March 24, 1998

Reports:

a. Chair: Let me start with some business announcements. The second one in terms of announcements is not just ordinary business, it is another sort of special one. As many of you know, Leslie Jacobson has been the indefatigable chair for about four years for the Committee on Academic Policy of the Senate. She is responsible for a stunning number of initiatives, panels, conferences, etc... While she is still here and not leaving immediately, Leslie has been moved to another position which will take her out of the Senate. She will be Acting Vice President for Research Development at the Research Foundation. Al Halpern is the Acting President of the Research Foundation, and Leslie is going to work there. We will have the pleasure of having Leslie: she has promised to stick it out with us through the semester and not abandon the committee for the next couple of months. So we congratulate Leslie.

The business at hand, before we get on with the agenda. The Executive Committee has concluded for a number of reasons that the wisest course of action would be to cancel the conference planned for this Friday on teacher education. There were many reasons for cancellation. For one, on our side, we had waited too long to get the publicity out and to get a keynote speaker. We had originally expected a keynote speaker who pulled out late in the game and finding a replacement took too long. And then the advertising couldn’t get out in time. Our registration was low. I think however the main reason, frankly after all of the pummeling we’ve been taking lately, our heart was really not in it. The teacher education issue was to be the central academic initiative this year of the Senate. We did certainly a reasonably good panel I think last semester on it. We will participate, some of us, in the second conference at Wave Hill on the subject that the Presidents are organizing. There have been a number of changes on several campuses in the way teachers will be educated and prepared.

One small ray of light that I can report, is that last night at the Board of Trustees meeting, the Interim Chancellor indicated that the preliminary results of the January test, the NYSTE are in, and there has been an overall 7% increase in the performance of CUNY students. So that some of our campuses are now running above the state average of the pass rate, both on the liberal arts and on the professional segment of the exam. Every campus, however, is up on the average of 7%, at least according to preliminary numbers. When we have something more rigid, final, and responsible, we will get them to you.

You will recall that Ron Marino stimulated a very interesting meeting last month, the minutes of which are distributed with this packet we have tonight. We promised to invite him back. He has agreed, but he is out of town at the moment. He said he’d come in April, but by that time we may of course have forgotten all of the issues that he was involved in and have two hundred different ones. In any case, he said he’d come back in April. It’s making me a bit nervous, because we’re suppose to have the President of the Graduate Center talk about Graduate Education, and I wouldn’t like her to be driven off of the agenda. We will tonight have the Chancellor and you can ask the questions you would like to of him when he gets here. And a discussion led by an Acting Vice Chancellor’s representative and the Deputy Chancellor at the Central Office on the CAP proposal and admissions changes that are being proposed.

While awaiting the Chancellor, I will move on to the main issues of the last few weeks. Considering the fact that this year we didn’t really have to organize that full court press for the budget that we’ve had to do for the previous 6-8 years, you might be mislead into thinking that the Senate is enjoying an early summer vacation. On the contrary, we are beginning to experience the full force of the results of the Republican victories in City Hall and Albany. Despite the fact that this is an election year for the Governor, I’m beginning to think that he really doesn’t really much care what academic responses to his policies might be. It’s no secret to any of you that for several years now, even before these elections, Herman Badillo, then a trustee and now Vice Chair of the Board, has blazed the path as the lonely herald and now with a critical mass of support of critics, people who have found nothing but ill and error and misguided policies in what CUNY has done. He has said quite publicly for many years, that from the very beginning in 1969, he opposed open admissions and thought it never should be created. What was for a while a singular voice on the Board of Trustees, is now the cutting edge of what I consider a frontal political assault and very little of an educational discussion.

Since the uproar a little over a year ago about the Hostos student performance on the CWAT, and the results of the NYSTE which were published at about the same time, Herman Badillo has led the CUNY critics on a campaign. It’s included attacks on the way in which Brooklyn College votes the Latin Honors for its graduates, grade inflation across the University, confused missions of the colleges, teacher education failures, graduation rates which are described as miserable, poor performance on the FSAT’s (Freshman Skills Assessment Test), and now of course, remediation. All of which are ways of talking about admissions policies of who should go to college. The Chair of the Board, Anne Paolucci, last year assigned Badillo to chair a committee on remediation and Nilda Soto Ruiz to chair a committee which was called the "seamless transition from high school to college."

On the Remediation Committee we are represented by Martha Bell, and on Seamless Transition by Eva Richter, and both have done heroics in an effort to stem some of the crazier remarks that have come forth in these meetings. The Chair of the Board also hired Judith Watson, an independent researcher, to prepare a report on remediation which appeared finally in February of this year. That seems to have been the inspiration for the first meeting of the Remediation Committee which never met. It listened briefly to the report at its first meeting and during that first meeting, without anyone really reading the report, I hadn’t even seen it except a half day before that meeting. Without people really digesting what was in that report, one of the members of the Board, who was not on the Committee but who was sitting in the room, proposed that all remediation be abolished in the Senior Colleges. That was John J. Calandra, Jr.

If you read Judith Watson’s report, you will come across an array of numbers and statistics that are presented in a reasonably readable fashion, that demonstrate among other things, that remediation in the United States at four year public colleges, occurs in about 78% of all instances. And for two year colleges which have largely minority enrollment, over 90% of American campuses provide remedial courses. The study of CUNY that she presented indicates a reasonable pattern of success over a longer period of time. One of her more interesting numbers shows that many students, who have gone through remedial classes, seem to graduate at a better rate than students in regular classes. While we all would prefer the numbers to be better than they are, the truth is that the students are making progress. It is slow, and we understand I think why it seems to have slowed down even further if we take a look at what has happened to financial aid in the last two years.

I will just finish the next paragraph, and then stop and introduce the Chancellor. Among other changes in the last two years has been of course the elimination of STAP (supplementary TAP for remediation), the introduction of maximum numbers of semesters of TAP, the increase in tuition, driving about 70% of our students at some point or another in their careers to go part-time and thereby extending the amount of time they need to graduate. All of this data has been assembled, it has been presented to the trustees, it has been presented to the media, to the Mayor. But last week I think that David Lavin coined a phrase that I’m going to quote as often as I can. He observed seditiously at the City Council Hearing, that these people seem to be "data proof." Every time I cite it I have to be careful about naming him because he may not wish to be labeled in public, but this is friends so I’m sure he won’t mind. The data proof issue suggests to me, the more I think about it, that we’re no longer dealing with the serious concerns of standards and education, but with a completely different agenda. That’s a subject that we should come back to.

The poor gentleman who finds himself right smack in the middle of this mess has just joined us. I won’t introduce him again, I’ve done that once before. I mean I won’t go through all of his great achievements. I wish his Guggenheims and his previous awards would make him data proof or something proof at this point, but they are not going to help. The Interim Chancellor is here.

[Continuation of Chair’s Report after Item VI] When I tried to indicate before that I was convinced that this issue was much less educational than political, I was basing it on my experience of the last few weeks. Watching the draft of this document get worse and worse and more and more internally inconsistent and conflicted. It was a document that everybody was writing a paragraph in. It was a little bit like pin the tail on the donkey. The Chancellery would send a copy to Trustees who would re-write the whole thing. Somebody here indicated the real problem. The real problem is, there is a profound split in the Trustees on the issue of whether or not remediation should continue in those senior colleges that do not have two year programs after 1999. That is the issue. That is the most basic issue. There are other issues. There are issues that have been raised here about maximizing semesters and all the rest of it. But the basic philosophical split in that Board is the issue I just mentioned.

Some of you may be aware of the fact that based on the Calandra Proposal to totally cut out all remediation in those seven senior colleges that have no two year programs. David Lavin did a simulation study, a test run, a couple of weeks ago with a graduate student, Elliot Weininger. Happily I had his results and others had his results, just on a sample of 8,000 students. Lavin concluded after doing this run, that about 5,000 would have not been admitted in September of 1997 to those senior colleges had the Calandra Proposal with no summer institutes been in place. Of that 5,000 excluded of the 8,000 admitted into the freshman year, about 70% were distributed amongst minorities and the rest amongst various white natives and new immigrants. Lavin’s recommendation, observation, or deduction, was that this was a potential social disaster.

Some of us succeed in getting this information across to the editorial board to the New York Times. Some of you may have noticed that. I consider that a piece of good luck because shortly before, when I started to cite these statistics, the Daily News in its infinite wisdom decided to call me Sandi Cooper Faculty Whiner in Chief. They indicated, as have some Trustees, that the faculty opposition of which about 45 voices spoke a week ago, is only motivated by self interest and the determination to keep their jobs. One of the complaints that has been made to me to ignore the protest that was generated a week ago in the public hearing of the Board, was that there weren’t enough student speakers. I suspect that from tomorrow, which is when a meeting of remediation will occur, through April 6th when the next Long Range Planning Committee will occur, the people who were here today plus Louise Mirrer will find themselves writing and re-writing drafts which will probably float past us like moving targets. At some point three-quarters of the way through April, a document will appear. It may well be worse than the one that did not get voted yesterday. The document that will appear will be placed on the Board Calendar for April and you will have an opportunity to attend the public hearing which is going to be Monday April 20th.

In the interim, what is necessary, if you disagree with the premises of these documents, is the mobilization of pressure. Not merely faculty. Most of the Senates already have sent me some kind of resolution. If yours hasn’t you might want to consider that. The students at this point have come out in opposition to yesterday’s proposal. I suspect the Student Senate at least will oppose anything drastic in the way of cutting off remediation. The pressure that has yet to be felt in anything like significant numbers has to come from outside. We’ve begun to see a little of it. This is only of course if you assume that these proposals are ill advised. We have begun to receive communications from the City Corps, from various churches, yesterday the Urban League. The President of the Urban League and I appeared on NY1 together. He spoke very energetically the other day in the City Council. We can be very grateful for the fact that Peter Vallone created in the nick of time a City Council Committee on Higher Education which is filled with supporters. The Chair of that committee, Helen Marshall, has been very energized and very active, participating with people in the caucuses in Albany in an effort to block the implementation of the program the other day.

It is not simply however in my view enough to react by saying everything is ill advised. My guess is that there will be some changes. My hope was that whatever changes take place, particularly if they mobilize resources for intensive immersion programs of various kinds, that these proposals are run by faculty. We have some models for that. In the summers for example where Intensive Skills Programs exist, they are run on campuses by faculty, but it has been pointed out that they are reasonably small and manageable. They are often funded from Freshman Skills money. We need to be very careful about how these things might be extended. But I think on balance, just a personal opinion, is that’s probably a whole lot better than multiplying Continuing Education and out-sourcing. It would help for example, if faculty who have experience in running such programs would perhaps create a model structure for how one might be generalized in other institutions.

It has been mentioned here that the implications of CAP are very serious for the transfer of students from the two to the four year colleges. An issue which has just begun to receive some attention, I’m happy to say. I’ve been trying to figure out the long term implications of this move, and I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist to see what will happen. If yours happens to be a campus which is going to have to give up remediation, or perhaps include it as the current CAP proposal says in what can be reasonably accomplished in less than one semester, I don’t know how you manage that. In any case, if that’s what happens to you and your enrollment goes down 40%-50%, which is likely to happen in a few of our senior colleges that do not have two year programs, it is not a fantasy to realize what will happen next. What will happen next will be a study of the space usage on your campus to see how many empty classrooms there are and whether or not you are still a viable institution.

It is a mentality that believes in downsizing, merges, out-sourcing, and selling off real estate, which characterizes the Mayor and the Governor in this case. Both of them are very pleased with using such language, I don’t see that they’d have too much of a problem turning one or two of our campuses into condominiums. The other possibility which is very likely to appear on the horizon if this downsizing does occur, is something I have had a lot of experience with. There are a few of us in this room who have. That is the merger of institutions. This is an extremely difficult experience for everyone concerned. Whether I’m glossing or not, birth pains of merged institutions are among the most painful academic experiences most people can go through. But nonetheless, I have heard one or two Trustees already envisioning such a future. Those of you who think that I’m fantasizing should start imagining for example what the Bronx Consortium of CUNY would look like.

In any case, the issue at the moment, it seems to me, boils down to whether or not the group agrees that remediation in some viable form should be continued, especially in those senior colleges that do not have two year programs. I think most of the Trustees have agreed to give up the Mayor’s original proposal which is none of it at all in the community colleges. I think that’s been rejected as too absurd. They have by no means agreed to continue the policies that they themselves voted in June of 1995 Resolutions 15 and 16. That’s what’s really on the table now. If you believe that at least those policies should be preserved, you have to mobilize and support that at any opportunity you can. If you’re lacking the fax numbers of the Board of Trustee Members, just call the office and we’ll send it out again. It has been out on the e-mail a couple of times and in hard copy.

I just want to conclude the meeting with one note, one reminder. Next month we begin April, we begin the process of nominations for the leadership of the University Faculty Senate, the Chair and the Vice Chair for two year terms will be up. A Secretary, Treasurer and Five At-Large-Members have to be nominated. So please begin thinking about this. The process starts in April and the voting occurs in May. You might want to try and imagine which one of your colleagues you want to send into the Board of Trustees for the next couple of years. I don’t have anymore remarks to make. I am asking at this point for new business.

b. Interim Chancellor Kimmich: Thank you very much, Sandi, always a pleasure to be here. I thought that before we talked and exchanged ideas, thoughts, and questions, I want to update you on four issues. First on the news that we have on the budget, and there is news. Second, the news we have on enrollment, preliminary enrollment for the Spring. Third, the latest news on progress on the Teacher Certification Tests, which have come in at this point. And finally of course, we will talk a little about the TAP proposal that we’ve all heard I think.

Let me start with the budget. Both the Senate and the Assembly have been working on what’s called, "One House Bills," that is to say, their own bills that are ultimately going to be discussed in conference between the two of them. The Assembly has completed its bill and the Senate expects to complete its bill tomorrow at which point they’ll go into conference to work out a compromise. Let me just summarize for you the numbers that you need to know on the two bills. I’ll take them in order. First of all, the senior colleges operating budget, then the community colleges, and then financial aid. On the senior colleges operating budget, the Assembly is proposing funds for 90 faculty positions, money for SEEK ($3.5 million), $1.2 million for child care, and a small line item for the work education program at Queens College, for a total of $9.1 million. In addition to which, rather a surprise, a significant sum for senior college tuition reduction. The tuition reduction amounting to $250 per student for a total of $28.8 million. So that’s from the Assembly for the senior colleges, those five items. There is nothing in the Senate Bill for the senior colleges.

For the community colleges, in the Assembly, there is an increase in the base aid for the community colleges, about $100 per FTE student. There is money for child care, there is money for College Discovery, there is money for 60 faculty positions, and there is money for contract courses, or what the Assembly calls, Business Assistant Teams, which is a kind of contract course that is both at SUNY and at CUNY and that can be worked out individually by the colleges. For a total in the Assembly Bill of $12.15 million dollars. The Senate has in its bill a base aid increase of $150 dollars per FTE for the Community Colleges. So they’ve been better in the Assembly in raising the base aid for community colleges. As you probably know, they are also under great pressure from SUNY, which has 30 community colleges, all of whom have pushed for this together with our 6 community colleges. So that they’ve been very responsive, and the $150 you see in the Senate Bill is what we had been pushing for. So that’s for the community colleges.

For financial aid, both houses have agreed that there should be an increase in the TAP maximum from $3,900 to $4,025, which of course does not affect us, because our tuition is below that so it does not reach us. However, the Assembly has eliminated the 90% TAP which does affect our students. Though resulting in full tuition coverage for CUNY students, if it goes through, the Senate has not removed that cap. So there is a difference here between those two. The Assembly has put money in for part-time TAP and that is very good news. We have been pushing very hard for that in the last few weeks. I will talk just briefly in a minute about our lobbying efforts. But we pushed very hard for the part-time TAP so that I am gratified that they have put in aid for part-time study. There is no news on the Senate side on this. But we have been just as hard in pushing our case in the Senate as we have with the Assembly. Both houses, it won’t surprise you, have also put into their one house bills, money for Bundy Aid so that all the colleges, both the public and private colleges get something in this year. There is some additional items in the Assembly Bill. It has to do with a step in CSTEP with Teacher Opportunity Core Program, with Higher Education Opportunity Programs, essentially restoring funds that had dropped away in previous years so that there is also something for these special programs.

That’s where the bill stands at this point. As I said, the Senate is expected to concluded its work tomorrow, and then it goes to conference. The good news, which just reached us this afternoon, is that the Senate and the Assembly have agreed on the revenues which was a big issue. How much money there was in fact to talk about, how much money they would talk about in conference. They have agreed, Senate Majority Bruno and Assembly Speaker Silver have agreed, that there is additional $1.2 billion in monies which can be used to enact the 1998-1999 State Budget. So that clears the hurdles for going into conference. So as they go into conference, these house bills will be on the table, to be negotiated between the two houses, both houses have established a committee of six members each, including some of the obvious people, like the Head of Ways and Means, and the respective Majority Leaders. So that they will hammer out, what we hope is a relatively reasonable period of time, what the ultimate budget will be like. What this means for us I think, is the time to make our case most strenuously is at hand. If there is any room here, we need to be there. This is not a given, the tuition reduction is not a given. Both the Governor has very strongly opposed it, and so has the Senate very strongly opposed it.

There is a difference on the base level aid for community colleges. There is nothing in the Senate Bill for part-time TAP, which I think is enormously important for CUNY. So this is the time I think to make the case once again. We are going to go full court press ahead in doing it from the Central Office and with the Trustees and with the Presidents. You should also, I think, do as much as you can from your end, with the normal legislative action groups on the campuses, through letter writing campaigns, with phone calls, with whatever means are at your disposal to make sure that those things remain for us. If it is not exactly the item we are getting, at least if the monies remain toward us. I would very much like to latch on to those $50 million in whatever form they come to us ultimately. Clearly our top priority remains full-time faculty. Our top priorities are for part-time aid, for certain things as teacher education initiative, and for the community colleges. Some of the things that we asked for in students services, the libraries, and infrastructure did not get funded. So we keep hammering away at that. Perhaps something will come out in the conference.

As to lobbying, as to presenting our case, just very briefly, we have conducted and have continued conducting legislative breakfasts in each of the boroughs. It brings together the Presidents and whoever they want to bring along and legislative leaders from the Assembly, from the Senate, from the City Council, the Borough President usually attends. These have been really quite successful. There is a strong sense, especially on the part of the borough presidents, that the colleges in their particular boroughs need support. They have pitched in as strongly as I have, as strongly as the presidents have when we have talked to our legislative leaders in these breakfast settings. We have also, as some of you may know, gone up to Albany with a Board Delegation, which hasn’t been done for at least a decade. A very impressive kind of thing to do with about ten board members, a number of Presidents, myself, and a few of my colleagues in the Central Office. To make our pitch with those chairs of finance and ways and means committees, but also with the majority leaders of both houses. We made the round, we were well received and we made the case for what we are doing.

One of the nice things about that two day trip, was a reception for the alumni in the Legislature. There are 39 CUNY alumni out of a body of 150, and that’s impressive. They were just delighted to be received, to be recognized, to receive a certificate from us, they were willing to be interviewed on television about their days at Queens, Brooklyn, Baruch, City, Queensborough, Hostos, wherever. Really, it was an outpouring of community that was a pleasure to see and really very comforting. There are a lot of supporters and we need those supporters. The Presidents have made their trips up to Albany. One of the things that we did here for the first time, was to join with SUNY in pushing for community college support. Again, we have never done that, and we always have run sort of parallel tracks. For the first time, we have tried to bring together some of the community college presidents, from CUNY and from SUNY, to make the case jointly so that we can demonstrate something that’s been on my mind for a long time. Demonstrate to Albany, to the Governor’s Office in particular, but also to the Legislature, that we have a higher education strategy here, that we are not at odds with each other, but there are many things that we have in common. And that we not be treated competitively or as a kind of divide and conquer strategy.

My point had always been that if we can bring together the two major systems in the state as well as the privates, I think this would be a force that would have to be reckoned with. In that line, my counterpart at SUNY, the President of Cornell, a representative from NYU and I, met with the Governor directly and members of his staff to talk about budget issues. He was particularly interested in the research report that he was prepared to think about, the CAT proposal that some of you may know about. Faculty Research that also involves CUNY. He was prepared to consider the idea of part-time TAP and TAP increases. That was very much on his agenda as well. We talked to him also about the possibility of faculty and bringing faculty to New York State, and keeping faculty in New York State by providing adequate salaries. All this he listened to and in fact engaged us in conversation. So it was clear that this was not just in one ear and out the other, but that he understood what we were talking about. Trying to bring together these three sectors is an approach I think pays dividends, and one that I want to keep pursuing.

That’s essentially what I have to say on the budget. As to the Spring enrollment, remember now this is preliminary. We don’t have the final figures of Spring of 1998, but you should know that the head count is almost identical from last Spring. Last Spring we had 198,727, this Spring 197,323. So we are just slightly below 198,000. The FTE equivalent enrollment at 144,392 remains virtually identical. There has been a minimal change from Spring 1997 to Spring 1998. When you look at it more carefully, you notice that first time freshmen at the senior colleges were down slightly but advanced standing transfers were up at the senior colleges by close to 5% which was a significant increase in students seeking out CUNY after having spent time elsewhere. So the transfer has been up, and that has helped boost that enrollment to the same number as last Spring.

At the community colleges, unfortunately both first time freshmen and transfers were down, not significantly, just around 2%, but they were down. There was that downward dip in the Spring which is not unusual. Finally, what we see here when we bring these things together, is that the undergraduate count we are down in the senior colleges 0.2%, community colleges 1%, while graduate head count is down slightly more 2.3%. But these are small figures and we’ve remained very steady since last Spring.

The preliminary analysis of CUNY results on the State Teacher Certification Exam, that is, before verifying the names and affiliations of students who took the test, reflects an overall improvement of 7%. Not great, but in the right direction. In the pass rates on the Liberal Arts & Science Test, which was the one they were focusing on last year if you remember, but also the same 7% in the other, the Educational Assessment of Teaching Skills Tests, when compared with the scores students made in February 1997. In fact, when you look at the overall record, none of the colleges with schools of education, none of them did worse than they did last year. All of them showed an improvement. Five of the nine colleges achieved a pass rate that exceeds the statewide average on the Liberal Arts & Science Test, which is a welcomed sign. Four of nine colleges, achieved a pass rate equal to or above the statewide average on the Assessments Teaching Skills Test. While these figures are still tentative, I think the direction is right. But also I think the signal is that we need to do more. I know that the work that’s going on now at the colleges, and the work reflected in the earlier panel we had here will in fact move us forward on this road. We are doing two things that you should know about. One, is that as of next year the State Education Department will permit us to authorize students to take these tests, so we can actually say to students, you are now ready for it, you can now take it. One of the problems with these tests has been that students could take it as many times as they want to and fail, and they only had to pass once. So they would try, try, try again even though they might not be ready. This will give us a better handle on making it possible for the colleges for the schools of education to identify those students who might be ready to go forward and to endorse that. Number two, there are a number of steps under way to work on the programs, the curriculum, various support mechanisms, workshops, tutorials, to bring our students into a more competitive frame for these tests.

Speaking from my own local experience, but also during other experiences at other schools of education, there is really an effort made by faculty to raise standards and maintain a level of expectation and accomplishment, that will stand, I think both the students and teachers and ultimately their charges in the classroom, in good stead. Just as a footnote, I might add that I’ve been urging, as part of our budget case up in Albany, I’ve been urging the Legislative to think about ways in which we can develop incentives for attracting strong students into teacher education. I’ve been saying in fact, one of the finest priorities I think we can assume, is preparing good students for the teaching profession and to attract good students into the profession and to give them the kind of education that CUNY is capable of doing. I think it is a very strong and worthwhile project and I’ve been pushing legislators to think in terms of financial incentives, tuition remission, whatever to see what we can provide ourselves with a way of reaching out, attracting and bringing in good students.

That I think is all I have to say on teacher education. Finally, let me just say a few words, without going into great detail, about the Comprehensive Action Plan. I think all of you know that the Board of Trustees at yesterday’s meeting decided to review, bring back the existing draft back to a meeting of the Board’s Long Range Planning Committee early in April in which the theme will be discussed. Since most of you are aware of the specific details, I don’t want to rehearse them, but just make a few general comments about the objectives as I see them, as I started with them when I began working on this back in December. That could perhaps be a starting point for our discussion later as the case may be. I really had four things in mind. First of all, I wanted a proposal that would strengthen academic standards while preserving CUNY’s historic commitment to providing access to students who can benefit from what we do. I think that is central to what we do and should not be compromised. The plan proposed therefore, rather than abandon remediation, to streamline it, to refocus it. There had been some suggestions that there would be remedial academies, or some such, that was never really part of the plan, though it has clearly been part of the discussion. Really more or a concentrated core of academic programs to deliver the students the proficiency skills that the faculty believe are required for college work. Where this would be done, how this would be done would have to be decided. The basic thrust of providing the access to students to that was never out of the picture.

The second goal that was in my mind was that the proposal would give students the opportunity to start college level work. And to succeed with college level work from the day they set foot in the classroom, or as close to it as possible. The moment that they were going to be faced with the rigors and the demands of college work, I think they should be ready to handle it. They should not fall short of that opportunity. All of you know, and the data shows, that not all students arrive equally prepared. It is one of our university strengths that we draw on the high schools of New York, the State, the nation, the rest of the world and what they bring to this University is what makes this University. The University’s academic programs I feel very strongly about that, must reflect that particular strength, that particular diversity without limiting educational opportunities for underprepared students. The point was to try to shift the necessary academic preparation. Where it was necessary, after admission into the University, but before enrollment into courses, so that this would level the playing field and would give everybody the same start. That really was the intention here.

The third point really was to see, and this is a theme I’ve voiced from my very first day on the job, was that the proposal was meant to provide greater autonomy to individual campuses in making their admissions and retentions decisions. I feel that unless we let the college decide what their destiny is to be, what their future is to be, how they want to fulfill their mission, I think we’re down the wrong path. I feel very strongly that the University should give to the campuses, working within a framework, working within parameters, the autonomy to decide on their mission, on the way they are going to fulfill their mission, and to come up with ways of doing that. That’s where the action is, on the campuses. That’s where the faculty is, that’s where the students are. It is not at the Central Office ever. So coming after years on a campus, coming to the Central Office, one of the things I’ve been pushing on very hard is the restoration, the return if you like, of responsibilities to the campuses to make those decisions for themselves as they see fit. So that the proposal, as I had originally put it together was in fact reflective of this decision for the campuses. I do think, and I thought when I was in my previous life, that there was no one better equipped than the campus to decide what kinds of programs it could offer, what sort of student it wanted, what kind of demands it would set upon its students, what kind of expectations is would have, what kind of mission it wanted to represent. Those are campus decisions, they are not Central decisions. So looking at it from that perspective it seemed to me that it made a great deal of sense to develop a proposal that would in fact make those decisions at the campuses. However, I don’t want to minimize it, you need to work I think in a University wide framework so that we don’t run off into two hundred different directions. I do think we have to have some kind of central sense of where we are going.

And finally, what I was looking for was a proposal that presented a comprehensive approach to the challenge that is raised by the uneven level of preparation that applicants bring to the University. Not in spite of, but because CUNY is a public institution, we have to be attentive to what I think is a highly complex nature of the issues involved. It can’t just be reduced to one or the other thing. They clearly reinforce each other, it is integrated and needs to be seen as the kind of integrated, complex issue it is. And so that the proposal as I had envisioned it, and as I still envision it for the future, is something that draws on all of the issues that are involved so that we can move forward as a University and not break up into individual items that might or might not work and that usually would conflict with each other. That was essentially the thrust of this proposal. Clearly it has undergone change from various quarters and we now have a document that is very different from the original document proposed. We will see what in the next discussions this month to next month the future will hold. I just wanted you to know that the context for all of this was essentially the four basic assumptions, the four basic goals that I’ve just outlined. At this point I will stop and I’ll be glad to have comments, questions, concerns.

Professor Bohigian (Mathematics, John Jay College) - "Acting Chancellor, last night was a pretty tragic night, or close to a tragic night. It was an accident that this did not pass. They didn’t get enough votes, it was eight - four - two, I believe. The road to hell is paved with all sorts of good intentions. What happened here, everyone of your proposals is fine, but that is what you have to fight for. Essentially when you were questioned by Board members, you were able to say that you would be able to monitor what was going to go on at Baruch. I really wonder how you can monitor that when the Baruch proposal was presented with the impression that Faculty Governance had approved it, though they had not. The President could not answer the factual questions on his most important day, this was such an important proposal. He could not answer simple factual questions on the issue. Sandi’s comments about data proof were so true about that particular meeting. If you go right down the lists of the facts, there was no approval from the faculty. Baruch was not labeled in that proposal, it was a CUNY wide proposal. If it had passed it essentially would have eliminated open admissions. The question basically is, you represent us as the faculty, that’s my viewpoint on administrators. Now you should have stepped in and said this plan is ill advised, it was not in line with my proposals. I listened to your proposals and there is nothing in that resolution." /

Chair Cooper - Just explain to the group which may not follow it that you are not talking about CAP but you are talking about a single resolution that came to the Board. /

Professor Bohigian - "That’s correct. It was an end run, in my opinion around CAP, it was a proposal from Baruch but it didn’t say Baruch, it said City University." / Chair Cooper - It was a proposal from Roy Moskowitz / Professor Bohigian - "Whatever, but the flag was being carried by Goldstein, that’s the bottom line. The fact of the matter is, as our representatives, why did you not come forward and say, we can’t accept this now. It has to be handled in a different manner. One simple change would have made it. In all the substitutions, the President has now become the focal point. No longer the faculty, the wording was changed previously from, "approval by faculty governance" to "consultation with faculty governance." If you believe in what you say, you have to make one simple change. Take the President out of this issue, because in the by laws he is not in admissions or policies or standards. Substitute faculty governance and you will get a wider support. That’s what has to be eliminated. I called five members of the Board so far today. They were unaware of the facts that I am presenting to you now that the faculty didn’t approve it, etc... This is very crucial, this can be switched around. The basic question is, what is your position? Are you willing to accept the changing of wording from the President to the Faculty Governance?" /

Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Remember that the Resolution as finally put before the vote did say in fact, "in accordance with appropriate faculty governance procedures."/ Professor Bohigian - "I have that wording, but not approval." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Presumably appropriate faculty procedures include that per campus. / Professor Bohigian - "Then why not change it to faculty governance approval?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Are faculty governance procedures identical on all campuses? / Professor Bohigian - "They are close enough and from your point of view you said that you wanted it as a local issue. Whatever appropriate faculty governance is operating there that’s what should be determinant, not the President of the institution." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Let’s make sure that we’ve got the terminology right. The appropriate faculty governance procedures that were referred to in that committee do comprise approval, do they not? / Professor Bohigian - "No. The wording says, "and after consultation with appropriate college governance." That was changed, and it was changed to "in accordance with traditional college governance." /

Interim Chancellor Kimmich - And does that not apply? / Professor Bohigian - "I don’t feel that that does it at all." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Why not? Doesn’t traditional governance procedure at Brooklyn include approval? Does it not at Baruch? / Professor Bohigian - "Then what is wrong with substituting the word "approval" or including the word "approval." We are quibbling over something that’s not important." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - We are not quibbling over something that is unimportant. What we are saying is that there are probably differences on the campus that need to be comprised under one kind of heading. When it talks about traditional governance procedures which are specific to a campus we are covering whatever that campus’ governance procedures are. If some of them include approval, that’s fine; if some only refer to consultation I don’t want in this one wording to change the governance procedure. / Professor Bohigian - "There is no governance in CUNY that allows changing of academic standards other than the faculty. I’ll go on record as saying that." /

Chair Cooper - May I interrupt this for one minute. One of the confusions that I think is compounding this issue, and I think it’s correct that the Board voted not to accept this last night, is the fact that the resolution that Professor Bohigian is referring to is really a modification of Resolutions 15 and 16 from June of 1995, and it got raised at the point when we were discussing a much broader set of admissions and remediation questions. The President of Baruch, originally when those two resolutions passed, began to take steps which the faculty early on complained to me about, did not include a consideration of traditional governance. This issue has been going on at that campus for two years. This is not new, it’s just its most recent incarnation. It is incorrect to state that the trustees, if they told you on the phone they are unaware of this, then they have amnesia. Because I have raised this particular point about that campus with every one of them. At least five times in the last two months...

Professor Bohigian - "…you need remediation also Sandi, the quote was, they have to trust the President, and if the President says it’s so, it is so. That’s what they told me. Here is the objectionable part, look what it says further on. It says, "a senior college president may propose and the chancellor may approve." That’s what’s wrong with this statement, a proposal should not come from a President."

Chair Cooper - The problem is in the original language of those resolutions is what I thought we had settled with the out of court settlement. And I believe we have settled it. In the out of court settlement which I read to you a few months ago, we admitted the University’s policy changes and graduation requirements, we the faculty. They recognized that there should be no major academic changes without the traditional, normal approvals, etc... It is my understanding that an out of court settlement has a legal binding control and therefore I act and assume it does. The problem with some campuses is that presidents represent faculty action differently than faculty do …. and the Trustees of course until proven otherwise will listen to their executive officer. If it gets bad enough, I don’t have to tell you what happens, but I don’t think I have the right to continue making a speech, I really have to call on someone else.

Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Two things in response to that. If you think that "traditional governance" which is a term I just heard Sandi used isn’t adequate, "approval" if fine with me. I don’t have a problem with that. I thought "traditional governance procedures" in fact covered it, without wanting to inadvertently impose language that some colleges didn’t have. Number two, let me say that I don’t feel uncomfortable with a resolution that essentially says that colleges should make those decisions. I’ve said a while ago that I believe in campus autonomy, I can’t very well say, well I’ll make an exception for Baruch because I don’t believe in Baruch’s autonomy. I believe in everybody’s autonomy. If there is something wrong with the governance process, well then let’s fix that. That’s not the issue. The issue I think is providing the campuses with as much freedom about their destiny as they can possibly handle. / Professor Bohigian - "Just get rid of the President phrase and we’re in agreement."

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) - "The Board of Trustees has this conception that first there is remediation, then you begin college work. But a lot of us have found that the best way to develop the basic skills is by integrating them with the college work. Sometimes you slow down the college courses to spread them over a year so you bring in the skills. This is by far one of the great findings of this great University in terms of remediation. We should have the freedom to do that. Also, if you believe we should have autonomy, then really you should ask them to get rid of this University wide competency test, or instrument, or whatever it’s called, across the University. Because a lot of campuses don’t want that, they want to have their own evaluation. If you really believe in campus autonomy then you won’t force all remediation at senior colleges to be outside the college context. A lot of us don’t want to do that. We will not force limits on remediation. A lot of us would like to have more in terms of remediation. They are not giving somebody autonomy. It’s hard to limit a comprehensive question to one question on a comprehensive plan. Basically a lot of us believe, that given our experience we could come up with plans that are much fairer to students. They would not include these proposals. Give us the autonomy, do not use these proposals and we will benefit the students." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I hear you.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - "My question also refers to the CAP Proposal. In particular to the Judith Watson report that Sandi referred to earlier in her remarks tonight. And how that Watson report might be infused more into this discussion of CAP. Since this was a report on remediation that looks at both the national and local picture regarding remediation, and since it was commissioned by Chair Paolucci of the Board, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how members of the Board, in particular those on the Remediation Committee and the Long Range Planning Committee might be encouraged to read it and pay close attention to it. And perhaps use its findings to make what many faculty think would be more informed decisions about issues discussed in the CAP." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - The one suggestion that I have made is that as much as there is a Committee meeting of the Remediation Committee on Wednesday I believe, that this be part of the agenda. So there would be a discussion and an effort made that everybody would understand it. Whether they can use it or not is another matter over which we have very little control. But certainly understanding is the first part of that. / Professor Friedman - "So will you be there?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich – Yes, I will be there.

Professor London (Political Science, Brooklyn College) - "You spoke of campus autonomy. Campus decisions are based in part on what Central Administration will pay for. Many faculty are under the impression that falling enrollments will not adversely impact budget allocation to the college, if the college is considered to be a tier one school. A two part question. Is there a plan for further tiering the University? And secondly, is there in place or contemplated, an allocation formula for funding senior colleges based on a tiering model?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - The answer to both questions is, not to my knowledge. But do let me say that I have begun to instruct the staff at 80th Street to think more creatively about the allocation process. The allocation process as we all know it has been a kind of historical thing that we’ve inherited and that we essentially applied. I won’t say mindlessly, but with little real creativity on this. There are lots of models out there, not only in New York State, but in Florida and elsewhere. They do a much more creative job of using the budget allocation to recognize needs, to recognize shifting interest, to recognize quality. I’ve asked the staff to begin thinking along those lines to the extent that that’s possible. Having said all of that, as most of you know, most of the budget is fixed. So what we are talking about is the 5% or so that is not fixed. That doesn’t reflect fixed costs. Even so, it seems to me that we ought to take a new look, and that is what I’ve done from the very beginning I set foot at 80th Street. We ought to take a new look at how funds are distributed, how incoming new funds will be allocated and what the criteria should be by which this is done. So that work is under way, Steve. I have not seen anything but very preliminary reports on it. But it does seem to me that’s a question we ought to look at very carefully. /

Professor London - "So at this point in time, if there are enrollment shortfalls the college might look forward to a budgetary shortfall in the Fall." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - That’s a hard question to answer. Even with budgetary shortfalls there has always been from the beginning an effort to help out. These efforts go on. All of you know that there are budgetary shortfalls and enrollment shortfalls at various institutions and the colleges have been helped at the expense of the collective group in order to get them through this. Usually with sharing the burden, but not having it absorbed entirely. Whether a shortfall this Fall is a given or not, I have no idea. We’ve seen no preliminary allocation figures. So that’s a question we would have to address when we get to it, Steve. The only thing I can say to you, clearly there is no way in which the University would let a college that has suffered enrollment shortfalls go down the drain. That’s not in the picture. How we help depends on what resources we have. All of you know that we tend to reach into the pot that essentially goes to all the University in order to help those that are in momentary distress. That’s the way it has to be, we are a University to that effect. I’m not sure that we should close our hearts to institutions that suffer momentary setbacks.

Professor Reitano (Social Science, LaGuardia Community College) - "What do you and your staff envision the impact of the CAP limits on remediation will be on the missions of the community colleges and the retention of their students?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - What we would envision would happen is that first of all, to reverse the question, is that I think the retention would be better. A figure that troubles me enormously is a figure that all of you I think know. And that is that students who enter community colleges and who fail all three tests, 40% of them disappear before the year is over. Those 40% are lost to us, they are gone. I want to reach them early, I want to intervene earlier than that. I want to keep them, I want to make sure that they are retained, or that they get an even chance. One of the things that is driving me in this is I took look at the University wide data, which I did not study before I came into office. So we can see how we can intervene in a way that might creatively give them a chance and might creatively bond them to the college. So one of the things in order to respond to your retention question is that we do think that trying to reach earlier into a process that is adjusted to student needs, accessible, possibly will in fact improve retention. The second question is what will it do to the missions of the community colleges. I had not thought that it would make much of a difference. The students would still apply, be accepted. With all of your help we would work out systems, and I keep turning back to autonomy, that would streamline and refocus remediation. Trying to reach those 40% that might stay if we intervened earlier. And provide the community college with the same kind of glorious mission they have now. /

Professor Reitano - "Would there be a massive infusion of funds to absorb the additional remedial students that will be bumped down from the senior colleges?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I’m not sure that I see quite that argument about bumping down remedial students from senior colleges. Assuming that many of the senior colleges now have a one semester program, and assuming that we allow colleges to [TAPE TURNED OVER].

Professor Vozick (Science, York College) - "I want to ask a question on the political side. I understand that some of the leadership of the State Assembly and the State Controller have formed an ad hoc committee in support of open admissions. It’s been my impression, listening to all that you’ve created for yourself, that you are rather uncomfortable with the term "open admissions." Which is a matter of severe concern to me because it represents a concept of opportunity for people in the City who normally view college as unattainable to them. So I guess my question has three parts. One is, on your watch is it going to possible for you, can you foresee a time when you could stand for open admissions as a principle? The second part has got to do with whether you could work with this ad hoc committee for open admissions to try to get general recognition that this a great achievement at CUNY that we would like to sustain and expand, not see go down your or anybody else’s watch. And the third part is, in the budgetary work that you are doing, whether struggle to achieve appropriate funding so that open admission can be a greater success, it already is a great success but not recognized. Whether that is a serious item on the agenda that you are considering?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I think the answer basically to all three is "yes." Having said that, let me come back to something I said the last time. That is, since open admissions has become such a political football I have tended not to use that particular term. I tend to prefer the words "open access." Which has less of the connotations that have been given it in the press and by people that you all know. Because it has now assumed that kind of aura of a political litmus test, one way or the other. My response to that has been not to challenge the principle, but to challenge the terminology. Rather to say that what we stand for is in fact the very inclusive character that we’ve developed since 1970, in spite of whatever else anybody might say. And something that we cannot I think, and should not reverse. But to leave terminologies to others and move forward with the principle.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) - "I think several of your statements are very commendable, however I see some disagreement in the CAP Plan and the statements you’ve made tonight. Let me point out two ways. Number one, you mentioned that you are interested in doing a better job with triple remedial students. I know that 40% drop out rate is rather frightening. We pull the students in and they are gone within the year. I think however setting arbitrary limits on how long students can stay in, how many times they can repeat a course, is not necessarily the way to go. I think there are programs around the University that work much better than setting University wide limits on remediation. For example, we have a program at LaGuardia, I would guarantee could cut that drop out rate in half, if not by two-thirds. That’s the sort of thing we need to pursue. Secondly, to go back to Bill Crain’s point before. The autonomy of the branches does not seem to jive entirely with the general outline of the CAP Plan. If there must be a limit on remediation, if it is being forced on us politically, I would suggest that the faculty at each branch come up with a plan. Outlining exactly what limits they would put on remediation and exactly why, rather than have a University wide plan." /

Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Let me answer your first question first. That is, very early on before I was appointed to this new position, the question that kept tying me up was how long do you think remediation should be? My answer was invariable was, that’s the wrong question. The question is how do we do it? Where do we do it? I still stick to that. I think that what we have at this University has developed a series of practices that are second to none in reaching students on remediation, students who need remedial help. I think we should stick to that. Whether there is a political reason to set a kind of limit seems to me less important than finding ways, drawn from our practices, and drawn from the very fine practices that exist at various campuses, during the summers and in the intersession and during the academic year, to make the remediation that is necessary the most effective as possible. I’m not sure that I’m very comfortable even with the question of talking about time limits. I know that is in the CAP Plan, and I know that there is a good deal of interest in trying to respond to a perception is that is all that happens here. And we all know that that’s not all that happens here. So putting it in that context I can see why it is there. But it is not there because I think it is the best of ideas. On your other issue, my preference, as I said in my opening remarks, and what the intent was, was to provide the colleges with an opportunity to come up with the kinds of plans that would work for them. Working however, and I have to say this, working within a broad framework. If we are going to say to ourselves, what seems to have worked at the senior colleges by setting a limit of a year, might also work at the community colleges by setting a limit of a year, while let’s talk about this concept. If we have this concept let’s adopt it, let’s work around it, let’s work through it. Let’s work at making it most effective. The question I think is one that has bolstered political dimensions as well as substantive dimensions. I do not think that we should be left entirely to our devices, otherwise we will just fall asunder as a University. /

Professor Gallagher - "I’m not suggesting that we be left to our own devices. But for example, at community colleges we know that it takes 64% of students one year to finish remediation, 86% finish in a year and a half. To see a year limit put down seems at this point somewhat arbitrary and to go against the numbers. If you just give the students another term you get 22% more of them through. And then you can deal with that remaining 14%." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Could I just ask a counter question, Professor Gallagher, and that is, what would happen to that time frame if in fact we introduced a strongly encouraged immersion module, or even two modules in the summer? Pre-enrollment. /

Professor Greenbaum (History, Queensborough Community College) - "I wanted to return to your response to Joanne Reitano and just raise a question. I’m a historian, I’m not a mathematician. If students who are not admitted require more than a term’s remediation into the senior colleges, and currently students are admitted to who require a full year. How is a summer and a winter going to make up for that without the loss of students? And then after that, if they lose students, there are all kinds of financial ramifications and state reimbursements to the colleges. I just don’t understand your reasoning." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - The ultimate answer might be that we will probably lose as many as we lose now. But we do know that we lose them now right? / Professor Greenbaum - "But we will be using them by the fact that they will not be accepted. Because they will require more than a term’s remediation." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Let me give you the Staten Island answer. They believe that they will get three quarters of the students done through an intensive summer program and then the rest in one semester. / Professor Greenbaum - "They are going to lose students. There is no question about that, in terms of admission." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Then that brings me back to trying to deal with college autonomy on this. Which is best for which. / Professor Greenbaum - "But it’s not college autonomy when CAP proposes one semester. There is no longer college autonomy. It is limiting it at the senior colleges. If you do that, some of the senior colleges will be in dire trouble." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I can only refer to my original plan.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) - "Chancellor Kimmich, actually my question has to do with the third and forth iterations of the Comprehensive Action Plan. You have spoken about the need for additional City and State funding for the Comprehensive Action Plan. I was pleased to see that in the third and forth iterations, the last sentence speaks about the assumption of additional City and State funding. You’ve said that you and your colleagues would go to Albany and to City Hall to argue for that funding. I also saw Trustee Calandra the other night on NY1. That was the evening that he was reported to have, and he in fact repeated his request, that the Board not vote yesterday on the Comprehensive Action Plan. One of the reasons that he gave was that sentence, "the assumption of State and City additional funds." He didn’t spell it out, but he made it clear that he had assumed this plan would lead to a reduction in tax payer money rather than an increase. This was one of the reasons he was for a postponement. My question is twofold. How does one reconcile those two different CUNY views and funding views? And the other is, how do you have success and do you feel hopeful that the State after your visits to Albany and your testimony here in the City, that there will be additional funding for this very expensive program? Both because of the institutes and different modules, and because there will be an anticipated drop in enrollment, a drop in tuition, a drop in State aid as a result. I was wondering how you would respond to that." /

Interim Chancellor Kimmich - To the first one, the interests, I don’t know, I can’t reconcile those two. You should ask him. To the second, even in the latest version of the CAP Plan there is a time table that suggests that there would be a number of pilot projects run this year to help us cost out very effectively to see what it might cost. And that next year’s round of budget requests would in fact try to reflect that. So that we are not talking, and I hope that there is no misconception about this, about starting this in the Fall 1998. No plan that I’ve seen in all of its iterations talks about the actual program starting in the Fall of 1998. There is mention of plans being prepared for Fall 1998, pilot projects, but the effectiveness of the actual program would be at least 18 months hence. So that gives us time, both to do very careful studies of what it might cost, and secondly to try some pilots. Let me say one other thing, since Sandi mentioned the many iterations. It’s very hard sometimes to keep your eye on that constantly changing ball. Clearly you are trying to cost it out and it changes from week to week. I ask my staff to work on draft three and suddenly draft four appears and we have to go back to the drawing board. So I don’t have a very good answer to your question at this point. Clearly the intent is to go for additional resources and we have made that very clear in testimony in talking to people in Albany, and testimony at City Hall. This is not a cost free plan, or even a plan that would reduce costs. So one could anticipate that in the budget request for next year, if indeed we get a close handle on it through the pilot projects. / Professor Kaplowitz - "A very brief follow-up statement. Those of us who have been involved in the budget are just concerned that from past history what we’ve experienced that asking budgets where the items aren’t funded, what has happened is that money is taken off from the allocation to be used for non-funded initiatives. Then there is a cut to the rest of the budget. This is part of the concern." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - In my previous life I was very much involved with unfunded mandates. I know what they are about.

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) - "First, I just have to say something because Cecelia is telling me to say it. Baruch’s plan will start September 1998, for the end of remediation." / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - Are we talking about CAP or are we talking about Baruch? / Professor O’Malley - "Baruch is part of it. But I want to ask my own question. A while ago we heard that each borough was going to have a remediation institute and we weren’t sure if they were going to be run by faculty. We thought that they might be part of continuing education. I wanted to know, is there money in the budget for this? Do you see that this is going to happen? And if so, will they be planned, supervised, and taught by faculty?" / Interim Chancellor Kimmich - I haven’t seen anything concrete lately about that. That had come up in an earlier version. But it had never been the intentions of certainly my own staff and myself to have it done by anybody but faculty and on the college campuses. No privatization.

c. Faculty Members of Board of Trustees Committees – The written reports were accepted.

IV. Resolution of Appreciation for Professor David S. Speidel – The resolution was moved by Professor Sohmer, seconded, and passed unanimously by voice vote. Professor Speidel, who was resigning from the Senate and the Executive Committee to take the acting Provostship at Queens College, gave a few parting words.

V. Election of UFS Treasurer - Professor Maria Rodriguez (SEEK, Speech/Theater, John Jay), chair of the Elections Committee, presided over the election of a replacement for Professor Speidel as Treasurer of the UFS. Professor Karen Kaplowitz was nominated and unanimously elected Treasurer, which left one at large seat vacant on the Executive Committee. Nominated for the seat were Professors Ruth Frisz (Student Personnel, Queens) and Robert Cermele (Arts and Sciences, NYCTC). Each made a brief statement. Ballots were circulated, and Professor Frisz was elected with 47 votes to Professor Cermele’s 27; there were seven abstentions.

VI. Senior College Admissions/CAP Proposal - Deputy Chancellor Patricia Hassett and Director of Admissions Les Jacobs.

Chair Cooper - We had invited the Acting Deputy Chancellor, Patricia Hassett and the Acting Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Angelo Proto, to come and discuss some of the issues which you have already opened up questions to the Chancellor about. Angelo Proto was unable to attend, and instead, Les Jacobs, the Director of Admissions is here in his place. Perhaps Mr. Jacobs would like to begin with a short presentation.

Director of Admissions Les Jacobs - I was asked by Chancellor Proto to discuss the process that we have gone through over the past couple of years to change the admissions criteria at the seven senior colleges. I don’t want to get anyone upset. I am going to use three terms that I use privately. When I mention senior colleges for the purpose of this discussion, it is the seven colleges that are baccalaureate only. The four colleges that have both associate and baccalaureate degrees, I personally refer to as comprehensive colleges, and of course there are six community colleges. Before I start, when I was out of the room for a second there was a question on admissions for this year. This is very preliminary, even more preliminary than the Spring 1998 enrollments. At the current time for freshman admissions, the University is up 6.5%. Which I guess means that no news is bad news when it comes to admission anyway.

In 1995 prior to the resolutions that are sometimes known as the 38 points of light, six of the seven senior colleges had a minimum admissions requirement of an 80 high school average or top third of the class, or at that time a 900 SAT score. That 900 today equates to about 1020. Because as most of you know, ETS went through some re-norming and some re-centering of their scores. It’s in effect the national average of those SAT takers. Resolutions 15 and 16 set limits on the amount of remediation that would be allowed at those seven colleges. I think Resolution 15 indicated that all senior colleges had to limit their remedial course offerings to that which could be completed within one year. If a college so decided, that was number 16, they could limit it to 6 months. It also stated, those resolutions, that the senior college would be allowed to establish admissions criteria consistent with admitting students who would most benefit by those limitations.

Again, I want you to try to visualize that before that time everyone had the same admissions criteria, it was an 80 average, or top third of the class, or 900/1020 SAT score, except York actually. York’s criteria was a 75 average or 46th percentile or the 900 SAT. At that time Vice Chancellor Friedland and Vice Chancellor Wormack established meetings with the college presidents to start going through a process by which those colleges could change their admissions criteria consistent with those policies. At most of the meetings the presidents were there, the provosts, usually the dean or director of enrollment management, and in some cases vice presidents of administration and student services. What we were attempting to do was to increase the number of students who were admitted as regularly enrolled freshmen who would pass the CUNY Skills Test and if not pass, than fail at a higher rate as far as a 6 instead of a 4 in writing, etc... The colleges gave us ideas of what they would like to do. What most of them did, all but one actually, was to lower the CAA under an 80, but raise the number of [TAPE TURNED OVER]

We were deathly afraid that some colleges might use this opportunity to simply take more students than they normally did since now they were on their own to establish their own criteria, therefore taking students away from other colleges. So we wanted to see that the enrollment was neutral and that it would have no effect on the ethnic profile or the gender profile of the entering class. In some cases, in fact Brooklyn College, we ran upwards of 15-20 simulations with different criteria before one was chosen. We admitted regular students using those criteria in Fall 1996, Fall 1997, and Fall 1998. We are doing it now. The criteria can change from one phase to another. I think that we’ve been quite successful. I would like to come before anybody and say that all of our applicants passed at 100% rate, these tests, we all know that that’s not true. We all know that a lot of students need help.

What we’ve attempted to do is to consult with the colleges which in my memory, it is the first time we ever consulted centrally with the college about admissions. The only consultations would be something like the Vice President of Administration at Brooklyn College calling me up and saying, can we have an 82 cut point, and me saying "no" and hanging up the phone on him. I think that what we’ve been able to do is to set up criteria which are consistent with a lot of public colleges in the country. The data show that it’s working, again reading scores and math scores at the colleges have gone up, in some cases dramatically. Writing unfortunately, one thing we know that in 1966 everything changed. The methodology for scoring the exam changed and the pass rate went down something like 7% University wide. So we can’t really measure the effects on writing. But clearly it’s had no effect on overall enrollment of the colleges and no effect on the ethnic profile of the admitted class.

Chair Cooper - Thank you. This is Patricia Hassett, who in an earlier life was at Brooklyn College as Vice President. Also magnetized to 80th Street in the recent past as Acting Deputy Chancellor. Patricia, by the way, is a graduate of the College of Staten Island.

Deputy Chancellor Patricia Hassett - I’ll just pick up on a couple of things Les said. As a former Director of Admissions at both City College and at Baruch College, I found it very frustrating as did some of the faculty and the Presidents with whom I worked, that we had no input into the admissions process on the undergraduate level. It was essentially mandated centrally and interpreted rather strictly. The minimum 80 average or its equivalent was a minimum; it did not mean that it was a maximum. Yet it was legislated as such and implemented as such. There were some campuses that could have introduced more competitive admissions criteria but were precluded from doing so as a consequence of these artificial barriers, as I saw them at the time. The 1995 Resolutions, when I read through them, in some cases I was horrified, but when I got to these particular Resolutions I saw opportunities for the campuses and the senior college campuses that I hadn’t seen before. Not simply to raise the standard, but to adjust the standard in such a way that we could attract students who were better prepared than some students with higher averages. Going to a 78 or a 79 average for students with 14-16 and upwards of 20 academic units would produce a class. In fact in some of the studies we’ve done at my former campus, we could see that students at 78 and 79 were performing as well if not better than students with higher averages who had been admitted with fewer academic units.

So this was an opportunity for the campuses to work intelligently and not just politically with undergraduate admissions criteria. I was delighted to see that change in 1995. A segue into my remarks on CAP. For those of you who have seen the many variations and drafts, I know them by the time of day, by the way I look at the last page and there is a time at the bottom in the lower left. I think one of the last drafts was at 5:02 p.m. on a Friday. Every time I read it and whatever participation I’ve had, it’s been involved to some degree with the senior college admissions criteria. You will see major changes from one draft to the next. I think it reflects the central debate over the role of remediation at the senior college. You are all well aware that we have some trustees who feel there should be absolutely no remediation at the senior college. I don’t know if we have defined what remediation is. Is it the tutorials that Baruch has introduced? Which may be largely very effective, but also accommodate students who haven’t passed all of the tests. Or is it the traditional course sequence that we offer at the moment? Or is it summer immersion? Some of those questions, of course, enter into the debate at 80th Street as we attempt to craft a document that is reflective of a vision. But a vision of a very divided Board at the moment. So you will see various renditions that will reflect those divisions.

I really can’t predict exactly where it’s all going to end up. We do know one proposal had the senior colleges free, if you will, to redesign their admissions criteria pending plans from the colleges to be submitted to the Chancellor and the Board. We would leave the issue open as to how the campuses would address that directive. Other renditions have specified no remediation whatsoever, that that is the goal. With no time table absolutely, but with an invitation to the campuses to have a plan with respect to achieving that goal, the plan being due by Fall of 1998. I think that of all of the aspects of the Comprehensive Action Plan, the most hotly debated is that which pertains to senior colleges and the role that remediation will play in the future on those campuses.

Mr. Jacobs - First of all, I don’t think your 300 is correct. I don’t have the numbers with me, but I would like to talk about the simulations. When we do simulations this year, the enrollment drop -- I am going to have to be very careful about what wording I use to describe colleges -- but the enrollment drop from a college such as Brooklyn that is simulated, is by far the maximum possible will occur, assuming a flat application market. Because Brooklyn is not the only college that is raising its requirements. Other colleges are raising their requirements as well. So that although Brooklyn might use 200 of their first choices, they are not going to lose 200 of their enrolled students. Because students who do not get into other senior colleges are going to get into Brooklyn. I’m surprised that anyone could come up with a number such as 300 right now. Because although I know that the total University is up 6.5%, we effectively changed what we were doing in the allocation which makes college by college comparisons from one year to the other absolutely impossible. The difference is that last year we did not admit SEEK students until April, phase three. This year we admitted them in March. So there is no way to compare where you were from year to another right now. I can’t do it so I don’t think anyone at your college can do it. But the fact is that the simulations for this year and for every year showed a maximum erosion. Not necessarily what will occur. I can almost assure you at Brooklyn it will not occur. The ESL issue, I don’t have any response to because I don’t have data on it. /

Professor London - "I’ll be happy to give it to you." / Mr. Jacobs - I’d like to see it. The changes that occurred this year, as far as I can see, are not any more severe than they have been over the last three years. Everyone has been moving at a very marginal rate. The college presidents are very concerned about overall enrollment as you might imagine. There has simply been no change, none. Is Ken [Sherrill] around? He is the only one left from the commission in 1969. It’s me and him, no one else is left. For the seven senior colleges the white population in 1995 was 33.8%. That was the year before we started this. In 1997 it is 33.7%. Black went from 27.8% to 27.9%, Latino from 21.9% to 22.2%, and Asian 16.5% to 16.3%. There has simply been no change since we started this process in the ethnicity of senior college students. I don’t suspect there will be in 1998. / Professor London - "I don’t want to take up the Senate’s time on dealing with a lot of the figures, but I would just say this. In terms of the drop at Brooklyn, the 300, it’s my understanding that the allocations this year compared to last when you take out SEEK, they are a comparable figure. The impact at Brooklyn College is not just simply in overall percentage drops. But since there are a number of students, the absolute number of Black, Hispanic, and Asian students are already low. Even though the percentages may go down in tandem, they nonetheless represent a smaller absolute number of already a small number of students.

Professor Levine (Applied Science, College of Staten Island) - "Fist let me just start with a gripe. Yes, I do take offense to you referring constantly to the seven senior colleges. At a minimum I would insist that you refer to Staten Island as a comprehensive senior college with emphasis on the word senior. But that is not my question. My question is, the previous admissions criteria read a bunch of things or top 1/3 of the graduating high school class. How many students in past years were in the category, top 1/3 of the graduating class?" / Mr. Jacobs - The numbers had decreased significantly. The percentile ranking class became much less of an issue in 1975 when the Board changed the equivalent of an 80 average being the top half of the to an 80 average being the top third of the class. I don’t have the exact numbers with me. Maybe I should have brought a laptop with me. There probably were no more than a 1,000-1,500 students admitted to the senior colleges in the top third of the class who did not have an 80 average, who did not have the SAT score. I’m guessing, which would have been an overall enrollment of maybe 500-700.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) - "I think there is no way of predicting what will be the number of students who are not able to face a second hurdle being imposed. In terms of the new layer of competency tests. We do know that the current Skills Assessment Test discriminates against students of color. Even students with the same grades, students of color do more poorly. In high school preparation, you take that group, you control for those factors, students of color do more poorly than white students. We know that the SAT’s discriminate against students of color. We are going to have a layer of tests which is just going to be another hurdle, another obstacle, more students are going to fail and be excluded. I think that part is atrocious. I really object to this idea of freedom. The one place we shouldn’t have the freedom is our commitment to open admissions and that means open admission in spirit throughout the whole system. If we say that all colleges should be free to raise their admissions standards then they are losing their commitment to open admissions. In a year they could raise their admissions standards to a 1300 SAT and a 95 high school average and they will have a perfect retention rate, the same as Harvard. But Harvard is not an open admissions university. The terrible thing here is once you let them do that, it puts enormous pressure on the rest of the senior colleges to follow suit or otherwise they are going to have a public image of being the second rate senior college. So whether we have the courage to stand by open admissions or not is an open question. But you are putting enormous pressure on us to abandon open admissions. I really do think open admissions applies to the whole system, not just to the two year system. I really resent this idea of the given freedom. You are giving us freedom to exclude students and ruin their future hopes, that’s all the freedom I’ve seen you give us." /

Ms. Hassett – If I could just comment. At the senior college level we’ve never had open admissions. We’ve always had standards at the senior college level. As for freedom to move to a class whose profile would be a 95 average at 1300 SAT scores, I think we all know we might have 10-15 students. The extent to which we are revenue driven, and I expect that unfortunately to continue, over 42% of our budget University wide comes from tuition revenue. With the extent to which colleges will have to continue to meet revenue targets, enrollment targets. Some colleges like Brooklyn College are in the enviable position of having met their revenue and enrollment targets successfully over the last five years and I don’t see that changing. Other campuses will be asked to do the same. In fact, one of the unhappy tasks that I face as the Interim Deputy Chancellor is reviewing the plight of campuses who are having their budgets cut as a consequence of revenue shortfalls. I clearly do not see that future for us whatsoever. /

Professor Crain - "Do you therefore then think that open admissions means every student’s opportunity to get a two year degree?" / Ms. Hassett - I’m not sure I understand the question. The Chancellor made it quite clear that his twin goals are to preserve access and to strengthen standards. One does not negate the other. When he speaks about broad parameters we cannot move in a direction as a University where there are not multiple opportunities for students who have a high school diploma to enroll in college. I thought the topic was on senior college CAP. / Professor Crain - "It is. You said that the senior colleges are not open admissions colleges." / Ms. Hassett - They have never been open admissions. / Professor Crain - "Technically that’s wrong. Because we always had the initial idea that senior colleges have to admit a certain number of open admissions students." / Ms. Hassett - No. / Professor Crain - "Then I repeat my question. Is it then that open admissions guarantees every student a full opportunity to get a two year degree?" / Ms. Hassett - Open admissions guarantees every student who enrolls to receive a four year degree if that student successfully moves through the City University system. / Professor Crain - "The spirit of open admissions was an opportunity to pursue your potential and develop your mind. Therefore you cannot create a system in which the senior colleges raise admissions standards to the point that students are denied that opportunity. It violates the spirit of open admissions. That’s what you are doing."

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) - "I have a question for Les Jacobs. But first, Patty, just a little gentle correction. The community colleges do have standards; we don’t have admissions standards. I know you didn’t mean that. I know you know that. How do you think that raising the admissions requirements in the senior colleges, how will that affect transfer and articulation for the community colleges?" / Mr. Jacobs - That’s a complex question and let me see if I’ve got it all right. I think Sandi will correct me if I’m wrong. The only operative thing, raising the admissions standards on the freshman level. I still view them as a change in the academic profile of the students who were admitted. There are a lot of students we would not have admitted in the past to the senior colleges who are now getting in. Students with 78 averages as Patty said, with 3 units of math and 3 units of English. They would have not gotten in in the past. The transfer students, the following policies abound. One is that for all but community college graduates, transfer requirements are set by the senior colleges. We just implement what they tell us and that has always been the case since transfer admissions were centralized.

Basically what’s going on with skills testing and the 1985 Board Resolution which we never implemented which we are now. I think it was created at Kingsborough Community College by your President, but I’m not sure. It has always been the case that students who were about to enter their 60th credit, whether it be community college graduates or senior college, had to pass all three tests before they could do that. That has now been extended to anyone transferring from a community college to a senior college with less than 60 credits. So that’s the entire effect. The senior colleges have really not changed GPA or credit levels, at least for this year. I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I was on the Commission on Open Admissions on 1969, I’ve gone through a number of iterations, and what the Deputy Chancellor said is true. It has never been policy to be open admissions at a senior college. There has never been a time when a senior college did not have an admissions criteria since 1969. I also might add that both of us, and I see Dr. Greenbaum here, that both of us are graduates of Queensborough Community College. Me, a hundred years ago. Both of us are personally committed to assure that students are able to move on like we were able to move on.

Professor Sohmer (Math, City College) - "Those of us who have been around for a while know that students who are not given their first choice, leave as soon as they can to go back to the school of their first choice. With the stratification of the admissions criteria, you are creating a real problem for the senior colleges because the schools who decide whatever they decide, will then have their students move off to schools of second or third choice. They will get the remediation of the second or third choice, creating an enormous financial drain on them, and then the students are going to leave. We will even have a bad graduation rate. Has this been factored in in any sense with anybody with the numbers?" / Mr. Jacobs - I think that dynamic will have to be studied over time. / Professor Sohmer - "We’ll be out of business by that time." / Mr. Jacobs - Not the way we’re moving now. I think that once a student is allocated to a college, particularly if this is a student’s second, third, or fourth choice. I think that it is a tremendous opportunity for that college to go out of their way to make that student feel so comfortable that they are going to want to stay. I’m not being disingenuous. I know that every Director of Admissions that I’ve spoken to would agree with that. Once you have what some people would call a live body on a campus, it’s better from an enrollment position to not have that person at all. I didn’t want to go to Queensborough in 1965, but they put me there because my SAT scores weren’t high enough, or whatever the reason was. I wanted to stay there, I wanted them to start off with four year degrees. I think if you are happy somewhere, if you are made to feel happy, there is a chance that you may hold onto some of those students.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) I would like to focus on what the Deputy Chancellor indicated to be one of the real contentious points in the CAP Plan and that is the issue around limitations on remediation at the four year schools. I’m going to refer to this Watson Report once again and just read a couple lines from it. I think we need to keep this discussion of one year, less than a year, less than a semester, in the context of the fact that in 1995 in those 37 points of light, we had rammed down our throats this limitation of one year at the senior colleges. That was two years ago. We never voted on that; we never discussed that at all. I guess we came to terms with that, and now we are thinking about one year as being great and we’re fighting to at least keep a year or maybe a semester.

Anyway, this Judith Watson Report indicates that among baccalaureate students, before the one year remedial cap was imposed, three-quarters of those in basic skills courses completed their remediation within one year. That’s 75%. Almost 90% finished by the end of the third semester, a year and a half. I know the political issues around saying, not a year, a semester, or less than a semester, put them to institutes and continuing education and so forth. But what is the educational purpose? Do we have an educational purpose for saying that, if after three semesters, 90% of students can make it, and they can make it because of the good remedial programs we have in place now. Why are we talking about a year, less than a year, less than a semester? I don’t see any educational validity for that and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that?" /

Ms. Hassett – Yes, I do. I don’t think the question is posed strictly from an educational perspective. It is posed in large part from a political perspective. But also in an educational context. When I have confronted certain Board Members on their opinions in this regard, they come back to what’s going on or what is not going on at the Board of Education with social promotion, with graduating students who are not prepared. In essence there is an immense frustration on the part of not just our Board Members but City leaders, if you will, with what is not happening. I often say, the Board of Education has $9 billion. We have from the City of New York roughly $100 million. We’re supposed to do with the $100 million with what the Board of Education can not seem to do with $9 billion. There is a lot of frustration on the part of us at the City University with respect to this. I think the frustration is evidenced by some of these policy proposals that attempt to force the issue at the Board of Education. I can’t say it has been without result. Chancellor Crew has been very responsive in recent days to Chancellor Kimmich’s overtures with respect to working together. I think one of the strongest features of the Comprehensive Action Plan is the work with the Board of Education.

One of the things Lester Jacobs and I are working on is putting samples of the Skills Test on-line. Letting students take them anonymously on-line in the high school and see where he or she may place in math and reading in particular. And use the results of that to get placement in courses that would lead to college preparatory work. There is the notion of College Now, which those of you from Kingsborough may be familiar with. It may not be perfect, but it has a budget line and it has been successful in helping students pass the Skills Test. I would like to see the Board of Education use the Skills Test as a graduation requirement. We wouldn’t have this problem whatsoever. So in any case, that’s where a lot of this comes from. There are those of us who argue for the paired courses concept which we know contributes to the two-thirds and three-quarter success rates with respect to students completing remediation in that sequence. We also have to contend with the notion that there has been at least the perception of some basic skills, an increase in the amount of courses, not ESL, but in basic skills. I’m not sure if there is any validity to that. We do know that we’re not offering degrees in basic skills. The basic skills courses are tools like the library, like computers, like all of the things we offer on campuses to help students gain their degrees. So there is a sense that without some political pressure, and I’m speaking only for myself now and what I’ve observed and what I perceive, at City University level might at some point, and maybe this is the point in time, create positive change at the Board of Education.

/Professor Friedman - "Paired courses cannot be conducted in a pre-collegiate setting. They have to be conducted during the semester with students in regular academic courses. Secondly, with all due respect, I know the problems at the Board of Education. But we do not teach at the Board of Education; we teach at CUNY. Basically we have been doing a pretty good job under very difficult circumstances and we don’t need radical surgery here. I hope that the Chancellery can take that message into what we know are very difficult negotiations with the Board."

Professor Matthews (Mathematics, Hunter College) - "I’m the first in my generation to go to college; my father went to 7th grade. I have heard data that minorities in the sciences, the highest correlating factor is having a relative or friend who is in the sciences to prepare the way. When I went from PS 73 to Hunter High, I only had CPI units. But have we done in our simulations anything to deal with the economic levels of the students who are cut out. Not just racial, but economic, and relation to parents having gone to college. Are we cutting out the first generation college students more than we want to? Are we cutting out the poor who went to schools that didn’t get a chance to have teachers who can teach CPI unit type courses?" / Mr. Jacobs - The answer is no. / Professor Matthews - "Don’t you think we should do something?" / Mr. Jacobs - I’m writing it down, I don’t know if we can. It’s extraordinarily difficult to get at that data. We have it for special program students, and we have it for a lot of students who are receiving financial aid. / Professor Matthews - I think some of us would be interested in getting as much as you have." / Mr. Jacobs - I would be interested in looking at it also.

Professor Greenbaum (History, Queensborough Community College) - "Before I make my question. Les, you didn’t get any grades from me, you earned them. There is a problem in the transfer of students from the community colleges, having to do with the 60 Credits Exam. Because in places like Hunter College, the skills level is higher than at the community college. We had a student in CUNY-BA, this was a very good student, who went from a community college to Hunter College and was denied admission after she had been admitted the term before." / Chair Cooper - Was admitted and then pushed out. It’s very complicated. / Professor Greenbaum - "She’s back in now, but it’s on a temporary basis. It’s very serious business. What can be done about it?" / Mr. Jacobs - I don’t know how to answer this. /

Chair Cooper - That’s an issue I think which is probably more at the campus. That’s the Hunter faculty, that’s not the Central Administration. I really don’t want the Central Administration to answer that question if you don’t mind. / Mr. Jacobs - There are colleges that have requirements that are different from the Central requirements for passing. All I can tell you is that at UAPC we have met the students based on the Central pass rates, not individual colleges. And I don’t like it. Personally I think it is awful, but it’s a faculty prerogative I guess at those senior colleges. I wanted to tell you one thing, because I have to say one thing incendiary today. That is that, we talked about the Board of Education and while it’s true that the Board of Education, the pass rates on these tests are very low. Although they are statistically better from our private and parochial schools, they are not that great. Just keep that in the back of your minds. Also the Board of Education pass rates right now in mathematics, of the students that come to us, last year for the first time were higher than the private and parochial school students who came to us.

The two panelists were thanked.

VII. New Business

Chair Cooper - Would somebody from the Executive Committee please like to move this Resolution. The Executive Committee held this special meeting a little bit before this meeting began. Copies of the Resolution are at the door. I recognize Bernie Sohmer, the Vice Chair of the Senate.

Professor Sohmer (Vice Chair of Faculty Senate) - Whereas the Comprehensive Action Plan proposes a fundamental revision of the admissions of the City University of New York. Whereas the CAP with its proposed limitations on remediation severely impact current and future CUNY students, including those attending New York public schools. Whereas the Comprehensive Action Plan would place CUNY outside the national mode of practices of United States institutions of higher education of which, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, 78% offer some remediation, including M.I.T., UCLA, UCAL-Berkeley, and all SUNY campuses, as do virtually all community colleges, and 81% of all senior colleges. Therefore be it resolved that the University Faculty Senate calls on the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees to modify the Comprehensive Action Plan to maintain the historical and educational mission of the City University of New York. Be it further resolved that the current CUNY policy on remedial education at senior colleges is embodied in the June 1995 Board of Trustees Resolutions 15 and 16, continue. And be it further resolved that the current policy and practice of student access to the community colleges continue. Be it further resolved that remediation at both senior and community colleges be designed, supervised, and taught by the faculty of the college. And be it further resolved that the funding necessary to implement the provisions of any plan be provided by the City and State before any plan is put into operation.

Chair Cooper - Is there a second? Is there any discussion? If there is would you please line up at the microphone. We have to have a record of comments.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) - "I think there is just one factual correction we need to make. In the third "whereas," I think that 81%, if you are referring to the statistics in the Judith Watson Report, is not all senior colleges, but all four year public colleges." / Chair Cooper - I think the 78% refers to four year public colleges. Could we agree to check the data on this and accept the proposed change in terms of the data. / Professor Gallagher - "I just mentioned that because I think that the word public is important." / Chair Cooper - You are right about that.

Professor Galub (Social Sciences, Bronx Community College) - "I agree with a lot that this resolution says. I think that there may be some inaccuracies factually. For example, the reference to the national norm of practices. I’m not sure that is so. I think that certainly the plans of the Board of Trustees should be modified. I think that remediation should remain within the University and within the University Faculty, I think it would be a disaster otherwise, and that funding is necessary. However, I disagree with the paragraph which states that the current policy and practice of student access to the community colleges continue. I teach at a community college, and I don’t think that the program has worked out the way we had hoped. I think that there must be some modification in it. Therefore on the whole I will abstain from this resolution. A position which is well known to my colleagues at Bronx Community." / Chair Cooper - I promise that we will correct the data. In Resolution 3 the data comes from the National Center for Educational Statistics. I’ve seen some of it and that is an organization that’s part of the U.S. Dept. of Education. It’s data that’s drawn upon by Judith Watson and others. It’s not something that anybody in CUNY researched. So we are not tainted in that sense. / Professor Galub - "I think that resolved clause is essential. We don’t mention anything about the testing policies and the new layer of competency exams. I think that’s very important." / Chair Cooper - Would you describe what you mean by the new layer of competency exams? / Professor Galub - "In order to get out of remediation once you are in it you are going to have to pass University-wide tests. That’s Badillo’s main point, that’s what he really wants is University-wide assessment that all students are going to have to pass. What that does is it violates open admissions because no longer are students guaranteed a place in the University, even the community college. What they are guaranteed is a place in a remedial institute and a chance to pass essentially an entrance exam to get into the University. / Chair Cooper - I’m not terribly sure. Are you proposing an amendment to the resolution? / Professor Galub - "Yes. You don’t have to change the resolve, [third resolve] it would just be adding... I think we need to make the point that we object to this second layer of exams."

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) - "When we drafted this as an Executive Committee we tried not to be too specific, but instead there would be a cover letter from Sandi spelling out the areas in which there needs to be modification and that would be one of them. If we started identifying one and then another, and then another. The whole plan consists of issues that are problematic. It probably is easier to have in a cover letter which we would then send. Sandi, would you include that in a cover letter?" / Chair Cooper - There is no question about the fact that it is an issue. The Discipline Councils in Math and English have made it very clear to me that they will not recommend, certainly the English one, using the CWAT as an exit exam, having used it as a placement test. Then the issue arose of what would be used and the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in one of these drafts said that the faculty would participate in developing an instrument. The issue will be whether or not the Trustees can be persuaded off that question. If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think they can. If we win that one, we will have really moved a mountain. When this meeting closes, if there is anybody here from the community colleges, I have some information you might want to have. On that issue of testing, at this point is there a second to the motion that we alter the Resolution to make a statement about testing? There has been a motion to amend. Is there a second? Is there any discussion?

Professor Diamond (Mathematics, Queens College) - "I’m going to suggest that we don’t do it because we are tired, it’s late, everyone knows that when you write a resolution on the floor it comes out bad. The intent is clear, the Chair is literate, and we should assign the Chair the question of drafting it." / Chair Cooper - I’ll take the assignment if others agree with it. I think I’ll call for a vote on the amendment if there is no further discussion. All in favor of amending the Resolution to include some sentence on testing? All opposed? It fails, I believe. Is there any other discussion on the original motion?

Professor Vozick (Science, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - "This resolution as written seems to be supportive of some modification of the Comprehensive Action Plan. It would seem to me that it would be more appropriate to the interests of the faculty to reject and call for the end of submissions of Comprehensive Action Plans."/ Chair Cooper - Would anybody like to respond?

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) - "I want to support Mike Vozick’s proposal. I think that taking a stand against this plan will be more effective than trying to cooperate in any way with it. It was not just a split vote, Karen. I don’t think that held it up. I hope it is some of the pressures getting to Comptroller McCall and some others."/Chair Cooper – Bill, I wish I could agree with you. I’m sorry to butt in from here, but I think that you are just frankly wrong on this one politically. It was a split vote and two of them were out of the country. And if you don’t think they are going to be lined up, then you just have to trust my experience in that building. / Professor Crain - "I just say, don’t underestimate the student movement that is growing right now. The situation is going to get hot and we will see how it plays out. I think that we should oppose this awful vicious plan and say that the University Faculty Senate calls upon the Trustees to halt the Comprehensive Action Plan and to cooperate with the UFS and local campus governance bodies in a careful study of remediation as it serves CUNY’s historic mission of opportunity. That’s what we should do, stop this and do it right. Do it in a way that allows the campuses to come up with a better plan."

Professor Yousef (Engineering Technology, College of Staten Island) - "I guess now that this is the motion on the floor, this is what we are discussing?" / Chair Cooper - The motion that is on the floor hasn’t been seconded. Go ahead, discuss. / Professor Yousef - "Could I call the question on the motion?" / Chair Cooper - The question has been called. Is there any objection to the call of the question?

Professor Vozick - "Yes, I’m going to call for a quorum."

Chair Cooper - There has been a call for a quorum. There being no quorum, the meeting is suspended. Thank you very much.