June 6, 2000

Chair Sohmer called the session to order at 6:00 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Present were Senators from the following campuses:

Baruch: Hill and McCall; BMCC: Friedman, Herz, Neis, Vozick, and Young; Bronx CC: Fuld, Gonsher, Read, and Tanaka-Kuwashima; Brooklyn: Bell, Jacobson, Kahan, Shapiro, Tobey, and Alternate Sheridan; CCNY: Connorton, Crain, and Sohmer; CSI: Levine; CUNY Law School: none; Graduate School: Baumrin, Philipp, and Alternate Katz-Rothman; Hostos CC: none; Hunter: Doss, Krishnamachari, Sherrill, Wallach, Wonsek, and Alternate Hollander; John Jay: Davenport, Hartmus, Kaplowitz, and Rodriquez; Kingsborough CC: Farrell, Goodkin, O’Malley, and Alternate Barnhart; LaGuardia CC: Beaky, Gallagher, Reitano, and Alternate Davidson; Lehman: Bullaro, Feinerman, and Alternate Mineka; Medgar Evers: Alternate Leocal; NYC Technical: Hounion; Queens: Diamond, Frisz, Hemmes, Kulkarni, and Savage; Queensborough CC: Dahbany-Miraglia, Greenbaum, Weiss, and Alternate Tully; York: none. Discipline Council representatives: Henry Olsen (Sociology), Ted Brown (Computer Science), and Phil Eggers (English). Governance Leaders present: Bass (Bronx), Meyer (Baruch); Cooper (York), Feinerman (Lehman), Hemmes (Queens), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Oley (Medgar Evers), O’Malley (Kingsborough), Perlstein (BMCC), Taharally (Hunter), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Excused were Deraney, Galvin, Skinner, Richter, Specht, and S. Cooper. Executive Director Phipps and Administrative Assistant Pasela were present.

I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as proposed.

II. Approval of the Minutes of May 16, 2000: The Minutes were approved as distributed.

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

A. Chair (oral and written).

B. Professor Levine, Chair of Budget Advisory Committee (oral).

C. Representatives to Board Committees (written).

D. Chancellor (oral).

IV. New Business - Resolution of Appreciation of Dr. Joanne Reitano, Chair of Community College Caucus – The following resolution was moved by Prof. Anne Friedman, seconded, and passed unanimously by voice vote:

Whereas, Professor Joanne Reitano, one of the founders of the Community College Caucus, has served as its chair since June 1997, and prior to 1997 as its secretary; And, whereas Professor Reitano has worked tirelessly and intelligently to educate the University community, including the Board of Trustees, of the importance of the mission of the community colleges within CUNY; And, whereas Professor Reitano has continuously reaffirmed the role of the community colleges, as open admissions colleges; And, whereas Professor Reitano has testified at numerous hearings, sponsored many resolutions, and written hundreds of letters in support of community colleges; And, whereas Professor Reitano has represented the members of the Community College Caucus with great integrity, always listening carefully to their concerns: Therefore, be it resolved that the members of the Community College Caucus, upon Professor Reitano’s stepping down from the position of Chair of the Caucus, to take a well-earned sabbatical, express their admiration and appreciation for her hard work, her intelligence, and her contribution of making the Caucus an important voice in University matters. Unanimously approved by the Community College Caucus.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:10 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

William Phipps

Attachments: CUNY Executive Compensation Plan

                    Memorandum of July 5 re transfer admissions and allocations of new faculty

Information on State/City budgets for CUNY

******

Subject to Senate Approval

REPORTS & DELIBERATIONS

OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIRST PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

June 6, 2000

a. Chair: There has been much ado since the last plenary. Some of these activities will be best addressed in the Q&A with the Chancellor, who will be here in about half an hour.

I have appointed Stefan Baumrin to head a committee to revise our by-laws by mid-year, since the approvals are a lengthy process.

There is a Chancellor’s Hearing June 15^th and 16^th on the already-approved Master Plan. We have largely decided not to participate in this post-facto process. However, I will comment on the lack of genuine consultation and the fact that the document is essentially faculty-frei. We will produce a document to send to the Regents, their Higher Education Committee, and the State Education Department. We will address lacunae in the document, and the flaws of commission. A serious concern is that the actions of the Board, reified in the document, have already caused a precipitous fall-off in the application pool, both in the senior colleges and in the community colleges. This is current information, as of this afternoon.

Members of the leadership of Friends of CUNY, CUNY Is Our Future, PSC, and UFS gathered together to assure our joint political endeavors, both currently and in the near future. New to this Master Plan is the statement that there should exist a Trustee-generated core curriculum, a creation which caused the faculty of George Mason to censure their trustees. It is a kind of virus perking across the country -- it also lead the faculty of SUNY to institute protests. It is highly suspect when such odd actions occur simultaneously at various venues.

The searches for various central office positions are winding down. The searches for various presidents have been initiated to be completed in the early Fall.

The Chancellery has reconstructed the senior college Instructional Staff Model (ISM), which determines the allocation of adjunct dollars to campuses. It will be distributing the 2000-2001 budget by the end of June using the new calculations. We shortly will get a dry run of the outcomes.

I would like to introduce Alfred Levine, who is the Chair of our Budget Advisory Committee, to make some statements about the ISM document revealed last night. Before we do the ISM, are there any questions about other issues? [In the section below, questioners are not identified because the microphone was not used.]

"What is the information about enrollment?" / Chair Sohmer – It seems to be all over the University -- about 10-15% for the senior colleges, and about 10% in the community colleges. There seem to be various factors involved, but it is hard to say that they are not related to the actions of the Board of Trustees. / "This is enrollment from…" / Chair Sohmer – Projections from the actual applications. / "Regardless of whether or not they will or will not be tested." / Chair Sohmer – Yes. This is a pre-testing catastrophe. Even the Spring transfers were down 6%.

[Question inaudible] / Chair Sohmer – The transfer students this spring were down about 6%. It varied from campus to campus. / "Those are transfers down prior to transfer students failing the Placement Test." / Chair Sohmer – Yes. / "How many transfer students disappeared after they were unable to be admitted into a four-year program?" / Chair Sohmer – I haven’t been able to elicit that information, although I’m sure it exists. I will try to get and add it as an appendix to the minutes.

"Have you seen any enrollment projections for fall 2000?" / Chair Sohmer – No, but I’ve heard them. Nobody puts anything in print anymore. The senior college fall-off of more than 15% is for the Fall 2000. These are projections for Freshmen, new students. The community colleges seem to be someplace between 10-15% as a projection for new students.

"A student came into the English Department at Queensborough, who was going to transfer to Queens College, but she was denied admission because she hadn’t passed the proficiency exam. We could put a stop to that, because the proficiency exam is not yet in effect. But she had this letter, and I saw it. Queens College had denied her admission because she hadn’t passed the proficiency exam. People may take a look into that." / Chair Sohmer – If you could get a hold of a copy of that letter and give it to us, we could possibly use it.

"There has been no proficiency examination administered to any student for any consequence. The first exam is not expected to be administered until the end of October. That should only be to transfer students who have already been admitted to the colleges. Students are not going to be held accountable until after they have been admitted. This is not a qualification for admittance to a college. Certainly not at the senior college level, and never to the community college." Chair Sohmer – The soonest the proficiency exam is going to be important to anyone is for the students who are transferring to senior colleges this Fall. The soonest that it applies to community college students for graduation purposes is two years from September 1999; whenever the student comes up for graduation, after entering no earlier than September 1999.

b. Professor Levine (Chair of Budget Advisory Committee)

Professor Levine - What I am going to describe is a work in progress. It was first shown to us last Friday. It was changed by the time it was shown to us again on Monday. And it will undoubtedly change a number of times before it is official. I will describe the process. First of all, what is an instructional staff model? This is an attempt to figure out, from actual enrollments -- FTE’s generated -- how many faculty you need by discipline and by college. There has been an ISM in place for many years. It had numbers like lower division mathematics and computer science (25.15), language and letters, which includes English (19.60). For anyone familiar with data, numbers to four significant figures in an area like this is bizarre. To try to make distinctions in the fourth significant place is bizarre. Furthermore, it wasn’t clear where these numbers came from.

For many years, the faculty have objected to the use of the existing ISM. Let me describe the new model. It simply divides students into three categories: lower division, upper division, master’s level. It has not yet been extended to doctoral level. Within each of those three divisions, there are low-cost programs, medium-cost programs, high-cost programs, and then the category "special programs." An example of a special program might be something like clinical nursing, which doesn’t fit any other pattern. In each of these categories, a number is assigned that roughly translates into the number of FTE’s you need to generate one line.

Remember, some courses are pure lecture courses, and other courses in the sciences involve lecture and lab. Lab courses usually have more hours than credits. For this reason, one would expect, there would be a difference in cost between psychology, at the lower division, and say biology and health sciences at the lower division. This shows up by giving psychology a ratio of 30 in the lower division, and giving biology and health science a ratio of 15. For the same number of FTE’s generated, you would need twice as many instructors in biology as you would need in psychology.

This represents a significant simplification. I can give you all the numbers but, since it is a work in progress, all I can tell you is the general pattern is low costs less than medium, medium costs less than high. Lower division costs less than upper division, which costs less than master’s. That’s the pattern. Within that, we can quibble about which categories are in which, but I’m not sure that is useful. Are there any questions on the meaning of an ISM and how it is used to generate a number? Then we will talk about what that number is used for. Out of this, enrollment gives you a number of faculty needed.

"Does this assume all full-time lines?" / Professor Levine – No, I’m getting to that.

Chair Sohmer – Let me correct Al a little bit. It was not mysterious as to where the numbers came from originally. In 1965, some industrious person in the State University averaged the size of classes across several universities in the country, and called that a statistic. That became the ISM, and to this very day we have used that ISM. Needless to say, they did compute it to four significant figures. They did the actuals at 17 medium-size liberal arts colleges across the country. The difficulty of that obviously is that it is a snap shot of various campuses with all the prejudices of those campuses built into the statistics. So that is where the numbers came from. What we have is a modification of that form of insanity.

"Could you say something about the meaning of FTE before you go on, so that the other part…" / Professor Levine – There are two things, the FTE students is very simple -- the number of FTE credits divided by 15. Faculty are a little more complicated. I am going to get to that in a second when I talk about how it is used. This is only at the senior colleges. However, Vice Chancellor Brabham indicated that it is her intention, once the model is in place, to apply it uniformly across the University, including at the community colleges. The formulas are intended to be university-wide ISM ratios.

The ISM that Professor Sohmer was describing, taken from a nationwide survey, was then adopted for SUNY. Then it was imposed on us after the fiscal crisis. I don’t remember it being employed before the fiscal crisis. But when we came under state aegis, it was then imposed on us. I think I’m right about that. In 1977, 1978, whenever they decided to rationalize our staffing, it was rationalized on this, then already dozen-year-old model, which didn’t necessarily fit the State of New York to begin with.

Now the question is, how has this been used in the past? Well, they would take enrollment data from every campus and calculate, based on these ratios, the number of faculty that you should have, according to the model. So, for example, at a particular campus, they might calculate that you need 500 faculty. They then would look and see that you had 300 faculty. They would allocate the adjunct budget to fill up, historically, a portion of the shortfall. That portion fluctuated. One year it would be 85%, one year it was actually 100%. They were very proud that they funded adjuncts at 100% of the model. This model was really only used in the adjunct allocation, which amounts to roughly 4% of the senior college funding. The intent is, for this coming year’s allocation of adjuncts, they will use the new formula. So once again, it will apply to only 4%. However, there is an implied threat, promise, statement, that starting next year, this will drive the instructional part of the budget, not just the adjunct part. To this, you have to add other costs other than instructional costs. You have to add a model for maintenance and operations, OTPS, for administrative costs, etc. Those models have not yet been developed. The only one that is even close to being developed is this ISM. To summarize, next year, this will have minimal impact. The year after, this may have a major impact.

[Question inaudible] / Professor Levine – 1999 actuals. But the way it is being used is to group things into a list of categories, business, math & computer science, public service technology, business commerce technology, language and letters, fine and applied arts, data processing technology, remediation, etc. They all have the number 22. They no longer are making these fine distinctions. I can do the upper division if you want. For example, the medium-upper is math and computer science, public service technology, business commerce technology, language and letters, education, data processing technology, and straight technology. That number is 16. They’ve smoothed out some of the strange pieces, which means that it is not as sensitive -- because they have based it, in some ways, at least in the upper division, on the actual averages of the group. It does seem that this model makes more sense than the one that is in currently in use. The real issue is how it will be used. That we don’t know yet.

"I don’t remember the year now, but there was a significant student shortfall and no enriched budget. The central office, under Joe Murphy, smoothed out the decline in staffing by using the ISM to re-distribute money around the University. So, for example, Baruch was short changed. I don’t remember who else that year, but it might have been Queens. Lehman was not penalized, with the consequence that for the following year it had the best student faculty ratio in terms of the fewest number of students per full-time faculty member. That was done on successive years using the old model." / Professor Levine – I might point out that currently, the community colleges are funded according to a form of ISM that presumably this would replace. There, it is funded this way. In other words, there is no historical funding base. A calculation is done of the teaching needs, and associated with that is a certain number of dollars given to the school. For those of you at the community colleges, I should point out that your presidents have tremendous ability to ignore the fact that the money is intended for instruction, and to find ways of spending it on things other than instruction.

[inaudible question] / Professor Levine – The boundary on the senior college is the Faculty Maintenance of Effort Policy. It says that they have to maintain a certain number of full-time faculty. So that when CUNY announces that we have 61 more full-time faculty at the senior colleges, at the end of the year we are supposed to have 61 more full-time faculty. For many years that was not true. For many years Ann Reynolds would stand up at plenaries and announce that we had 400 new faculty lines but we ended up with 400 administrators. At the senior colleges, the Faculty Maintenance of Effort provides some protection. / [inaudible question] / Professor Levine – Under no circumstances are these funds allocated by department; that is strictly campus. The adjunct budget that is given to CUNY has never covered the full cost of our adjuncts, at any campus that I am familiar with. Therefore, we always need to take money from elsewhere to pay for our adjuncts, or we couldn’t run our classes.

"The point is that the personnel budget doesn’t move to OTPS." / Professor Levine – But in principle it can. It’s just that we couldn’t run that way. We would never be able to offer our courses.

"At John Jay we have a budget of $5 million for adjuncts. This has tremendous impact in terms of the modifications; some problems will occur. But on the other hand, the Vice Chancellor of Budget and Finance is extremely involved with the Faculty Senate’s Budget Committee in terms of deliberation and consultation, and there were modifications made that were recommended by the Budget Committee. We have to acknowledge that." / Professor Levine – Vice Chancellor Brabham is trying to do a very good job on this. Chair Sohmer –The informing of the administration via the faculty, informs documents. It is not at all clear that it will inform implementation. The implementation has yet to be seen. To give you a picture of how that is a problem, last September there were 61 lines allocated to the colleges officially. That’s a document. We have asked since September, where? It seems that they are having a great deal of trouble discovering where. There are several hypotheses, one of which is "nowhere." The other hypotheses are that they have been so inequitably distributed that they are embarrassed. These are two very strong possibilities. The fact that the documents have been altered in a fashion that we tried to construct does not yet mean that there is going to be an alteration in behavior.

"I would like to ask what is the practical outcome of this new formula? There has to be a purpose for doing what you are doing." / Professor Levine – This year, very little. In the future, CUNY may move to an all-formula budgeting approach. Current funding is historical. Schools that wasted a lot of money last year, get to waste a lot of money this year, with only very minor changes if they went up or down in enrollment. Under this scheme, there will be major changes in your budget if you go down in enrollment. As long as they kept in place a historical formula, they really didn’t have ways of decreasing it by very much. Here, if your enrollment drops in half, a good portion of your budget drops in half. /

"Performance measures will mean some faculty members, who do everything very well, but hate to write, are going to be penalized. And somebody else who writes very well, very often, but doesn’t do anything else, for example, participating in community affairs, will also be penalized." / Professor Levine – I usually don’t like to disagree with you, but this time I do disagree with you. The real problem with performance measures is that they usually reflect on the performance of students. The most popular performance measures nation-wide are graduation rates, retention rates. There is a new buzz word "outcomes assessment," where you are going to be expected to show that you are doing what you are claiming to do. So it is results on "objective" nationally normed tests, etc. Unfortunately, I’m afraid, that is what is usually meant by performance measures.

Chair Sohmer – The percentage of students who are successful will be used as a measure for that institution.

Professor Levine – The faculty have made a strong argument that, yes, there should be an ISM for the doctoral program. It has not yet been developed. It think that we do need to put support of doctoral programs on a firm basis, and get away from some of the confusion that exists now.

Professor Greenbaum (History, Queensborough Community College) – "To return to a point that Stefan made earlier about Lehman College and the cushioning in a decline in enrollment. This was true of many of the campuses over a period of time. They were cushioned over a period of three years. In some cases, by the time the cushioning period was over, enrollments had gone back up, and the very fact that they were cushioned enabled them to function. Are they taking that into account?" / Chair Sohmer – That is the process which is used for funding the community colleges. It is a three-year weighted average. That’s the cushion effect. On the other hand, not all weighted averages go up.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) – "Yesterday at Fiscal, there was, as always, a monthly report on the colleges’ tuition collection. In other words, enrollment, how many dollars for tuition were collected, and also expenditures. Some colleges are at 70% tuition collection. Hunter is 99.6% as of April 30^th. So the Vice Chancellor reported the colleges that under-enrolled, that don’t meet the tuition collection revenue target. They will have to have a cut in their budget, of course. Those colleges that over-enrolled would be able to keep their extra tuition collection. This is what is done each year. So Trustee Morning asked, how long do colleges have to make up the deficit that they will be generating from not meeting their enrollment target? Vice Chancellor Brabham said one year, but colleges that have severe deficits have two years. To my surprise, Trustee Morning said that he thought that six months should be the amount of time a college should have to make up its deficit. Vice Chancellor Brabham said most colleges don’t know within six months that they have a deficit. The Chancellor then said that this brings him to two areas that he is very concerned about. One is what he called "the appalling reporting capacity" of many of the colleges -- where colleges are not reporting accurately and in a timely fashion the collection. And he cited the Mayor’s Advisory Report on CUNY as evidence of the validity of that statement. The second was that best practices are not being followed and that he has directed Vice Chancellor Brabham to meet with the presidents and vice presidents to develop better reporting techniques and to emulate best practices. This was a very serious issue." / Chair Sohmer –Trustee Morning was really referring to what a sensible corporation does. He was hoping that we could emulate a sensible corporation. But I think everybody doubted that.

c. Chancellor Goldstein: Let me keep my opening remarks brief so that you have an opportunity to ask questions. The budgets have now come to rest. We are analyzing the City Budget because there were some late modifications yesterday. We will be in position on our primary objective of getting a fair number of faculty positions. It will be the largest number of positions that we’ve seen in quite some time. I think we can all be very pleased about that.

There are lots of other incidental things. I have talked to you already about the TAP restorations and the base aid for community colleges, which will help us mightily. This building is going to get a little over $4 million built into its operating budget for people, now that the infrastructure is built. I’m sure that you are going to have questions about the Master Plan. I will defer my statements and respond to your questions.

We will have a number of executive positions announced at the board meeting in June. All of you know that we were looking for a number of vice chancellor positions. We expect to fill the senior vice chancellor/chief operating officer position. This is a new position pursuant to the reorganization of the central administration. We expect to announce a vice chancellor for budget, finance, and computing, and a new position of vice chancellor for enrollment management and student development. This is a newly-defined position.

We will be announcing a new person for the vice chancellor of legal affairs and general counsel. This is the only vice chancellor position that has a bifurcation of responsibility, in part to represent the Board in its role as general counsel and to be part of the chancellery as the vice chancellor for legal affairs. We will also be announcing an interim president for Queens College. This person is in place, but I am not at liberty to say who it is until I’ve discussed it with the Board. Certainly the leadership of the Board knows of the recommendation, and we will move forward with that. We have set up the committee for a permanent president for City College. The committee is chaired by Trustee Randy Mastro. I’ve engaged the services of Heidrick and Struggles. In fact, we have their most prominent partner, Bill Bowen, who is probably the dean, if you will, of Executive Search. He has been in this business for a long time. He is being assisted by Charlie Knapp, the former President of the University of Virginia. We must get an exciting man or woman of great integrity, intellect, and energy to lead that important institution. We are a little further ahead with the Hunter College search. I’ve engaged the services of Korn/Ferry International. The partner is John Kuhnle, also a man of great experience. Both of those searches will move ahead this summer.

Our expectation is to have these appointments announced, if not in place, by January. I don’t see the wisdom of allowing this to go on and on. We really need to get permanent leadership in those two important institutions. We will commence the search for the Queens College president very early in the Fall semester. It will be the first order of business to appoint a chair and a committee.

The last thing I will say is that we are moving forcefully with a performance-based compensation model. It is attached to the Executive Compensation Plan that was approved by the Board in February. When I came forward with this, I indicated that it didn’t make sense to have just an Executive Compensation Plan without campus targets tied to overall University goals. These goals would be aligned with the Master Plan. That’s not a policy item, but it’s an implementation item, consistent with the policy of the Executive Compensation Plan.

I mentioned earlier today at the Faculty, Staff, and Administration meeting that there is a lot of interest in the press. We are very much ahead of any university system that has taken on this initiative. People are going to watch very carefully how this unfolds. Obviously the thing that we are concerned about is the language in this budget. We want to start allocating the budget much earlier than in previous years.

"When do you anticipate a permanent appointment at Queens? Do you anticipate a whole year?" / Chancellor Goldstein – As quickly as possible. Typically in this University it takes a year. That to me is much too long. If you have somebody who is a sitting president, or sitting vice president for academic affairs, it is difficult for them to leave in mid-semester. But we will try to get it done as quickly as we can. We would do it now, but it really is a capacity problem. Think about what was done this year: four presidents were appointed, four vice chancellor positions, and two interim presidents. That is just taking a toll on the executive office, just physically to deal with all of it. We will get it done very early in the Fall. It is conceivable that this appointment could be made by February or March at the latest.

Professor Greenbaum (History, Queensborough Community College) – "If my memory serves me, you sent out a notice about hearings on a common core." / Chancellor Goldstein – On a common core. I haven’t. Maybe you are talking about the Master Plan.

Chancellor Goldstein – I’ve heard that; I find it hard to understand. I think this is largely derived from when I arrived as Chancellor -- and the by-laws were changed to have presidents report to the Chancellor. I think it is an appropriate thing to do. And quite frankly, I would have never taken this job without that particular provision in place. My view is very simple. I want to give each of the presidents in this University as much autonomy as possible in order to run the University. I want them to act truly as chief executive officers of their institutions and to be responsible for their institutions.

Probably the best example of this is the Executive Compensation Plan. The Presidents will set the salaries for members of the executive branch of the campuses. If you are given authority, you have to be willing to take the responsibility. The other thing that you mentioned is the flagship environment. To me, this is the latest example of the integrated University. I believe that the power of this University is the degree to which campuses can work in a collaborative way. The notion of a flagship environment is about academic programs. For me, the notion of a flagship environment is to strengthen all of our institutions, not to diminish any of them at the expense of some other campus./

Professor Wallach – "Is it fair to say that nothing in the Master Plan takes away from the current prerogatives of faculty at their existing institutions to set academic policy?" / Chancellor Goldstein - I would like to answer that question. I assume it is around the core idea. I would be very happy to tell you what my view is, and has been. I think the Board is going to follow.

Professor Kahan (Political Science, Brooklyn College) – "On pages 6 and 7 of the Master Plan, core curriculum is discussed. It can be read more than one way. I was pleased to see in today’s New York Times you were characterized as not wanting to play a directive role in core curriculum. That is how I read the statement. But in this Master Plan, it says "high profile University-wide forum on liberal education, bringing the University together, yet maintaining the characteristics of each campus, etc." Can we have your assurance that in the end, the faculty responsibilities and governance vis-à-vis curriculum, will be strictly honored? There will be no attempt to shortcut that long established prerogative of the faculty?" /

Chancellor Goldstein – What I would like to see in the paragraph you are reading is a high profile discussion, if you will. I think we should have a discussion of what it means to have an environment of liberal learning in this University. I’ll give you some prejudices that I have. I think it is unconscionable that any student today can leave this University with a baccalaureate degree, without having some notion of scientific literacy. That can happen in this University today, and it’s wrong. I think it’s wrong that students are graduating with baccalaureate degrees today, and they don’t have to take a math course. These are the kind of principles that I think we ought to be discussing in the University. I would fight to make sure that the Board does not interfere by saying, Prof. Kahan, you are a political scientist, but we don’t think you know how to devise a course in comparative political systems, and we are going to tell you how to do it. The people in the political science department should be devising that. The faculty really need to do it, and nobody else. Does that answer the question? / Professor Kahan – "It’s a start."

Professor Philipp (Biology, Chemistry/Biochemistry, Graduate Center) – "We heard a report just a few minutes before you came in that enrollment CUNY-wide is going to be down approximately 10%. I don’t know if the number is correct. Transfer enrollments were down perhaps 6%. If these decreases are real, it will presumably have an impact on our funding from the State, and perhaps from the City. If it does have an impact like that, how will that be handled at the same time while you’re making the changes you want to make in the University?" /

Chancellor Goldstein – One of the problems we have is that everybody has access to numbers, and when people get up and start talking about numbers, invariably, there is a swirling of complexity. The applications are way up for our senior colleges across the board. They are up about 11-12%. The community colleges are down, not uniformly, but many of them are down, and some of them are down substantially. We have some idea why they are down. We know the Welfare To Work program took about 28,000 students who were studying at community colleges, and that number is now down to about 7,000. It is something that we have no control over. The other thing that is playing here is that we are in a full-employment economy in this City. If you read the community college literature, it is very clear that enrollment at community colleges is very much aligned with how hot an economy is. If people can find good jobs, and they can in this City, even with few skills, their options are oftentimes to exercise an employment, at the expense of going to a community college. I think that’s really what’s driving it. We really don’t have a problem at the senior colleges. The senior colleges, at least in terms of admissions for first time freshmen are way up. We are hoping that that will be sustainable in terms of students enrolling. /

Professor Philipp – "So if I am understanding you correctly, you are saying that actual admissions are up?" / Chancellor Goldstein – Admissions are way up at the senior colleges. It is at the community colleges that they are way down. / Professor Philipp – "Transfer admissions as well?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I don’t know exactly what the situation with transfers is; they are at a different cycle. We get an awful lot of transfer students in the January-February semester. I can find that out. I honestly don’t know the answer. The thing that we typically look at are first-time freshmen. What I would say is I don’t think, at least at the senior colleges, we have a problem in attracting students.

Our real problem at this University is retention. We have a very serious retention problem. One of the things that I insisted on at the next Board meeting is a policy statement about retention. We are going to allocate budgets accordingly. We are going to hold presidents accountable for one area where we have some control, and that is providing an environment where students can make steady progress towards their degrees. We should have a covenant that we strike with a student: if you are admitted to study at City College, and you want to get a degree in, e.g., economics or psychology, we have to ensure that there are an adequate number of courses given, so that students are not compromised. Opportunities have to be made available for a student elsewhere in the system and that has to be guaranteed. By the way, that is the power of the integrated University. I think it is morally imperative that we do it. We are losing students. I met with the Math Discipline Council several weeks ago, and the representative from Hunter College told me something that absolutely surprised me. She said that there is a sophomore level course, that many students want to take in order to get into more advanced courses in sociology, economics, and psychology, and that course is just not available in the kind of numbers that those students need to make adequate progress. They are losing students because of that, and that’s wrong.

We have an ability to fix this. We don’t have an ability to provide money for students who run into economic difficulty. We don’t have a way to provide a commodious environment for every student. We are too big, we are too complex, and we are not well-funded. But we can do something about this. When people talk about enrollment, our enrollment problem is our retention problem. That is really the underbelly. We’ve never got our hands around it, and we must.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – "I think there is a tension, and I don’t think we are going to be able to have it both ways, if we are going to have the power of an integrated University. It is a top down model. The model that we are used to is that curricula decisions, admissions decisions, retention decisions, as prescribed by the Board of Trustees by-laws, come from the faculty governance bodies of the individual campuses. The Master Plan, on pages 11 and 32, does call for highly selective colleges. They call for more than a flagship environment; they call for highly selective colleges. The Master Plan calls for the ACT Compass test. The Board is supposed to provide broad guidelines, and the campuses are supposed to be formulating specific policies. The ACT Compass is not a broad guideline. Will City College have the right to not use the ACT Compass, or any of these exams that have been handed down on us, whose sole purpose, as I see it, is to keep students of color out, and build up the prison industry. Do we have a choice in this matter? Are we formulating our policies on our campuses? Now we are having core curricula imposed on us from the top. Everything is coming down. We have no choices in these matters, yet this is our tradition. In all respect, CUNY did not establish the greatness of City College, Hunter, Brooklyn, and these colleges. That did not come from on high. This came from the faculty developing our curricula on our local campuses. This tension is real. I think we have to fight you on this because you are just recommending and going along with all of these decisions coming down from the Trustees. They are going to ruin this University." / Chancellor Goldstein – I don't really see a lot of the things that you are alluding to as top down kinds of things. In the Master Plan, yes, we talk about highly selective colleges. We have that today. It is not something in the future. Baruch and Queens, within the genre of what we do here at City University, are very highly selective relative to some of our other campuses. That is the way it is. I don’t think that is wrong. I don’t think it diminishes one campus as opposed to another. That is something that the faculty has recommended. When I was at Baruch the faculty came forward with much higher admissions standards. I challenged the faculty; they are the ones who devised it. The same thing has happened at other campuses as well. I don’t think these are top down. What leadership at a Board level, and at a Chancellor level, has to do is to challenge. I would like publicly to say that you and I, if you would like to, ought to sit down some time. / Professor Crain – "These discussions should be in public. I refuse to have a private conversation." / Chancellor Goldstein – Either you have a question or not. You can come up and give a speech and that’s fine. If you really want to have a discussion, I am willing to do it with you. If you would like to ask a question, I’m fine with answering it. / Professor Crain – "I ask the questions, and you give the answers. Bernie, you should let me talk as much as he talks. Why should I ask the questions, and the Chancellor gets to talk?" / Chair Sohmer – Because we have one Chancellor and many professors. / Professor Crain – "And professors are relegated to role of asking the questions, and we receive the answers. That’s not right, Bernie. We should have a legitimate discussion. We don’t have that many people here; we can have a dialogue at this forum." / Chair Sohmer – But who is the "we"? / Professor Crain – "The faculty and the Chancellor. Why should the faculty be relegated to the submissive position of asking the question and receiving the answer?" / Chair Sohmer – That’s the format we’ve been using for years. / Professor Crain – "Well, break the format. Do something innovative." / Chair Sohmer – We may in the future, but not at this moment. Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate Center) – "Bill, I’m sorry. Let me say for the Senate: We adopted this some considerable years ago as the format for having the Chancellor as our guest. We can discuss as a Senate, but this is the format. Bernie is administering the format, as we have had it over 20 years." / Professor Crain – "A lot of bodies have been developing new formats." / Chair Sohmer – We will discuss that sometime in the future. / Professor Baumrin – "It is a procedural point; we will certainly discuss that. It is within the Chair’s prerogative to enforce the rules as they stand."

Professor Vozick (Science, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – "I share a lot of the concerns that Bill is struggling to express. I think that they reflect concerns of students who don’t get access to this dialogue, and communities that rely on CUNY, and objectively are not being served as well as they might. I welcome the chance to talk to you. I hear your robust presentations on behalf of your perspective, but I also witness a steadily shrinking University. Not much candid admission of it, or open efforts to reverse it, but instead a structure that seems to want to have it happen without admitting it. I’m going to go back to one question. I’d like this to be civil, but it is very difficult, because the actual consequences are not civil. You mentioned that admissions were high in the senior colleges, but we were having a problem in the community colleges, and that retention is the key issue." /

Chancellor Goldstein – That’s not what I said. The question was, in the Master Plan… / Professor Vozick – "I’m referring to the question before Bill. I’m just trying to maintain the continuity of the thought. As I understand the procedure, there are first applications of students, then allocations by the admissions office, then testing, then acceptance by the college, and then enrollment, if the student in fact chooses to come in. Most students have not been admitted at this point; we are operating on projections at this point, what we expect. As a community college faculty member, I’m concerned about colleges. The fact that community college projections are seriously down is not minor; it is a really serious matter. I guess I’m going to make my question a softball question." / Chancellor Goldstein – I prefer a hardball question. / Professor Vozick – "I know, that’s why I’m going to give you a softball question. That is, do you think, as an institution, including yourself, we are doing our best job of presenting CUNY as an attractive alternative for people who might be considering coming to college? I know I’ve seen you do a few things in the media. We have the faculty around this institution, we have an impacted, inflicted University. The editorial in New York Times makes it difficult to do this. But do you think that we are taking the kind of initiatives that we could take to make CUNY a really attractive option, so that we could in fact reverse this end of a shrinking University." / Chancellor Goldstein – I think it is a great question. And the answer is "no." We’ve never really done it at all. I don’t want to take any credit for this. But I keep talking about changing the conversation about CUNY. At any time that I have the opportunity, at any public forum, I’m out there talking about the depth of our faculty, the quality of the work that goes on in our classrooms, the inspired students that we see everyday, our libraries, our computer facilities, where students go after CUNY. We’ve never really done this in this University. We’ve had this field of dreams, one day you get up in the morning, you put the key in the door, you open the door, and you wait for the students to come in. We can’t do that anymore. Students have options today that they may not have had before. They are exercising those options. Certainly, all of the attacks on this University and the paucity of dollars have not made this an attractive place for a lot of students. Especially for those who have options. When you ask, are we doing enough…we are not doing nearly enough. It requires everybody in this room. It requires the Chancellor, the Board, all constituencies of this University and outside, to do what we can to maximize the likelihood that students will look at this University as an option and say, "I want to exercise that option." We have a lot to do. / Professor Vozick – "My last question is going to seem like it is unrelated, but it is not. I represent the part-time contingent faculty from BMCC and York. We have some representation. We are almost a silent voice; it is extremely hard to get recognition. Have you ever considered the Chancellery developing some kind of significant interface with your large contingent faculty, which are very invisible, yet doing a major part of the work that would in fact make CUNY more attractive." / Chancellor Goldstein – I would welcome it. If you have an idea how we can do that, I would welcome the opportunity. I don’t have an opportunity to address part-time faculty, because they are not organized in the way that our full-time faculty are. But they are certainly a valued cohort of our teaching power. Certainly, I’d be happy to do it. If you have an idea, drop me a note, and I will follow through with it. / Professor Vozick – "We should do that." / Chancellor Goldstein – O.K. Great.

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – "My question is about the Executive Compensation Plan, which was distributed at the FSA Committee today. Actually, when you came in, Al Levine was leading a discussion on the ISM. But we hadn’t gotten to this. So other people haven’t seen it. I’m interested in the sheet about system targets, which has evidently now been filled in. My question is, is this policy now? Are these going to be the targets for 2000-2001? And, what was the procedure for arriving at the numbers? I noticed very specific transfer rates (19.5); why is it not (19.0)?" / Chancellor Goldstein – All of those numbers are derived from the Master Plan. You have to look in the Master Plan. Let me just step back one second to set the context of what it is that you are reading. When I came forward with the Executive Compensation Plan, I said that I would not recommend this unless we had a performance-based system for making those decisions. Once you have a performance-based system, there is a likelihood that when it is implemented, there are people who will get no raises. And there are people who will get larger raises. There is a range. The question is, how do you make a distinction? I’m a president of Queens College. I’m allocated by the Chancellery X dollars to distribute to the Vice Presidents, the Deans, the Associate Deans, and others who are in the Executive Compensation Plan. If this is truly performance based, how are you going to make the judgments about a pie that is allocated; who gets what? What used to happen was, everybody got the same thing, 2.8%, 3.4%; it was easy. There was nothing really to do. I think that our presidents and their executives have to be held accountable for their actions -- first and foremost the president. The chart that you are reading addresses University goals on academic quality. Dr. Beaky, if you could read the first column, what are the three that go down? / Professor Beaky – "Academic Quality, Improve Student Success, Enhance Financial, and Management Effectiveness." / Chancellor Goldstein – Within each of those there are some objectives and indicators, then there are targets. The targets that are associated with that are derived from the Master Plan. The first has to deal with flagship programs. What else is listed there? / Professor Beaky – "Enhance and update programs, increase instruction by full-time faculty, increase retention, improve post-graduate outcomes, enrollment…"/ Chancellor Goldstein – All of these are directly derived from the Master Plan. Where there are quantitative areas, they are derived from the Master Plan, where we have a four-year sunset. That is where those numbers come from. Let me tell you how the system works now. I think this is important for all of you to know. Starting in July, I will meet with each of the presidents, one on one. The University has overall objectives in those broad areas. And each individual campus, because of the uniqueness of the campuses, has certain components that are under that particular umbrella. There will be a dialogue between the administration of the campus and the Chancellery. We will agree on certain kinds of objectives and goals to be established at that campus over the year. Then, 11-12 months later, we will have an interview with the campus to see where they are with those objectives. Based upon where they are with those objectives – this will inform what we do if there are dollars to be allocated to the University for executives. That’s the way the system works. / Professor Beaky – "So the numbers under the University targets are keyed to the charts at the end?" / Chancellor Goldstein – Everything is integrated here with the Master Plan. If you look at the back of the Master Plan, there are a series of tables. You will see that those derive from those tables. / Professor Beaky – "I guess my question then is, where did those numbers come from? How were they developed?" / Chancellor Goldstein – Take retention, for example. We started with a baseline of where we are today at each of our campuses. We said that there ought to be greater retention, year to year. They are very modest increases from year to year. This is to get the culture of the system changed, to move the system in the way that I think all of us want. I think we all want our students to graduate at higher rates. We want our students to be retained with greater frequency. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but they are very modest, small, incremental steps, moving in the right direction. / Professor Beaky – "So you see them as estimates, projections, hopes." / Chancellor Goldstein – They are really hopes. I can’t magically say that in the year 2003, we are going to go from a retention X to a retention of Y. But we all want to move in a direction, and we’re just gradually pushing it. I think there is no reason why the campuses shouldn’t be able to achieve those. They are very reasonable. We will try to change the culture of how people manage their campuses.

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) – "I need a clarification. Right before you came in, Bernie gave some figures, and they were very different from your figures. This has to do with admissions and also applications. I think the difference was that Bernie was giving application figures. And Bernie was saying that applications are down. And I think he gave the figure 10-15% at the senior colleges, and not so much at the community colleges. I think you’re talking about admissions. You are saying the admissions are up in the senior colleges and down at the community colleges. First of all, it is a little early at the community colleges to be talking about admissions." / Chancellor Goldstein – That’s right. That’s why I’m not as concerned about the community colleges at this point. / Professor O’Malley – "Is there any clarification in terms of this?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I’m not sure what Bernie is reading from. But applications are up as well as admissions in the senior colleges. / Professor O’Malley – "So you have very different figures."/ Chancellor Goldstein – Remember, when we say admissions, we have to be very careful. Admission means that the student has satisfied the criteria for admissions; there is still a diagnostic test that needs to be taken. They are placed in some suspended state, until they satisfy the diagnostic test. That diagnostic test has been given this spring. Unfortunately I don’t have the data with me. But it looks very promising for the senior colleges. I will tell you one thing. I just saw data this morning that is very encouraging to me. It has to do with Prelude to Success. At Hunter College, about 92% of the students (of about 64 students) have passed the diagnostic test. They are going to get into Hunter College as regular matriculated students, with no loss in credits or access to their degree. By the time the remaining 7-8% go through the summer immersion program, we expect 98-99% of those students to pass. That indicates to me that the faculty who have come together at BMCC and Hunter College and designed this cohort program, have designed a very successful program. I am not as concerned about the senior colleges. There were allegations that there were going to be huge numbers of students who weren’t going to be admitted to the senior colleges, that there was going to be a great effect on race and ethnicity. The data are just not showing that at all. We are going to look at this much more carefully. / Professor O’Malley –"Bernie, you don’t want to say anything in terms of your figures and his figures. I just don’t get it." / Chair Sohmer – The difficulty is that what I was looking at were projections which were extrapolated from the previous years of both shows and success rates on the examinations. / Chancellor Goldstein – That’s going to be difficult to do, because the environment has changed. That kind of modeling is going to be difficult. We will have very definitive data by the time we convene in September. We will see where the students are. Our early indications, given that the students coming into the senior colleges are better prepared, are they are doing much better on this diagnostic test. With Prelude to Success and the Summer Immersion Program, a dominant number of students are going to get into the baccalaureate program with little or no loss towards their degree.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) – "I, like Susan, am confused about these figures on projections for next year’s enrollment. Let us assume that there is a possibility that in the next two or three years we do suffer a precipitous decline. For example, looking at the Master Plan and the charts in the back, you expect SAT scores to go up 30 points between 2000-2004. You expect high school averages of entering students to go up 1.5, from 84.8 to 86.3. At the same time you expect enrollment to go up 5,000. What plans do you have if this doesn’t happen and we suffer precipitously?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I don’t think we are going to decline precipitously. What you need to look at is the pool. The pool is growing dramatically of the cohorts that are going to be coming into university life. I think these numbers are very conservative. There are larger and larger numbers of students in the high schools. I want to make sure we keep them once they are here. If you look at the inflow and outflow of students at this University, it is appalling. It is appalling to see how many students leave this University in good academic standing. It is not that they are failing necessarily. They could leave in good academic standing because they are running into financial difficulty. That’s sad, and I wish that we had some way of dealing with that. Unfortunately we don’t. We are losing students for reasons that I think we have some control over. That’s what I think we ought to be reflecting on. / Professor Gallagher – "I quite agree with that. I suspected that you were going to get to the point of retention. I think there are two qualifications. Certainly it would not hurt to raise all sorts of new efforts to retain students. I think that we also have to consider, given our student body, students who leave are not necessarily failures at all times. There should be some way of measuring that. Students who come for a year or two and cannot continue for financial or familial reasons should somehow be factored into that. I know that at my branch, about 40% of the students who drop out, drop out with a passing average." / Chancellor Goldstein – I agree with that. That’s why I’ve always taken great issue when people say that graduation rates are very low at the community colleges. I always thought that that was a red herring. I never thought that there was great substance behind that argument. At our community colleges, there are students who step in or step out. That is not a reflection of their readiness or their success. They go with the intention of taking some courses, or they may go with the intention of transferring. And we count them as a "0" in the 0 and 1 columns. I agree with you. I am talking about something very different. I am talking about a student who comes to the University, who wants to study at Hunter College. The student leaves Hunter College, because Hunter College is not giving them the thing that they had hoped to get at Hunter. We have to get at that issue and remedy it. Part of it is trying to deal with the frustration that students have in just getting a registration grid filled out, with courses that they need to make adequate progress toward their degree. That’s not an easy thing to do, but it is something that is solvable. / Professor Gallagher – "Let me give you a suggestion along those lines. Seven or eight years ago, I invented a program at LaGuardia that significantly increased the retention of basic skills students. No one at 80^th Street has ever said a word to me about this. I think if you want to improve retention, you have to go back and start with the faculty, rather than creating a top down program." / Chancellor Goldstein – There is no top down. I am challenging you to say, "we have a retention problem, let’s fix it, let’s find a way to do it."

Professor Bell (Educational Services, Brooklyn College) – "I want to go back to the issue of core curricula again. Coming from Brooklyn College, I walked into Brooklyn College 23 years ago when the core was being debated and formed. I thought the core was the worst plot for getting rid of minority and disadvantaged students that ever crossed the face of the earth. I totally flip-flopped to the other side of the argument when I saw what happened. I went through the process and saw how the core helped our students. I am a great supporter of the Brooklyn College core. But I also lived through the process where we developed the goals and talked about the principles. It came from the faculty. Even Provost Emerita Wolfe, who was assigned to it, was doing it as a member of the faculty. It was before she was provost. I remember sitting there with alternate models that were sent back because the faculty wouldn’t vote for them. We went through model after model. I’m concerned about where the line is where the Board is setting principles or overarching things. Where is the faculty demarcation in developing the core? Are colleges going to be allowed to go through the same debates we went through in deciding what are the overarching principles of a liberal arts education? Then develop our own courses. Or is somebody else going to tell us what an educated liberal arts curriculum would provide for the students? And then we do it." / Chancellor Goldstein – I would say that it is the former, Martha. The primacy of the faculty must be adhered to here. If we don’t do that, we are not a University. It really has to start with the faculty. However, I think it legitimate for a board of trustees to say there are certain principles that we as a board think are important; there are certain conditions that we think are important. You pick up the paper today, you read about the human genome, galaxies, AIDS, and data around that. I think it is very important for an educated person today to have some understanding that underlies scientific literacy. It is a prejudice. But I think it is a legitimate prejudice. I would like to see our faculty across the University do something about that. I think the Brooklyn College core, if I remember, was developed under Bob Hess’ presidency. But it was the early 1980’s? There is nothing wrong with taking a look again. It may happen at Brooklyn. Maybe the faculty are constantly looking at it and refining it, changing it, and augmenting it. I just want to go on record here. I feel very strongly about this. It is the legitimacy of the faculty here in setting curricula that I think is the inviolate principle that we can’t play with. / Professor Bell – "I think that Brooklyn has always been clear that curriculum and core curriculum is always a work in progress. We are constantly looking at our curriculum. I’ve been thinking about this issue very carefully. Where is the differentiation between a general principle and a dictate on curriculum. I wish that you would not answer me now, but in fact think about what that differentiation is, and help define that for us." / Chancellor Goldstein – Martha, it is a difficult question to answer. It is that delicate balance between what I believe are the true prerogatives of the faculty, but at the same time the legitimacy of a board to be heard. I think it is possible, if we approach this in a systematic way. I think we can get this done in a way that will help our students.

Professor Hollander (English, Hunter College) – "Several years ago when I was still a student here, I ran into Ann Reynolds at a demonstration. I offered her some advice that some students were anxious to get to her. Her response was, "speak to your elected representative through the University Student Senate." I’m wondering if you would promise to us here and now, to give a similar response to independent faculty groups that approach you, rather than to sit down and consult with them. I’m thinking of, for example, the CUNY Association of Scholars. Rather than to consult with them, to send them, to direct them to the University Faculty Senate."

Chancellor Goldstein – Let me speak to what I think undergirds your question or your concern. Any president that is worth their salt, really has to consult with the people who will inform a decision. When I was at Baruch, I wanted to do a curriculum in the Mathematics of Finance. I didn’t talk to the faculty who were teaching history at Baruch College. I like them very much, and we had a wonderful relationship, but I talked to our mathematics faculty, and I talked to our finance faculty. I talked with them independently and jointly. They came forward with a very good program. This is where you have to get the information. Ultimately all of this is advisory." / Professor Hollander – "Are you saying then that the CUNY Association Scholars is your core curriculum faculty?" / Chancellor Goldstein – No, I’m not saying that at all. I don’t know what you are referring to. What I’m saying is, when you need to have specific information about designing a course, you go to the people who know about that course. If I were designing a core curriculum, and I knew that the core was going to have a battery of 8-10 courses, and they were going to be discipline specific, I would want to talk to the faculty who were going to be designing each of those courses that will inform that decision. / Professor Hollander – "And where would you go to look for that faculty?" / Chancellor Goldstein – Well, if I were on a campus, I would go to my individual faculties to do that. / Professor Hollander – "But if you’re the Chancellor, would you go to any faculty member who approached you, or would you want to go to the University Faculty Senate?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I would leave it to each of the campuses. I’m not going to dictate it. / Professor Hollander – "I wasn’t thinking of you putting your hand into campus affairs, since you have expressed yourself as not interested in the top down approach. I’m thinking of general policy matters, on which individual faculty members have approached you. They specifically undermine…" / Chancellor Goldstein – They are not going to be approaching me, Rob. I’m not going to be setting the curriculum. It is going to be set at a campus where it should be set --whoever those faculties are who inform, whether it is the faculty senate, the faculty assembly, a faculty of chairs, etc. Every campus is organized in a different way. However that is organized, I would expect that the best and most informed set of ideas would come through the appropriate faculty bodies. I’m not going to be involved in it. / Professor Hollander – "In other words, you would not consult, then, with the CUNY Association of Scholars on such issues." / Chancellor Goldstein – Rob, you would be a very bad lawyer. Always know an answer to a question before you ask it.

Professor Barnhart (History/Philosophy/Political Science, Kingsborough Community College) – "My question comprises two parts. I’m a member of the Community College Caucus. We were talking about the Master Plan this evening. I have only read to about page 80, so I may have missed something. One thing that concerned us was the issue of the flagship environment. There are two aspects to that. One is, the institutions that will be leading in that kind of an environment seem to be senior colleges. That’s OK. One of the things that also seems to be in the document is that a lot of the hiring that is going to go on of new full-time lines, is going to be dictated by the needs of the flagship environment, including the cluster hiring, and so on. Our fear is that we are nowhere near a 70:30 full-time/part-time ratio, and this is not going to be solved really with this flagship approach, certainly not at the community college level. We are feeling we might be left out, and the big problem, which we think has to do with some of the problems with standards, students not doing so well, and the culture of CUNY, isn’t going to be addressed by this kind of strategy." / Chancellor Goldstein – Good question. Let me answer it in a way that I think will be helpful. I am the architect of the notion of the flagship environment. I have always believed, again, the strength of this institution is not our individual campuses, but our individual campuses working with one another in appropriate ways -- not dictated top down. The only way I know that you can start building strong institutions, and the way the great strength of the institutions in the United States were built, were about departments, programs, divisions, and so forth. That’s what I really want to do. That’s going to be spread across the entire University. Yes, the way you do that, short of having an enormous influx of resources, is seriatim, through a series of programs. We started this year with teacher education and we started with languages and computer science. We’re going to work through those kinds of disciplines that will strengthen the reputation of the University. They are not going to be on one campus -- there should be campuses that take the lead. One doesn’t compromise the other. The only way you can do that is through cluster hiring, but that can’t be the dominant way of allocating faculty lines. Our problem here in this University is full-time faculty across the University. The dominant number of lines has to be in a very different way from cluster hiring. But cluster hiring has to be part of it, if you have any intention of building up distinguished programs in the University. The second thing that I would say is that everybody here has to be vigilant, in the way that I talk to the Legislators, the Governor, and the Mayor: you gave us dollars for faculty hiring, but not nearly enough. There has to be a commitment in principle, that this is a long-term problem. That it is not going to take a year or two. It will take 5, 7, 10 years to bring this University back to a level of full-time faculty that is respectable. The question is, how do you do both at the same time? Again, it is that delicate balance of knowing that you have to build distinguished programs. You need to do the full-time faculty ranks at the same time. It’s not easy, and we are trying to do it in an intelligent way.

Professor Levine (Engineering Science & Physics, College of Staten Island) – "Actually my question follows up on this. I have two questions that are related. First of all, in an earlier plenary, you informed us that we would have 61 new faculty authorized in this year’s budget for us to search for. You promised us a list of the allocations. I know that various campuses, including mine, have received allocations of lines, out of this 61. I haven’t seen this list. Has this list been made available to the Executive Committee?/ Chancellor Goldstein - Quite frankly, I don’t know where those lines were allocated, but I’m sure Vice Chancellor Mirrer has it. I would be happy to get it from her and forward it. There are no secrets here. Did you ask me for it? Al, if I didn’t get it for you, I apologize. I don’t know where the lines were allocated. This was the $1.8 million that was put in, and then not funded. Those were allocated. / Professor Levine – "I think we all would have preferred 661, but let’s rejoice over 61. The follow-up question deals with next year’s allocation. In your budget request, you put in, correctly for the senior colleges, $4 million in new faculty lines under the flagship environment, and $3.75 million under the category of "improving undergraduate instruction." This meant roughly equal balance of lines because the flagship lines will probably cost a little more. In next year’s budget, where we asked for $4 million and $3.75 million, the State gave us $1.8 million." / Chancellor Goldstein – That was last year. It was allocated this year. / Professor Levine – "Additional, new money was $1.8 million." / Chancellor Goldstein – You’re right, and then it wasn’t funded. / Professor Levine – "That $1.8 million was never funded? It was taken out of the budget. / Chancellor Goldstein – I can get this to you. The $1.8 million never found its way into our budget. We allocated those positions for the current year that is about to end. / Professor Levine – "For the next year, that $1.88 million is there, plus an additional $1.8 million." / Chancellor Goldstein – Yes, plus an additional $2.7 million total. We are going to have this year easily twice the opportunity we had last year. / Professor Levine – "Is the intention to roughly fund it so that again, we have a parity between flagship lines, and improving undergraduate instruction lines?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I can’t give you the allocation break, the bifurcation. I will say, we have to have considerably more positions generally throughout the University with the money that we have been allocated, rather than the cluster positions. There will be a group of cluster positions. I don’t know what the areas are going to be yet. They will be in numbers of positions, smaller in number, but considerably smaller than the number of regular positions.

Professor Greenbaum (History, Queensborough Community College) – "One of the things the faculty is looking for is assurances that what happened at SUNY doesn’t happen here. The faculty went through a great deal. They had the NAS version of their concept of what curricula were like, and it was imposed on them. I would personally like to see science in every core curriculum. I would personally love to see American History, World Civilization, and Western Civilization. I would personally like to see philosophy and a number of other things. But if these are not present in a core curriculum coming out of a college, will that core curricula still be accepted? That’s what I think we’re concerned about." / Chancellor Goldstein – Fred, I’m going to go back to what I said before. We’re going to have a discussion in an honest and open way in the University. I can’t tell you what the structure is going to be. But I would be interested in participating and listening, because I would like to hear what’s on the minds of some of our campus faculty. There are students graduating, I don’t want to say from which campuses, who do not take any science, or any math. There may be some other disciplines missing as well; I’m just not familiar with them. People usually call me about the science and math. They are largely faculty at the campuses who are calling me. I don’t think we are doing a service for our students to allow that to continue. Those are the kinds of things that I am interested in: basic principles, some conditions, driven by the faculty. I’m not going to be involved in telling or trying to dictate to the faculty how to do their job. Again, it is the primacy for you as a member in good standing at Queensborough to decide what you think is best to be in a course. And that’s the way I think it should be. I don’t know how SUNY did this. I do think there is a legitimacy for people who are not faculty to say things that they think have value, and will improve the pedagogical life and learning of our students. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. / Professor Greenbaum – "What bothers me is that, in the name of putting certain principles in place, rather than curriculum in place, it will end up driving curriculum." / Chancellor Goldstein – I really don’t want that to happen, and I will fight against that happening. I think I’ve said it a half dozen times, and I can’t say it more clearly.

*The Chancellor was thanked for appearing.*

Continuation of Professor Levine’s Report:

Prof. Anne Friedman (Developmental Skills, BMCC) – "We just got this today at 3:00 pm at the Board Committee on Faculty, Staff, and Administration. There is a chart and the title is "City University of New York University Performance Goals and Targets 2000-20001." As Lenore read before, under the goals column, there are three main areas, "Raise Academic Quality," "Improve Student Success," and "Enhance Management and Financial Systems." Then going across on "Raise Academic Quality" there are three objectives, then there are three indicators, and three university targets to go along with that. Under "Raise Academic Quality," #1 is "Promote flagship programs and environments." The indicators would be number of faculty hired, recognition and validation from external sources, and research awards and publications. So I guess those would be the measures. Then I think, from his answer to Lenore’s question, what is in this last column that says, "2000-2001 University Targets," is what he suggested came out of the Master Plan. So for flagship environment, nationally prominent faculty will be recruited to flagship programs. CUNY’s most prominent programs will receive heightened recognition. Faculty research awards and scholarship will increase. The way I’m interpreting this, if this happens at your college, your president is going to get a raise. But also, I think more money in the budget.

Chair Sohmer – This is going to be smudged with very unclear boundaries.

Prof. Anne Friedman - "Under "Raise Academic Quality," #2 is "Enhance and Update Programs and Pedagogy and use of Instructional Technology." Those are the objectives. Indicators are, programs reviewed, accreditation, outcomes, use of technology and instruction. I don’t know if I’m reading that right. Each college will review at least 10% of registered academic programs, targeting low performing programs, and implement appropriate action. Right, close programs. It doesn’t say that exactly."

Chair Sohmer – The review would be of a fraction of the programs on each campus.

Prof. Anne Friedman – "It also says, each college will conduct faculty development and use of technology to enhance instruction, and will maintain data on this effort. Then it says, ‘increase instruction by full-time faculty. That is the third objective. The indicators would be, the number of sections taught by full-time faculty, the percentage of sections taught by full-time faculty will increase. My interpretation of that is, less reassigned time, is one thing for sure. Next is, improve student success. Objectives are, increase retention and graduation rates. The indicators are retention rates and graduation rates for first-time freshmen and transfers. The University target: Freshman retention rates will rise by an average of 2%. Sophomore and Junior retention rates will increase by an average of 1%, six-year graduation rates will increase by an average of 2%."

Chair Sohmer – I think we would probably be better served to put this in the Minutes for everybody. /

Prof. Lenore Beaky – "If I could just make two points. This doesn’t only concern presidents. The way presidential salaries are different from all of the other ECP salaries is that the presidential salaries are tiered. But this includes every person on the ECP, all the administrators. What Al said about outcomes assessment, is exactly how this is going to feed into what happens in a college. At LaGuardia we are instituting an outcomes assessment plan. All of this is now very familiar to me, all the charts, the rubrics, and the numbers. That’s what Middle States is asking for, for all colleges that come under reaccredidation. This kind of thing, you will increase your graduation rates by X number, is what we are all going to be asked to do eventually."

Prof. Anne Friedman - "I just wanted to let you know an interesting thing that the Chancellor said today. It’s that they have already given raises to the presidents and the vice chancellors for next year 2000-2001. He said, even though these performance indicators are not yet in place already, they made some determination, and they are giving the raises anyway. He wasn’t any more specific. So I asked him if he could tell us what those raises are. Presidents now across the board make $136,000; what are they going to get now? He wouldn’t answer that. He said that, as soon as it is approved by the Board in June, it will become public information. That will be very interesting to see. The other piece of it was, I asked where the money is coming from. Because that was one of the major concerns that I had raised back in the fall when this whole thing went through. One was the tiering of the salaries, but the other was where the money is coming from. To my knowledge, I don’t think there is money in the budget for 2000-2001, specifically devoted to those raises. His answer was, "the money comes from where it always comes from, the budget." Maybe when we go into contract negotiations...." / Chair Sohmer – You are not going to get contract negotiations for provosts. /

Unidentified speaker – "My understanding is that the June Chancellor’s Report and University Report will show the salary increases for each president. Also, what the Chancellor is talking about, regarding each president having to evaluate the people in the Executive Compensation Plan at his or her campus, is that each president has been given an amount of money. They have been given a lump sum for all the people on the Executive Compensation Plan at his or her campus. Each president has to decide whether to give $0 to each person, or what part of that lump sum to give to all of the people on the Executive Compensation Plan. They are supposed to evaluate each person. That is what he said the presidents don’t really like to do. But if they have the responsibility, they should take the authority. So some people will get $0 increases presumably, unless they divide it equally. But they are supposed to rate them. There is a form from "extreme improvement" to "lacking improvement". One of these five point scales. That will also presumably be in the Chancellor and University Reports. It will be interesting to see."

Chair Sohmer – We will try to keep everybody informed at least electronically, as to how things are going. For instance, the City Budget was passed. For some reason or another, it is quite mysterious as to how much CUNY got, except that it was clear that the day before it was passed, the Speaker of the Council had decided that CUNY was no longer important to him. The diminution for the community colleges, I think, was something like 75% of what they had promised. We don’t know what the budget is since all of the stories in all of the newspapers avoided the higher education piece quite obviously. We will try to get it onto the electronic information as fast as we can. But at this moment, it is quite a mystery. Everybody is deliberately making it a mystery.