Chair Sohmer called the session to order at 6:30 p.m., in Room 9205 of the Graduate School and University Center. Present were Senators from the following campuses:

Present were Senators from the following campuses: Baruch: Hill, Majete, and McCall; BMCC: Friedman, Herz, Price, Vozick, Young, and Alternates Garely, Wei, and Blake-Neis; Bronx CC: Belilgne, Cummins, Fuld, and Read; Brooklyn: Bell, Jacobson, London, Shapiro, and Tobey; CCNY: Connorton, Crain, and Sohmer; CSI: S. Cooper and Levine; CUNY Law School: none; Graduate School: Baumrin; Hostos CC: Vasillov and Alternate Jones; Hunter: Doss, Kurzman, Neville, Sherrill, Steinberg, and Wonsek; John Jay: J. Davenport, Hartmus, Kaplowitz, Rodriguez, and Alternate E. Davenport; Kingsborough CC: Farrell, Galvin, O’Malley, Richter, and Alternate Barnhart and Lin; LaGuardia CC: Beaky and Reitano; Lehman: Bullaro, Feinerman, and Knobloch; Medgar Evers: Bennett, Donohue, Harris-Hastick, Umolu, and Alternates Leocal and Rodriquez; NYC Technical: Cermele, Deraney, Hounion, Walter, and Alternate Richardson; Queens: Brady, Diamond, and Frisz; Queensborough CC: Barbanel, and Dahbany-Miraglia; York: A. Cooper and Kirkpatrick. Governance Leaders present: Cooper (York), Feinerman (Lehman), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), O’Malley (Kingsborough), Perlstein (BMCC), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Excused were Brady (Queens), Connorton (CCNY), and Yousef (CSI). Faculty guests included Phyllis Read. Excused was King (Brooklyn), Greenbaum (QCC), and Donoghue (Tech). The Parliamentarian was absent. Executive Director Phipps and Administrative Assistant Pasela were present.

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

II. Approval of the Minutes of December 7, 1999: The Minutes were approved as distributed. (The January plenary had been cancelled due to bad weather.)

III. Reports: [recorded in Reports & Deliberations]

a. Chair (oral and written).

b. Vice Chancellor (oral).

c. Budget Advisory Committee (oral).

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

IV. Old Business

a. Student Affairs Committee’s Proposal of Model Admissions Policy (see attached) – Adopted unanimously by voice vote.

b. Faculty Blueprint for 2000 – Omitted.

V. New Business - Resolution on Behalf of Song Yongyi (see attached) – Adopted unanimously by voice vote as amended.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:45 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

William Phipps

                                                                                                                                                                            Subject to Senate Approval

a. Chair: The Governor’s budget has appeared, omitting critical items, but of this there will be more later. The search for the President at Queensborough has wound down (we are at campus visits), and some of the procedures have left the faculty members uneasy and unhappy. The search at LaGuardia is also winding down, and there are no troubling reports, yet. The Board has passed a revision to the executive pay plan, which, while rectifying some past problems, creates an entire lexicon of new difficulties, particularly Carnegie classification tiering of executive salaries, with consequent implications. An announcement has appeared today (letter to the Chancellor in the rear) naming Ninfa Segarra (without search) as a Vice-President in residence at the Research Foundation, with a portfolio of school-university interactions (College Now, etc.). It doesn’t hurt to be a quondam deputy mayor. While there have been many assurances, it is not yet clear on paper that the SEEK students have been provided for in the passage to remedial-frei campuses.

At a meeting of a Board committee several weeks ago, the chair moved to go into executive session, and I was asked to leave. Since I am a trustee by state law, I remonstrated, but the several trustees were implacable. I have since written to the Attorney General for an interlocutory, since I believe this was a transgression of the state constitution.

At the request of the Vice Chancellor, I have named three members to the implementation policy committee for the articulation resolution. The committee is chaired by Dean Hotzler, and the faculty are Philip Baumel, Physics, CCNY, Joanne Reitano, History, LaGuardia, and John Donoghue, Social Science, NYCTC.

I met with some of the SUNY senate executive committee and others and there will be a birthing in March of a statewide committee to speak for Public Higher Education, incorporating senate and union leaders.

Professors Bell, Cooper, McCall, O’Malley, and Sherrill of the executive committee will be in Albany this weekend to represent the senate at the Black and Puerto Rican caucus.

Please respond to the invitation to our conference on March 3, which must be returned by February 25.

Let me now thank Felix Cardona for his service which has proved to be a time problem, and now name Stefan Baumrin as ongoing parliamentarian.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – "Change New York has issued a press release charging four CUNY campuses, and four SUNY campuses, with mis-spending public money by inviting "The Vagina Monologues" to appear on its campus. I wondered if you could get it, and I also wanted everyone to know this was happening." / Chair Sohmer – This is the same group who know clearly what a core should look like, and their first shot across the bow is American History. I don’t know what the second shot across the bow will be, maybe sex education or family values.

a. Budget Update

Vice Chancellor Sherry Brabham – Thank you for the invitation to come and speak to you this evening, and tell you a little bit about where we are in terms of the University’s budget situation. You have a couple of documents. There are two yellow sheets. These are the priority sheets that we have developed this year, in terms of what we are asking for from the City Council and from the Legislature. On the back of one, there is a very large graph. It shows what has happened at the University since 1980 in terms of enrollment growth versus losses in full-time faculty. The other sheet is the City Budget priorities. The front of that sheet basically shows what the adjunct teaching percentages are at the community colleges.

The other thing that you have in your packets is a copy of the University’s Budget Request that was adopted by the Board of Trustees on November 22^nd. The final thing is a copy of the preliminary review. It includes a summary of what happened to the University Budget and State Executive Budget; also the consequences of the City Financial Plan for the University. Those are the items I would like to review with you quickly with you this evening. I will then answer any questions you have about the budget situation.

When we went to Albany with the Chancellor a couple of weeks ago, to testify before the Assembly Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, we were pulled aside by some representatives of the Faculty Union at SUNY. They pointed out to us that we were fortunate that our Board of Trustees adopted a budget request that asked for additional money. As many of you know, the SUNY Trustees have not done that in recent years. They have asked for standstill or very modest budget increases. The difference between SUNY and CUNY in that regard, was underscored by the differences in the testimonies that were provided by Robert King, the new Chancellor at SUNY versus Matthew Goldstein, our Chancellor. Robert King asked only in his budget testimony for the $150 increase per FTE base aid increase for the community colleges, whereas Chancellor Goldstein asked for a whole list of things -- many items that had been included in the Request, and had not been funded by the Executive Budget.

I thought you would be interested in that. I wanted to say that because I think it underscores the University’s position going into the budget cycle, this period of time in the spring when we are seeking additional funds for the University. The Executive Budget, which was released early in January, is the first positioning on the State’s side of things. It has been made by the Governor in terms of what he would recommend for the budget for the University. It was better news than we have received in recent years. On the senior college side, the senior colleges received $28.2 million. There are several items that are included in that $28.2 million, including $10 for collective bargaining costs.

The second item that was funded by the Governor was $4.1 million to operate the wonderful new facility for the Graduate Center. The building was built, all the bricks and mortar were here, but there were no funds that had been provided by the State to operate the building and pay for elevator contracts. We were gratified that the Governor this year did not overlook that, but did indeed put that into the University’s Budget.

The third piece of the funding that came from the State in the Executive Budget was $9.7 million for mandatory needs. This is a combination of things. It includes the funding of the incremental costs which are associated with the collective bargaining contracts -- those step increases that faculty and staff receive on an annual basis. Also funding for OTPS inflation. Funding for some of the increases that are given to skilled trades, through what we call controller determinations. The process is slightly different from funding for other staff at the University.

The forth piece of what the Governor’s budget provided for us was $9 million for academic support services. We had a request item for $9 million, including things like advising, tutoring, and supplemental instruction. This $9 million is not directly in CUNY’s budget. It is a line item, earmarked for CUNY, in the State Education Department Budget. We were a little concerned when it was displayed that way. But we have spoken with the Division of the Budget and we have spoken with the people from the State Education Department, who assure us that this is a direct pass through.

One thing that was not good news, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, which was in the Governor’s budget. There was $4.6 million that the Legislature provided to the senior colleges at the end of the Legislative session, the budget adoption process last year. The Governor did not continue that funding. That was on the senior college side $4.6 million, and it was funding for full-time faculty, SEEK, and child care. The same thing happened on the community college side of the budget. I know there is concern throughout the University about the loss of those dollars. One of the things we need to keep in mind is, it is not unusual for governors to take out things that legislators have added to the budget. This has happened to us in past years. It is not an unusual posture, but that doesn’t mean we are happy that he did it, or that we are going to be content about it. One of the things that the Chancellor spoke about when he spoke in Albany was about the restoration of those dollars. And as you can see, it is a priority on the yellow sheet. It is a priority for the University in terms of the legislative session. It is not a highly unusual action on the part of the Governor in that regard.

Overall, the University’s budget on the senior college side increased about 3%, to $1,012,000,000. That is just the budget for the senior colleges. On the community colleges, I wanted to talk about what happened both in the Executive Budget and in the City Financial Plan, and the preliminary budget released by the Mayor a couple of weeks after the Executive Budget. In the community college budget, the base aid amount that is provided to the community colleges continued at the adopted budget level. So in this regard, the Governor did continue an action that was taken by the Legislature, after he had issued his budget last year. Base aid is continuing at $2,125 per FTE. Our budget request was for an additional $150. That is on our priority list for the spring. That is also a priority at SUNY. As I mentioned before, that is the one thing that Chancellor King had included in his remarks and testimony before the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

The second action on the State side for the community colleges, I’ve already alluded to, was the elimination of $1.9 million. It was the funding on the community college side for full-time faculty, childcare, and College Discovery. On the City side, the changes in the budget seem a little bit dramatic. One of the things you will see when you look at the City pages is that the University budget was reduced by $5.6 million. This was not a reduction in City funds or State funds. This was reduction in tuition revenue at the community colleges. Because of enrollment declines at the community colleges over the last couple of years, revenue collections at the community colleges are down significantly. The $5.6 million reduction in tuition revenue is simply a recognition of what the University is doing in terms of collecting tuition revenue at the community colleges. All of our community colleges know the level at which they are under-collecting, each of them individually. This has been something that they have been dealing with already this fall. Expenditures have been adjusted downwards at community colleges based on what their collection levels are. This is not good news, but it is not startling news. It is actually a response to behavior at the University, rather than an action on the part of the City.

The good news in the community college budget is that the Mayor continued this year $1.2 million for College Now. In last year’s budget he had taken it out, when he released his preliminary budget, but at this point it is continued. However, he did not continue the $6.5 million for the merit scholarships. These are the Vallone Scholarships that were funded a couple of years ago. The Mayor took that out of the University’s budget, so we lost $6.5 million there.

Let me just say one final word about what has happened in terms of financial aid. In the area of financial aid, there is one recommended change in the guidelines for TAP. That is, students will be ineligible for TAP if they leave an institution in poor academic standing, and then they are accepted at another institution. That is an issue that we are a bit concerned about. Preliminary estimates are that it affects fewer than 1,000 students at the University. But it is still something that I think there are some concerns about. There is a reduction in total TAP expenditures projected for fiscal year 2000-2001. This is one of the things that we see in the expenditure projections for the State this year.

We are expending TAP at a lower level in the current year than had been budgeted. What DOB has stated, is that the $40 million reduction in the TAP budget for next year is a consequence of under-expenditures this year. It is just a continuing projection of what has already happened this year. When questioned about why there are under-expenditures in the TAP budget this year, the response from the Executive is because we have a booming economy, there are fewer people in college. In some ways we have seen this. We have had enrollment declines at the University over the past couple of years. The second response is that there is greater prosperity in the State. As people’s salaries go up, fewer people are eligible for TAP. I know there are many folks throughout the University who are concerned about the TAP program needing to keep up with the bracket creep issue. Because as people’s salaries are going up, the cost of living is going up as well. That is something I’m sure you all are aware of and we need to continue to be aware of.

One other piece of good news on the financial aid side is that last year the University lobbied very strongly with the Executive and the Legislature to administer a part-time TAP program. The part-time TAP program is a pro-rated TAP program. The arguments that the University made last year were that we have many students for whom it is more advantageous to go to school part-time rather than full-time because of other obligations. They try to take heavier loads, and may not be successful. Therefore if they let us pilot a part-time TAP program, we projected that it would not cost the State any more money. Basically to pro-rate part-time TAP. The University received permission to do this on a pilot basis. The criterion is that the student has to have at least 24 credits before they are eligible. There would have to be some demonstration that there is a commitment to academic progress, in order for the student to be eligible. Our expectation is that the first students who will really be eligible for that program will be the pipeline in the Fall of 2000. We are very anxiously looking at that. You should know that people in SUNY are interested in seeing how this progresses. I know that several members of the Legislature, Assemblyman Sullivan in particular, are interested in the progress of this program. So we will be reporting back to you on that.

Professor Frisz (Student Personnel, Queens College) – "I don’t really believe that we are losing students because the economy is good. I believe we are losing students because of the negative and horrendous publicity that this University has had over the last couple of years. I think we really need to be out there recruiting students." / Vice Chancellor Brabham – The $40 million is a State-wide number. So it is a representation of lost enrollments throughout the State. I would certainly echo and agree with your concern about the negative publicity and the impact it has had on people’s interest in the University. As far as I know, I’m not aware of any study that really correlates this so we have data, but we all feel it. I know that is one of the things the Chancellor is concerned about when he talks about changing the conversation about the University.

Professor Sherrill (Political Science, Hunter College) – "I also wanted to ask a question about the TAP proposal. Several years ago there was a change in TAP from an entitlement, to a program in which there was a maximum appropriation for the year, and if more students applied, that was their bad luck. Under this version, is the $40 million drop on the cap? So that should enrollments go up, those students will be denied financial aid? Or is it returned to being an entitlement?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – This is what I think. My understanding is that TAP had remained as an entitlement. APS (Aid to Part-Time Study Program) has been a capped program. My understanding is that TAP will continue as an entitlement program, so that if enrollments go up, there will be an additional appropriation for it. That is my understanding of it. I will check that with Les Jacobs. If I am wrong, I will let you know.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – "I’ve asked students and student governments at City College and Hunter College about the TAP and the explanation about the rising wealth of the students. They look at me like I’m crazy. They say that the bureaucracy in terms of getting TAP has become enormous. I think there is a sense maybe that the poorest and most economically disadvantaged students are getting discouraged. As well as the restoration and SEEK and childcare, I think we do need to work for the restoration of TAP. I have a question on the Mayor’s Budget, since I’m just hearing about it now. Tuition revenues are down $5.6 million at the community colleges. So that means that the Mayor is under maintenance of effort. Does that mean that he puts in $5.6 million less?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – No, that is purely our tuition revenue. If you look on page eight of the Preliminary Review, under community colleges, State aid is $12.6 million, City aid is $88.2 million, and tuition is $142.5 million. If you look at tuition revenue, that is the portion that is going down. It is going down to $136.9 million. That is money that we collect as our contribution to the community college budget. The City aid is decreasing slightly by $500,000. But our expectation is that by the time we actually have a City Budget, we hope that we will be much above $500,000. I believe that the Mayor will maintain effort. Last year for the first time in many years his City support of the community college budget actually went up. It was a wonderful surprise.

Professor O’Malley (English, Kingsborough Community College) – "I’m also concerned about the changes in TAP. At Kingsborough we have a program called New Start. Right now we have about 750 students. We take students from the privates and also from other CUNY campuses who have not done well. We give them intensive counseling and advising. It has been a very successful program. I’m afraid that this little move is going to eliminate this program. I suspect that the privates will be angry at this, too. I’m sure that they re-admit students who don’t do well. Perhaps they will lobby and protect it. Is CUNY going to do anything about this?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – At this point it is something that we have spoken to people about informally. It is not on our priority list. But imagine that there is a lot of similar sentiment. A lifetime prohibition does seem harsh. / Professor O’Malley – "Would student letters from students who did well in this program help?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – I think that would help. There is probably a lot of sympathy among certain segments of the Legislature on getting rid of this provision.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan College) – "I’m looking at the graph and wondering why the year 1980 is chosen in terms of looking at a 20 year period. Why not go back another decade. If we go back to 1970, I think that the figure of 19% is going to be more than doubled. Why are we looking at 1980 as the benchmark?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – We looked at 1980 because twenty years is a significant period of time. Quite frankly, it was information that was easily available to us. There was in the period between 1970 and 1980 the whole issue of open admissions and retrenchment. There were major problems. I don’t know that you would necessarily have the kind of enrollment growth from the early 1970’s. The thing that is wonderful about this is that it shows that in a period of extraordinary enrollment growth, we are also have faculty declines. This is the story we wanted to tell. We are serving more people and we have fewer full-time faculty. / Professor Friedman – "Some of us think that we should also tell the story going back ten more years. Then we are looking at a figure of 50% decline in faculty." / Vice Chancellor Brabham – Do you know what happened to enrollment in that time period? / Professor Friedman – "I don’t really know. Were 50% more faculty teaching tiny classes? Was life great? I guess you answered my question." / Vice Chancellor Brabham – We’ll look at the numbers. I think there is also something about not wanting to have too big a period of time. Then our story becomes less convincing maybe. This happened in the period of time that most of us worked here. This is fairly recent history.

Chair Sohmer – There is an answer. There was an enormous growth of the student population until the institution of tuition. At the institution of tuition, there was roughly a 20% fall off. You are right about the faculty. The faculty from 1975 until now have collectively diminished by 50%.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – " The faculty numbers that I was given about 5-6 years ago by the central administration are considerably larger than this. I don’t understand how a more recent central administration could come up with another set. We took these numbers to Albany for about six years. They stated rather clearly that around 1980, we had something close to 10,000 faculty. We are down to about 5,200. That strikes me as something closer to 50% than 20%. Now we go up to Albany this year, with this somewhat shrunken number, and I for one will feel like a first-class idiot. Who are we counting? I thought that we were counting classroom faculty, librarians, and perhaps counselors. I don’t think we were counting the Registrar series, but we may have been. I thought that we were counting people very closely connected with teaching." / Vice Chancellor Brabham – This is full-time faculty in the classroom. Stefan had raised this with me at the last meeting. I asked the folks to look at these numbers. These are also numbers from the Affirmative Action reports. That is slightly different from numbers that come from another report. But they are not different in the way that you are saying. They are not different from 50%. If you have a copy of what was done before, I would love to see it. All I can surmise is that between HEO’s, counselors, CLT’s, and librarians, there may have been…. / Professor Cooper – I’m sure we didn’t count HEOs. The other point that I was going to make about TAP is that I just happened to hear on the radio that the Republican senators asked the Executive Office to increase the maximum income for a family that could receive TAP to $80,000 a year. Obviously this is not going to benefit CUNY students enormously. I wondered if you heard anything about that, and whether or not there is some useful ploy we could hook onto in order to leverage some more money out of it." / Vice Chancellor Brabham – I had not heard that. There have been discussions about somehow tying brackets to the cost of living, so that students don’t get caught in this bracket creep thing. This may be related to that. I will check these numbers.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) – "Will there be another chart showing the percentage of adjunct-taught sections at the senior colleges?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – There is no reason that we can’t do the numbers also for the senior colleges on adjunct sections taught. Because this is university wide, we just didn’t want to do the same chart twice. Chair Sohmer – I think there is a problem with the numbers, because these numbers are probably generated by only the tax levy monies. On many campuses the adjuncts are supported by all kinds of other funds. / Vice Chancellor Brabham – That is indeed the case. I think, as many of you know, there is greater variety at the senior colleges than there is at the community colleges. / Professor Kaplowitz – "So there might be some sensitivity about that. But maybe some kind of chart indicating the large percentage, maybe by borough or something, would be possible.

Professor Cooper (English, York College) – "Will that pilot program for part-time TAP be conducted across the board at all campuses, or at certain campuses only?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – At all CUNY campuses. The criterion is the 24 credits. Any student eligible for TAP, who has taken 24 credits, would get a pro-rated TAP award based on their part-time status. So if you are taking 6 credits, you would get 50%. / Professor Cooper – In a pilot program, I would assume it is going to be a lot smaller than you would expect it to be, once the pilot succeeded. How will students be chosen then?" / Vice Chancellor Brabham – That is an excellent question. The goal would be, after it succeeded, to make it eligible to all part-time students, regardless of credits. /

c. Budget Advisory Committee

Professor Levine (Engineering Science & Physics, College of Staten Island) – Let me start by personally, and on behalf of the Budget Advisory Committee, thanking Vice Chancellor Brabham for the great help that she has been in providing us information and in doing an excellent job of preparing budgets and of understanding issues. I would like to say up-front, Vice Chancellor Brabham is on our side. On 99.9% of the issues, there is absolutely no disagreement. So if there are some issues here where there might be minor disagreements, please don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. These yellow sheets are wonderful. They really do capture the essence of our arguments. They are very well prepared. I hope that we will all use them in are presentations both on our campuses and to our legislators.

I want to start by clarifying issues that have caused problems with faculty. There is a question of what is meant by "new faculty." Over the years this has been an issue. We remember when we had Chancellors standing here talking about hiring 100 new faculty, and then at the end of the year, there were 500 fewer faculty at CUNY. Vice Chancellor Brabham does not go along with that. She believes in truth. Just by way of illustration, I want to quote from the August 12, 1999 memo from her, on the Operating Budget Allocations. It talks about the faculty hiring initiative. "The University’s Faculty Hiring Initiative began in 1997-1998, and has been very successful in maintaining full-time faculty strength at the colleges. This year we will extend the maintenance of effort requirement that lies at the heart of the policy."

There is a lot of confusion about this. What this refers to is that Vice Chancellor Brabham’s office prepares a sheet that indicates the number of full-time teaching faculty at each campus, at certain dates -- the number of new faculty lines allocated to those campuses, and the number that have been filled. She makes sure that each and every campus takes the money that is intended for faculty and uses it for faculty, for instruction -- to increase instruction, as opposed to other uses that administrators might find. This has caused a lot of confusion. This is campus by campus. I have heard people say, in the Philosophy Department at Institution X, six people have retired, and none have been replaced. That means that those six lines went to some other department within the same institution. I assume that this is still our policy. Those of our colleagues who have retired this year, and quite a number retired, should under this policy be replaced by teaching faculty at the same campus.

When we talk about new faculty lines, we mean in addition to this maintenance of effort. The chart handed out at the back table indicates that something roughly equivalent to $1.88 million at the senior colleges and $850,000 at the community colleges was allocated. But it doesn’t give the corresponding number for the maintenance of effort. So I have a question for Vice Chancellor Brabham. When will the new maintenance of effort table be prepared? So that we can be sure that these new faculty lines are actually going to instruction. Do you know?

Vice Chancellor Brabham – Because of the timing of the adopted budget last year, which was not done until August, we were very late in allocating the resources for full-time faculty. They were not done actually until December of this year. My sense is that there are still dollars being allocated. This is the reason that all the sums are not there. The decision was made to allocate dollars in the spring. There was an understanding that it would be impossible to hire full-time faculty. So instead of giving lines, dollars were allocated. At the same time Vice Chancellor Mirrer’s office developed an RFP for all of the colleges, asking them to apply for lines for these dollars to be used. Those letters have gone to certain campuses. My understanding is that all of those decisions have not yet been made. Vice Chancellor Mirrer has committed that we will get a report saying what the total was, and what the lines are going to be for the fall of 2000.

[Unidentified Speaker] – Does this include the adjunct conversion dollars that colleges would get for full-time lines, or is it separate from that? / Vice Chancellor Brabham – It’s just straight dollars for lines.

Professor Levine – So in other words, this will be eventually converted to maintenance of effort numbers, so that there will be an increase in the number of full-time faculty. I might add, Vice Chancellor Brabham has been very good about this. Campuses have been given 18 months to hire the faculty. The money is placed in the budget, but obviously you cannot go out and hire the kind of quality faculty we want on three days’ notice. I think an 18-month period, which could be extended I believe, is a fair system. We certainly appreciate that.

I think this should clarify some of the issues, and then prepare us for understanding these yellow sheets. Under the restoration is included the $1.88 million that has already been allocated. If the only thing to happen would be that $1.88 million, that’s included in the $6.5 million that you have on this sheet of paper, were to be restored, there would be no new faculty being hired. This is why it is important to argue for the $10.3 million, which is intended to increase the number of faculty.

A second issue deals with the costs of the Executive Compensation Plan. A lot of people have commented on the unfortunate tiering. Nobody seems to have noticed, it costs money to pay people extra. I don’t want to begrudge the extra money to the college presidents. But the Executive Compensation Plan does not stop at the Presidents. It goes all the way down to "deanlettes." City University at its various campuses has hundreds of "deanlettes." There is no budget request for this money. It can come from one place and one place only -- resources intended for instruction. Because there is no magic pot. We can’t print money. Has anyone given a cost estimate?

Vice Chancellor Brabham – There was a contract with an outside firm that came in and looked at the salaries of the Executive staff at the University, and compared that with other like institutions across the country. They made recommendations about ranges for salaries for executives at the University. At that point in time we were asked to do a cost, and Mercer did a cost. We tested each other’s costing. The way we costed this is to estimate if everyone went to the middle of the range, what the cost would be across the University. The annual cost across the University would be $2 million. The way the plan is proposed for adoption on Monday is that nothing will go into effect until after May 1^st. At that point in time the only increases that will be given to executives will be based on performance. Everyone will be evaluated, and there will have to be some sort of performance recommendation at each campus, and at the central administration, in terms of what raises should be.

There is an absolute understanding that this will not be an across-the-board issue. There will also be some sort of control effort to ensure that people do not make huge jumps in ranges. Although implementation guidelines, which are being developed by the Office of Faculty and Staff Relations, I have not seen. There are no additional dollars for these costs. I don’t know that there will be although the Legislative session, and the session in the City, is not over yet. I think the expectation is that there will be increases, but they will be based on performance. They will not be automatic. I should also say, the executive salary cost of living increases have always been tied to the State. The last raise that the executive staff received with the University was in 1998. I think at this time, there was not a raise contemplated in terms of cost of living increases. / Professor Levine – I can assume that we can expect that by next time this year, you can give us a report on how accurate these estimates were. / Vice Chancellor Brabham – Yes. I think as an estimate it is accurate. I can give you a cost on exactly what the implementation is.

Professor Stefan Baumrin (Philosophy, GSUC) – So it is only $2 million. I thought it was only going to be $1 million. $40,000 to $50,000 lines, 20 full professorships. I don’t know what you are not going to do, other than take away lines. There is just not a lot of paper clip money around. I am not trying to make a joke, but we just don’t have that much OTPS. Al’s original question is whether it’s going to come out of the faculty. / Vice Chancellor Brabham – My sense is that I don’t know that it is completely fair to say that it is going to come out of the faculty. At this point, certainly for this year, and the prospects for next year, are that it will come out of the budget generally, but it may come from other areas. It could come from OTPS, temp service, or other kinds of areas. I don’t think anyone is particularly pleased about having to self-fund anything. The University has unfortunately has come quite expert at it. We have self-funded technology, and faculty and staff increments for the last five years. This is the first time we have gotten funding for faculty and staff increments at this University in about five years. We have eaten costs from many years before. I realize I am in sort of strange position, with a little bit of conflict of interest. But I do believe that the salaries for presidents and other executives are not competitive in the current marketplace. I think that is something that we need to be aware of if we want a strong University. In the same way, I think this point was made yesterday at the public hearing, salaries for faculty and staff are not necessarily competitive either. That is one of the things that we need to focus on and be aware of. Faculty salaries and the issue of their competitiveness is something that is dealt with in the collective bargaining process. There is not a collective bargaining process for excluded staff.

Professor Levine – I am going to segue into the topic of performance budgeting in a second. I just want to end this topic by saying I thank Vice Chancellor Brabham. Thanks to her, we have the only protection whatsoever against bloated administrators raiding instructional resources, and that is this maintenance of effort policy. It is the only thing within the entire budget which is carved in stone, for the time being, where administrations cannot just steal the money.

This provides a nice segue into the whole topic of performance budgeting. There has been a discussion over the years of moving to budgeting campuses on the basis of performance indicators. Vice Chancellor Brabham has been very helpful in involving the faculty in trying to establish a process whereby there will be performance budgeting of campuses. This is something that is very complex. We did have the Chair organize a group of CUNY faculty who are expert in the area, to meet and discuss the best practices nationwide in performance budgeting. I was astonished at how many people at CUNY really know a lot. We are not coming at this out of ignorance. There are people who have spent their professional career studying how you judge the performance of higher education institutions. They came up with a consensus of the best practices nationwide.

While it is much too complex for me to deal with here, let me just mention the two most common performance indicators. One is an eight-year graduation rate, which, by the way, CUNY does very well on. I know there are people who insist that we should be judged on the basis of a two-year or four-year rate, which is totally inappropriate for institutions which maintain graduation standards, as opposed to institutions that simply worry if you pay your tuition. If we go to the national norm of eight-year graduation rates, CUNY does very well.

The second most common performance measure is the student to faculty ratio. It is considered that institutions that have more faculty, a lower student to faculty ratio, are better. The figures handed out by the Chancellor indicated that CUNY-wide, our student to faculty ratio is 35. Using this nationally-normed, quantitative indicator, CUNY is an institution adrift. We do not have enough full-time faculty to provide a quality education to our students. One can look at performance indicators as a way of improving the situation. There is a negative view. The negative view is that performance budgeting is another phrase for finding an excuse to cut the budget. There is some truth to that viewpoint, too. Experiences at other levels have shown that when people say "performance budgeting" they mean they will use whatever indicator they can find to justify attacking and lowering your budget. I know that Vice Chancellor Brabham is on our side on this one in trying to come up with indicators that will improve the situation. I hope that we can come up with indicators which measure these things as actions of the campuses in moving to improve the student-faculty ratio, by hiring faculty, and reducing administrative bloat. We can raise the salaries of administrators if we fire a certain number of useless non-performing ones.

We shouldn’t be looking at performance measures on administrators as necessarily a bad thing. I just hope that there is transparency in the process. We should look at performance budgeting as a way of recognizing when we have excellent programs in basic skills. We can document that we are doing a good job, and why shouldn’t we get credit for it? We can look at performance budgeting as a way of guaranteeing that we provide adequate start-up funds for new faculty so that we can increase faculty productivity and research. There are many performance indicators that are positive. I hope that in discussions with the Vice Chancellor and with the College presidents, and with the Chancellor, that we can come up with a set of useful indicators.

Vice Chancellor Brabham – Let me just say that the issue of performance budgeting has been kicking around at the University for a couple of years. I think that one of the things we discussed at the Budget Advisory Committee is that there is general dissatisfaction with the University’s initial foray into this area. There really is a need to give a little more thought to this and to have a broader-based process in considering what measures will be used in the future. The discussion of performance-based measures is part of a discussion of the way the University manages its budget and finances. Chancellor Goldstein has been concerned about that. As you know, the Schmidt Commission Report expressed some concerns about the University’s management of budget and resources. One of the things that we are doing in the Fiscal Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees is to begin to discuss some of the issues that have been problematic at the University for many years, and how we propose to address those. I see the performance-based issue as being one component of that larger discussion which will also deal with issues of how should senior colleges be budgeted, what should we do with the community colleges, how should revenue be handled, all-funds budgeting, etc.

Professor Dean Savage (Sociology, Queens College) – "I first heard about the performance-based budgeting as a movement that grew up at places that had no well worked out faculty evaluations, which we already have had for fifty years. It is how many students in your classes, how many papers you’ve published, how many conferences you go to, your reputation in the profession. On those kinds of measures, we as a faculty do very well. The number of Ph.D.’s, for example, on the faculty. There are plenty of schools that are at 30%-40%. CUNY must be 93%. In a way there is nothing really to worry about, but it needs to be molded or managed to fit into our institutional ethos. That requires a lot of give and take between the faculty and administration. Our administration, for all its good intentions, is not very good at working with the faculty. Maybe it was in the days when it used to be faculty members who were administrators. It’s gotten to the point that administrators are administrators, and they are on the executive pay plan. Faculty are faculty, and have to wait for representation from their collective bargaining persons to be entitled to a raise. All this stuff amounts to a way of encoding an evaluation scheme, on the basis of which most of the faculty are going to look very good. And the people who in fact we know have not performed very well, will not look very good. What they are going to do about it is another matter. I doubt that anything in fact can be done about it in the short run, but maybe in the long run, there may be some sort of faculty re-evaluation panel, or so on. But I don’t think that the central administration has very good ideas about this, and they will need to have our help in formulating ideas."

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – "I’m much more suspicious than I am hearing you two on this issue. It sounds like we are going to be giving tremendous new authority to the administration." / Chair Sohmer – There has been a historical budget, you’ve got the same thing next year as you’ve got this year, plus some minor changes on the fringes, and a tiny increment in the adjuncts, based on an instructional staff model at the senior colleges. There really was no major faculty input into the process at all. If we are worried about giving up influence that we previously had, I’m afraid that previously we had none. To the extent that Vice Chancellor Brabham is willing to listen to our ideas on how to reduce administrative bloat, we come out with a positive. / Professor Crain – "The calls are being made by the Governor and the Mayor. As far as I can tell, they have no interest in anything except our University shrinking. We are at a time of budget surplus at the State level, at the City level, yet we are getting minuscule raise increases, and they are proposing cuts to our most economically disadvantaged students. That’s what the budget picture looks like. This budget really stinks. Let’s be clear about it, in a time of budget surplus, this is awful to be at this steady state and no increases. Now to go to some sort of productivity evaluation is going to give up all kinds of authority that has taken thousand s of years for faculty to develop. I’m much more suspicious of the whole thing."

Professor Perlstein (Governance Leader, BMCC) – "Professor Levine, thank you very much for your illustrious presentation. I always learn something when I listen to you. I am reminded of a point that you made a couple of weeks ago at a Governance Leaders’ meeting about faculty lines. It goes beyond just asking for numbers of faculty and money. It goes to the issue of who are going to get those lines, and who’s going to make the decision about where those lines go in the colleges. I think this is very important, especially when we think about going up to Albany and advocating for more lines. I think something new is that the decisions about where those lines are going have been made up at central administration and not at the college level. So perhaps you could just briefly comment on that. I don’t know if we can really discuss that today, but I think that is very serious. I know that we have lines at BMCC, but the Dean is telling us where they go without discussing them with departments. I think they are getting their instructions right from 80^th Street."/ Professor Levine – There is a lot of truth to what you are saying. On this maintenance of effort chart, the new authorized positions at both the senior and community colleges were split into two categories. One was 70/30, recognition of campuses that had enrollment increases and had not received any lines to enable them to hire faculty. The other half were in designated APP positions where the central university indicated what areas people would be hired in. The phrase has changed so rapidly, but it means the same as APP. It means that 80^th Street had decided. These decisions are often made in ways that we do not understand. In the budget request for 1999-2000, it speaks for additional lines for photonics and teacher education. There isn’t a single word in here about lines for new media or languages. Yet when the lines were allocated, a portion of the lines were allocated for those four areas. We have not gotten how this was broken down. But then again, we don’t even know the number of lines. We don’t know, out of this allocation, how many are 70/30 and how many are flagship. Vice Chancellor Brabham, do you know roughly?

Vice Chancellor Brabham – These are dollars for the Spring and they are formulated 70/30, and there is also a percentage based on the number of full-time faculty currently…/ Professor Levine – So these are all 70/30 lines, these are not flagship? In that case, the answer to your question is that all of these lines have not been stipulated by the central administration. Is that the correct statement? / Vice Chancellor Brabham – Allocations for the fall of 2000 will be based on the responses to the RFP. / Professor Levine – So the allocation for the fall for this money will be based on flagship. Exclusively flagship? / Vice Chancellor Brabham – I’m not sure. / Professor Levine – So we still don’t know how it is split. Let me emphasize, if somebody retires, it is up to the campus administration to decide what area gets to hire. So far, the central administration has not, to the best of my knowledge, imposed anything.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay) – "May I just clarify a difference in Academic Program Planning and this year’s approach? Because I do think that it is different. There used to be APP where the colleges were asked to make the case for lines in any area. But this year the RFP that went out from Vice Chancellor Mirrer’s Office in Academic Affairs, named four clusters. It asked the colleges to make the case, if they wished, for lines in those four clusters, photonics, software development, language acquisition, and teacher education. If a college such as John Jay, which doesn’t teach any of those areas, wanted to make the case that it deserved and needed lines in forensic psychology or forensic science, or any of the other programs that are unique to John Jay, we had no opportunity to do so, and could not. Because somehow the process was decided that these were the four clusters where there would be large areas of hiring across the University. What I think that Alfred and I, and Stefan and many others on the Budget Advisory Committee have been very concerned about is that to our knowledge there was no consultation with the faculty about which areas should be the areas for the cluster hirings for the RFP’s. So that this is a new twist in what we thought we had been freed of when Vice Chancellor Freeland was no longer Vice Chancellor, and APP ceased to be an initiative at the University."

Professor London (Political Science, Brooklyn College) – "It is important to understand that these discussions take place in the absence of no real new money. In other states, where performance budgeting does take place, they talk about adding $100 million, and how is this going to be distributed. I may not agree that we want to necessarily distribute it with performance measures. Nonetheless, the discussion is taking place in terms of some real money. We have to remember that at CUNY our base budgets are extraordinarily thin. As to the point that Bill Crain made earlier, this budget is not a huge increase. It is a very modest incremental increase. We are not getting hit as hard over the head as we were in the last couple of years, so it may feel better. But it is not a major increase. Before we engage in a discussion about performance budgeting, or tiering, what we need to do is talk about adding to our base budgets. That should be, I believe, the position that the faculty takes, as indicated by the measures which the Vice Chancellor brought us tonight. If we have a substantial reversal in our resources, then I think the faculty might engage in such a discussion. Right now, these measures will really be used to downsize some campuses and reallocate resources that are all too scarce."

Professor Levine – I agree with the comment that this budget is still much less than we need. There is no way to claim that this is a good budget. But let’s focus first, not on the Governor’s Executive Budget, but on the Request. I do want to pull some numbers out, that perhaps I should have mentioned before. The Request on this page for new faculty, increasing full-time faculty, creating a flagship environment, is not quite what the Budget Request was. I want to distinguish. In the Budget Request there were two separate categories. One category was creating a flagship environment, which called for an additional $5 million in full-time faculty and faculty support. The other category was improving the undergraduate experience. That called for an additional $5.25 million. Roughly half of the Request is for flagship, and half of the request is for improving the undergraduate experience. I think we should argue for both, but if some of you want to argue for the half that relates to improving the undergraduate experience, feel free. But let’s recognize that the request does make this distinction.

Vice Chancellor Brabham – Let me just add one thing. The City sheet also has a request for $4.5 million. So actually we are asking for a little bit more money for full-time faculty. It is really more than was asked for initially. In the Budget Request, if you look on page 40, basically the two categories that Al referred to, full-time faculty under creating a flagship environment, and full-time faculty under improving the undergraduate experience, the total requested amount was $10 million. It was divided between senior and community colleges. On the lobbying sheet at the community colleges, I forget what the exact amount was, about $2.5 million that we were asking for full-time faculty at the community colleges, and the remainder at the senior colleges. It has been increased to $4.5 million, which is on this sheet. So it is a little higher number than was in the Request.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – "Just a couple of general points about the issue of performance-based budgeting. I guess I don’t consider it as benignly as Stefan suggested, although it could be. I imagine if it were shaped and massaged properly, it might be. I understand that, with all the efforts to create a foolproof system, it practically fell apart, and has been rejected by South Carolina. They went into paroxysms of meetings and hours of God knows how many dead trees, to create the perfect system. I gather that they have all backed off of it, because everything is coming apart. I first heard this phrase at a meeting four years ago, at a meeting of the American Association of Higher Education. I was there representing the Senate. I have to tell you, at that time, it always came in tandem with the phrase "post-tenure review." So I think you can’t really just consider this as some kind of inventive budget message. Its genesis appears to be the very same folks who brought us the Viet Nam War, which is the RAND Corporation and their new guise as higher education experts. They are very much in favor of this. Roger Benjamin’s hand is clear in the Schmidt Report on this issue. He in fact worked on the Schmidt Report as a consultant. With this it seems to me that we have to think about the social and historical context in the United States. CUNY is finally being yanked out of its New York provincialism into the American mainstream on this one. I remember trying to propose to the Senate a few years ago that we consider some of these issues. The response of most people in this room was the same one that we were taught in elementary school, to hide from the atomic bomb under our desks. I think that people felt if they didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t happen. I suggest that it wouldn’t probably be a wise strategy. I don’t know if it would work any better to talk about it. It is probably going to happen. It strikes me that pretending it isn’t there is non-realistic. The two articles in the last issue of Academe on the issue of productivity, I recommend to everyone if you want a national picture."

Professor Levine – We cannot ignore these national trends. So far at CUNY, the discussion has been on performance budgeting on the campuses. Vice Chancellor Brabham, has there been any broadening of that discussion to any of these issues?/

Vice Chancellor Brabham – That is the only issue I’m involved in. / Professor Levine – That is my understanding, too. My remarks on performance budgeting echo that. So far what we are talking about is the allocation of the amounts above the base budgets. In particular, new money. I would hope that would change in the future, but at this point, that is the entire discussion.

Faculty Members of Board of Trustees Committees

V. Old Business

Student Affairs Committee’s Proposal of Model Admissions Policy

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – The Student Affairs Committee thought that instead of reacting negatively to everything that comes from the Chancellory, we would try to say something positive. We tried to create a statement as to what we thought an admissions policy should be -- not necessarily an ideal admissions policy, but an admissions policy that we thought could work for CUNY. That is what we developed and outlined for discussion. Colleges could use it as a guideline, in terms of working towards something that they thought would be more ideal than what we have now. It is the admissions policy that SUNY-Buffalo is moving towards. So we don’t think that it is totally unrealistic.

Essentially our policy would be that if students scored high enough on certain quantitative variables, GPA, SAT, CPI units, the colleges would set a minimum of a high score and then they would automatically be admitted. At the next level, we would recommend that the college broaden its scope, and not only consider the quantitative variables, but a series of qualitative variables. For example, letters of recommendations, projects, personal statements, that provide evidence of motivation, leadership, perseverance, social commitment, overcoming difficult obstacles, and special talents. This would require admissions committees. Through Professor Sohmer’s compromise with the Board of Trustees, there will be faculty appointed admissions committees on every campus. This is something that we think we could work toward. They would have to set up reliability, and meet in groups to look over students. The admissions committees could look at a wider range of variables. This would be a real admissions policy, not simply looking at quantitative scores and going by those alone. A lot of colleges would like to look at things like evidence of talent. If there is a student with a particular literary, mathematical, or musical talent, the college would really like to give a serious look to such a student. I know at City College, where we are strong in the math and sciences, we’d like to look at math scores. If there is a budding math genius coming in, we don’t want to loose that student because they fall off low on some other score, and let the student go off to MIT. We would like to have some of these students. We would like to look at the whole transcript as a minimum, and look at letters, projects, and so on.

That is the idea that we proposed, and we also proposed that placement exams would be placement exams. Once the student was admitted, the student would be placed into what remedial courses they needed, not being sent off to community colleges. Finally, we would hope that admissions committees would lean on the side of accepting students and giving students a chance, rather than rejecting students. No combination of variables that we have come across, rally predicts success in college that well. So if you can’t predict that, it seems incumbent upon us to give students a shot where possible. That is our model admissions policy. We think it is workable within the City University. Bob Friedman, Jane Young, Martha Bell, Cynthia Jones, Ruth Frisz, and Mike Barnhart are here from our Committee.

Chair Sohmer – The motion before you is to accept the Committee Report. It will be received by the body, and then the Executive Committee will forward it to the Board of Trustees, the Chancellory, and Governance Leaders, with a recommendation.

[Unidentified Speaker] – Has anybody thought about the implementation of this type of policy? Who is going to review all of this?

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – We’ve discussed that at some length. You are right, it would require more work, but we think that it would be work that is rewarding for the colleges. You could even have interviews, and start to make contacts with students before they are allocated. When retention is important, it would help us keep it up. I think the more contact we have with students, the better. It would take work, and we would have campus admissions committees. It would really be worthwhile to engage in.

Professor Bell (Educational Services, Brooklyn College) – When the SEEK Directors met with representatives from UAPC on Monday, it was made clear to us that there was now a pre-admissions screening of people who didn’t make the cut on the indices. They were being sent to admissions offices for screening and evaluation. It seems to me that this is a very logical extension of that policy. If we can do it for small ends, and we had time to gear up, I think we could do it for larger ends. I think it might be very worthwhile to actually look at things that would give us a better picture of who is being admitted. It certainly would give the admissions office at a college a real role in shaping a freshman class, which would be a very good thing.

Chair Sohmer – So it is before you to adopt, are there any objections? All of those in favor of calling the question? All those in favor of the motion to adopt this resolution? Against? It passes without dissent.

Faculty Blueprint for 2000 – This item was skipped.

New Business - Resolution on Behalf of Song Yongyi

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – This is on behalf of the Executive Committee. As you may know, the issue of Song Yongyi, who had been detained by the Chinese government, then arrested and charged, is one that raises fundamental issues of academic freedom and the rights of research. CUNY is personally involved, because CUNY supports a variety of programs. Even if that were not true, we would still be involved as scholars and as people who believe in academic freedom and liberty. The Resolution was written first to ask that he be released. When he was, the Resolution was written to reaffirm our support of the unfettered right of inquiry, academic freedom, and scholarly research. Also to welcome his release. As you may know, there is an article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, which follows up on his release. This will continue to be an issue that people will be following. The Resolution has a variety of whereases, and then resolves that the Senate welcomes the release of Song Yongyi. It also resolves that the Senate insists that academic freedom and scholarly research must not be restricted by Chinese governmental or non-governmental bodies.

Chair Sohmer – The Resolution is before you from the Executive Committee. Are there any comments?

Professor Ricter (English, Kingsborough Community College) – "I’m wondering, since this makes the statement that academic freedom and scholarly research must not be restricted by Chinese governmental and non-governmental bodies, are we sending this to a Chinese governmental body?" / Chair Sohmer – One element of the distribution would clearly be the Council General of the United States, and then we would distribute it publicly to the press and other folks.

Professor Baumrin – "I don’t think you should have "must" in the last sentence, but rather "should." It doesn’t make logical sense. "Must" is a word of necessity. I move that "must" be changed to "should." / Professor Beaky – "It goes with insists."

Chair Sohmer – You are now faced with the slightly amended motion -- "must" has been turned into "should." All those in favor of this Resolution as amended? It is unanimous. It will be distributed as a document of this body.