THE
THREE HUNDRED THIRD PLENARY SESSION
OF
THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE
OF
THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
The meeting was called to order
by UFS Chair O’Malley at 6:30 p.m. in Room 9204/5 at the Graduate School and
University Center. 58
voting members were present:
Baruch: Present – Hill and Pollard. Absent – Freedman,
Giannikos, Majete, Myers, Onochie, and Wiley. BMCC: Present – Aymer,
Friedman, Martin, Price, White, and Alternate Rani. Absent -- none. Bronx CC:
Present – Fergenson and McManus. Absent - Lopez-Marron and Skinner. Brooklyn:
Present– Antoniello, Bell, Jacobson, Shapiro, Tobey, and Alternate Bloomfield.
Absent – Cunningham, Haggerty, London, Romer, and Sardy. CCNY: Present
– Benenson, Crain, Connorton, and
Sank. Absent – Broderick,
Buffenstein, Sohmer. Vacancies – 3. CSI:
Present – Cooper, Foleno, Klibaner, Levine, and Petratos. Absent–Yousef. CUNY
Law School: Present – McArdle. Absent – Andrews.
Vacancy – 1. Graduate School: Present – Baumrin. Absent –
Katz-Rothman, Khuri, Kulkarni, Nair and Ofuatey-Kodjoe.
Hostos CC: Present – August, Roe, and Singh. Absent - none.
Vacancies - 1. Hunter:
Present – Doyle, Finder, Matthews, Wimberly, and Alternate Rodriguez. Absent
– Friedman, Kaye, Krishnamachari, and Sherrill. Vacancies – 2.
John Jay: Present – Kaplowitz and Napoli. Absent – Holder,
Kadir, Mandery, and Wylie-Marques. Kingsborough CC: Present – Barnhart,
Farrell, Galvin, O’Malley, and Alternates Fridman and Lin. Absent– Goodkin.
LaGuardia CC: Present – Beaky, Davidson, Gallagher, and Mettler. Absent -
Lerman. Vacant -- 1. Lehman:
Present –Philipp and Wilder. Absent – Jervis, Heching, Hosay, and Mineka.
Medgar Evers: Present – Alternate Hickerson. Absent -- Barker,
Harris-Hastick Donohue and Patwary. NYCCT: Present –Dreyer, Hounion,
and Richardson. Absent -- Cermele, Horelick, and Walter. Queens:
Present – Erickson. Absent – Bird, Brody, Habib, Moore, Savage, and Sukhu.
Vacancies – 3. Queensborough
CC: Present –Dahbany-Miraglia, Pecorino, and Alternate Tully. Absent –
Barbanel, Weiss. Vacancies – 1.
York: Present – Lewis, Moss, and Alternate Cooley.
Absent – Berg, Frank.
Attending as guests were Mitchell Langbert
(Brooklyn), Karen Gourgey (Baruch), and Syd Lefkoe (Queens).
Governance
Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Cooper (CSI), Dreyer (NYCCT),
Fridman (KCC), Friedman (Kingsborough), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine
(CSI), Mettler (LaGuardia), and Tobey (Brooklyn).
Parliamentarian Andrea McArdle, Executive Director Phipps, Administrative
Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were present.
I.
Approval of the Agenda - The agenda was adopted as proposed.
II. Approval
of the Minutes of February 24, 2004 - The minutes were adopted as proposed.
III. Reports
: (Recorded in Reports & Deliberations)
A.
Chair
B. The Chancellor
C.
Vice Chancellor Russ Hotzler on the Community College Investment
Initiative
D. Representatives to Board Committees
IV.
New Business
A. UFS Recommendations
on the 2004-2008 Master Plan - Since time was short, the Chair
solicited comments by email and promised that the recommendations would be
redrafted and distributed later.
Professor Crain made the motion,
which was seconded and passed unanimously, that the UFS express to Professor
Ramona Hernandez the following sentiment: “That
we wish to express special gratitude and appreciation to our colleague,
Professor Ramona Hernandez of the City College, for thinking only of the best
interests of children and maintaining the courage of her convictions in the
recent New York City dispute over grade retention.”
Professor Hernandez had been removed the previous week from New York
City's Panel for Educational Policy because she opposed Mayor Michael
Bloomberg's plan to impose strict promotion rules for third-graders.
There
being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:15 P.M.
Respectfully
submitted,
William Phipps
Executive Director
THE THREE HUNDRED
AND THIRD PLENARY SESSION
OF THE UNIVERSITY
FACULTY SENATE
OF THE CITY
UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
March 23, 2004
III. Reports:
A. Chancellor: Thank you for the work that all of you are
doing because it really is going to make a difference. I had imagined, as
everybody had, that we would have a very fast budget this year because the
Republican convention is going to be in New York City, the Legislature is up for
reelection, and you would imagine that people would be distracted pretty early
into the spring and want to get out of Albany and do their other work. I don’t
believe that that is going to happen. In recent conversations people have
indicated to me that they believe that there will be some agreement, a
conceptual agreement, that may occur around the beginning of May. And once that
conceptual agreement is reached, mark-ups of bills will have to be done and that
could take at least three to four weeks. So I think we’re back to business as
usual here. Unless something really dramatic happens it looks as if the budget
is going to be much further than I think most of us had anticipated. And of
course complicating this, and you see this in the press, we don’t have full
disclosure yet from the Zarb commission, the campaign for fiscal equity decision
that courts mandated that the State Legislature come forward with a plan; that
has not surfaced yet and that really is becoming much more of a complicating
factor and dragging the process towards its completion. In any case, our efforts
have largely been, at least on the State side, for the senior colleges to get
restoration of about $18 to $20 million in operating aid. That is going to be a
problem unless we get it fixed, not a problem that you would necessarily see on
your campuses but problems that we would have just putting together the
foundations of a strong and secure budget. I believe that that will be turned
about in our favor. I also believe that the special programs, SEEK, College
Discovery, programs like that I think will again see the light of day, which is
very good news. The hard thing in our particular budget again is the TAP
program. To get the full restoration of the TAP program is close to about $300
million. That is a very, very big number. The thing that I’ve always worried
about, and I’ve shared this with you now for two years in a row, because
we’ve seen this happen over and over again, that when TAP is restored people
feel we’ve taken care of public education, let’s go on to something else,
when all of us know that, while it’s important to get TAP restored because we
will have some students who are vulnerable, there are areas in the budget that
unless they are addressed will have particular problems for us and we need to be
very mindful of it.
The other difficulty in this
budget process is on the community college side on the capital side. I don’t
think it’s necessarily problematic on base aid to community colleges; the
Governor reduced base aid by about $150 per FTE student, but that I think
probably will also be corrected, if not fully then fairly completely. It is on
the community colleges’ capital program that I continue to be concerned. We
have requested, and I have gotten very favorable signals from the Governor
himself, from the leadership in both the Senate and the Assembly that the $108
million that we are asking for in addition to what the Governor has proposed is
a legitimate request, and certainly by the nature of what has happened in the
past in financing the capital programs in the community colleges is more than
justified. More than justified because there has not been right now for about
six and a half years any real money into the community colleges, and we believe
that over the next five years we’re going to need between $400 and $500
million to do the kinds of things that I think are really essential to do across
our six community colleges that have really been very poorly neglected. So the
problem that we have is that the City of New York, and you heard me talk about
this over and over again, has not given their side to the covenant that is
struck, that if we provide a dollar you have to match it with a dollar, and the
City has never done that to any extent, starting with the Giuliani
administration and spilling over to where we are today. And they say to me very
directly, “We’re prepared to do this but if we do it we don’t think the
City is going to put up their share, and if the City is not going to put up
their share we’re going to pause and make sure that we put the money to where
we think it’s actually going to be used as opposed to appropriating it and not
being used.” And that puts us in a very difficult conversation. I’ve had
obviously very long and many private conversations with the Executive in the
City, with, again, the highest levels in the City over and over again, and
people believe that there is a legitimacy to our need. Nobody is concerned about
that but there is this play that is going on, and we’ve been seeing it for a
while, between the City and the State over capital programs. Until we work our
way out of this we’re put in this vice between competing interests here that
leave us falling short. Again, I had a late conversation today with a top Deputy
Mayor who’s very much involved in this, and with the Budget Director, and
I’m hopeful that we’re going to work our way through this. But on the State
side with respect to community colleges, that’s what I’m really worried
about. On the City side, let me just briefly say that I think after a lot of
very hard work, quiet work, especially with the Executive branch, I think the
$5.4 million will be OK. That was this PEG reduction that I’ve shared with you
for some time now, and although I don’t have it in writing I’m fairly
confident that that will work out. Here we had really a joining of hands between
the Executive that we worked on (this is going on now for several months) and
the City Council, so I’m fairly confident that we will prevail. We still have
issues on the Vallone Scholarship safety net program, operational support for
the PEG reduction and the Hunter College Campus Schools, which continue to have
a deficit of about $125,000 which is crazy.
It just doesn’t make any sense at all, but we’re working our way
through that. So that’s where we are. We’ll be fine. I’ve said that
we’re going to have stability and we will have stability next year, but these
little pockets of money, a little here a little there, cause particular campuses
a problem. I’m even convinced that we may get some additional faculty
positions on the State side because fortunately all of us this year have been
saying the same sort of thing and the message is getting across. So we will see.
That’s all I could tell you at this particular point. The message is a later
budget than I thought and we still are somewhat concerned about the capital side
for the community colleges.
Let me mention a few other things and then I’ll take some questions and then
I’m going to leave you because Russ Hotzler is going to talk about the
community college investment program. We are in various stages of searches for
new Presidents. The John Jay Search Committee has come forward with four very
interesting people. There are campus visits this week and next week. I will make
a recommendation for a new President for John Jay College at the May Board
meeting and I expect that we will have a President that will start over the
summer at John Jay and I think it will be a good President as well. The
candidates that we have look very promising. We are in the later stages of a
search for a President for Kingsborough Community College. I have not met those
candidates but I will be meeting them and I expect that we will advance a
President for Kingsborough as well as early as the May Board meeting. That one
may spill over until June but I’m not sure about that. We’ll see how fast we
can get that done. I met with the faculty leadership, student leadership, and
alumni at New York City College of Technology and indicated to those three
groups that it’s my intention to take a short route instead of a full-blown
search for a new President. I think that we have an ideal candidate that has
shown a real capacity to do really very good work and I await his visit to the
campus, I await reports, and we’ll discuss this with various leadership groups
on the New York City College of Technology campus. And it’s not a secret,
I’ve made this very public, we do have provisions. When I came in and we
rewrote the Presidential Guidelines, because we changed the governance structure
about the relationship of Presidents to the Chancellor, we put a provision in
those guidelines that if there is a particular outstanding candidate the
Chancellor can go to the Board and say this particular individual really has all
the tickets, so let’s do it. So Russ Hotzler is in play right now, so when you
see him he’s going to be looked at (applause). I’m not exactly sure if that
applauded me, but I will await and I’m going to do this according to Hoyle and
we’ll get this done.
We also are going to be doing a rapid search for another very senior officer of
the University, in fact the first officer of the University, Louise Mirrer,
who’s seated in the front, who after seven years as Vice Chancellor of
Academic Affairs, and then Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, is
assuming the position as President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York
Historical Society. Let me just say that this may be Louise’s last visit to a
plenary; I don’t know, she may find it so enjoyable that she may want to come
back. Let me say just a couple of words about Louise. When I came in 1999 I was
delighted to find Louise Mirrer in her role. I was privileged to chair the
Search Committee when I was President at Baruch that chose Louise, so obviously
I had great admiration for her having never met her but chaired the Search
Committee and made that recommendation that she be the next Vice Chancellor. In
the last five years there has been a tremendous amount of work that I would hope
that many of you would acknowledge about the academic renewal of this
University, not only the cornerstone of this, which is faculty renewal. Remember
in 1999 we had about 5,400 full-time faculty, and we now have something over
6,000 and growing, and we’re going to continue to grow the faculty that
we’ve attracted, and extraordinary faculty, to complement the extraordinary
faculty that we have right now. For me that has always been the flagship
component of what it is that we’re trying to do to build a great faculty at
this University and to really shape the University to attract more students that
in the past were not as interested in coming to CUNY, and we are getting
extraordinary men and women who are choosing to come to this University now that
were not at all persuaded that this was the right place for them to study.
We’ve done an awful lot of policy changes at this University. Some of these
policy changes have been controversial, but I have been doggedly about trying to
do this because I’ve always believed that they were the right things to do. So
if I listed all of the changes that have occurred, the new schools that we’ve
established, the new School of Journalism that we will establish in May, the
change in standards, the assessment, the performance management system, it just
goes on and on, the driver of all of this was Louise Mirrer; she was the one
center stage moving this, so I think we owe a debt of great gratitude to Louise
for her sensitivity to moderate and listen and change a view based upon
information that is given; the hard work that so many of you have acknowledged
to me on a personal level about how hard and honest Louise has been over these
seven years in her capacity as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and just a
good colleague, a very fine person that I think we as a community benefited from
greatly. So, Louise, we’re going to miss you.
We have a Search Committee that has been established for an Academic Vice
Chancellor or Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. We have a
protocol, and that protocol mandates a certain number of Presidents, a Trustee
that is a non-voting member. Ricardo Fernandez of Lehman College will chair the
committee. He will be joined by Marlene Springer and Gail Mellow. You’re
fortunate to have Susan O’Malley on the committee. I think Susan you did say
yes, right? Professor Stuart Ewen at Hunter, who’s a terrific fellow; Nilda
Soto Ruiz, who will not vote; she called me today and she said, “Am I allowed
to talk on the committee?” And I said, “Of course you’re allowed to
talk.” So she will be talking but not voting. And two members of my
administration, Allan Dobrin, who’s a Senior Vice Chancellor and works very
closely with the Academic Vice Chancellor, and John Mogulescu, who is the
largest grant and contract receiver in the University by several orders of
magnitude, and Agnes Abraham representing the students. It’s my intention to
have a new Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs by September, so this
is on a fast track and we’re moving as quickly as we can. In the interim I’m
going to be very much involved in academic affairs, as I have been over the past
five years, but I’ve asked Russ Hotzler to coordinate the activity of academic
affairs after Louise leaves, and hopefully he will not have to do that more than
two or three months because he has another assignment that awaits him, but
he’s agreed to do that. And there will be another search or two and I’m not
prepared to talk about that tonight, but to me the change in leadership is about
trying to attract the best people that we possibly can, and with the reputation
of the University having changed I think for the better over the past couple of
years, we are getting extraordinary people now saying “I’d like to be
considered for some of these positions,” and I think that’s a good sign for
us. It’s certainly showing in the faculty that we are recruiting.
I will just say one very quick story because Russ is going to talk about this
later. It was at John Jay College about a month ago where I was meeting with the
Faculty Governance Leaders, and I always get a corned beef sandwich when I go,
which is what I look forward to. A Professor, Chair of the English Department at
Queensborough, came over to me, Sheena Gillespie, came over to me and said that
they have just completed hiring seven members of the English Department for
Queensborough Community College, the largest infusion of full-time faculty in
the English Department in the history of her tenure at Queensborough, and I
think that’s going to be replicated at a number of institutions. It’s a
wonderful time for this University to attract as many people to work with you
and to do the good work that all of you continue to do. Those kinds of stories I
think we’ll be able to chat with you about.
Let me just finish with the tenure clock issue, which I’m sure is of interest.
I know that there are disparate views on the faculty, and that’s good,
that’s what universities are about. People are free to express their views and
it’s important that those views be heard. We did have a town meeting. I’m
going to report to the Board on that town meeting but more important than all
the communications, and they have been quite substantial, is that we’re going
to go through a process. I have not even approached anybody yet and I’m going
to be very straight with all of you, and I always am. I have not asked anybody
on the Legislature yet, either on the Assembly or the Senate, to sponsor a bill
because I’m not exactly sure what that bill should look like, and I think we
need to continue to think about this. We have a draft of a bill that Rick
Schaffer did, but as I would say, everything is a first draft and it needs
constant looking at carefully. I think it’s the right thing for us to do. The
thing that I received from listening closely to those people who spoke very
favorably about a change are the young faculty at a number of our campuses that
said something that really gave me a great sense of comfort and encouragement.
They said several times, and this was across a number of campuses, “I don’t
want to write in a B journal, I want to write in the best journals that I can. I
have ideas, I have a dissertation that I think can be structured in a way that
can enable me to get my work into the best possible places.” For those of us
who have written for top journals, you know how long that process can take;
you’ve heard the stories over and over again. I want to help support faculty
who shoot high. For me it’s about fairness. It’s not about changing the
guidelines in terms of making it more stringent to get tenure, it is to give
people an opportunity in a reasonable amount of time, not in an accelerated
amount of time, to do the good work that they are capable of. We have to make
judgments in such a short period of time that oftentimes reviewers have said,
“I won’t review something like this; how can you possibly make a judgment so
quickly.” And I understand community colleges have different views in large
part from some of the senior colleges and we need to take some of these things
into consideration, and this process is going to move forward and we’ll see
where we wind up. I’m going to need to stop now because I know that you want
to see Russ and I have to get on to something, so I have time for just a few
questions and I’ll get out of here.
Professor Levine (Engineering
Science and Physics, College of Staten Island) – As everyone in the room
knows, I support extending the maximum time to tenure, so I’m the right person
to ask this. I would ask, since the UFS has arranged a Spring Conference for
exactly one month from today discussing the time to tenure issue, that you would
hold off, fully participate in that conference and hold off on any final
implementation or proposal until after that conference, and everyone is allowed
to speak. / Chancellor – And I think we have time. Again, I’m not
rushing to do this. I don’t know if I can physically be there. / Professor
Levine – Other people from your staff. / Chair – We asked you a long
time ago and you said yes but I don’t know what your calendar looks like.
Professor Lea Friedman
(English, Kingsborough Community College) – I want to begin by acknowledging
your concern for world-class faculty and faculty renewal and mentioning that
something quite wonderful and important, a number of things, has come up at
Kingsborough. One involves your own visit to our campus and visit of the Search
Committee to the campus, at which time you agreed that it would be a wonderful
thing for Kingsborough to have a person leading it with a series of academic
credentials, and certainly you’ve expressed that interest here, the concern
with world-class and serious academic credentials. And the second thing that you
had mentioned that the Search Committee also mentioned was a promise that
faculty would have a voice in this process. It’s come to our attention, and
this is another quite extraordinary and wonderful news to the faculty, that
there is a candidate with exactly this very background, someone with
extraordinary world-class credentials, with extraordinary work, very substantial
fund-raising background and credentials as well as administrative background,
and a number of faculty have put together a letter for you and for others urging
that this individual be interviewed. The concern with the faculty that we do
have is that in the process earlier that brought us McClenney seems to have
excluded the possibility of including this individual. I did write a letter to
the Search Committee, and I’ll skip parts of it but I’ll share with
you a part of it. “The resume is impressive. The books Weisberg has published
with Yale, Columbia, NYU, and Little Brown helped create the field of Law and
Literature. One of his books provided the evidential base for trials against
French Railroads for conspiring the murder of 75,000 French Jews. The name of
that book is Vichy and the Law. A gifted fundraiser, Dr. Weisberg raised
$8 million in the last five years for Cardoza Law School and its institutes.
He’s the Florscheimer Professor of Institutional Law. As a member of
Kingsborough faculty, I find his administrative background especially
interesting. Dr. Weisberg directs three important institutes, two of them with
multi-million dollar budgets, and has brought and managed major trials of
national consequence.” / Chancellor – Can I just say that I’m very
uncomfortable about mentioning names of people who are maybe being considered. I
just don’t think it’s really appropriate in an open forum. We try to
maintain not only the dignity but the confidentiality of the process. Talking
about this in an open forum I just don’t think is appropriate. I don’t know
who the individual is you’re referring to but I just don’t feel comfortable
even responding, given how we try to conduct these searches.
Professor Crain (Psychology,
City College) – I want to express some concerns about the flagship
environment. At City College the University has designated Engineering,
Architecture, Sciences flagship programs and departments and the City College is
also now asking departments to apply within the college for premier status. I,
and a lot of others, even in the so called upper eschelon, did not like the way
this is dividing us into superior and inferior departments and haves and have
nots and it’s going to hurt morale and collegiality. The whole process is
going to be destructive to the atmosphere of the college. / Chair – So
what are you going to ask the Chancellor? / Professor Crain – I’m going
to ask him to respond to this. And also we understand at City College that these
priorities have to do with funding and, if so, it’s a template for
consolidation and downsizing of the University and it’s very worrisome. As you
have a finite budget, certain programs are going to get financed, in some there
will be retirees, they’ll just dwindle without the funding and that’s a very
serious matter both in terms of the morale and of the implication. /
Chancellor – I have talked about the whole notion of the flagship environment
from the first day I walked in here and I’ve gone over this over and over
again. I really just can’t take the time given my own constraints and the
other questions that have to be answered. Let me just say that there is no
expectation, there is no result of this that would reduce the size of the
University or starve one program as opposed to another. These are investments
incremental to what it is that we have across the University. There is no
flagship initiative that is unique to one particular organization within the
University, one particular campus. These are collaboratives that when we invest
in a flagship effort it is cross-campus, building some great strength. So if
anything what the result of this is really to lift all of the University, it’s
not to give one favorite group more money than anybody else. It’s incremental.
/ Professor Crain – I will have to pursue it later then.
Professor Bell (Educational
Services, Brooklyn College) – I have two questions. The first is in the past
day it’s come to our attention that there is an RFP that used to subsume
freshmen summer programs and Writing Across the Curriculum and other efforts,
and it sort of seems to restructure the way the funding will come and how the
colleges are supposed to respond to these initiatives; and it has some acronym
that I don’t remember, CUNY Undergraduate something. We’d sort of like to
hear what it is and why we’re doing it please. / Chancellor – Martha,
can I answer? I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. / Professor
Bell – But Vice Chancellor Mirrer is nodding her head. She knows what I’m
talking about. / Chancellor – Could Russ respond to it and then he could
tell me what this is. / Professor Bell – I hope so. The other one is on
TAP, which you do know about. When I was in Albany on Tuesday, having met with
many people in the past couple of weeks that I’ve been up there, I’m getting
the sense that they’re very negative about restoring TAP as you said, that
they see it’s such a challenge because they’ve done it with smoke and mirrors the past couple of years and they’re sort of
hitting the wall. And when I was in Senator LaValle’s office they were
talking about alternates in restructuring and all sorts of other things.
Maybe we could be at the forefront to protect our neediest students. / Chancellor
– I have some ideas on that but our public position, our lobbying position,
has been full-restoration. The problem is that it’s a very big-ticket item and
then it just subsumes everything else, and that really is the challenge that we
face, that they may just do that and then just say, “We’ve taken care of
it.” The other thing with TAP is we have other partners; we’re not there
alone. The biggest recipients of TAP are the private institutions, and without
TAP a good percentage of them would not be viable. So for them it’s a lifeline
for survival. I think at the end TAP is going to be much more what it was
before, but there is going to be at some point because of the explosive nature
of growth in TAP that something is going to have to be done. It’s just going
to be a program that may not be affordable in its present structure in the long
run. / Professor Bell – That’s what I saw in this figure and I wondered
if we could get out ahead of it and help restructure it for us. / Chancellor
– We do have some ideas but at another time.
Professor Benenson (Mechanical Engineering, City College)
– I have a comment and a question. The comment is I would like to wish Louise
every success in her new position at the New York Historical Society. My
question I think is unrelated to my comment. I have to tell you that there is an
air of unreality that for me at least pervades these meetings. What happens on
the ground at City College, which is the only place I know, is very different
from what I hear here. I use the tenure issue as an example. At City College
it’s well known that the only requirement for tenure are publishing in
refereed journals and grants. Service to the department is dissuaded for new
faculty, so is excellence in teaching or a great deal of attention to teaching.
Many of our junior faculty who come to City College believing that it’s an
institution where teaching is important, where the students are important, find
themselves either not at home there or dissuaded from continuing by the
requirements that they make. What I wonder is whether or not you’re aware of
this problem. Have you taken steps to address it? Junior faculty is
routinely told “Do not do anything that interferes with publications and
grants.” / Chancellor – Am I aware of it? I’ve lived through it when I
was President of Baruch and I must say that I was very disheartened by the early
tenure clock because that was a very real factor that I could really grasp.
Young faculty in no uncertain terms at Baruch College, and it was attested to
last week at this town meeting, are told, are advised by their Chairs and the
peers in the department, “Forget about working with students, just go in and
do a decent job teaching. Unless you build up your publication record quickly
you’re out of here.” And I think that’s wrong. I think that’s dead
wrong. It is sending just the wrong message. If anything, with so many of our
students they need a faculty member to work with them, to guide them, to give
them encouragement, to spend time with them, and if they are being dissuaded
from doing that I think it’s wrong. But that’s the message that they’re
getting and at the end at many of our campuses if you have a good publication
record and you just do an adequate at best job by appearing in class and show up
you have a very good shot of getting tenure. / Professor Benenson – Right,
but the question I have is what evidence is there that changing the tenure clock
will do anything except lengthen the period in which junior faculty don’t
teach. If the requirements aren’t changed as well then the problem is simply
magnified. So it seems to me that the issue of changing the number of years is
the wrong issue. The issue is really the requirements for tenure. /
Chancellor – Let me just respond very quickly, and I think these are the kinds
of things that we have to talk about as a community here. For me if somebody has
two additional years to get their publication record in shape, then they have
more time to do other things around the college that they are persuaded from
doing right now. That to me is an obvious result. / Professor Benenson –
Equally obvious is the possibility that the P&B and the review committee
could say, “You had more time, you should have done more stuff.” / Chancellor
– I think that’s wrong. / Professor Benenson – Well, the evidence suggests
that’s what will happen, unless there is clear direction. / Chancellor –
We have to get clear direction. I believe, and I don’t know this for a fact
because I’m not at ground level seeing what actually goes on at the P&B,
but if you believe that there is a legitimate process that exists right now at
our campuses in evaluating people then I think that legitimate process should
just be extended to give people a little more time without saying that if
you’re a humanist, if you’re in the philosophy department of one of our four
year institutions and you’re not going to get tenure unless you write a book,
for example, with a reputable publisher, I don’t think one should say that
given the tenure clock is extended by two years that you ought to have two books
or a book and five articles. Whatever it is now should be the case, but give
people a little more opportunity to do it in a better way than perhaps they were
forced to do it, and give them a little more time so that they can have a better
balance in how they deploy their talents on their campus. And right now I think
you’re right. / Professor Benenson – It might give them more time to get
discouraged.
Professor Pollard (Baruch College) – You talked about
you’re going to unveil a new School of Journalism in May. Where would it be
located? / Chancellor - It’s going to be a University-wide school. It’s
not going to be on any particular campus. We will find an appropriate physical
location to seat it. We will look to hire a Dean and the Dean will be given an
opportunity to bring in faculty in addition to using faculty that we have here
at the University. / Professor Pollard – So you’re going to use the
faculty that you have now. / Chancellor – Actually the process is very
much a faculty driven process. / Chair – And UFS has been quite involved in
it. / Professor Pollard – Thank you.
Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of
Criminal Justice) – It’s very quick and it will not reveal anything
confidential. I am very pleased to have been on the Search Committee at John
Jay; it’s a wonderful committee; Trustee Mastro worked wonderfully; everyone
on it was terrific. In the course of the meetings what became clear is that this
artificial tiering of the colleges may not be in the best interest of the
University, and I’d like to ask that we rethink it. Colleges that are somehow
second tier strike candidates as strange, especially since that’s not their
perception necessarily of the college. / Chancellor – Tiering is probably
not the best word. I think we need to have campuses that have much higher
admission standards and I would love to see all of them moving towards that
direction. / Professor Kaplowitz – Maybe we can rethink a way of designing
it. / Chancellor – I think hopefully all the time as I will be talking
with each of the candidates that I would like to see a new President come and
push an institution much more in that direction. / Professor Kaplowitz –
And that’s the sole criterion for what tier the college is in? /
Chancellor – No, it’s not the only thing but it’s certainly a driver. The
admission standards at Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hunter, and Queens are much
different than the admission standards of those institutions that are not in
that group. I would like to see even that group of five move further. I’d like
to see other campuses move in that direction as well, as long as it doesn’t
really upset the basic fabric of the University, and that to me is important. / Professor
Kaplowitz – Thank you for taking the time.
Chair – Thank you very much,
Chancellor Goldstein. It’s my pleasure to introduce Russ Hotzler. What to say
about Russ Hotzler? He’s worn every hat in the University. He is now Vice
Chancellor for Academic Planning. I like to call him the Vice Chancellor for
articulation, but anyway, he’s going to be the Interim Vice Chancellor for
Academic Affairs, and he’s already been presented as the President of New York
City College of Technology, although faculty and the Board must vote on this. So
he does everything and he does it well.
Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Thank you very much, Susan. You
left out the most important thing: I’m still a member of the faculty in this
University. / Chair – Yes. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Thank you for your
welcome today, it’s a pleasure to be here, and I’ll try to be as quick as I
can. I know there are some questions and hopefully I’ll be able to answer
them. One of the handouts today was an overview of what has been referred to as
the community college investment program, and I will speak to it for a moment
just to bring everyone up to speed on this a bit. Some of this may not be
sitting well with some of the senior college people, but nevertheless we hope to
have an investment program for the senior colleges at some point. As you all
know, unfortunately we were in a position that forced us to raise tuition this
past fall, and in doing that we had attempted with regard to the community
colleges, and the Chancellor fought at length, to keep the tuition low but felt
it was necessary to raise tuition for the community colleges. One indicator, for
example, is that the amount of the instruction by full-time faculty at the
community colleges had dropped down to the low 40% range, and that’s just not
conducive to a good educational environment. So there is a real need here to
infuse resources back into these institutions and, again, we were fortunate that
there were people at the City Government and City Council that recognized that
need and allowed the University to go ahead and raise the tuition. However, that
rise in tuition, $300 at the community colleges, was essentially placed into one
fund and it was anticipated to generate somewhere between $25 and $26 million,
which we transposed into hiring 450 additional faculty and staff. There is a
breakdown here on the sheet that you can look at. It’s been amended a bit;
colleges have requested to make some switches here and there and we have allowed
them to do that based on their particular needs. But what this shows you is that
there were essentially 240 faculty lines given out to the community colleges and
given out in a manner that would give each of them an opportunity to reach a
point somewhere between roughly 55-56% of the instruction would be full-time, in
some cases a bit higher. Another 60 lines defined here as cluster, although
we’re really not looking at them in the same context as we look at cluster
lines at the senior colleges, these were high priority lines if you will, the
difference being that those lines were going to be funded at an average salary
of $70,000 whereas the other faculty lines were funded at an average salary of
$50,000. And that again was to give the colleges some flexibility to be
competitive in areas such as nursing, computer science, subjects where perhaps
the market required us to go a bit higher; as some of you know, to attract
nursing candidates these days one has to be competitive and the starting
salaries are significantly higher. But the attempt was also present to address
other needs. The libraries, for example, had undergone significant erosion over
the years in terms of staff and money for acquisitions. This attempted to infuse
not only additional professional lines into the library but, as you can see, a
significant amount of money that was dedicated to new acquisitions. This has
moved forward and I can report to you now that of the 240 lines, and we can
stick with those for a moment, approximately 220 of them are filled at the
moment, and they are filled in the following way: Only about 60 appointments
have been made on a permanent basis to this point in time. The other lines are
filled on a substitute basis and we certainly hope that by next fall the target
would be to have all of these lines filled, if not permanently then certainly
all of them filled with substitutes as well, so that we can really bring the
benefit of this plan to our students. This has been really long awaited. There
is another category here I should mention in terms of academic support, and that
breaks out another 40 lines, and the colleges were given the opportunity to tell
us in effect how they wanted those lines; academic advisors, whatever the
particular needs were on the campuses. It’s of significance perhaps to note
that of 150 lines that one could look at as being non-teaching approximately 45
of them are going to be academic advisors, transfer counselors, or student
service positions that will basically assist the students in their academic
programs and determining the best course for them, and that has been an area at
the community colleges that has been lacking significantly in the past number of
years and this will help us tremendously also with respect to transfers. You may
not be aware we’ve been watching these transfer numbers go up. I know some of
you are aware that you’re finding more and more transfer students on the
campuses. We actually had 30,000 transfer students across the University. That
was broken out about roughly 50/50 in terms of internal transfers primarily from
the community colleges to the senior colleges, the other half being external
transfers coming in. When you look at that number in the context of taking in
somewhere between 45 and 50,000 regular freshmen one sees that the transfer
population is really becoming extremely significant.
And the numbers are not dropping, we expect them to continue to rise, so
it’s really essential that we find ourselves looking to see how we can best
deal with that population. Let me just say in that regard one of the advantages
that will come out of this investment program is that, since all the lines were
not filled from day one, there is obviously some money here that was not
encumbered early on. All of that money is going back to the community colleges
in the form of additional resources for library acquisitions. We are in fact
buying about a million dollars’ worth of electronic resources for the
libraries. Some of that will spill over and some of those new electronic
journals will also be available now to the senior colleges as well, so there is
a crossover here in that regard. Some of the other additional funds will also be
used to help with some of the systems we have. In particular I know LaGuardia
Community College and Brooklyn college have recently brought up a system called
Degree Works, which is really a phenomenal system that empowers the students to
understand what courses they’ve taken, what remains to be taken, they can do
this as a what if. The system actually draws upon some of the inventory within
the University with respect to the TIPPS system, which has equivalencies in it
but is somewhat limited because it doesn’t interact with many of the other
programs. So the Degree Works software will actually allow that process to go
forward. As part of this we are going to buy the licenses for all the community
colleges and also put in place the expertise that can bring this program online.
Again, some of that will then benefit the senior colleges because once they
acquire the software, the University Computer Center will have the expertise to
move them online much faster. So we’re quite hopeful about this.
Let me say that one of my jobs with respect to this investment plan has been to
oversee the way in which the colleges have proceeded to hire new faculty, and I
say that respectfully because the Chancellor, I believe in an earlier visit
here, made it clear that, given his extent of commitment to the City Council and
to others as to how this resource was going to be used, ensured everyone that in
fact we would maximize the benefit to our students by hiring the best qualified
people we could and also ensuring the degree of diversity in these new hires. In
that regard the colleges have been sending in copies of resumes as the pools of
candidates, and I have to tell you we have been very fortunate. We’ve been
hiring some very spectacular people from all across the country, and I don’t
think the community colleges have seen pools of candidates like this in a long
time, and certainly we haven’t hired like this in at least thirty years, maybe
a little longer at this point. So
actually, while there has been an effort to assist the colleges in this process,
I have to say, and those of you who have been involved in this – I had the
pleasure of discussing this with the Community College Caucus a few weeks ago;
Professor Farrell invited me and we went through some of this, so I know some of
you heard it – are familiar with it, but we’re very pleased at this point
this is moving forward in a very positive way. There are a few areas where I
think it will be difficult. There are some 50 lines in English. There are about
45 lines being searched in Mathematics. Some of those pools are difficult to
fill, especially in the Mathematics area there has been some difficulty, but I
can report that everyone is to task on this. I’ll stop here on that and answer
any questions anyone might have.
Professor Bell asked the question before and some of you may be aware that the
University Office of Academic Affairs has essentially over time developed a
number of academic support initiatives. Traditionally RFPs are issued to the
campuses to ask for money to support Writing Across the Curriculum, to support
other ventures, freshman year initiatives, summer program usage, and basically
what was happening was that there were at least four, sometimes five of these
RFPs going out, and discrete pots of money were set up in order to allocate for
a particular program. In some respects this wasn’t working as well, and I can
just tell you as a President getting four or five letters indicating an
allocation for this, that, and the other, and not necessarily having the
flexibility on the campus to use the money in a way that was perhaps most
needed. There was an effort here to see how we could simplify this process, so
we have simplified it in a manner by simply issuing one RFP, and I would say
that that RFP includes all of the areas that were issued separately before. So
nothing has been eliminated: the Writing Across the Curriculum, the freshman
year initiative, the use of program for the summer, nothing has been struck off
the list. Also we have put this forth to the colleges in a way saying, “It’s
not a competition for the money; we guarantee you upfront you will get the same
amount of money that you got the year before.” And we didn’t want people to
start, as they had been, submitting proposals where they felt they were in
competition for this money. By combining it, it has essentially allowed the
campuses the flexibility to use these funds where they were most needed, and
what I mean by that is that some people for example were getting and asking for
significant money in the summer session, some of that money they didn’t need
in the summer; they now have the flexibility of infusing that across the
semesters. Some people would like to put more money into Writing Across the
Curriculum, perhaps less money into one of the others. We’ve also broadened
it, something that I think is very important; faculty development can be
included in this process. So essentially this was an effort not to restructure
in terms of the intent of providing additional support for the students but
simply giving the colleges individually the flexibility to direct that support
in a way that was most in line with their particular needs.
Professor Bell (Educational Services, Brooklyn College)
– May I ask? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Please. / Professor Bell –
It seems to me that there was a list of initiatives, like the WAC in the
freshman year. It seems to me there were more than were funded. It was almost as
though the list started to contain unfunded mandates and themes that weren’t
present last time around. It seemed
to me the programs were towards the theme or structure. Am I reading it
incorrectly, that there were some goals underlying this other than financial? /
Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Let me be specific to your question. The list of
things that the colleges could do with the money was extended not with the
intention of forcing any particular direction but certainly to indicate that we
were going to allow the money to be used for things that were perhaps not on the
agenda before. For example (tape switched) … a small amount or whatever, and
to actually invest some of that in a program for ESL students or, again, faculty
development. So it was not meant in any way to start a new agenda if you will.
It was really intended to free up and provide flexibility. / Professor Bell
– But not any additional funds for…/ Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Well,
there may be. You have to understand all of these RFPs, and some of you may
know, it adds up to in excess of $50 million. There is a significant amount of
money given out and it was given out in a way which was a little bit too
structured. And again, the intent here was not to eliminate any of the
initiatives but simply provide the colleges with the flexibility. / Professor
Bell – Can you share that with us the Senate? Maybe Susan and The Executive
Committee can take a look at it and see how that’s going. / Vice
Chancellor Hotzler – Absolutely. / Professor Bell – Thank you. / Vice
Chancellor Hotzler – Just goals and targets, you did mention that. It was
mentioned in the RFP that obviously as a college defines its initiatives it
should be looking foremost at what its goals and targets are and could then
direct the money to ensure that they were able to reach that higher retention
etc.
Professor Levine (Engineering Science and Physics, College
of Staten Island) – First of all, Russ, let me say how happy I and the rest of
the faculty are with all your new positions, and in particular how grateful you
are that you will be in charge of the Office of Academic Affairs in this interim
period. We’re very glad. Now I’ll start by asking questions. In the document
you handed out there is a category 40 positions for academic support services
with a funding of $75,000 per head, which is higher than the funding for cluster
hires. Is this a euphemism for…? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – No, the
cluster faculty positions are funded at $70,000. / Professor Levine – The
net funding for the cluster faculty is $58,200 per position. / Vice
Chancellor Hotzler – That’s net. There are other factors in there. There’s
benefits. / Professor Levine – But $50,000 plus fringes still doesn’t get
to $75,000 per position. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – These are ten-month
salaries in terms of the actual allocations. / Professor Levine – But my
question is I don’t know what academic support services is. Is this a
euphemism for more deanlets? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Absolutely not. /
Professor Levine – Well, what is it? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – They
are essentially, and most of them are HEO positions as I indicated earlier, they
primarily have been requested in the form of academic advisers; some people have
requested positions to work with disabled students; in one or two cases
they’ve asked for another CLT, but there are no administrative positions in
here, unless you want to consider Director of Disabled Student Services a …/ Professor
Levine – No.
Professor McManus (Bronx Community College) – I wanted
to tell you how much I respect the wisdom of the people who decided to invest in
community colleges. I want to express appreciation on behalf of the faculty and
staff for investing in the teaching and learning resources for us, and I guess I
need to also express thanks on behalf of the senior colleges for the money that
have been allocated to support their database participation. I think it’s a
good thing that the libraries are getting the resources. I think that’s
terrific. Just two questions. Will the money be coming soon, the additional
money for the libraries, because I haven’t heard yet on my campus? And the
other question, I was hoping that perhaps might be considered that the senior
college tuition increases could be similarly per capita allocated to
support libraries as well for additional databases and resources. Those are the
two questions. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – First of all I think, again,
the Chancellor is really to be commended in this regard because he did go way
out on a limb here, and we’ve been down to the City Council, we were down
there last Friday; they recognized this, they’ve been supportive and
appreciative of it. One of the reasons we’re sort of looking at this closely
is that we won’t get a second chance at this; if this doesn’t work out, as
we all know it can, it would be hard pressed for us to go and ask someone to
trust us in the future, so there is really a need for us to make this good. I
think that unfortunately the tuition increase at the senior colleges was really
an offset of a reduction in support from the State, so it didn’t leave us with
anything additional to turn around and have an investment program. At some point
I would hope the State would perhaps reverse course, which it’s been on for a
while now, and bolster support to the University, senior college level, which
will allow us to then invest in a much stronger way. / Professor McManus –
And when will be additional money be coming that’s supposed to be spent by
June 30? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – You’ve gotten most of it. There is
spending, by the way, of the library money as we speak. The electronic resource
purchase reps have been flying through and I believe by the end of this week,
the beginning of next, any additional funds will be allocated to the campuses.
Part of that is for library, part of it is additional OTPS, whatever’s left
over. / Professor McManus – Will there be similarly public information
provided about that additional money? / Vice
Chancellor Hotzler – I think when we’re finished at the end there will be a
final document that will detail the distribution. / Professor McManus –
Thank you very much. One last comment. When we’re going to the City Council -
Chancellor Goldstein was talking about the capital problem with getting the City
Council to fund so that the State fund can match it - they gave us all this
money, we’ve got to put the resources somewhere, and we’ve got to put the
faculty somewhere, so I don’t know if that is a leverage opportunity. /
Vice Chancellor Hotzler – We don’t want to bring those problems to that. If
they’re willing to give us the money we’ll take the money and try to work it
out.
Professor Friedheim (History,
Borough of Manhattan Community College) – Like the previous questioner I would
like to congratulate and express my appreciation for those who invested in the
community college investment program. Of course, the investors are our students.
They’re investing an additional $300 a year. So there was a fund of a little
over $25 million, which enabled us to hire 240 faculty, CLTs, librarians and
people for student support services. Next year I assume there will be another
$25 million. Will there be another infusion of new faculty and CLTs, and
librarians and an increase in student support services, or are we going to
reduce the tuition for our students by $300? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler –
Essentially next year it’s anticipated that the bulk of the $25 million will
be there to support the salaries of the 450 people that have been hired. We do
feel there will be a little extra money, not as much as this year in terms of
OTPS but there will be something in October. But essentially all the hiring
we’re doing is going to subsume those funds, and one of the cases to the City
Council has been to try and treat this as separate from the rest of the budget
if they talk about other adjustments, because this is, as you said, student
money, and they’ve been respectful of that and we want the students to accrue
the benefit. / Professor Friedheim – But I assume the pot is going to
increase from year to year as enrollment seems to increase from year to year. / Vice
Chancellor Hotzler – I don’t know how year to year that will continue but we
will have more than the $25-26 million this year because the enrollment was a
little higher, so some of the extra money that we’re able now to spend on
library and other services is really generated from a higher enrollment at the
community colleges, and if that continues into next year there will be some
additional funds beyond what we anticipate in terms of OTPS. / Professor
Friedheim – Use it wisely.
Professor Pecorino (Queensborough Community College) –
Congratulations, Russ! Almost every time we meet one another you’ve got
another hat, a new position, a different office. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler
– My family is beginning to wonder whether I can hold a job. / Professor
Pecorino – And I serve on more than one committee around this institution, so
I stand here before you as the head of this UFS Committee that’s been charged
with library matters and computer resources, so here’s my question. OK,
you had twenty unfilled lines at $50,000, they gave you $1 million, you
couldn’t give it back to the students so you did the best you could with it.
It went to OTPS, you gave resources to the library, thank you very much; you
gave some for the database access and you gave some for that new piece of
software; all students will profit from gaining access to those services, thank
you very much. Now come the questions: equity and proportionality. If all the
units of CUNY are going to enjoy the benefits of that, the City Council wasn’t
told that the money was being raised from the community colleges to benefit the
entire University. One shot deal, you had the money, you had to do something
with it. But you know database access is a yearly thing, and those twenty lines
are going to get filled and then you’re not going to have that money. So where
is the money going to come from to continue this wonderful project that we’ve
been advocating that the central office will have a shared resource access to
whatever electronic databases needed by any member of this community. That’s
our goal? Where is the money going to come from once you take it off the backs
of the community college students, because it’s going to be going into the
salaries, or you’re just going to cut all the librarians off and say, “No
longer you’re going to have access there.” And the senior colleges don’t
ever have to pony-up for community college access. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler
– Well, if you caught what I said before there will be beyond the coverage for
salaries next year some additional OTPS. A piece of that is targeted to maintain
the licenses for the various electronic databases. / Professor Pecorino –
For the entire University? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – No, only for those
new additions to the electronic database that have come out of this program.
It’s anticipated somewhere between $5-600,000 will be continuation. / Professor
Pecorino – That’s not what the Council of Chief Librarians was told. Mike
Ribaudo appeared before them. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – And he said? / Professor
Pecorino – That the databases were going to be given access to all the units
of CUNY. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Right. If we purchase access to the
database for the community colleges, as the way they’ve set it up, the senior
colleges will be able to benefit and access them as well, the ones that we’re
adding through this program. / Professor Pecorino – So why not equity and
proportionality? Why not the senior colleges contributing as well on a yearly
basis to keep it there, keep it increasing? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler –
Surely there is a rather large amount of money spent every year on electronic
databases and everybody has access to them, and some of that comes from the
State, which, if you want to look at it that way, comes out of the senior
college side. So I wouldn’t draw a line here but I think there is obviously an
effort to share resources as best we can across the system. / Professor
Pecorino – Can we talk about this becoming a secure revenue stream, as the
Chancellor would say, for the database access? / Chair – On to the next
question. / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – We’ve both been around long enough to
know what the word “sure” means.
Professor Singh (Hostos Community College) – My
question is also about this record number of transfers. I can understand
students transferring from community colleges to senior colleges in large
numbers, and that of course is a matter for gratification, but I also noticed
that there are large numbers of students transferring between community
colleges. How would you explain that, Vice Chancellor? / Vice Chancellor
Hotzler – They actually transfer in ways that we can’t even imagine; they go
in every possible direction back and forth, and some of it is driven by students
moving, their jobs change, their locations, there are a hundred different
reasons why they may transfer from one school to another. Sometimes students
want to take classes closer to where they work or where they live. Also,
obviously sometimes students change their majors as they go along and they want
to go to another school where perhaps the program they want is located. It’s
clear from the numbers that this flux is not random but it is certainly very
intense and it spans the spectrum all over. Students from Hostos go into other
community colleges, go into senior colleges, and vice versa. / Professor
Singh – I understand many of these reasons but how do we explain the fact that
there are more such transfers taking place now than perhaps ever before. /
Vice Chancellor Hotzler – We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of
external transfers and I would have to believe that that is twofold. I think
it’s partially due to the increased importance and standing of the University,
as well as the fact that I think some of the tuition charges of the private
schools are absolutely ridiculous. We see students, I know, transferring in who
in a year or two build up $20, 30, 40,000 in student loans and that’s
inappropriate, it’s unfortunate, so we think that the students are recognizing
at this point good quality for their money and we’re going to try to help
them. / Professor Singh – Are we planning any kind of a study of this
phenomenon? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – We have been looking at it
closely.
Professor Jacobson (Brooklyn College) – Russ, having
worked with you in so many different venues I want to say how pleased I am to be
working with you again as the Interim Vice-Chancellor. My question concerns
cluster hires. You have 60 lines here for the community colleges. Have they been
allocated and what areas have been targeted for cluster hires at the community
colleges? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Leslie, as we said, perhaps when
this was originally formulated, the term cluster--perhaps another word should
have been used. We refer to it now as the priority positions for the community
colleges. We’ve expanded the definition and it basically, for the community
colleges, refers to lines that they would need to fill at a higher salary. / Professor
Jacobson – This is the kind of thing that we talked about at our meeting, yes?
/ Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Right. / Professor Jacobson – So we’re
talking about where we need people in priority areas like nursing and education.
/ Vice Chancellor Hotzler – In community colleges those are different
areas than they are for a research agenda, if you will, at one of the senior
colleges. / Professor Jacobson – OK, thank you. How many of the 60 have
been allocated? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – At this point there are a few
that have not been allocated but let me just say that the colleges have gotten
every line they’ve asked for with the exception of one. / Professor
Jacobson – Would you send the numbers and the areas to the University Faculty
Senate? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – By the way, they haven’t been
allocated simply because we gave them upfront the opportunity not to have to ask
for all the lines immediately. They had just gotten 240 lines. Clearly they had
a number of priority positions that they knew they needed but we wanted to
provide them the opportunity to reflect on this and come back later and ask for
some more lines. So that’s been happening and as people have asked for it
we’ve been giving them out. Certainly within the next month or so all 60 of
them will be…/ Professor Jacobson – To clarify I think maybe we should
talk about priority areas so we don’t confuse the issue. / Vice Chancellor
Hotzler – Right. That’s the way it’s being referred to in all of the
correspondence right now. These are priority faculty positions. / Professor
Jacobson – OK, thank you.
Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of
Criminal Justice) – My congratulations too, Vice Chancellor. Just a side
comment. As a member of faculty at a college that has been historically under
funded I envy my colleagues and the students at the community colleges because
you already, without the investment, have a higher percentage of course sections
taught by full-time faculty, and after these hires you will have far higher
percentages than at John Jay and some of the other senior colleges, so I do hope
we get an investment from the State so that the senior college students can also
be treated as they deserve, as the community college students are. I have a
question, and I was going to ask the Chancellor but he was clearly leaving, but
the question is that at the last budget briefing of our Budget Committee of the
UFS, we were told that the Assembly and the Senate had agreed that
the excess revenue above the Governor’s proposed budget is between $100 and
$500 million. Now that’s a gap, but the problem is that $500 million is very
little; $100 million is very, very little, but $500 million, which is the
maximum they’re agreeing to, is very little. To restore TAP, as the Chancellor
says, is $300 million. Is it really in the picture that TAP will be restored or
should we be as worried as I am, because $300 million out of $500 million to do
everything, health care, K through 12, everything else for the State, that’s
more than half of the maximum amount that was agreed to a few weeks ago at
least, unless the picture has changed tremendously. /
Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Let me just respond a little bit to that. I
think those numbers keep changing because I think the Assembly and the Senate
realized you can’t do much with $500 million, so they are kind of upping those
numbers, a billion, two billion. / Professor Kaplowitz – Are they up to
that? / Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Well, it’s growing a bit, and I think
they’re trying to find a larger home, but your concern is well founded
because, as you all know, TAP has been under attack for many years from
different directions, and they have come at it from different ways in an attempt
to sort of lower that number. There is significant pressure, as the Chancellor
said; we’re not the only ones that benefit; our students, all the students
benefit from that. So we’re hopeful that they will end up restoring if not all
of it almost all of it. But it is something that will continue to draw our
attention and our energy to ensure that we keep pushing it. / Professor
Kaplowitz – Hopefully none of us, including the faculty, assume that because
in the past years we’ve been successful it’s something that will
automatically be restored, because I don’t think it necessarily will be. /
Vice Chancellor Hotzler – Not necessarily a given. Maybe it’s an election
year, there’s I think the desire on their part to restore this that’s in our
favor, but eternal vigilance is required. / Professor Kaplowitz – Thank
you.
Chair – Thank you so much. /
Vice Chancellor Hotzler – I’d just like to say that I thank all of you for
your kind words and indicate that, regardless of what job I’ve had, I’ve
always felt that essentially my job was to enable you to do yours.
Chair – Thank you. Do I have a second? How did you know? Do
we have a quorum? No, but I can
still make my report quickly. Katherine Richardson wanted me to announce that
for the PSC-CUNY Research Award grants there are vacancies. They are looking for
people in women’s studies, performing arts, library, mathematics, music,
engineering, ethnic and area studies, history, earth and environmental science,
communications, linguistics, speech and hearing.
Let me give my report very quickly, just
a couple of things, and then I want to spend just two minutes on the Master
Plan, and then you can go home.
Faculty Experience Survey –I met with
David Crook today. It looks as if the survey has been completed. It will now be
piloted at Queens College because we have to make sure that all the questions
make sense. It will then be sent out in the fall. There will be a booklet of
data, similar to that for the Student Experience Survey, that you will receive,
and performance measures will be developed that will be part of evaluating the
Presidents. I’m really pleased this is going forth.
April 23 the UFS will hold a conference:
“The Politics of Tenure.” I hope you’ll come. Larry Hanley has agreed to
speak; he is the editor of Academe; and Barbara Bowen, Chair of the PSC.
We’re looking for a President to speak. They’re proving scarce. Maybe
we should ask Russ. We will also have a panel with two Chairs, two recently
tenured faculty, and two new hires representing different positions. I hope you
all attend the conference.
Please read your Senate Digest! I
found when I attended a meeting of the Status of Faculty and Academic Policy
that everybody had not read their Senate Digest. It is out; it should be
in your mailboxes. My column is about changing the tenure clock: the education
law would have to be changed in order to change the time to tenure.
We went lobbying last week in the snow.
There were eight of us. I want to thank them so much. What fine lobbyists!
Theresa McManus, I must say, if we don’t get the community college capital
budget after she reported the state of the Bronx CC Library … Dina was
extraordinary. Martha Bell is a superb lobbyist. Robert Kelly, Eckhard Kuhn-Osius
from Hunter, Eda Hastick, Concetta Menella were also wonderful lobbyists. We saw
eighteen legislators or aides and we’re evaluating how be more effective.
The Academic Integrity Report will go
through the Board in May or June. About the Master Plan, what makes sense is
that you read it, distribute it to governance bodies, and then e-mail back
comments. It’s a little bit like a quilt of ideas. In other words, you’ll
see that Martha Bell wrote a little tiny bit of it and Phil Pecorino wrote a
little bit of it; I’ve been getting paragraphs from people with expertise in
different areas, but I need your help. Yes, Martha.
Professor Bell (Educational Services, Brooklyn College)
– Susan, I would ask that we not distribute this one widely, that we ask the
people to wait till next week when we could do a better draft for distribution
and then distribute it widely. I think there are some problems with this one
that will not serve us well, as I read for details, which I didn’t have a
chance to do this afternoon. / Chair – How could you, I just got it out! /
Professor Bell – Yeah, but I could have stayed up all night, I guess. /
Chair – No, I was rewriting it up to 2:30 today because people were feeding me
information. / Professor Bell – I think before people distribute it widely
on the campus they should wait till next Tuesday or Wednesday after the
Executive Committee when we will send out a better draft. / Chair – Fine.
We’ll send it out, and we’ll also have it on the website, the corrected one.
That’s fine with me.
Now, new business?
I think a motion of sentiment is in order. As you know, a CUNY faculty
member, Ramona Hernandez of City College, was dismissed by the Mayor for her
stand against holding students back in the third grade on the basis of a single
test. She said that she was a
faculty member and she thought research was essential before she voted. / Unidentified
– Was she dismissed from a tenured position? / Chair – No, she’s OK,
but there was all kinds of pressure on her to vote with the Mayor. It’s quite
a story. Anyway, Bill Crain would like to read a motion of sentiment.
Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – Let me just
say that the Mayor dismissed three people in order to win the vote. She was one
and she’s very upset. So the motion is that we wish to express special
gratitude and appreciation to our colleague, Professor Ramona Hernandez of the
City College, for thinking only of the best interests of children and
maintaining the courage of her convictions in the recent New York City dispute
over grade retention. / Chair - Do I have a second? Yes. (Voting) OK, we will
relay that to Ramona. Do I have a motion to adjourn? OK, see you next month.