1970's and early 1980's. That is not an isolated event. It is the same in many other areas that I work in, transportation, and other areas of infrastructure. The amount of money we are going to receive from the Federal government is less than it was, and it is going to continue to be less. If you hear the discussion in Washington, D.C. today, you hear very few voices really discussing the money to services. It's mostly talking about a balanced budget and tax decreases. I'm not telling you you shouldn't rail against that, or you shouldn't protest against that, or you shouldn't criticize that. But I'm telling you, that is the envelope that I see us looking at. Whether it be at the State or City level, it's the same situation.

Revenues might look flush today. The last two years have been very good. We're probably looking at a $2 billion surplus at the State and City levels. But let me tell you, I don't think that will be the case in a year. I don't certainly believe that the economy will continue to operate at the level we've operated in the last two years. Nor, when the tax decreases that the Governor and the Legislature have implemented kick in over the next two years. It's going to decrease State revenues, even if our revenues stay current. If they increase we might be lucky, but I doubt it. So I think you're looking at a situation where resources will probably remain at the current levels. I don't foresee decreases like you saw in the early 1990's, but I certainly don't foresee vast increases. So what is the impact for us here at the University in that kind of landscape? From my perspective, and what I've tried to encourage the Trustees on the Fiscal Affairs Committee to look at, are greater economies that we can make in the University, changes in the methodologies that we use for the funding of faculty lines, and that's Base Level Equity, and going back even further into the early methodologies that were derived from SUNY and are applied to CUNY.

I'd like to see more cost and benefits implemented into the budgetary process and into the operational process. I'd like to see more risks and rewards. So that campuses that are willing to take risks, are rewarded. Campuses that do better should receive more funding, and the campuses that lag should have to deal with those performance indicators. I'm sure you don't like some of those management performance indicators. I must tell you, to be honest with you, I drove the process to have performance indicators included in the faculty distribution formulas for this year. I believe that those are not perfect. Graduation rates, far from it, I'm willing to admit that. In the last three Fiscal Affairs meetings, we've looked at ways of changing those performance indicators and changing the basic methodology for the distribution of faculty. I think there need to be deep structural changes in both of those models. I'm happy to take your input -- that's what Ned [Benton] and I have in common. I think, in my dealings with Ned, he has been a very thorough and comprehensive thinker about some of these issues. We invited some of the faculty from Baruch to come in and discuss some of their views. I'd like to utilize the expertise of the faculty in many areas. For example, I don't think we utilized the expertise of the faculty in running a $150 million endowment that we have. We should definitely use more of the expertise of the Baruch faculty and other financial faculty members of other institutions. We should utilize expertise in operational measures from John Jay, or administration measures from John Jay. There are a lot of first class teachers who prepare the administrators at the State and City, just in those areas. I'm willing to admit that there is significant, valuable input from the faculty.

What I'm asking you to do is recognize that there are changes that need to be made. I am quite frustrated, I'll tell you, in the lack of change in my year and a half on the Board. I would like to see a thorough reorganization at 80th Street, with a decrease from anywhere from 20-25% in the budget that goes to central administration and having that budget redirected to full-time faculty members. I'd like to see at least a 15% cut at each of the campuses at the administrative levels. I'd like to see a decrease in some of the norms, for the use of non-faculty for the use of non-instructional duties, especially in the HEO classes. I think we need to make some real changes, in the numbers and how we utilize HEO class employees. I agree wholeheartedly with this move to de-emphasize the use of adjuncts as much as possible. When I think you move into that area, I think you move into serious differences. When I was undergraduate and graduate, I remember adjuncts' being used really as an opportunity to bring in men and women who worked in the public or private sector, in areas where the faculty maybe might not have had specific expertise. It was to supplement or to add some other experience or academic discipline.

Over the years, I understand that the University has been forced to use adjuncts as filler. As the budget was cut, probably no serious discussion on how to reorganize the University ever took place. So a Band-Aid solution was used, in utilizing adjuncts. I would like to have that more thorough institutional discussion go on now. That doesn't mean that campuses have to close. I'm not talking about closing a campus. It might mean significant shifts of faculty to campuses where enrollment has increased. It might mean changing a number or course offerings at certain institutions. It might mean merging, and having more faculty participate at different institutions in order to deliver the best product to the students who come to these institutions. I think that some of the historical methods that we have used to run this University are going to have to change, or that void I talked about earlier will be filled by the political system, and I don't doubt that.

I've seen, when I worked in City government, I've seen changes implemented either by that department in a creative fashion or an unwillingness to make those changes, and then imposed upon that department. I fear that, because I'd much rather shape the changes than have them imposed upon the institution. I don't know very much about education; I'm willing to admit that. But I know that remediation and open admissions are the topics. So to be frank with you, I will give you my very unsophisticated views. I don't think we need to study anything: I think we have 25 years of experience of watching the delivery of remediation services in this institution. You probably go way beyond any other public or private institution in the United States. So I'm not sure that there are benchmarks to look at. There are probably places that, in a smaller numbers of students, might deliver the product better. I'm not saying that we can't learn from other institutions; I think we can. But I am willing to take certain risks to either preserve what you have, or to make changes.

I think the only way you do that is by true demonstrations. So since November I've talked publicly about looking at some other methods of delivery of the remediation service. I have a great deal of respect for some of the presidents, Matt Goldstein, Leon Goldstein, whom I look to, one on the senior college level, one on the community college level. I look for their input and advice. Leon, I think, thinks highly of the continuing education model, as being one at least to evaluate, as one to look at to see if there is a better method to deliver remediation through the continuing education model. I'm certainly willing over a two year period to evaluate that. I'm willing to bring in Columbia teachers, Bank Street School of Education, or the University of California, to work cooperatively with the faculty, to assume control of one community college totally. And to see how you would deliver that service differently if it was unfettered from CUNY directly. To see if there are other ideas or concepts from other faculty who you might collaborate with to deliver that product. I'm willing to bring in the private sector to look at one institution. I don't know who in the private sector might do this -- I don't think it's the Stanley Kaplan. I think they're oriented to helping better prepared students on the SAT's or LSAT's or other competitive exams. But there might be some institution in the private sector who is willing to make a deal. With the private sector, I would do this on a very severe cost/benefit performance basis. To pay them clearly on some agreed upon performance standards and goals that would have to be agreed to prior. I wouldn't force any of you to do this. I don't think it's our right to tell you you should teach in any of these models or not. But I'm certainly willing to look at different ways to approach this.

I don't think in clear dollars you are ever going to reach the 70% number in full-time faculty teaching unless you make some use of adjunct faculty. I work in finance, but if somebody said to me, Ron, your next job in finance is going to be a bank teller and count out dollars to clients who come on line, probably my level of job satisfaction would decrease. I'm going to make the assumption that all of you have been trained in specific areas -- you have your Ph.D.'s, you've researched, you've written. I'm going to make the assumption that you would rather, to a degree, some of you, not all of you, because some of you are highly trained in remediation, those of you who want to teach remediation should have that choice unfettered by the Board. But those of you who want to teach full-time college classes, credit bearing classes, should also have that option. I think that begins to move us towards a higher number of full-time faculty teaching credit bearing classes, to those students who are prepared at that time to do that.

I also think that we've got to look at what is truly best for the students, rather than impose what I think is not just a fault of this institution, but I think of American education. That is that a four-year degree is a symbol of success. I'm not sure if it isn't better for some of our students to have that two-year degree, to obtain a job that might pay $40,000, $50,000, or $60,000 now, at this time in their life. I know many of them, I read the statistics, have two or three children and are trying to work. It might not be the best option for that student at this time in their lives to try and continue to go for that four-year degree. Especially when getting a decent job that would give them some economic independence at this point in their lives would allow them to make other choices. Then maybe they can return when those kids are older, are in school.

As I said, that is not a fault of this institution only. I think it is a fault that runs through American education. I don't think the two-year degree, as a terminal degree at some point in your life, and as a take-out to a good job, is emphasized enough for certain students. For certain students, they should go on and have the possibility for that four-year degree. For other students it might take a longer period and a maturation that they have to experience to be ready for that four-year degree. I think there are a good number of decent paying jobs in finance, in health care, and in technology which our community colleges could prepare students for at the current time. I think we've convinced too many students in our community colleges that the only success is that four-year degree. It puts them in a situation where they are trying to achieve that, and possibly deal with children and a job all at the same time. It might just be too much for any person to deal with at that point in their lives and that might be unfair to them.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) - "Currently the State has a surplus. Don't you think that the Trustees could lobby to put some of that surplus, instead of all of it going into construction, reducing tuition? Or hiring full-time faculty? Or supporting some of the remediation within the context of the colleges where we have strong evidence that it will work if it were funded? I have in mind specifically pairing the skills remediation with enrollment in content courses. At City College we've had a number of experiments with this and we know that it is highly successful. That's one question. Here we are on a shoestring budget, and albeit the prediction of austerity we are dealing with a surplus. The students right now could go through college much better if they had the money. We could do the experiments, the research we needed, and support the kinds of remediation we needed. I just have to ask you, I'm assuming that you believe that it's not our choice whether a student decides to pursue a four-year college degree at this time in his or her life. I'm assuming that we create the opportunity and give them the choice. I'm assuming it's just a matter of opening up options. But we're not going to foreclose the intellectual development of students because we decide, because they're poor, that they only get a two-year education. I'm assuming that you don't mean that, do you?" / Trustee Marino - I'll try to answer all of your questions. Number one, Sandi told you to begin with, I voted against a lot of capital items. I don't understand spending hundreds of millions of dollars on buildings when I can't tell you how education is going to be delivered within 10 years. Look at the changes in the uses of the computer and technology over the past 10 years. I would much rather see capital go into rehabilitation and upgrading of the existing infrastructure of the University. I'd rather make sure that every library, that every computer center for students, has the most modern technological equipment. Because I think there are going to be vast changes in the way you deliver your teaching over the period of time. Building large mausoleums might be a very poor investment. Number two, I would rather see those dollars that you talked about probably utilized. I don't think the idea of lowering tuition is a good idea. I think that, and this might be juxtaposed to what most people think, if the system was free, it would go back to being what it was prior to 1968-1969. / Professor Crain - AI don't understand that." / Trustee Marino - My view would be that unless there is some support from other sources by the City and the State, you would go back to a much smaller system based truly on scholarship. That's my view. You might think it's wrong, but that is my view. Just the opposite from what you think, I don't think that you are ever going to see the day where you are going to have pure institutions that are going to be supported by the State. If you look at the best high schools in the City, the Stuyvesants, the Brooklyn Techs, the Bronx High School of Sciences, Art and Design, LaGuardia. They are based on a merit system of entrance exams. As you begin to decrease revenue into the overall institution -- 43% now comes from the students -- I don't think you are going to see a match by the City and the State to compensate for each dollar you lose. You are going to see a smaller system, one based to a greater degree on scholarship. Lastly, I never said poor students, by income, should not have a four-year degree. I never said that. I take offense that you said that, that I in any way meant that or inferred that. What I said is that there are people in current situations. If I was a young woman with two kids and working, I'm not sure that's the best option for me (or a young man, because I'm not a woman). What the best choice would be in this time in my life may be getting a position that generates maybe $50,000 or $60,000 for me. I'm sorry, but I will tell you, in Smith-Barney, where I work, if you have a two-year degree in technology or computers, you start at about $42,000. That is the starting salary. Giving someone some stability in their life where that man or woman can maybe get a better apartment, put their kids into a better school, elementary or secondary school, and achieve some economic independence. It allows them then to make some choices. Maybe that choice is to forego that four-year degree for a period, but to come back for it after they have reached some stability. How many of our cohorts went to CCNY or Hunter for six years at night? How many of our generation went to CCNY?

Chair Cooper - Ladies and gentlemen, we have got a long list of people. I'm going to have to limit you to one question. If there is time later we will follow up because there is a long line of people waiting and we have a huge program.

Professor Brady (Library, Queens College) - AI went to CUNY in 1963 when it was free, and I would have never had gone to College had I not done that. The European model, you were cut off at age 12-14, and you had no other choices. You were locked into life for lower mobility careers. That is just an observation. My question to you is, as a financial analyst why assume the money is not there? Why assume that priorities in the country could not be changed? We spend more as a nation on jails than we do on public education. There is something wrong with that." / Trustee Marino - I might agree with you on that point but I'm certainly not in the position like an elected official to change the policy of the Federal, State, or City government. I'd rather see more money going into hiring of faculty rather than building new buildings. I'd rather see it go into technological improvements, library improvements, than building new buildings. Because I'm not sure that creating an elaborate infrastructure is going to be the best way to deliver teaching in 10 or 15 or 20 years from now. / Professor Brady - "We are confusing remediation, we're confusing two-year terminal degrees that are practical, and we are confusing the issue of whether or not the status quo is fixed. I think we should sort out these different issues because otherwise we have no..." / Trustee Marino - The status quo is never fixed. There is a dynamic. You move, it will change. / Professor Brady - "It's all politics."

Professor Greenbaum (History, Queensborough Community College) - "First of all, what you are talking about in terms of two-year and four-year degrees, we've been doing it at Queensborough since I got there in 1961. Preparing students either to go on or to finish with a marketable skill. But I understand, as you said, ultimately the Board determines policy. Some presidents have been acting in an arbitrary fashion. Do you feel that the Board has a responsibility to hold these presidents to their by-law limitations?" / Trustee Marino - What areas are you talking about? You've got to give me a hint. / Professor Greenbaum - "Presidents have unilaterally changed admissions policy which is clearly the by-law responsibility of the faculty. Their role is only to transmit that information and they have been making changes. Do you think the Board should hold them to their limitations? And not making any changes without consultation of the faculty?" / Trustee Marino - Without a doubt a president should seek the input of the faculty. But I do think that I look at a president as being responsible, being the chief executive officer of that institution, that campus. He's not or she's not? / Professor Greenbaum - "it's not the same as corporations. It is not a chief executive officer. There are things he can do and things he can't do." / Trustee Marino - I'm not saying he shouldn't consult, aren't their prescribed methods, there are faculty committees... / Professor Greenbaum - "They are not following them." / Trustee Marino - This is probably not the forum, but I'd be happy to understand more about this issue. If you believe that in a number of institutions that the presidents are not adhering to the prescribed procedures for faculty and administration..../

Professor Sherrill (Political Science, Hunter College) - "one of the things that I didn't hear you mention in your remarks is the role of research in the University. Particularly the interface between the two. In my capacity as Chair of a department I face an immediate problem. I have one member of my department who has won a MacArthur genius grant, very prestigious, and on that grant will be taking a year without pay to do research. I have another colleague who has won a two-year Federal grant, and on that grant will be taking a two-year leave without pay to fulfill the responsibilities under this grant. Not one penny is made available to hire anyone, substitute, adjunct, or full-time, to replace either of these people. How can the Board of Trustees justify that?" / Trustee Marino - Ken, as I said to you, I am happy to look at any issue in the Instructional Staff Model, Base Level Equity, how we derive both the numbers and the full-time equivalent lines budgeted. If that is a serious issue, that faculty members are on leave for a year or two and you don't receive some sort of substitute or some kind of augmentation, those are kinds of issues I'd like to have articulated at the Committee. No one has articulated that at the Committee. / Professor Sherrill - "Well,, consider it articulated."

Professor Cermele (Arts & Sciences, New York City Technical College) - "You said that we've convinced too many community college students to pursue four year degrees. I'm curious to know, what is the basis for that opinion?" / Trustee Marino - It's my intuitive, unscientific, unresearched view. As I read the Chronicle of Education, as I read the memos that I receive. I just think that there are a number of positions that could be filled by CUNY graduates that I see available. Again, institutions and companies like I work in on Wall Street, or in other areas that are not. I see SUNY or I see Nassau Community College kids come in. I see Suffolk Community College kids come in, into a Smith-Barney. As I said, I preface this by saying, this is not a problem sui generis to CUNY. I think that it is a problem throughout United States education. I don't believe that every single high school graduate has the ability or the interest to have a four year degree. I think the system drives that as the level or as the symbol of success. That's my view. / Professor Cermele - "I'm just countering an accusation that we are encouraging this." / Trustee Marino - Yes, the system, the entire higher education system encourages the four-year degree as the first step, as a terminal degree. Rather than for some students, the two-year degree being the terminal degree.

Professor Reitano (Social Sciences, LaGuardia) - AI wanted to ask a similar question to the one that was just posed regarding this concept of community colleges offering primarily terminal degrees, a term that is hardly used these days. Since the community college is supposed to provide access to higher education for non-traditional students, I'm wondering whether you are reconceptualizing the community college and envisioning it as more of a trade school." / Trustee Marino - I don't think I'm reconceptualizing anything. I think that if you look back, there is a dual role for the community college. For certain students, it is the transition to a four-year college, for many reasons. My view, I think any student who didn't undergo or experience their secondary education in the United States, who are truly ESL students, I think part of that surplus that you asked about earlier, I would, and I've said this to both the Governor's representatives and the Mayor's representatives, I'd like to see as a gift to every immigrant who comes here, one year English, paid by the State and City, fully. To give that newly immigrated person an opportunity, a chance to compete in our education system, I'd like to see them get a full year of ESL paid by the State and City. / Professor Reitano - "Why shouldn't the native born student also have equivalent opportunities?" / Trustee Marino - Because they've had it. / Professor Reitano B No, they haven't. The problem is that they have not." / Trustee Marino - So they've been through this educational system and they haven't. I'm not on the Board of Education. Do you want me to change the Board of Education? I've got to deal with and you've got to deal with what you're presented with. / Professor Reitano - "Precisely. We're happy to work with what we are presented with." / Trustee Marino - To go back, that system will maybe undergo some changes with the Regents' recent policy changes. I don't know. I tend to doubt it -- I'm a cynic. I tend to think you are going to see very little change. That doesn't mean that we can ameliorate every single issue in American society; we can't. We can't do it as an institution of higher education. We have discrete goals and missions.

Professor Sank (Anthropology, City College) - AI share the previous speaker's views and I really feel that something is wrong in the communication here. It seems to me, and maybe I'm misinterpreting you, by saying to some students, don't go to school, go to work. What you are doing is setting up a situation where people will try to get a job, and if they fail in getting a job, they may end up in a scenario on welfare. They'll never get a chance to get into college. I really think you are setting them on a road that may lead to failure. I'd like to ask you, what about the high school students. If they get married or if they have children, that they shouldn't complete high school, that they should go out and get a job and raise their children and then come back to high school?" / Trustee Marino - I don't think it is a similar situation. What I'm saying is, someone who has a serious family or work related obligation, possibly cannot continue to go for a four-year degree at this particular time in their life. In my view the person I'm talking about, hopefully has an academic degree from one of our public or private schools.

Professor Bohigian (Mathematics, John Jay College) - "Mr. Marino, I don't think you realize how much anger you have elicited here." / Trustee Marino - Well, I hope I've made you think. Because I don't think you're being realistic. / Professor Bohigian - "No, you made me think, but I think you should as well. Now I think you should come back at another time so this can really engage in a forward discussion. Let me ask you the following question. Suppose I were employed by Smith-Barney and I was an analyst. Would you like me to come to you as my superior and say, I have a great intuition on a particular stock, I haven't researched it, but I have a gut feeling that it should go a certain way, and by the way I haven't done the charting because I don't have the data or the availability to do the charting." / Trustee Marino - If you want me to be more direct with you, I do read the demographics produced by CUNY in the student demographic book. Do you want me to recite the statistics there? I can if you want me to. / Professor Bohigian - "Reciting the statistics doesn't prove the point. The point is, the last time I heard this speech, Jimmy Carter gave it and he happened to be wrong about the energy crisis in the United States. And you're giving a similar speech that there is a crisis of limitation on education and resources and we have to restructure accordingly. We were never given the resources to make open admissions a success, and despite that we did make it a success."

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia) - AI would like to challenge your assumption that there are jobs at $60,000, or $50,000, or even $42,000 out there on average for students graduating from community colleges. At LaGuardia, and let's take LaGuardia as a typical community college, we do remarkable things in changing people's economic situation, but we don't get them jobs at $42,000. Let me just read you two sentences from a fact sheet put out by the college that I think illustrates these two points in conjuncture. More than half of 1991 entering students, 53%, had a household income of less than $15,000. The average salary of 1995-1996 graduates was $25,000." / Trustee Marino - Let me tell you that the starting salary for clerical positions at Smith-Barney is $33,000. / Professor Gallagher - "Well, if you want to hire all of our students, fine." / Trustee Marino - What I'm saying to you is that most of our clerical staff don't have even two-year degrees. I'm not telling you that there is a job for every single two year graduate. But those who have degrees in specific areas, in health care, in the technological fields, in finance, in real estate, there are plenty of good back office positions for a two year graduate. / Professor Gallagher - "But I think we need to deal with the fact that the average starting salary for LaGuardia graduates, and I assume it's fairly close for other community college systems, is around $25,000. If you want to advance the idea that students should take time off, is $25,000 enough not to get a four-year degree?" / Trustee Marino - I tend not to agree with you. I mean that. I tend to think we have imposed values upon certain students.

Chair Cooper - I guess it's lucky [because of the lack of time] that Christoph Kimmich was called to Gracie Mansion and cannot appear tonight. He's there to honor a faculty member in CUNY who won a major award that the Mayor is giving. It would be very nice if this were written up in the Daily News. But I have a feeling we're not going to see any editorials on it.

I am going to remind you to pick up that bright yellow sheet, and read it carefully because we need people to serve on the University Committee on Research. You will see, there are a great many openings for it.

We are trying to put together a conference on teacher education for the Spring Conference of the Senate, March 27, 1998, a Friday. At the moment it is not yet set, when we know the total details we will issue them. So hold the 27th of March of that.

VI. Reports: (see page 33.)

V. Panel on Remediation: Chair Cooper "The permanent Chancellor's position: It is very likely that that search will continue beyond the term that I service which is ending this May. You have got to start thinking very soon about elections in the April Plenary. The question arose about whether or not I should continue on that Committee after the term expires because the Chair of the Senate becomes an ex-officio member of the Executive Committee. There was unanimous consensus in that Executive Committee that I spoke with, as well as among people on the Search firm that I do continue. If you have major objections I would like to hear them. I don't want to get into a discussion of this right now, but I didn't want anybody to feel that they hadn't been informed. I didn't plan it this way, this is just the way things fell out.

I don't have to tell you that the subject of remediation and open admissions has a become a piece of the front burner, hot button issue. The faculty and Vice Chancellor Louise Mirrer, who is here, had begun some informal conversations a few months ago in a kind of laid back effort to try to figure out what we might do to pilot some new models with a grant next year of delivering remedial education. These rather relaxed conversations took on a major urgency when the bomb from the Mayor dropped. As you can see, there are a variety of Trustees with different proposals. Last year the Chairwoman of the Board, Anne Paolucci, had asked the Vice Chair, Herman Badillo, to Chair an Ad Hoc Committee on Remediation. Assuming that committee was going to meet, I had asked Martha Bell to represent the faculty on it and it was another reason why our ad hoc faculty committee began sitting. The Badillo committee finally had a meeting about a month ago. It had its second meeting a couple of weeks ago. As some of you know, at it second meeting yet another Trustee who is not on that committee proposed all remediation be ended this September at Baruch, Hunter, and Queens and in the following September at all the other senior colleges. That proposal came as boldly as basically I have just put it, with no couching language or anything else. That came on top and he considered it, a compromise to the Mayor's more drastic statement that no remediation exist in any community college and for those students who need it private contractors will be found. That is a very fast summary of the issue. It is by no means a textured discussion of the complexities. I didn't intend it to be, but it is my way of introducing the panel.

Martha Bell who is a member of the Executive Committee, Director of Education Services at Brooklyn, and Chair of the Council of the SEEK Directors, is one of CUNY's best known advocates in Albany on subjects such as the SEEK program, CD, and opportunity programs. Martha has invited some of the University's talents and experts, and in addition we have asked Louise Mirrer to come tonight and focus a discussion a draft proposal which Louise and the faculty have been working on.

Martha Bell "This panel has been formed to address the important issues of remedial and developmental education at CUNY. Though remediation has become a political football and a dirty word in the eyes of many, those of us on this panel have had more than 150 years of collective experience teaching remedial and developmental courses and are proud of the work we do. We are here to provide you with information from the perspective of people who specialize in this field and have expertise to share. When thinking about what to call this panel, we had a couple of conference calls. I quoted Regent Adelaide Sanford, who at the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus weekend said that the students coming to CUNY from the New York City High School are not underprepared. That is blaming the victim, but in fact they are underserved. In this discussion we came up with the title "Serving the UnderServed." That is what we will be trying to talk about tonight. The format will be first. I will try to put remediation in a historic perspective both nationally and locally. Vice Chancellor Louise Mirrer will speak about her proposals for remediation, then members of the panel will have a discussion based on seven questions we have found to be important and pertinent to these issues. Then the entire panel including Vice Chancellor Mirrer will entertain questions.

Let me introduce the members of the panel. Starting with Vice Chancellor Mirrer, whom you all know; Professor Mona Fabricant, who is the Chairman of the Department of Mathematics at Queensborough Community College; Dean Dolores Straker, who until last week was Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at York College and a member of the Reading Program in the English Department there and as of yesterday is Visiting Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at 80^th Street; Professor Hannalyn Wilkens, who is Chair of the Department of Communications Skills at LaGuardia Community College, Professor Brian Gallagher in the Department English at LaGuardia Community College and Professor Robert Kelly, who is the Department of Educational Service and Brooklyn College and in the Graduate and Doctoral Programs in Criminal Justice and Sociology.

Let me try a little perspective on remediation. Most of this information is from a report by Hunter Boylan, who is the head of the Center for Developmental Education. He reported in a paper given at Brooklyn College a number of years ago that the first record in the U.S. of developmental remedial courses started in 1636 at Harvard College where they found since all the text books were in Latin and Greek that they needed tutoring in remedial Latin and Greek. About 50% of the students were underprepared. In 1849 the first modern developmental education was founded as a college preparatory program at the University of Wisconsin. In 1889 The National Council on Education reported 80% of all colleges and Universities offered special programs. It was not uncommon then to have half of the students in these universities enrolled in college preparatory programs. In 1863 and 1890 the first and second Morrell Acts required land grant colleges to serve new immigrants and freed slaves and provide them with opportunities for economic and personal advancement thus creating a large number of developmental and remedial programs. In 1907 Harvard, Yale,. Princeton, and Columbia reported that 50% of their students needed to be placed in college preparatory programs. In the 1920s junior colleges are founded in order to create a place to do more college preparatory work. In 1950 researcher Martha Maxwell reported 50% of college students are unable to read or understand at the college level and the college skills and reading courses were founded. In 1960 the U.S. Congress under the Higher Education Act introduced Upward Bound, Talent Search and Special Services to provide more access to universities for disadvantaged students. In 1984 The National Council of Education reported 80% of all colleges offered these programs. It is not that we invented this at CUNY and it is often said we did. There is a long history of this. Just this weekend I was given a report that was considered at the February Plenary at the University Faculty Senate in 1969. The report was placed into discussion by the University Faculty Senate Committee on Admissions. "The admissions problem of the University is not simply how to admits student barred under present admissions, but how to develop an effective program to educate the students who graduate from high schools today." Sound familiar? They go one to say, "we need to see whether we can not bring more academically disadvantaged young people into the University on the basis of their ability to benefit from a college education." Lastly, "that the newly eligible students will enter the University with severe deficiency. We must therefore have available as much support and remedial teaching as possible. They cannot be thrown as regular matriculants to sink or swim." That was in 1969.

It is important before we begin to understand what we mean by basic skills. We do not mean reading, writing, and mathematic skills as they are taught in our elementary, junior high schools, and high schools. We do mean the preparation of students to do high level academic work. In the case of Reading to read, analyze, and to think about academic discourse. In writing to be able to think, elaborate, and present ideas on academic subjects. In mathematics to be able to possess college-level mathematics literacy including the ability to understand statistics and research necessary to understand fields across all of our disciplines.

Now let me introduce Vice Chancellor Mirrer to introduce her proposals.

Vice Chancellor Mirrer "Thank you very much, Martha. I am very pleased to be here this evening. I have with me to my left Vice Chancellor Proto, who together with the Office of Academic Affairs designed the proposals: the remediation documents and the proposals that some of you have in front of you and many of you have read.

First of all, as Sandi said, the document comes out of a somewhat lengthy discussion that was carried on somewhat informally until the point at which it became apparent that the Trustees were poised to make changes in the ways in which we did remediation at the University. At that point it became rather urgent to us in the OAA, to Vice Chancellor Proto in Student Affairs, and to Sandi Cooper and the group of faculty that she was generous enough to put together, to put something down on paper. This is a discussion paper, and I would like it to be seen as such. I very much welcome your comments either here this evening, by E-mail, by phone, anyway you want to send them. Since I know many of you have looked at the document, I would just like to highlight some of the areas and Vice Chancellor Proto can supplement what I leave out.

First of all, the document rests on assuming we continue along and admit students as we have and then test them in the three areas as we have. It rests on timely testing of students so that students are admitted to the colleges, then take the Freshman Skills Assessment Tests, and then can actually be matched with the remedial offerings at the college in which they plan to enroll. Given that there may be some discrepancy between the result on the Freshman Skills Assessment Tests and the offerings at a given college, the document provides for a number of different opportunities for students to address deficiencies in skills areas before they enroll. One of the chief among them is requiring students who do not meet the offerings in the college in which they wish to enroll to participate in a summer program, a summer intensive skills program. That would be a rather large difference from what currently occurs. Those programs are required only for special program students at the moment -or an intercession. I should say this is the same type of program during the intercession period, were they to be enrolling in January. For students who still don't meet the admissions standards of the colleges in which they wish to enroll, those students can take the courses that they need at other colleges or they can enroll in a program which is a college prep program which we would try to pilot, at least one in each borough of that sort.

The other areas that the document touches on have to do with limiting remediation and those proposals are also departures from what currently exists. On the one hand, resolution number 17, which prohibits students at senior colleges from repeating more than twice a remedial course, would be extended to all students. Students at community colleges would have two opportunities -one opportunity to retake effectively a remedial course which they have failed and they would have to be successful on the second time. Again, opportunities would be provided as fallbacks for students who fail a second time, but they would not be provided within the collegial framework, the collegiate experience. Students also would be limited to taking -I think I am going to turn this over to Vice Chancellor Proto to describe because I always get into trouble. They were limited to a sequence of remedial courses that he will describe.

Vice Chancellor Proto -Actually for those who are familiar with the >95 resolutions which are [numbers] 15 and 16, which allowed for up to one year of senior or up to one semester at a senior college [of] remediation. Everyone was trying to define what the one year meant. I think it is finally coming out this year, the one year meant that the sequences of courses would be two. That is a two semester sequence in any one of the areas. That the one year was a time frame of courses being offered rather than chronological twelve month period of time. The one semester obviously is only one level of remediation in any one of the areas. Clearly people who are confused over saying how can a student then be in remediation into their third semester of attendance. You have to tie in what was mentioned previously about resolution 17 because students are allowed to take level one and pass it and take level two and fail it the first time. They are allowed to go into a third semester of attendance under the current policy. Therefore, they are in a second year of attendance and still be in good standing yet have an opportunity to pass the second level at a second attempt. So by definition we are talking about levels when we talk about the years of remediation. One year is two levels of instruction. If it is one semester it is one level of instruction in the collegial experience.

Vice Chancellor Mirrer - I will just highlight a few other things since, as I said, I think many of you have actually read the document. The document also calls for extending pilots and piloting the kinds of course enhancements that have been attempted at various colleges in exporting successes across the University. Some of the suggestions I think I heard Bill Crain make about paired courses, so on and so forth, we would want to pilot further or extend those successful kinds of interventions in terms of remediation. The document also calls for the main- streaming of students who are high failure, or so called border line students, with supplemental instruction. For example, students who receive a six on the CWAT might be mainstreamed and offered supplemental instruction in addition to a regular credit bearing course in college composition. Naturally advisement is crucial -good strong advisement is crucial to the success of any of these proposals and we would very much like to put some resources and get some additional resources into advisement to make sure that students from the very moment that they are admitted to a CUNY college are appropriately and correctly advised as to where they should go, what types of courses, what types of supplemental instruction they might have available to them and what their chances for success will be in any given program. I will stop there and wait for the questions.

Professor Bell  - Thank you, Vice Chancellor Mirrer. I will then pose our first question to the panel. What in your experience works for underserved or underprepared students entering the University?

Professor Mona Fabricant (Mathematics, Queensborough) - Since I am representing Mathematics on this panel, that is where my focus is going to be. I think one of the most important things for the students is proper placement so students have a chance for success. That is something that the Council of Math Chairs has taken into consideration in devising a new placement exam and that seems to be working well at the moment. The second thing that we need to do for the students which is extremely important and which the University must support us on is providing adequate support services for the students. That includes tutoring and it has to NOT be [from] soft money that comes and goes at the whim of whatever, but money that we know is there so we can plan a program that truly works. We need academic advisement. We need funds for that. We need counseling for family and personal problems and we need help for the students with study skills. Also what I think works for the young students is being in a college setting with older, more mature, and motivated students. I am sure all of you who have been in the classroom know what a difference it can make to a classroom full of 18 and 19 year olds and if you add a couple of adults who are motivated and focused it makes a very big difference in the whole atmosphere in the classroom. Another thing is of course full-time faculty.

I would like to just tell you what our success in mathematics at Queensborough has been. We looked at our students over the years and in the last five years 40% of the students who are in our calculus courses started with a zero credit course. In addition, the Math Department sent out a survey for 900 graduates starting in 1968 through the present. These were liberal arts and science and pre-engineering people. We asked them to tell us what course they started with and what they are doing now. The preliminary results were as follows: 59% of those responding started with a zero credit course -- these are all graduates. Of these 60% went onto earn to B.A. or B.S., another 10% are working on a four-year degree, and 19% earned a Masters or higher. We had a number of Doctors and Chiropractors, etc. So I think what we are doing seems to work.

Professor Brian Gallagher (English, LaGuardia) "I am going to make a statement that may be impolitic. I am certainly sure the Mayor doesn't want to hear this, most of the Board of Trustees don't want to hear this, and I suspect Vice Chancellor Mirrer doesn't want to hear this. What works at CUNY especially given our enormous lack of resources is remedial education in general as it is right now. There are things that can be improved and hopefully we will have a chance to talk about those later on. Let me give you some statistics to put this in perspective.

This first statistic is from the very excellent report, "Background on Remedial Education at CUNY and Across the U.S." prepared by Judith Watson for the Board of Trustees. Unlike Michael Goodwin, I do not believe that remediation is a black hole at CUNY. It does not absorb enormous amounts of time and money. 12.4% of the courses across the University are remedial courses. I believe that would work out to less than 10% of our budget. In a City where even Herman Badillo admits the school system is deficient, where we get enormous percentages of students who do not have high school degrees, but GEDs instead. In a City where we get students whose secondary education was had in over 100 different countries across the world. Here is another statistic in showing how much giving students remedial courses helps them succeed. For the class of 1988, I believe this is the 1986 graduation rate, for students who did not need remediation the graduation rate is 48.6%. For those students who needed remediation it is 42.8%, only a 5.4% difference. I think those students were worth investing in. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of good remedial programs across the University. Let me just mention two that we have at LaGuardia. Our English Express Program, which I think has been imitated and adopted across the University and indeed across the nation. A one week intensive computer based basic writing course which has about a 75% pass rate. We use it in two formats. We use it in our summer immersion program and we also use it at the end of each term for students who are close to passing. Our new student house program, which is a fully integrated, thematically linked, set of courses in reading, writing, speech, and counseling. [It] is remarkable not only for its higher pass rates but even more remarkable for its retention rates. We know at LaGuardia, and I believe it is true across the University, that students who drop out tend to drop out in their first term or at least the first term has the highest dropout rate. This is a program not only that has higher pass rates in all its courses, it is a program where 90-95% of the students complete all of their courses in the first term. I just throw those out as two typical kinds of programs that are indicative of the dozens of extremely good programs across the University.

Professor Dolores Straker (Academic Development, York) "I think I want to talk about the broad stroke of language education because it touches on reading as well as writing. I would like to speak about some principles that are transferable between both of the areas. I think it is important that when we look at developmental education particularly in reading, because that is the area I come from, that we want to broaden students' background of knowledge. It is important that all learning strategies be contextualized within the framework of course content. It is also important to provide ample opportunities for students to transfer learning strategies or to generalize these learning strategies to other disciplines. This I think can be accomplished by thematic study or linking, or pairing courses which we do and I have seen it across CUNY. I think the next three principles I want to focus on have to do with the learning process. Students must assist in taking an active role in their learning process. They have to be assisted by the faculty. Students need to learn about their individual learning process and work toward becoming increasingly more conscious of when and why they comprehend and when and why they don't. Students need assistance in being certain that they understand task demands.

The final principles I would like to talk about focus on creating a context for managing and sustaining change. Developmental education must be valued as part of the overall educational goal. Therefore it must have administrative commitment and support. Faculty who teach developmental education and broad faculty involvement are essential factors in achieving and sustaining the goals of developmental education. It is not only one area's job to try to achieve what we want to achieve in developmental education. All faculty need to become involved in the goals we are trying to achieve.

Professor Robert Kelly (Education Service, Brooklyn) "As Professor Gallagher has indicated we have a program that, based on the preliminary data we have, is very successful. It is called roughly, A Critical Inquiry, and is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. It involves creating pedagogical modules in which students who are deficient, underprepared and underserved, are put into courses, writing, reading, communication and those involving some content area -substantive courses in psychology and sociology. The idea of the program is to have the instructors, tutors, and all ancillary students interact on a regular basis so that the curriculum is widely shared. There are not discrete curricula. That adds to the reinforcement work that goes on in each of these courses. The focus in the content courses is on the development of skills in generating questions about essays that are utilized in the class. Where upon students take those sorts of questions that deal with content material and go into the reading and writing courses and perfect their skills and presentations. This is something that I think is probably portable and we have been discussing it with persons in the SEEK Program outside of Brooklyn College and attempts may be made to utilize this and see if it produces the sorts of success we have got at Brooklyn College. Our suspicions are that it will. It may appear to be somewhat costly because it involves instruction prior to the fall semester and then in the January period between spring and fall term where there is reinforcement going on. It appears to work. The rate of success in passing the proficiency examinations is extremely high, as we do the analysis of the data.

With regard to the notion of remediation in general, I think as Professor Gallagher has indicated very persuasively, it is a good investment. I was a little dis-spirited to hear the previous discussion because I thought I was listening to a talk on how to revitalize a Walmart operation. This is a university we are talking about. We might want to think of it as something like a natural phenomenon more than a business operation or an Amway. That is another matter of course and I don't want to jump on people who are sitting here who are part of that system and have to operate within these budgetary constrictions that exist.

Professor Hannalyn Wilkens (Communication Skills, LaGuardia) -- I don't want to be repetitive, but I will probably repeat some of the fine things that my colleagues here have said. Just to give you some statistics in terms of being cost effective and successful and what works, we look back five years in the Reading Department at LaGuardia. We serves 15,000 students in those five years. 72% of them passed our courses and went onto their other courses. As far as the cost per student, it was about $200 per student to go through a reading course in a year at LaGuardia. I did some research over the weekend looking at what some of the privatization of remedial education cost, and I am referring to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1997. It is called Tutoring Companies Take Over Remedial Teaching at Some Colleges. The cost there is $300 per student. Let's face, it folks, the privates realize that there is a lot of money to be made in remediation and they are out there trying to make that money. They can't do it any cheaper than we do at CUNY. They demand classes of 18. When was the last class we had at 18. My average class size is over 25 in reading department and some classes go up as high as 32. They also would like the most attractive space on the campus so the student will have the proper image and proper self-image when they are taking these courses. We know that that works, too, and that a student needs to develop self-image and confidence.

This leads me to some of the issues that I want to underscore about the nature of what I think should underpin a remedial course. First of all, I think there should be an emphasis on two things that come out of our literature. One is called meta-cognition and one is called schema. By meta-cognition, we have to make students aware of how they perform as learners. Make them aware and conscious of the techniques they use as learner. These are skills and strategies that are transferable to other areas. The other thing is schema -Dolores had mentioned it -which is building up their prior knowledge about the world around them. Our students who we mentioned are the underserved come with very poor schema or they lack the schema necessary.

A second issue which is very important is an integration of skills work with college-level content work. Also the location, being in the college, at the college and interacting with other, maybe more proficient students. Basic skills students learn a great deal from being mentored by faculty on campus and also by interaction with these other students. In order to provide the context that we are talking about, or the schema that we are talking about, having the courses be what we call theme-based, where they are reading and writing about a topic or an issue and doing extensive reading and writing on that theme. Certainly the small group approach has worked. We have tried to find ways to deal with the huge classes of 36 or more. One way we have found is to divide the classes into smaller collaborative groups. This seems to work quite well.

I think we are doing a very good job. We certainly can do better; it is not perfect. Let me leave you with one remark. One size does not fit all when it come to remediation. You need a variety of approaches.

Professor Bell "The second question which I have heard consistently being asked by Trustee Badillo at the Committee on Remediation is why are students in remediation?

Professor Fabricant "First of all, I need to say that we do not have a definition of remediation in Mathematics. Leaving that alone for the moment I would like to quote from some remarks made by our U.S. Education Richard W. Riley. This was a speech to the conference of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America on January 8, 1998. The title of the talk was The State of Mathematics Education: Building a Strong Foundation for the 21^st Century. First of all, he quotes some research which says recent studies have shown that student achievement is most influenced by teacher expertise accounting for as much as 40% of the measured variance in students mathematics achievement. Now keeping that in mind let me give you some more statistics from his remarks. "Presently, 28% of the high school teachers of Mathematics in the United States" -- and I think that number is quite a bit higher in New York City -Ado not have a major or even a minor in Mathematics. Added to that, the average K-8 teacher takes three or fewer Mathematics or Mathematics Education courses in college and fewer than one-half of the 8^th grade Mathematics teachers have ever taken a course in the teaching of the Mathematics at this level."

I also want to quote from the New York City Annual School Report 1995-96: "Fewer than 25% of the students in the ninth grade taking the Regents Exam in June 1996 passed it." So what are we saying? That the students are not getting the education in the High School. I want to add one more quote to this and that is from Leon Botstein, the President of Bard College. What he said, which I thought was very nice for the community colleges, was, "that the faculty at the community colleges are much better trained to teach disciplines, including Mathematics, than the high school teachers because they know their subject area."

Professor Wilkens "New York is a City of great diversity and students come from a variety of different preparations. We have students who have GEDs, who are foreign students, students who have gone to the New York City High Schools but have been underserved as we have said. We have students who have had great interruptions and gaps in their knowledge. We cannot assume that every student who comes to CUNY has had the same kind of preparation or background, or been taught by the same techniques or methods. Therefore, they have different requirements. At CUNY we have the FSAT placement tests and when they take them they score as they do and they demonstrate that they need remediation in either the reading, math, or the writing.

Professor Gallagher "I think the answer is almost mind boggling simple. Students are in remediation because we know how to test them to see whether they are ready to do college-level work. It is not because they are at the 11^th grade level or the 10^th grade as some people on the Board of Trustees would have it. We know what college-level work is and we know what you need to perform that. I might also say, although this never seems to get through to our opponents, that it is not our fault that they are not prepared. We should not be blamed for the deficiencies of the students that we admit, nor should they indeed.

I don't want to create a culture of blame here. I am not trying to blame the high schools. They have enormous problems and certainly they can improve, but it is not simply the high schools. It is the fact that many of our students, as I mentioned before, have GEDs, many come from different countries. I think the other reason we have remediation is simply that we are an extremely democratic institution. We are not Princeton University. Among other things we don't give nearly as many As. We have always served not only exceptional students of which there are many who have come through CUNY, but very average students who have done exceptional things. For example, Colin Powell is the first person to admit that he was a rather mediocre student at City University and I think he has achieved something that goes a little beyond mediocrity. The other reason we have so many students in remediation and why we need it and why we need to keep it at both the two and four year colleges is the incredible linguistic base from which our students come. It is not untypical at LaGuardia to have a basic writing class of 28 students who speak 20 different first languages from Korean and Urdu through Italian and Spanish. That is the situation. We are a democratic institution and our students need remediation because we hopefully want to remain democratic.

Professor Kelly "Apart from the fact that Professor Fabricant pointed out that so many high school instructors are, in Mathematics at least, not up to par, I think it is also the case that the effort to create a better liaison between the CUNY system and the high schools has somehow stalled. Perhaps that should be looked into more carefully and efforts made to reinvigorate high school instruction in view of the fact that you have such a sociologically diverse population. At one time I believe Chancellor Reynolds was actively involved with the Chancellor of the schools in New York City to do something like that. To produce linkages which would smooth the transition from high school to college. I don't know if that program is active any longer. That may be a serious problem here -making that bridge feasible.

Professor Bell "The next question I would like to pose is, "Why does remediation vary across the campuses?"

Professor Straker "I think we see a lot of variation because there are variations in the colleges that students are attending. Each college has its own admission standards and criteria and students are going to those colleges based on skills and strengths that they bring to the table. We see great deal of variation because there is a great deal of variation within CUNY.

Professor Gallagher "Just to follow up on that, a couple of other points that grow out of that. Number one, the colleges in CUNY have had an autonomous tradition basically. It is not a standardized university. We have done marvelous work because of that autonomous tradition of the various branches of the University. I also think we adjust the work that the students do to what we see as successful at various branches. We work with the students and are constantly changing and shifting programs and requirements on our campuses in response to student needs. I get very scared when I see these pronouncements that come out like Mr. Calandra's pronouncement or ones that assume a monolithic model. Just to give you an example, everyone is saying now that ESL is excluded from any pronouncements about basic skills, but at LaGuardia for example there are very few students, particularly since the lower level of ESL has been eliminated, who are strictly in the ESL courses. Almost all of those students are at the same time in remedial courses so there is almost no such thing as an ESL student at LaGuardia. That is part of the complexity that needs to be dealt with and has not been dealt with sufficiently.

Professor Bell"Another question is, "Should there be limits on remediation? How long should students be allowed to enroll in remedial services? Should remediation be allowed at the senior and community colleges?"

Professor Kelley "With regard to remediation at all levels, I see no reason why there shouldn't be remediation at the senior colleges for the very reasons stated here -- that there is such diversity in the student body and the needs change as that student body changes. At Brooklyn College when SEEK was initiated we had primarily African-American and Latino students. Now the bulk of the population in the remedial programs are Russian, Asian, and African students. So you have constant shift of the demographics in Brooklyn and that is reflected in the student population at Brooklyn College and they have varied needs. To simply eliminate remediation at that college would denude the community of an opportunity to provide an educational basis for the students there. I think this is true elsewhere in New York City too. You don't have a uniformity in population distribution and to create a set of institutions that could be oriented on borough lines is also not very practical.

Professor Gallagher "I don't mean to monopolize things here, but I think I have a lot to say on this question of limits and whether remediation should be allowed at four year colleges. First of all, I don't see what the crisis is when you put this in a national context. 81% of four year colleges across the country offer remedial courses. Only 25% of those institutions limit remediation.

Some of the problems. What does a limit mean? I think a limit has to be put in context. Limit students and if they fail twice, which is in the proposal from Vice Chancellor Mirrer, what do you do? Do you throw them out -that is one thing. You put them in a remedial institute and frankly I have not seen any reports on the CUNY Immersion Institute that convince me that I would want to send a student there. Do you give them what we all know you need when you fail the course twice, enhanced instruction, with the best instructors, small classes, and extra tutoring help. That is the way to deal with students who are repeated failures.

On the question of whether it should be allowed. Let me put this is a social context: I think they should be begging us to give these courses. For example, the United States as many of has the largest gulf between the rich and the poor and it is growing faster than it is in any industrialized nation in the world. This is a major social problem, a major economic problem, as I think we would all agree. We are sitting at the very epicenter of this. Of all of the thousands of counties in the U.S., New York County has the greatest gap between the upper 20% population and the lower 20% of the population. The upper 20% of the population in New York County which I imagine is over 200,000, earns 32 times what the lower 20% earns. That is a prescription for social disaster. We are whistling in the wind. If we chisel a few more bucks out of remediation at CUNY, what does this mean? It means those brokers on Wall Street who were spoken of in the Times a week or two ago will be able to buy $601 bottles of wine instead of $600 bottles of wine because they have such obscene bonuses that they need to spend the money as quickly as possible.

Vice Chancellor Mirrer"First I would like to clarify that no one has proposed sending students out on the street who fail a remedial course twice. What has been proposed is that that student be sent precisely for the type of enhancements that you mention, Professor Gallagher, but outside of the collegiate program. I think that a student who has twice been given an opportunity to take a remedial course has been given quite an opportunity. I think resources have been spent on that student and I think they have been spent appropriately, but I don't think we need to be excessive. I certainly wouldn't want the careful crafting of alternative opportunities that has gone into this set of recommendations to be misinterpreted as telling a student go away. I think within the collegiate program to have offered that student significant opportunities twice is worthwhile to ponder. I would also like to say that your figure about the number of institutions in the country that offer remediation, while accurate, does not reflect remediation being offered with a collegiate experience. I have taught, myself, at three different institutions before coming to CUNY, two of them large public institutions and I also participated in nationwide study last year of several hundred institutions in remediation. It is not in general, and it has been less so in general, that remediation has been offered as part of the collegiate experience. Remediation is offered in continuing education; it is offered in separate entities. Although this proposal does not propose that, we believe that that is more and more the case across the country in institutions like ours.

Professor Bell "I will pose one last question for the panel and then we will open it to questions. "What can be done to pool the expertise and experience of CUNY faculty as a resource for remedial, developmental, and compensatory practices at CUNY?"

Professor Wilkens "I would like to say that every time I come to one of these things it sounds like they are blaming us for not doing our jobs. I go across the nation and I do speak at many professional organizations in reading, the International Reading Association, The College Reading Association, The National Association of Developmental Education. When they hear that somebody from CUNY is presenting, those workshops and those conferences are jammed packed. You can't get in the room. We are a national model and we should continue to hold our heads up high and retain our reputation. Locally we constantly denigrate ourselves, but nationally we are very recognized and we should hold our heads up high about that.

Professor Straker "I have to concur with Hannalyn. All of the conferences I have been attending throughout my career, when someone from CUNY speaks about developmental education, the room is packed. You can't leave the room without answering numerous questions. I have to agree with Hannalyn in that regard.

I am excited about some opportunities we may have again to work out new strategies and to broaden faculty development. I think one of the things that has been lacking a great deal with developmental education is the opportunities for people in developmental education to do research and to do a broader amount of publishing. I have always thought that should be and was the model for successful developmental education. I think we have faculty who were very knowledgeable and very committed. In the past there were opportunities to share through the Instructional Resource Center and I wondered what happened to those. I think that there must be a strong commitment to assist faculty who specialize in developmental education to conduct research and to participate in curriculum development. As well, the education of our students is everyone's concern. There should be broad faculty participation in the learning process. Sound processes that produce successful students must be valued as part of the educational process.

Professor Gallagher"I just want to go back to the point that Vice Chancellor Mirrer made. I do not see, looking at the statistics I have in front of me, an argument for dropping students after two failures. Let me give you an example. Statistics at LaGuardia: those who fail basic writing once have a six-year graduation rate of 32%, those who fail twice have a graduation rate of 31%. A 1% difference yet those students will be shunted out into remedial institutes. These are the statistics that come from 80^th Street, in remedial institutes students who had any where from less than 250 to more than 900 hours of instruction passed the CUNY WAT test at a 7% rate. That does not give me a lot of confidence in throwing these students out of college and putting them into a different structure.

You have all heard this before but I think we need to say this again. In terms of pool expertise, sometimes that can become a euphemism for not doing anything or not giving us the resources. Let's say what we all know -- certainly the University has made a start in this so I don't want to condemn them entirely -we used to be a university with a full-time faculty of more than 11,000, but we are barely over 5,000 today. We have to get that number up. The University is working on that. We are working toward a 70% goal. Whether we will ever achieve that, and Trustee Marino indicated that he is not very hopeful. Adjuncts sometime teach 70%, 80%, Karen Kaplowitz tells me that at John Jay 83% of freshmen courses are taught by adjuncts. That is just an impossible number. We need, number one, if we are going to continue using adjuncts at even close to the scale that we pay them for office hours, to pay them for training, and to convert a lot of them to full-time faculty. Class size needs to be reduced. Most remedial classes are about twice the recommended maximum size. It costs money obviously to do this, but this is the way you get results. You need increased support services, more tutoring, more counseling for these students. This is the way to get results. We have known this for years, we just haven't had the resources to do what we know we should be doing.

Professor Bell "What I would like to do is throw the panel open for questions to members of the audience to Vice Chancellor Mirrer or members of the panel.

Professor Levine (Applied Science, Staten Island) ""Earlier we had Trustee Marino present the common wisdom that remediation is a total failure. We have just had a panel of experts presenting the opposite view point that remediation is an outstanding success. We have to move beyond this level of discourse. Vice Chancellor Mirrer, do you think the Board of Trustees would accept an outside panel of, let's call them referees who can examine the facts. Examine the arguments of both of these viewpoints and come up with a posture that we can all agree on?" / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -I don't know the answer to your question. I would like to say, first of all, I agree entirely. I think there is tremendous expertise here at CUNY. I said that since the day I arrive. I said that before I arrived. I think one of the reasons for this panel is to gather together some of that expertise and go forward. I agree with what you said, I don't think we can get very far if we have some kind of polarization and no commonalities. In terms of bringing in some external body to talk to the Trustees, I just don't know.

Professor Brady (Library, Queens) "AI don't pretend to know anything about remediation particularly. I was asked by a colleague to raise the issue of the impact on the complexion of Queens College as reflective of the demographics of Queens if remediation is dropped at Queens College. For instance, she talks about the economically depressed areas of Queens. This is something I was totally unaware of. There is supposed to be nine periods in a day. There are actually only 45 classes that are considered because of the shortage of teachers. Many of the teachers are not even certified. The question is how this will change the complexion of the student body at Queens College if students from Queens want to go there are denied remediation at Queens College?" / [ Dean Proto- When the institutions come forward with their admission criteria which is really just to project what students may or may not be able to enter the collegiate program, and that is what admission criteria really is in terms of selecting students who are going to be able to engage in collegiate work. When we do the work for Queens College, like we do it for any of the colleges, we do simulations based upon the population that has previously been admitted and enrolled at the college. All the simulations we have done take a look at whether there is any demographic change. There is very little demographic change in the profile of the freshman class that enter the college over the last three years. We have only been doing this for >96, >97 and now preliminary for the first two phases, meaning admission cycles, of >98. There has been very little change in terms of the profile of the students from the borough. Obviously some students who are not being admitted may have been admitted in prior years. On the other hand, the way some colleges have gone with their admissions criteria that some students who were denied access in the past now have access to Queens College. The colleges have gone more with an emphasis on units and distribution of units rather than just on a straight academic average. Some students who had lower indices in the past were not admitted are now being admitted because they have stronger academic profiles in terms of units. We do simulations for each college. When I say we, the Central Office does the admissions process, we do simulations for each college prior to their changing admission criteria.

Professor Bell "May I also remind everyone that admissions criteria are the purview of the faculty and faculty senates on the various campuses.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City) "A I thought this panel was one of the best I ever heard. It was very inspiring I would like to ask Vice Chancellor Mirrer -it just seemed to make sense to get this information we heard tonight and put in the form of a report and not just to go through with the proposal you mentioned, but to take this and get both of these as part of the discussion before the Trustees. To go forward with a proposal without this kind of information would be foolhardy. It would be disrespectful and foolhardy -we have all this data and this experience at an institution with a great record of innovation in remediation. Could we not get this as a report that would be part of the working process?"/ Vice Chancellor Mirrer -Absolutely. That is no problem.

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia CC) "AI also have a question for Vice Chancellor Mirrer. On the question of not allowing remedial students to repeat a remedial course more than twice, wouldn't these be possible scenarios? A student is required to take remediation in one area or two or three. [The student] passes one or two of those. Doesn't pass one, passes his or her college level courses, but regardless of how that student has done in the other remedial courses, in the other college level courses, that student would then be essentially expelled -not on the street, but in a non-collegiate environment. I don't understand how that is going to help the student learn what wasn't learned before. I don't see how that helps our students." / Vice Chancellor Mirrer "First of all the proposal calls for students who are in good academic standing, which I guess is the point you are making, for that student to be permitted to re-enter the college. So I would like to say that in the first instance. I guess I would also like to raise the question of when remediation is done. Having been actually a faculty member for many years I have always had the view that students should do their remedial work first and early. They would be more successful in courses that they took in other areas, in disciplinary areas, in required courses, and certainly when entering their major. So that the scenario you pose of the student moving along making a lot of progress being maybe ready to graduate, but having that one remedial area -I really think that our students should do their remedial work before they reach that stage.

Professor Beaky - "I didn't imagine that this would continue for that long, but I was thinking of that at some point during the first year perhaps, or just slightly into the second, it might happen that a student would have done well in most courses and not passed in only one of those. That student would then be removed from the collegiate environment. I don't think that that assists the student." / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -I take the point that you have made. I think I understand now the point that you are making. I will need to think about it. I am grateful for you bringing up that point. I think it would certainly inadvertent for a student who needs remediation in one area, let's say Mathematics, but who can otherwise make progress in other areas to be removed.

Professor Gallagher -  "I am glad to hear the Vice Chancellor say that. I think before students are shifted out of the collegiate environment one thing we really need to have is a review process. There may well be students much like the student Lenore [Beaky] describes, essentially successful collegiate students who we don't want to bounce out. There will be other students who have a long history, may have taken eight or nine courses and only passed a couple. There is going to be such an enormous difference unless you have an honest review at that point, I think the system could be a disaster.

Professor O'Malley (English, Kingsborough CC) -"One thing that people didn't address in the panel, and I was curious to see what your reaction would be, was the proposal to mainstream high failure students. We have tried that at Kingsborough and we had some success, but with the pressure not to give any credit for remediation we stopped that. You have to pass the WAT and RAT before you go into freshman composition. I know Hunter is trying something like this. What does the panel feel about this proposal to mainstream high failure students?" / Professor Bell -What Susan is saying is put students in English I who have a six on the writing test.

Professor Wilkens -The summer intensives that we have been having have been for students who are high failures. Those students have had a very good success rate. Taking that one step and taking that person in putting them in a content area course ,I don't know what the results are. I do know we have a very long experience and successful experience with high failures doing more. Professor O'Malley -"In summer immersions certainly." / Professor Gallagher -I have two answers for your question. Number one, I think it can be done successfully if you manage it right. For example, at LaGuardia we have an English 101 course for students who got a six on the WAT and passed the Reading Test. It has one extra hour. It is a five hour rather than four hour course. I believe it was last term Sandra Hanson could give you the stats on this -we actually had a higher pass rate in that course than we did in the regular English 101 course. What should not be done is use this to slip remedial students into your regular program to keep your admissions up. I think that is the down side and that is the threat of programs like that.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, BMCC) -"I am flipping through all of the these papers trying to look for an area we can reach some kind of commonality in light of what the first questioner said. A number of the panelists talked about this concept of 'one-size does not fit all.' Our students have different needs and different colleges have different needs. I do see some reference to this in Vice Chancellor Mirrer's newest draft which I went through this morning. I do see a number of references to the caveat of looking at this situation on a college by college basis. For example, on page 2 it talks about that remedial and developmental course offerings available at different colleges differ. We have different levels. Some colleges have fewer or more levels of reading. There are a number of pages here where I see the proviso that we look at each college individually. How do you envision that working out practically speaking in terms of our local governance procedures and governance bodies which normally have had purview over issues such as admissions and curriculum? How do see that jiving in terms of general guidelines and pronouncements?" / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -As you point out, and I am very glad that you did, the document does try to take into account the variety among the colleges. It tries to take into account the expertise of the faculty and it tries to take into account the need and obligation we felt to provide opportunities for students within a reasonable environment and framework. In terms of going forward, the rationale behind the document is much to with the perceived need to do things better which the panelists may not agree with. Frankly there are a lot of data appended to the document which I think tell a somewhat different story. I have heard the LaGuardia data, for the first time, this morning from the Acting Provost. It does not correspond with the data we have. So I told him I would look further into it. The data which we have that I have appended tells a somewhat different picture of how well we do. How much we advantage our students in what we do. I am not sure that everything we do, we do extremely well. I am sure there is room for some improvement. I am also sure that the context within which we are working is a real context, and which you are now quite aware of there is a need to make changes. I would hope that faculty governance bodies would be eager to work in a constructive environment towards rethinking some policies that may exist on individual campuses, in a productive way and an academically sound way. I think that is the best I can do to answer the question.

Professor Rushing (Non-Senator, LaGuardia CC) -"Dr. Mirrer says that this report doesn't propose kicking students into the street. It seems to me that it does precisely that when it states that it has become increasingly clear that at least some of the students seeking to enroll at the University have remedial needs that may best be met outside the remedial developmental course sequence offered by any college. Now the problem with making that statement is that we cannot predict well who is going to do well in college and who is not. I have good friend who would fit this category who now has a law degree from Yale and a Ph.D. from Princeton." / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -- There are two separate issues that the document addresses. One of them is what is appropriate and reasonable within a collegiate framework. That is the point that is made in the document you refer to. The other point that is made in the document is that it is also appropriate for CUNY to offer opportunities for remediation for students through other venues. It may not be appropriate for CUNY to offer every kind of remediation that it offers within a collegiate experience.

Professor Rushing -"Well, Professor Gallagher just gave some data that contradicts that statement. I would like to add some other statistics to that. In Mathematics at LaGuardia the graduation rate after six years for students who failed one remedial math course was 11%. For students who failed twice the graduation rate is 14% and for those who failed three times it is 22%. The more they failed the better they did. What I would like to stress is that a lot more research needs to be done before we make the pronouncements that are being made in this report." / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -The statistic you are giving I think is quite misleading. Many students who fail a remedial course leave. They transfer. They go elsewhere. They are not on the road to graduation. They are not going to be included in graduation figures.

Professor Matthews (Mathematics, Hunter) -"Following up on the more hypothetic idea of a student who is having trouble with one remedial area. At Hunter this semester we did have a situation of luckily just one student, but it is symptomatic perhaps of what is happening. It was a CUNY B.A. student and at first it seemed as though she was proficiency satisfied, but then since she was at Hunter there was a higher level of reading that was expected and so she was not allowed to register for this spring semester. We have to realize that students transfer back and forth. We have had lots of trouble with articulation particularly in Math. A Calculus course at some community colleges we may feel is not enough preparation for the next level at Hunter. There are problems in other fields too. We have got to think of students moving from one system to the other. Particularly as Trustee Marino was saying, if students are encouraged to go to a community college and later come to the senior college then will they never count in the senior colleges graduation rate because we didn't first admit to Hunter. These numbers you have to careful of what they really mean."

Chair Cooper -"I wondered if the panel might shift for a minute and think of answers for the following issue which members of the Board of Trustees repeatedly return to. The Board of Trustee Committee on Remediation has been determined to discover what grade level the WAT tests and nothing some of us do gets them off of that question. Secondly, they want an answer in five words or less, no box top, to the question how do you know they should leave remediation. What test do you administer for them to exit from whatever remedial classes you have? I have no answer for these questions. I am sure there isn't one single answer. I can't find a way to communicate that it is an inappropriate question -- the first one doesn't bear any relationship to the WAT. This is going to repeatedly come back because we are dealing with people -- you had the most sophisticated member here tonight and somebody who really does seem to have a good understanding of what goes on. You are dealing with people for whom education is something very measurable. They seem to remember first, second and third grade. There were grades and things were very clear -- at least they think they were very clear back in the >40s. I don't know quite what we are going to do about this. If we have to assess students for placement with these three assessment tests and then come up with some measure of proving they should be exited from remediation. What is the answer?" / Professor Fabricant - I think Trustee Marino did say that the Trustees make broad policy and he doesn't really want to impose upon what the faculty does. Especially in Mathematics. Well those are the words that he said, whether he means them I can't tell you. He did say that. Being that it is agreed that remediation varies among the colleges, exit from remediation will vary also. It is the purview of the faculty, especially in Mathematics, to decide when a student is ready for certain levels of courses and there is nothing else that can be said.

Professor Gallagher - I think people should be prohibited from asking that question until they can pass the test on the WAT booklet, which very explicitly lays out what requirements there are for college level writing, and it has nothing to do with grade level. Until people look at that booklet it is impossible - and look at seriously -it is impossible to get beyond that point. As far as how we know students, are ready to exit to remediation. I think the Trustees simply have to look at it branch by branch. There are different criteria in different departments. It is very explicit. We could explain how we do it at LaGuardia in writing. It might take an hour. They may not want to give that time. I just don't know what else to say. That is the answer to those questions.

Professor Cooper -"If I could just make a point. Some of you are going to speak on Monday at the open hearing on CAPPR. It would be helpful if one of you would address that issue. If somebody would be willing to address that issue about exit from remediation I think it would be useful."

Professor Ward (Non-Senator, Lehman) -AI have two quick questions for Vice Chancellor Mirrer about proposal four and five in the document. Specifically whether there was any discussion of main streaming the high failure students, did that include ESL students? On proposal five a new test or measure of competence for exit -that's relevant to what is just being asked about. Whether there were any discussions elaborating what that might be and what some other measure of competence could possibly be?" / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -Both of those proposals actually come from faculty members so I am really not the one to expand on them. I assume that Sandi may be able to answer this question better than I can. I assume that there was discussion or some pool of expertise beyond the proposals. The proposal to mainstream high failure students came to me out of the three meetings we had with faculty members. [The question is directed to Professor Otte (Baruch) who answers yes.]

The second proposal also came along with a packet of comments or suggestions or bottom line, I think Sandi called it. I believe that it certainly does relate to the issue that came up serendipitously at the last meeting of the Board's Remediation Committee, which is exactly what happens to pronounce a student remediated. There would need discussion. I don't think that that is a fleshed out proposal at this point.

Mr. Hollander (Non-Senator, Student, Graduate School) -"I wonder how we are drawing the line on what kind of remediation we consider appropriate to the collegiate setting and what is not? If we have high failing students it seems to me that that is an indication that the remediation that we are offering them isn't working for them and we should be offering them some other kind of remediation or some other kind of help that the principal question of why that kind of remediation shouldn't belong in collegiate setting arises. If these students are removed from the collegiate setting I wonder what kind of financial aid is going to be made available to them and what is going to be given to them to replace that collegiate setting that they are going to be missing?" / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -The proposal to mainstream high failure actually does just the opposite. It enables students to take immediately college-level, credit-bearing courses. It doesn't remove them the collegiate setting; much to the contrary. The proposal asks that supplemental kinds of interventions which have been proposed by the faculty -- piloted as I understand it at some campuses successfully -- would be offered to those students. It is quite the opposite of what you suggested. / AI am not sure that I understand. It seemed to me that you were saying that high failure students would have to be removed and would continue outside?" / Professor Bell -Main streaming means to directly put them into college credit level courses. Mr. Hollander -"I am sorry. I misinterpreted high failure. I thought it meant repeated failure." / Vice Chancellor Mirrer -I think we are now calling them borderline students. Mr. Hollander -"I am sorry. Then I change that question. The question is repeated failure students who will be removed from the collegiate setting."/ Vice Chancellor Mirrer - I have to say I will think about Lenore Beaky's comment. I would like to say first of all that there is always an appeals procedure. So I would like to stress that point for a student wants to appeal a decision. On the repeat remedial policy, it is my own view and the view of many others, many of whom are in this room this evening. It is not unreasonable to offer a student two opportunities to fail a remedial course. I have talked to a number of you in this audience and I know a number of you have agreed that it is not reasonable to offer a third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth, and seventh chance.

Professor Vozick (Science, BMCC) -"I am a part-time faculty member teaching Biology at York College and at Borough of Manhattan Community College. In all of the basic subject matter courses we are also doing developmental skills teaching whether that is recognized or not I think that should be fit into your thoughts. The deep concern that I have as a part-time faculty member who is a Senator on this body, I have a responsibility to speak for the part-time faculty. In the whole excellent presentation made I am with you all the way, part-time faculty who we know are carrying the bulk of these courses are sort of mentioned on the periphery as a problem or as something. I don't ever hear their concerns, their professional needs, the resources they need to do their work, the conditions under which they work, ever mentioned as a part of the problem. Anybody who has spent any time at all looking at the realities of education at CUNY knows that this a major concern. I just wonder what your thoughts are on that point?" / Professor Gallagher -I certainly agree that it is a major concern. I remind you what I said earlier. Number one, adjunct faculty should be paid for office hours. Number two, that they should be paid for training and that more of them should be hired as full timers.

Professor Wilkens -I think that we sympathize greatly with your plight. It was a little surprising to me that when Mr. Marino was speaking it seemed he was suggesting -maybe my interpretation was wrong -that more full time lines should somehow go to non-remedial courses and that even more adjuncts should be teaching remedial courses. [audience reaction about if Trustee Marino said whether or not. Professor Bell interjects that we will save it for his next appearance.] We are being frank tonight. We are being honest. He said it.

I would like to say one other thing. I think the term high failure is a confusing term and may need some massaging. Maybe we should just call it border line student or something else, but I think we need to revise that.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, Graduate School) -"This question is for the Vice Chancellor. In view of the reports on CUNYTALK of the attitudes of Board members Calandra and Badillo and the performance of the Board member who was here tonight, could you make an assessment of the likelihood of your compromise proposal being successful?" / First of all, I don't see, my, our series or proposals as a compromise. I would like to make that clear. I don't see it as a compromise. I do see a need however, to enlist the help, advise, expertise of faculty in ensuring that whatever proposals may surface at whatever point. I hope that these proposals in some shape or form will be fully informed by the judge of the people at CUNY who are closest to the students and are in an excellent position to inform the discussion. I am optimistic. I have been optimistic since I came. I think that any proposals for change that do go to the Board will need to have a strong academically informed underpinning. So we toil on. I have to say I continue to be optimistic. I think that when policy changes are introduced, which I think they inevitably will be ,I hope that the kinds of thinking that we have done here tonight will inform them.

IV. a. Reports: [The Chair's report was in brief form to allow time for other business.] Professor Cooper -First I would like to thank the members of the panel. This coming Monday the Board Committee on Academic Program Planning has a draft resolution on Admissions Policies. I want to alert particularly those of you in the senior colleges that you should be in your campus senates very alert to the discussion of changing the admissions policies involving what kinds units will be expected, SAT scores, and there will be a whole set of packages proposed. I would like very much to be sure that if there is something that comes back and a president says it has been voted on which we have now heard twice -that it has in fact been voted on and this is a very serious issue. Secondly, the meeting I mentioned before at 3:00 p.m. is open to the public. Four or five faculty have been asked to discuss questions of this sort in front of the Trustees who will come. It is the spring meeting that they are using for a public forum. I would have spent more time on it earlier because it is appropriate here, but I didn't want to cut into the panel. We will try to have Ron Marino come back. We will continue the discussion.