Chair Sohmer called the session to order at 6:30 p.m. in Room 9206/9207 of the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center. Present were Senators from the following campuses:

Baruch: Hill, McCall, and Pollard; BMCC: Aymer, Friedman, Neis, Price,Vozick, and Alternate Leslie; Bronx CC: Tanaka-Kuwashima and Alternate Brennan; Brooklyn: Bell, Jacobson, London, Shapiro, Tobey, and Alternate Uctum; CCNY: Connorton, Crain, Manassah, Sank, and Sohmer; CSI: Cooper, Foleno, Klibaner, Levine, and Yousef; CUNY Law School: none; Graduate School: Baumrin, King, Kulkarni, Philipp, and Alternate Hayes; Hostos CC: Canate; Hunter: Doss, Kurzman, and Steinberg; John Jay: Kaplowitz, Lanzone, Richardson, and Rodriquez; Kingsborough CC: Farrell, O’Malley, and Richter; LaGuardia CC: Beaky, Gallagher, Lerman, Mettler, Reitano, and Alternate Davidson; Lehman: Avani, Feinerman, Jervis, and Mineka; Medgar Evers: Bennett, Harris-Hastick, and Alternates Leocal and Thompson; NYC Technical: Cermele, Horelick, Hounion, and Richardson; Queens: Frisz, Moore, and Speidel; Queensborough CC: Barbanel, Greenbaum, Weiss, and Alternate Tully; York: Coleman and Kirkpatrick. Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Cooley (York), Feinerman (Lehman), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Mettler (LaGuardia), O’Malley (KCC), Perlstein (BMCC), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Excused were Senators Harrison (Brooklyn), Umolu (Medgar Evers); Kahan (Brooklyn), and Pearson (CCNY). CUNY Faculty members Dahbany-Miraglia (QCC) and Barbara Katz-Rothman (GSUC) attended. Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela and Secretary Blanchard were present.  

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

2. Approval of the Minutes of April 24, 2001: The Minutes were approved as distributed.

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

a. Chair (oral).

b. Chancellor (oral).

c. Representatives of the Board Committees (written).

4. Nominations and Election of 5 Members-at-Large of the Executive Committee - Chair Sohmer had prepared a preferential ballot on the ground that it was fairer and avoided ties and run-offs. When protest arose, a vote was taken and the preferential ballot was abandoned with only 7 votes supporting it. Most agreed that a preferential ballot might be acceptable if adequate notice were given, but that adequate notice had not been given in this case. Voting results were as follows (winners in bold): Baumrin, 25; Beaky, 36; Bell, 31; Cooper, 29; Friedman, 38; Kahan, 23; Philipp, 29; Speidel, 23, Richardson, 21.

5. Old Business

A. RESOLUTION ON THE INTEGRITY OF TOP LEVEL SEARCHES

Whereas, several recent presidential searches have left unanswered questions, and

Whereas, among them, it is not clear who makes the first cut before the committee members participate, and

Whereas, it is also not clear what informal screening of interested candidates is done by headhunters and others, and

Whereas, it is essential that the faculty (because of their international connections) be free to do background checks on the candidates, and

Whereas, the current guidelines on searches, while not perfect, reflect some very important conditions that we concur in, such as a broad base of participants,

Therefore, Be It Resolved, that the Board and the Chancellory be requested to reaffirm their adherence to the current guidelines, and consider that participation by the various stakeholders (faculty, students, trustees, alumni) be inviolate, so the successful candidates are actually chosen as a result of a legitimate (rather than manipulated) search, and

Be It Further Resolved, that the search committee should in all cases recommend to the Board a minimum of three candidates,

Be It Finally Resolved, that the UFS requests that this resolution be placed on the agenda of the Board’s Faculty, Staff, and Administration Committee, and that it be brought to the full board no later than the last meeting of this academic year.

Passed without dissent as amended.

                       6. New Business

A. Resolution on Adjuncts in College Governance Plans

Subject to Senate Approval

REPORTS & DELIBERATIONS

OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINTH PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

 

a. Chair: Last week there was a conference conducted in this building by several historians, on a potential required American Social History course. It was reasonably well attended. The meeting was new to those of us who are not historians. I do not know if there is going to be a report coming out. The meeting discussed a particular view of how history should be taught, with an orientation toward American History.

There will be no need this year to hold the tentatively scheduled Plenary of this body on June 15^th. The by-laws of this body say that the Executive Committee can act between sessions. The Executive Committee will meet if there is something urgent.

I don’t know if all of you saw or heard the statements made by the President of New Paltz the other day. It was a statement about the politicization of SUNY, which could have been translated to CUNY. Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani both seem to take the same view that the University is an extension of the political process, which rewards your friends and punishes your enemies. Simultaneously, I don’t know if you saw that a very good guy was named president of NYU. He was named by the Trustees without any real consultation with faculty. Some of the faculty on the campus were put out about this. The fact that he is very good, I think is probably irrelevant. The chair of their Board of Trustees, in wonderment, said to a reporter, "It is not clear to me why there is a problem: all of the trustees agreed on it." I am afraid that we will be seeing more of that in the future here. There are several things going on in the University, which I presume will take some coloration from this kind of national view. As a matter of fact, the Executive Committee has a resolution, which was distributed during the call to the meeting, on the integrity of top level searches at CUNY.

b. Chancellor: Let me just mention a few things. I have to be out of here earlier than usual, and I want to leave time for your questions. On Friday of this week I will be testifying in front of the City Council regarding the Mayor’s Executive Budget. I believe I shared with you the conditions under which the Mayor has advanced his budget for the City University of New York. I don’t think that will be problematic. What I see more problematic is the fact that the Mayor has proposed a standstill budget. On the one hand, he is advancing $5.5 million for faculty positions, and $5 million for College Now. On the other side of the ledger, $10.5 million was removed from our budget under the guise of Maintenance of Effort. On a dollar to dollar basis, it is a wash. But while it is a wash, we will have restricted dollars versus unrestricted dollars. It is something that we are not happy with, and we are going to try and get it turned around. Of course we are also going to attempt to get consideration for additions to our budget.

We have been working aggressively with the City Council to make that happen. As I mentioned to you, Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota was up in Albany last week. He was confirmed, and is now a member of our Board. He will be at the Board meeting Monday next week. I think that he is going to be a very good Board member. He has been very helpful to me as Chancellor. The most obvious example is his intervention in getting us out from under this onerous PEG reduction that we were facing for the community colleges. I think he will be a strong force on the Board, and I look forward to working with him.

Next week I will be in Albany. We have now confirmed a meeting with the New York City Senate Majority. That meeting will take place in Albany on the 21^st or 22^nd. I also will be meeting with Joe Bruno and Speaker Silver, as well as members of the Governor’s Office. I will be pressing our agenda for the budget that still eludes all of us. This has happened, in part, because the two houses have still not come together on revenue estimates. Until there is closure on revenue estimates, we are nowhere near a budget. There doesn’t seem to be any momentum that I can determine at this point. Once revenue is agreed upon, I think this budget is going to move very quickly. I can’t tell you when revenue is going to be decided upon.

I will tell you some news about the Honors College. We now have 217 students who have accepted our invitation to join the Honors College. The dominant number of those students are being enrolled at Baruch, Brooklyn, Queens, and Hunter. At City there are little less. We will have a good group of honors students, and we are looking forward to launching that important new initiative. This is consistent with the notion of the integrated University, where all five campuses will be working together as we launch the new Honors College. Whenever we get information, we are using our webpage much more aggressively to post it.

You know that we were successful in working with NY-STAR for the largest single grant ever to come to the University, for work in basic science. We are going to have planning meetings on how to leverage that $15 million, which was the value of the award. We will leverage that money to really do things in the area of biology. This will be exciting for the University. We are pleased with the confidence that the NY-STAR Board had with this University. First, with this University’s capability to manage a complex project, and second and more importantly, it is a strong vote of confidence in support of our faculty. The faculty was quite instrumental in creating the pathway, which we were ultimately successful with, in working with State officials to get this amount of money. We are also very actively involved at the Federal level. I had indicated to this body in the past that one of the things that I did early on in this administration, was to close our Washington, D.C. office. I thought it was a drain, and I didn’t see great productivity from the Washington, D.C. office. We were spending a great deal of money on people, rent, and support services, and not getting the bang for the dollar. We took a very different strategy, which is taken by major research universities, in working with an organization that can really get into the bowels of the various appropriation bills that are passed each year at the Federal level. Our early indications are that we probably will hit very big this year. I don’t want to anticipate what the dollars will be, however we are hoping that we are going to get a substantial amount of money from the Federal government in support of another flagship idea.

The flagship idea is around our efforts to work much more aggressively in our teacher education programs. Many of you know that we had a big boost this year in the pass rates on the Teacher Certification Examination. One of the things that I have always been interested in, is creating the necessary technological infrastructure that will enable us to teach our students who aspire to be teachers, in ways different than they have been taught before. We can do this by creating real environments for them, in real time, with real students, taught by real teachers. This is opposed to what happens now in our teacher education programs, which is that they see a classroom rather late in their studies here at the University.

I’ve always believed that one of the reasons we lose many students who become teachers to the profession is that they are just not ready for the culture of what is needed for managing complex classrooms. If we get students involved very early on, throwing them into that environment, I think it is going to pay handsomely. Not only will that money be used for that purpose, but I am very interested in using technology in the classroom. I want to use this technology, not necessarily for distance learning, which is what many people talk about, but for asynchronous learning within a classroom setting. It allows students to move at different speeds, depending upon their interests and abilities. Asynchronous learning can become a model for this type of instruction. We are looking to get support from the Federal government for faculty development. That is always the Achilles’ heel in doing these sort of things. Not enough attention is placed in developing faculty skills to use these kinds of tools. I am hoping that that will lead to something important.

[LONG BREAK IN TAPE RECORDING]

Chancellor Goldstein - What do you mean by performance? / [Unidentified Speaker] - "Not arriving with sufficient numbers of books, not the right titles, students being given..." / Chair Sohmer - We will set up a committee in the early Fall. We will have the RFP’s there.

Professor Perlstein (Governance Leader, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - "Chancellor, were you saying that negotiations with Deputy Mayor Lhota had led to the elimination and reduction of the PEG?" / Chancellor Goldstein - "Yes, the PEG is gone for this year. We were facing a $2.3 million PEG reduction. He was very helpful in getting that removed from consideration this year. Had that not happened, we would have had to find $2.3 million in the course of a month to cut from our community college budget. This didn’t happen. / Professor Perlstein - "Is there any change in the PEG for next year?" / Chancellor Goldstein - That is still out there. We will have to deal with it as we do every year. Every year we get a PEG reduction, and we deal with it at the appropriate time. Right now it was the immediate problem, and he was very helpful with that.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - "I think I heard you use the term ‘ad hoc’ in talking about the community college committee. My recollection is that about a month ago at an Executive meeting, you told us that it has become a permanent committee. Is it ad hoc, or permanent?" / Chancellor Goldstein - It is an ad hoc committee. It is not a standing committee. It will sunset after its business is completed. I don’t know when it is going to sunset. It is not a standing committee of the Board. / Professor Friedman - "What is the definition of ad hoc?" / Chancellor Goldstein – ‘Ad hoc’ is a committee established to do a particular task, and when the task is done, the committee is finished. This is as opposed to standing committees which go in perpetuity. / Professor Friedman - "I hope that doesn’t mean that community colleges aren’t going to go on forever." / Chancellor Goldstein - I hope that the community colleges go on forever.

I just want to say something, which is that I really see storm clouds ahead. I am not someone who looks at the world and sees darkness. I like to see light. I really believe that we have seen the best potential for the University over this last decade. Unfortunately the best potential was not realized at this University. It is a very sad statement, and it is a statement that I would say CUNY and SUNY has been out of sync, especially with respect to what has happened nationally. Nationally a lot of wealth and liquidity were generated in this last decade, especially in this City, and none of that wealth really chased higher education. I think we really lost. The opportunity costs are very high.

I think with high energy costs facing us, tax reductions at the Federal, state, and city level, there are storm clouds staring to accumulate. We, as a University, have to be prepared for those storm clouds. We need to anticipate when it is going to hit and how it is going to hit. I don’t have a clearer lens than anybody else. I think it is a serious issue that we have to be prepared for. Again, I keep saying to you and to others, that we have to start thinking in a different way as we manage the affairs of this University. We have to concentrate on our core business, which is about teaching, learning, and the development of knowledge. That is where our resources must go. Part of what I have to do, and need to be held responsible for, is anticipating these harder times that are coming in our direction. I need to know how to manage the affairs of the University in a more efficient way. I think we do a very good job as faculty in teaching our students. We work hard as a faculty, but I think we are not nearly as efficient as we can be in the development of administrative support systems for the University. That is something that I think has the potential to really develop a different set of pathways for dollars to come into our core business.

The question I would ask is, how do you address it, how do you get it done, and in what time table do you get it done? The irony of course is that it is going to require an investment to get the kinds of tools that you are going to need to make that happen. The challenge is, knowing that the money is not going to be there, how do you get the money to do the investments so that you can develop a much more efficient set of practices here in the University, so that you can re-deploy dollars back into our core business? That to me is one of the great central questions, and one of the very difficult questions that this University is going to have to face. That would be my question. I think we are all going to have to work together on this. I don’t think anybody is going to come out and save us on this. We are going to have to develop this ourselves.