Subject to Senate approval

REPORTS & DELIBERATIONS

OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY SEVENTH PLENARY SESSION

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

February 29, 2000

a. Chair: A few items I think I should mention. You may or may not know that the president of Hunter College has resigned as of July. There will be a search shortly. There are also searches as of the beginning of next week, for the Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs. Currently filled by Roy Moskowitz. And the Vice Chancellor for Finance, Sherry Brabham. The committees will be set in motion at the beginning of next week.

The Board has decided, fortunately, to reconsider how senior colleges are funded. There are no guarantees that the insane process that is now used, will be replaced by a more rational process. But it will be replaced by a different process. The first considerations started at the Committee yesterday, and will go forward. Astoundingly the Chancellery believes that they will find a process which is probably more rational, sometime before the distribution of this budget for the Fall of 2000. There are those of us who have serious doubts about that.

I don’t know if we mentioned that the search committees for the presidents of LaGuardia and Queensborough have reported in. This means that they have come up with lists of three candidates each for the Chancellor. They will now go forward to the Chancellor making some kind of decision, and presenting it to the Board. The search at at least one of the places was problematic, in the sense that the faculty feel ill-used, and ill-considered in the process. The process for searching for presidents certainly has to be revisited. I don’t know if we will be successful in convincing the Board members, that what they do is neither collegial nor consultative, or participatory, so much as, formally looks as if it were.

b. Chancellor Goldstein: I apologize, but I have another event that I must get to. I thought I would defer my presentation and take questions from the floor, if that’s acceptable with the body.

I do want at some point to talk about enrollment. Let me go through some of the enrollment numbers. We are dealing in an environment that is not stable. Let me indicate what I mean by that. What’s interesting is that overall enrollment for first-time freshmen is essentially flat. Where we seem to be having problems is in the transfer pool that came in the Spring of 2000. I think the reason for that was uncertainty in the feeder schools. I’ve asked Vice Chancellor Mirrer and her staff to identify a sub-set of those institutions that dominate the pool of students that we receive, and to make sure that those institutions understand the policies that exist today, so that there is no uncertainty in the market.

Here are some of the problems -- they are administrative problems. We have about 4,700 students who are waiting consideration to get into the four-year colleges. But because of one of three things happening, those students haven’t received acceptance letters. First, the dominant group of that 4,700 are students who have not sent a SAT score to the University. We believe that a large group of them have taken the SAT, but for whatever reason – perhaps they were not advised -- the schools have not received the SAT. I have directed the Office of Academic Affairs to accept those students because they have an admissions profile that would lead us to believe that they would be accepted. We have to place their acceptance in a suspended state, until we get the SAT, but the letters will go out.

Secondly, there are a group of about 1,400 students whose diagnostic tests would indicate they would not be accepted into the regular baccalaureate program. This group is now awaiting disposition by the faculty committees at each of our campuses. You remember that when this policy was promulgated I indicated at the Board meeting that I thought it would be advisable that each of the four-year campuses set up review committees of faculty. We would like the faculty to look at these students. If they believe that their profiles are sufficiently compelling to join the University, they ought to do so. Finally, there is a group of students who are waiting to enter the community colleges, and until the disposition on these other groups is satisfied, the community colleges are in suspension until they get their phases completed.

This is something that is very different than we have experienced before. If you take out those 4,700 students, and say that they would leave the University, which is obviously not the case -- I would say that the dominant number would actually come back to the four-year institutions -- we are down about 2.8% in enrollment. The real problem is that we have an outflow of students from this University that is exceeding the inflow of students. We have a continuing serious problem of retention at this University, and we must get our arms around this.

Probably everyone in the room knows that there are a complex of issues that result in this happening. Financially, students are running into problems. The institution is not the most hospitable institution for the student. They are not able to get a full complement of classes. They can’t seem to put together a full program. There is a whole panoply of issues. We really have to do a much better job of understanding why our students are leaving this institution in larger numbers than we are receiving students. That to me is really the central issue that we must face.

That is really where the enrollment is. The first-time freshmen are flat overall. The numbers are down about 2.8%, dominated by transfer students. But it’s not dealing with the outflow of students. We really have to do a better job on our campuses than we are. That is basically the report that I have. I would indicate that the Prelude to Success Program and the Permit Program are a mixed message. I would say at Hunter and Brooklyn the Prelude to Success Program has been a good program. We are attracting the students; they are enrolled.

At Baruch, it was a miserable program. I interviewed the Interim President today. There were about 150 transfer students who had satisfied the admissions standards for coming into Baruch College. Unbeknownst to us, a number of these feeder schools already test these students, but we don’t have access to that information. That is one of the things that we are going to have to learn from these feeder schools. There were a considerable number of them who already took tests at their sending institutions. But when they took the diagnostic test, our Freshman Skills Assessment Test, they either failed, one, two, or three of these exams. These are students who satisfied the admissions criteria coming into Baruch.

I think most of you understand that Baruch has probably some of the most rigorous admission standards in the University. Baruch contacted each of those 150 students, and indicated that they should appear for placement in the Prelude to Success Program, and also indicated that they had the opportunity to take courses as permit students. When those calls and letters were written, only a small set of those students responded. This was unique to Baruch. This didn’t happen at the other institutions, at Queens, Brooklyn, and Hunter. Of that 150, only about 40 or so appeared, and they left. They really didn’t want to go through the bother of becoming community college students at Baruch College. Or they decided to go to another four-year institution, or decided to go to another community college. I don’t know who the students are, but we just found this out today.

What it says is that for this program to work well it has to be administered carefully. Again, these were transfer students. These are students who accrued credits. Many of them have probably said that they have been tested enough. There were no problems with the freshmen. A place like Baruch had three freshmen, out of the large number that they took in, in the Spring, who were ready for Prelude to Success. That was replicated across the system. So the first-time freshmen were not a problem. It was the transfer population. It is a much more complex population. They come from different schools with different backgrounds, and it is something a little harder to get our hands around. That’s where we are.

Professor Sherrill (Political Science, Hunter College) – "This pattern of students transferring in with good academic records from other colleges, and meeting our criteria for admission, but who fail one or more of the placement exams, strikes me as indicating that there is a serious problem with the policy it self. Or, at the very least, that our exams are not valid. If students have successful records at other colleges, and it’s a national pattern, the majority of students who are in Prelude to Success, are not first semester students. Further, many of the students who fail one of the exams, had more than 30 credits, and thus couldn’t go to community colleges, and had excess credits and therefore were not eligible for financial aid. What changes in the no-remediation policy are being contemplated to solve this problem?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I think with the transfer population, we need to look at what other testing instruments these colleges are using. We really don’t have access to them right now, but we are getting that kind of information. In a sense, this was a good learning exercise. Fortunately it occurred when the numbers were relatively small. What we are going to do, as I said in my opening remarks, is to do our due diligence, to work with the major feeder schools, like Nassau Community College. I forget the names of all of these institutions; they are largely dominated by two-year institutions in the SUNY system, private two-year institutions, etc. The numbers are tiny from each. There are three from this school, two from this school, five from that school. There must be several hundred of these and we must go through in methodical detail and look at those institutions, the smaller set of them, where the numbers are relatively large. And if we can find the appropriate surrogate for the test, then we ought to recommend that those surrogates be used. Professor Sherrill - Would those surrogates be available to first-year students as well? Chancellor Goldstein – No. First-time freshmen are a very different problem. We have new tests beginning in the fall, the ACT which is a blend of reading and writing, and the Math Assessment Test, which we continue to believe is a good test. To pass the MAT you need rigorous arithmetic and very little algebra – very low levels of mathematical maturity.

Professor Dean Savage (Sociology, Queens) - The problem with retention that you mentioned – by and large, this is invisible to the faculty. We see our students, and next semester we see them again and maybe some of them are not there, but we are not so aware of that. The data about the number we have lost simply are not available to us. Is there a policy change planned by the Chancellory that will give some guidance at campuses about how they might engage the faculty in doing something to develop more student-centered environments on the campus and department levels? Cleary there are many of us here who have spent many years trying to develop more student-centered environments. We often have the impression that a large number of our colleagues are not particularly concerned about this, nor are local administrations except maybe once or twice a year. There is no constant drumbeat of how we need to change things to make it easier for our students to continue to hang in there and finish their degrees. We need some kind of leadership on this, or things are going to continue as they are." /

Chancellor Goldstein – I think that was beautifully said. I think that here is where the faculty really have to take a leadership role on our campuses. You are the ones seeing these students on a day to day basis. You are engaging with them, you are seeing them during your office hours, you are seeing them in class. The first line professionals are the ones who can assist and develop the ideas that we need. I don’t think it is a matter of policy. I think it is a matter of saying this is a critically important activity for our campuses to address. It is very fundamental to what we do as professionals.

We need many more faculty positions. We have some indications that we are going to get more. Everybody here knows that we need more faculty. But with the resources that we have, the first obligation that a president has is allocating resources. There is also this notion: is this a hospitable, friendly, and welcoming environment? It is mixed. At some of our campuses, I think we send those messages out very clearly. At other campuses there is much more of an aloofness. I think it is the front line people: our faculty, counselors, people in advising, who really need to set the tone and the direction. / Professor Savage – "I’ve done a number of surveys of undergraduate satisfaction at Queens College and produced a number of reports. They circulate, but then I just don’t feel like I have much success in getting the administration to go ahead and support any of the initiatives that we think would actually make a difference. Sometimes they involve a carrot. Sometimes they involve something a little different. I will send you a copy of my most recent report." / Chancellor Goldstein – I would like to look at those studies. I would really encourage this body to help formulate some ideas. This is a critical problem. I have just looked at ten years’ worth of data across this University. This has been a systemic problem at this University, and it is getting worse; it is not getting better.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – "I’d love to talk about the testing. The math test is not the one that is so invalid. It is the writing and reading test." / Chancellor Goldstein – That is gone now, Bill. / Professor Crain – "They are still using the same ones now." / Chancellor Goldstein – Yes, but in the fall they will be changed. / Professor Crain – We have rejected students on the basis of invalid tests, this term. I feel a responsibility to ask about City College. There is an enormous morale problem and crisis among the faculty. At City College, we have lost an enormous amount of full-time faculty. We naturally have a large adjunct budget. I think we have done a magnificent job, given the circumstances. We are still sending students onto Ph.D. programs in percentages that are better than almost any other college in the New York area. We have just been heroic. This term our administration has come in and felt some intense pressure to take away 20% of the release time of the faculty, and to cut the adjunct budget. Sometimes they maybe take away release time in a valid way, other times they’ve done it in an invalid way, and hurt people unnecessarily. This has created a terrible blow to morale at the University. We are trying to figure out what happened. Is this coming from the Chancellor? Is this directed by you? Is that why this has occurred? Otherwise we don’t know who to address. Second, we hear that there are plans for our college. We are to become a science and technology college. The people in liberal arts feel that they don’t know what is going to happen to them. The second question is, are we going to be allowed to determine our fate? Or are you going to be the one to determine our fate?"/

Chancellor Goldstein – Let me answer both questions. With respect to the former question about release time, I can’t answer that because I don’t know what is actually going on. I can tell you what I’ve asked for. When we appointed Stanford Roman, I did that with the very real intention of not doing a search immediately for City College. I did that because I did not believe that if we did a search right after Yolanda Moses left, with all of the controversy that occurred around that release, and the negativity that was connected in the press around City College, we would never get the kind of leadership that that great institution needs and deserves. But that appointment was done with the understanding that there was going to be an analysis done of City College. Indeed, because the faculty at City College is so talented and so entrepreneurial, what we had in the past was a relinquishing of the administration to large numbers of people at City College, faculty and others. That is not the way that a complex organization can deploy its resources. It has to start with a good administration.

For me, it is fundamental for City College to be renewed and to get a very strong and prominent leader. In order to do that, we need to take a thorough look at the operations at the institution: one has to do with workload, one has to do with administrative support systems, one has to do with the nature of the technology that exists, one has to do with the human resource area. When I say "we," the president when he was appointed was asked to go through with faculty and other administrators and look at the institution, and remediate any problems. I assume the release time issue was part of that analysis. If decisions were made to pull back release time, I would like to believe there was some basis for making that determination. I’m not close enough to the particular issues to say, "yes, it made sense" or "no, it didn’t." Let’s assume that there was some real basis. With respect to other things that are happening, we need to bolster the administration. As you know, Bill, you live there on a daily basis, the administration has essentially imploded at City College. It just doesn’t work. Very fundamental business practices are just not working at City College. Hopefully very soon we will bring in somebody to assist in bolstering those administrative systems.

With respect to your last question about science, there are two strategic planning committees that are working in tandem at City College now. One is an overall strategic plan that will feed into the Middle States visit. I think the visit occurs in September or October. The other is, what do we do about science, engineering, technology, and architecture. They have a very special place at City College. The question is, when we have a very distinguished engineering school, a very distinguished physics department, and other very distinguished activities in science and technology, what is possible within realistic constraints of our resources? What is the institution capable of becoming? And how can that happen over a long period time? In this administration, you will never see me saying an institution should be science and technology, and we forget the arts, humanities, and social sciences. That would be unjust to the students. / Professor Crain – "What is going on is that the arts and humanities will be respected." / Chancellor Goldstein – Absolutely, they have to be.

Professor Levine (Engineering Science & Physics, College of Staten Island) – "Chancellor Goldstein, I think that you as a Former President of the Research Foundation join with all of us in rejoicing any time that a CUNY faculty or staff member brings in external funding. In this spirit, I understand that Ninfa Segarra is project director on an externally funded grant. Could you please tell us the funding agency, the face value of the grant, her salary on the grant, and the indirect cost recovery rate that has been negotiated?" / Chancellor Goldstein – Let me tell you what the facts are without going into all of the details. Ninfa Segarra is indeed, as you said, a project employee. She is going to be on an account that is housed at the central office. The money is being fueled by City government. There is no assault on any of the indirect cost recoveries that go back to the campuses. You asked a question that I shouldn’t respond to publicly. It is as if you asked me about a colleague at your campus, what she is being paid, and how it is being funded.

Professor Reitano (History, LaGuardia Community College) – "I recently attended a national conference of two of the most important community college associations. One was the American Association of Community College, which as you know, is led by the President of Bronx Community College, Carolyn Williams. The other one was the National Association of Community College Trustees. It was very impressive to see hundreds of community college trustees from all over the country, eager to advocate for and support their colleges. I was wondering therefore whether you could help me understand why there wasn’t one CUNY Trustee present at this national conference?" / Chancellor Goldstein – I really have no idea. / Professor Reitano – "I wanted to call it to your attention, because it is most embarrassing." / Chancellor Goldstein – In past years I’ve gone to a lot of these conferences. I never remember seeing Trustees at any of these conferences. / Professor Reitano – "This was a conference just for Trustees." / Chancellor Goldstein – I really don’t know the answer.

Professor McCall (English, Baruch College) – "I wanted to go back to the first statement on transfer students. I think the problem is with the policy, as Ken suggested. It seems to me only common sense that a student transferring from a community college into a senior college wants to go to a senior college. He does not want to be told that he is, in fact, being placed into a community college. The same thing is true of a student transferring from a senior college into a senior college. He doesn’t then want to find out that he has been demoted into a community college. That is an issue with the policy that you’ve established. It’s not an issue with the measures that are being used to determine something about these students. The other problem at Baruch is, Baruch has never offered January immersion to transfer students. When I raised that issue with them this past term, they still did not want to do it. This is even though we knew that in order to get into Prelude to Success, they had to first fail the immersion. There is that part of the problem as well as the problem with the policy. It is my understanding that the only way a student got into Prelude to Success is that he first had to start with immersion; if he didn’t do well in immersion, he would go into Prelude to Success." /

Chancellor Goldstein – This particular January is truly an anomaly. In fact, we made available the Prelude to Success to any of these transfer students, regardless of how they performed on the diagnostic test. This is not the way the policy is written. I think it’s worth taking one minute to review the policy. If a student aspires to go to a senior college and has a 75 on the English and Math Regents, they are exempt from taking the diagnostic test. What we are trying to give is as many opportunities to get in, given you show certain deficiencies. If you do not get a 75 on the English or the Math, then we look at the SAT exam. The level of the SAT cut-off is a relatively modest number. It is something like 480 English, and 480 Math. And this a re-centered score. We are not talking about students showing tremendous abilities on the SAT. If they don’t pass that particular barrier, then the diagnostic test is taken. If they fail one of the parts of the diagnostic test, then Prelude to Success is available. If they fail more than one test, then they have two options. They can go into one of the immersion programs. I seem to remember that we had immersion..? / Professor McCall – "Only in the summer, not in the January program." / Chancellor Goldstein – If that is the case, they should definitely have it. The other option is that they can go to a community college. That is what the policy says. There are three ways of progressing: Regents, SAT, Diagnostic Test. / Professor McCall – "I understand that. But also part of this problem is that students who are transfers may or may not have ever taken the SAT for their initial college. So then requiring them to sit for an SAT, after they have already been admitted somewhere to a college, also seems to be problematic." / Chancellor Goldstein – There is even a further problem: they may have already been tested. A number of these transfer students already took the ACT, but that is not part of their file, so we didn’t even have access to that information. Fortunately the numbers are very small. I want to get back to what Dean Savage said. I think that is really the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is retaining students. We need to understand why they are dissatisfied. I’m talking about retaining students who have been in this University. There is where we are really seeing tremendous leakage in the system. We have a retention problem in this University.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – "My question has to do with budget, but because of your comments about enrollment and the transfer population, I’d like to start by commenting on the upcoming proficiency exam. The faculty supported it before we knew that there was going to be any policy on eliminating remediation at the baccalaureate programs. This is a policy that is going to have the same effect. We will have a retention problem. As you know, students who transfer from outside of CUNY will have one semester to pass that proficiency exam. That may either discourage them from applying when that policy comes into effect, or we will lose them, if in one semester they cannot get up to that grade. Now if other transfer students can’t pass these, in your own words, simple placement tests, how are they going to pass a proficiency test coming from these other colleges that haven’t prepared them? One thing perhaps we should rethink, is the proficiency exam. We have all these other policies, and all these other tests in place…" /

Chancellor Goldstein – When is the proficiency exam supposed to come on line? / Professor Kaplowitz – "In September for transfer students into junior status. I think that can have a very negative impact. This was before all these other policies, including the elimination of remediation policy, were developed. It really was in a different context, and in a different culture." / Chancellor Goldstein – I’ll look into it. / Professor Kaplowitz – " At previous plenaries, you’ve been good enough to promise us a list of the allocation of the new lines -- the four cluster areas that the RFP’s were sent for, and the 70/30 lines." / Chancellor Goldstein – I don’t have them, but I can certainly provide them. I can give them to Trustee Bernie Sohmer. / Professor Kaplowitz – "When we know the lines, would you make a commitment to continue the faculty maintenance of effort policy. It was one of the best policies that ever came out of 80^th Street --which is that whatever number of faculty a college has, plus a number of new lines given, those lines have to be filled as faculty lines. The administration cannot treat them as fungible, and fill them with HEO’s and administrators. It’s a wonderful policy." / Chancellor Goldstein – I want to give the presidents freedom and autonomy to run their institutions. I don’t think the presidents need to hear from the Chancellor with respect to how they should be allocating their budgets for their institutions. Certainly they know much better than I. We have a very serious problem in this University. You have heard me say it over and over again. It is at the top of our list with respect to the legislative process, which is going on right now -- for full-time faculty. What we desperately need as well are academic support positions. If colleges need a lab technician in their institution, more than an assistant professor, I think they ought to be able to make those decisions. I am not going to question that kind of decision. As the pedagogical environment changes, largely around the use of technology, I hope some of you come to the National Center for Collective Bargaining in Higher Education. I am going to give a speech on technology and the kinds of challenges that we, at this University, face. / Professor Kaplowitz – "Just a really quick follow-up. One of the reasons why I think the faculty maintenance of effort policy is so important is that now with the new Executive Pay Plan Program, monies for which increases of salaries at the campus will come from the college’s own operating budget, that could come from the new faculty lines that are allocated. We need those lines." / Chancellor Goldstein – These, I assure you, will be independent events. We will get funding for these from separate pots of money.

Professor Young (English, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – "I speak to you from the front lines, and my question has to do with the new testing process that has being set up. ACT was recruited to collaborate with the University in making a test that is suitable for our students and our population. The information that I have seen and heard suggests that there is not too much collaboration going on. The test is a three-part test, as I understand it. A writing sample, a grammar section, and a reading section, which as yet has not been determined, but academic level reading. I teach remedial writing at BMCC. We do not teach reading in our remedial writing classes, nor do many teachers teach formal grammar and sentence structure, in the way that the test promulgates it. We really need time. I know that people get impatient when we say we need time. The reality is, I myself, do not know how to teach a class where the end result is the test that we don’t even know about yet. We have also heard that only one topic will be given. It will be a letter of some kind to a dignitary. This is not in keeping with what a lot of people do in their classes. There is very little information that we are actually getting as a group. We are not getting a whole lot of collaboration, and a lot of us are very nervous about what the outcome is going to be, when it comes to training our new crop of students to take this test and pass it. The whole thing is shrouded in secrecy. I would like to ask you whether you are aware of these problems on the front lines, and what you hope to do about them." /

Chancellor Goldstein –What I would suggest is that you invite Vice Chancellor Mirrer and some of her staff to respond to some of these concerns. I do know when I arrived in September, there was a group that was advising the Vice Chancellor on the various choices that were available for testing. These tests were looked at, and faculty were very much involved.

Professor Richter (English, Kingsborough Community College) – "Once again, the question of testing. Specifically, its impact upon the question that you raised, which is retention. I walked into my first class at Kingsborough today to realize that a number of students had been admitted to a two-year college on the basis of SAT scores. Those students were then exempted from any placement tests. They did not belong in freshman composition, but they were automatically placed in freshman composition. In one case, a student who really qualifies as an ESL student had apparently scored 520 on the English SAT. That student had previously taken the CUNY Reading Assessment and Writing Assessment Tests, which placed him at a rather low level of ESL. But then when he came in today, he produced the fact that he had the SAT score, and no longer had to take ESL. That student is going to take freshman composition as a result, and fail. There is no question about it. We have complained about the use of the CUNY writing assessment test only in terms of the fact that it was being used both as placement and exit. We did not complain about its use as placement. Now all of a sudden we find that it is simply being discontinued. There is no way that we can place the students according to the standards that we feel are correct standards. This is surely going to impact upon the retention of students. Why is this being done?" /

Chancellor Goldstein – First of all, the SAT is in no way a requirement at the two-year institutions, and it’s probably odd that a student who aspires to go to a community college would have an SAT score. And it is even more odd that they would score a 520, because that would eliminate a need for them to even take the diagnostic test at a senior college. / Professor Richter – "I really do protest against the assumption that a community college students is less able, per se, because he applies to a two-year college. Many of our two-year colleges have programs that people want, elect, and opt for, while they are perfectly well-qualified for four-year colleges." / Chancellor Goldstein – I don’t disagree with that. But we don’t have an SAT requirement. / Professor Richter – "They take it anyway." /

Chancellor Goldstein – If a senior college excuses a student from a certain minimal level of basic skills instruction, on the basis of passing or scoring at a certain level on the SAT, that should easily be transferable to a two-year institution. We are trying to change the way in which we assess our students. When we talk about this institution being mired in some of the problems it has had, one of the problems had to do with our not assessing student readiness for some of the work that we believe they should be able to do. You say "no" but we could disagree on that. I would say that is a very fundamental problem. I think assessing students is an important thing for us to do. Whether it comes from one organization or another, I don’t see that as the relevant principle here. I think the relevant principle is that we ought to use the best information we have as professionals, to assess our students’ readiness to do work. If they are not ready, we should put them in an environment where they are going to succeed, and then welcome them to the next level that they want to go into. That to me is what an integrated university is about. It is not turning the student away, and saying you are less valued, or you are not as smart as the next kid. It is really saying, we are making a statement about what we as professional educators believe you are ready to do. We can argue as professional educators to say, I don’t like your assessment instrument. That is a different kind of question.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – "The surprise about the transfer students ought not to be. It was Angelo Proto, three years ago, who began to provide us with very useful data, demonstrating that transfer students into CUNY coming from places like Fordham, St. John’s, Manhattan, Adelphi, etc., who came in with 30 and 60 credits, failed the CUNY Assessment Tests at about double the rate of the transfer students who were re-tested from our own community colleges. Therefore, having known it, it seems to me that we ought to be very flexible about the application of this policy of remediation. If these students are being asked to take Prelude to Success, it is going to drive a lot of them out. At the same time, it seems to me, there may be something that might be done to encourage the colleges to point out the permit exception for them. They are the perfect group of people who ought to be encouraged to follow the permit route. I do not have the impression that this route has been sufficiently emphasized. Unless the numbers have changed, over half our baccalaureate graduates were transfers at many of our campuses. They did not start with us, but they came in during the second and third year, in particular. If we start to hemorrhage the transfers, as a result of what is obviously an ill-begotten policy towards them, we are obviously downsizing this University in a very stupid and deliberate way." /

Chancellor Goldstein – Let me respond two ways. I think that the data would show, at least with the limited experience we have this spring, that the problem in the transfer pool was for students who had a limited amount of credits. We are not talking about students with 30-45 credits. There is a back entry into the University. We have known this for a very long time. All of us have discussed this, with students taking 6-10 credits from institutions and finding a way to get into the system. That is where the real problem was. It wasn’t with students who accrued a lot of credits. In respect to the permit policy, you’re right. It is very clear to me that we on the campuses did not promote with sufficient robustness the availability of permits for all the students who were accepted into Prelude to Success. It became very evident to me when I spoke to the President of Baruch College.

Chair Sohmer – Just a small correction during the discussion of the procedures for admitting the students. It was the faculty who put on the floor that there should be an admissions committee to alter the discarding of students at the campuses. The Board of Trustees bought it. They don’t buy much, but they bought that. It was a small discount, but they bought it.

[Unidentified Speaker] – "We got information at the Academic Advisory Committee that admissions committees have been instituted at all the BA campuses.

c. Faculty Advisory Council to the Research Foundation

Professor John Davis (Chair, Faculty Advisory Council to the Research Foundation) – I have the opportunity to introduce you to a new service that is available to faculty, provided through the Research Foundation. It is going to be offered through an office known as the Office of Technology Licensing, Management, & Support. We have with us tonight the director of that office, Barbara Sawitsky. I have the pleasure of introducing Barbara. She has come to us from the Research Foundation at SUNY. She was at Stony Brook, where she was Deputy Director of the Office of Technology Licensing, and Industry Relations. Prior to that she was Managing Director of a health sciences consulting group. Barbara is active in her professional organizations, an officer in the biotechnology industry organization, and member in the Association of University Technology Managers, where she has been a speaker and moderator. She is going to speak to us about the mission of her office, and her responsibilities. Hopefully you can share this information with others. This is something that might actually lead to making money.

Ms. Barbara Sawitsky (Director of CUNY Office of Technology Licensing, Management, & Support) – Thank you all. Tonight I am going to talk about technology transfer at CUNY. I’m just going to take you through a brief and quick overview of the function of the office and its activities. And I’ll be happy to answer any questions. We’ll discuss how this benefits you and your colleagues as faculty members. I want to remind you that this is a University initiative. The office is a University funded office; part of other monies comes from the operating budget, from the Research Foundation. My office is in the Research Foundation, primarily because that is where all the intellectual property is.

As you see here, we start off with an idea, we move along the line, we get a couple of patents, and then we collect pots of gold (reference to overhead). I want to talk to you about the impact of technology transfer activities at Universities since 1980 when the Bayh-Dole Act was passed by the government. It allowed universities and not-for-profits to take title to inventions that were funded with government research. As you all know, the largest source of funding to universities for research is from the federal government, be it from NIH, DOD, or DOE, or any of their groups. Prior to 1980, researchers who invented something could find themselves in conflict with the policies of the different groups, and also the government owned the title to the inventions, and they were reluctant to license that to industry. After 1980 Bayh-Dole said that universities had the right to own the titles to the inventions, and they could transfer these titles to industry. Bayh-Dole also requires that inventors share in any profits or income that comes into the university after patent costs. The balance of the monies would have to be used by the university or college for research and educational use. They are not to be used for other areas, so it is very clear.

I want to remind you now, as an economic impact, since 1980, over 2,200 companies have been started, and 1,300 remain operational. When someone says after 5 years 95% of all small businesses fail -- not so with these companies. These are almost primarily technology based. Over 60% are still remaining, and of those who are out of that pool, there are acquisitions, mergers, buyouts; it is a very highly dynamic driver of the economy. Three hundred and eight of these companies have brought products to market. In 1997 they have generated somewhere around $24.5 billion in sales. 83% of the new companies have stayed in their State. In 1997, approximately 245,000 jobs were created or supported by technology transfer from universities out into the public sector.

The next group is a NFS study that says in the 10 years between 1975-1985, the majority of pharmaceutical products, 44%, originated in universities. Also from 1975-1985, 28% of information processing products, 22% of metal-based products, 9% of electrical products, 8% of chemical products, and 2% of oil-related products, originated in universities. This is a shift, because now with the advent of technology that is driving sensors, and sensor technology, and remote sensing, we are going to see a change in this. University technology transfer as a profession and as an industry is truly a driver of a big section of the U.S. economy.

This is CUNY’s Technology Transfer mission, to benefit the public and identify intellectual property inherent in university research programs. Those are from you, the faculty members, and your students and colleagues. These can be inventions by the patent law, which are utility, process, procedure, and chemical entities. These can be research tools; they may not be patentable. These may be a monoclonal antibody. This could be something that could be licensed to a company to give them a head start or to move their development or research along. It can bring money to the university, to you, and any of your co-disclosers. A lot of things are know-how that companies can use, if we know it is available, and I can go out and market it. Another part is to transfer these technologies to industry for development of their commercial potential.

Again, we need to maximize the return to the inventors, whether it be faculty, students, staff, or the university; also to the economy. We discussed the kinds of numbers and drivers we have. In New York the economy is being driven by all this tele-media, the new media, the new start-ups, the e-commerce. We want to enhance U.S. competitiveness. Bayh-Dole was very concerned about losing the edge.

The responsibilities of this office again are to identify intellectual property. I go to campuses. I am available to come to a campus and talk to faculty. I’ve set up meetings at Lehman, Staten Island, and Queens to talk about faculty members about technology transfer, drilling down to the more detailed aspects of it. We need to comply with Bayh-Dole.

Again, to protect intellectual property with patents, know-how, copyrights, and trademarks, I work with the university patent and inventions committee. The Chancellor has appointed me the Chair of the Committee. We meet monthly. I will talk about that a little further on. And again, part of the function of this office is to commercialize the technology, to evaluate the invention disclosures. Those of you who have had the pleasure of doing this, will know that I will get on the phone and say, talk to me in really basic terms. Because if you can explain it to me, I can go out and market it; determine the market potential of your invention. We have facilities, and we have access to databases. We can determine whether something can move in one direction, or another. I conduct target marketing. We negotiate and prepare licenses.

Another thing is university industry outreach and university faculty linkages. If you want to work with a company and you need someone to reach someone in that company, I’m the person you should call. I may not always know someone. But certainly in the high-tech and bio-tech areas, I know just about everyone in the business, licensing, tech-transfer, and can get a feed in somewhere else.

I’m very involved with the incubator initiative that the Chancellor has spoken about many times, and how we can hopefully have a high-tech incubator, as opposed to just the tele-media/new-media ones, one place where one can actually do engineering or bio-tech kinds of work. Again, foster company growth by in-licensing of CUNY technology.

It starts with you, the faculty. Without you this office doesn’t work. We have a new technology disclosure on our website. It’s much more user friendly than the old one. You can download it. There is a lot of space to fill in. You can sign it and send it into us. You can e-mail it to us, but then I need another signature, because we need to have a signature copy. It comes to me, we triage it, and it goes to our hard working university patent committee there. And they really do work hard. I also manage all of the intellectual property that currently exists in the University. I work with all of our patent attorneys to make sure that things get filed on time, they are answered on time, and negotiate the costs. I also do target marketing. We use the Internet a lot. But we also have other electronic ways of doing this. There are tech-transfer websites where we can post our technologies at no cost, and they go off to companies, and they would respond to me. If there is an interest, I can monitor those sites to see which companies are interested in looking at the technology. I can see who has responded to a key word. I can get that as a report, so I know who is looking at our technologies. We are in the process of getting that all set up now. I manage the disclosure, patent, and license portfolio, and I enforce and license terms that we have. I am working very closely with the RF Council on this. Because that was generally their responsibility, and we are sharing it right now. I hope to do this all in the future. We have created databases of all the intellectual property so that it is easier to track and manage. I also establish and maintain industry relations, negotiate licenses, encourage linkages. Most people like the last one, which is to distribute royalties to the inventors and to the colleges.

There has always been a perceived problem with the Patents and Inventions Committee. I’ve heard from so many faculty who have taken the time to fill out a disclosure and it has gone into a black hole. It surfaces sometime in the far distant future. They’ve gotten annoyed, they’ve filed, they’ve gone and gotten their own patent. Then there is an issue of who owns it. I’ve asked the Committee members to commit to the last Thursday of every month through June. We meet every month and review all invention disclosures. We have the deadline for submitting the disclosures. If a disclosure is received by that date, it will be reviewed two weeks hence, and you will have a timely response from us. Sometime for certain cases, we need more information. We are also looking for more committee members.

The clock is ticking. We’ve established these databases that we can get into quickly. We have a website that is being designed. It will be linked to other technology transfer web sites. If someone goes on to the university technology manager’s website, they can scroll down and find the City University of New York. It will be linked to the New York Bio-Tech Association website. We’re doing some marketing. We’ve sent out marketing letters that CUNY now has an office and is ready for business.

We are doing analysis evaluation of some of the patents in the portfolio. Of necessity, I am starting with the more current and working back to see if there is something there that we can use, and where we can place it. We’ve started some e-notices to executive offices of groups, selected faculty, and all the grants officers. I sometimes receive notices from NASA looking for diagnostic tests for skin cancer. They are offering grants, research projects and protocols, and I send these out to selected groups. The whole world doesn’t get them. But we hope to build that list up so if you are in an area of interest you will receive an e-mail about a grant, funding, or a technology in the University that somebody wants. We are trying to work very hard with the faculty to educate them that technology transfer is a good place to go. You will get a response.

I’d like to remind you of the CUNY Faculty Development Seminar. We are calling it "Bringing Scientific Ideas To Market." It is Friday, May 19, at the Graduate School from 8:30 am – 4:00 pm. We are going to have attorneys from Darvey and Darvey, which is one of the oldest intellectual property law firms in the country. They will speak on various topics. We will start with "What is technology transfer and why should I care?", "How do you know that you invented something?", "Patenting an invention – A guide through the process," "What is prior art and how can it affect my patent?", "Licenses versus Patents," and "A Successful Academic-Tenured-Entrepreneur Tells All." We will conclude with a panel. Anyone can ask these high price lawyers, who probably charge $350 and up an hour, any questions they want about intellectual property. It is almost a quick one-day seminar. I am open to a few questions, but I know it is getting late.

[Unidentified Speaker, Question off-microphone] / Ms. Sawitsky – Deans for research have gotten it. I’m not sure if provosts have. The Deans for Research have. I will see that provosts get it. Grants officers all have it, and I’ve met with them a number of times. They are my first link after the faculty.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate Center) – "I’m on a committee, chaired by Moskowitz, on the question of intellectual property, and its redefinition for the purposes presumably of the supervision of your office. Although I think you arrived after the committee stopped meeting. So it’s really had no influence on you." / Ms. Sawitsky – I think I was the reason that it stopped. Because they said, we’re getting someone in, let’s not move ahead on that. Right now we all function under the policy of the Research Foundation. I understand that this committee may be resurrected, and they’ve asked me to be part of the committee. But I don’t know when, or where, or how. / Professor Baumrin – "Don’t you think it would be a good idea if your office told the faculty what the current rules are in areas where their work is copyrightable as opposed to patentable?" /

Ms. Sawitsky – The policy is threefold for copyright. Individual effort is the traditional faculty, writing a text, writing a book, having it published, collecting all the copyrights. Second is the university-assisted individual effort. Not clear, it says "if some resources were used within the university that are more wholly owned by the university, then the author receives 75% of the royalties and the university receives 25%. If it is a very strongly university supported effort, the author receives 25% of royalties. This is wonderful, but there are no restrictions and no real definitions on what the difference between "assisted" and "supported" efforts are. One could argue this continually. Copyrights right now, and I just came back from the Annual Meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers, are a university’s nightmare. We just talked at Morris Hounian’s Committee about this.

The World Wide Web has made copyright an issue beyond what universities are able to deal with it at this time. Everybody is waiting for the first university to either get caught in something or sued by a faculty member about something, where there is case law. Then everyone will move forward somewhere along the line. One of the faculty members on Morris’ committee said, you know it really is a matter of scale and money. The fact is, if you go out and give your faculty members your class notes, or you charge them $2 dollars for the reproduction of it, they go out and give it to a friend – that’s one thing. If you put your class notes on the Internet and say if you want my notes, plug in your credit card, it costs $9.95, and you have access to 9 million people who might want those notes -- who gets the money? Did you use a university facility to make CD ROM’s? Are you using the university Web to get out to the Web? Are you using their Internet and servers? This is a very gray area. I don’t have an answer. It is going to end up in a court of law. / Professor Baumrin – "We agree about that. But my question was, wouldn’t it be a good idea if your office circulated to the faculty a current state of our policy, however inadequate it is.." / Ms. Sawitsky – It’s on rf.cuny.org. / Professor Baumrin – "This may come as a real shock to you. Not all of our faculty use the web. Some don’t have access to it. A piece of paper that officially notifies the faculty of what the policy is, however inadequate, would be a nice gesture on the part of the administration." / Ms. Sawitsky – Well taken.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) – "One of the items on our agenda is the PSC/CUNY Report on Educational Technology and Distance Learning. A lot of issues are related to this. If an instructor creates and teaches a course through distance learning, and that course is then taught to thousands of people, there are issues of ownership and copyright. Is your office involved at all? Is there any overlap between the other groups that are grappling with this? / Ms. Sawitsky – I have not been involved. CUNY is so wide spread in its committees and its interests, that it is very hard for me to grasp it. I have no problem sitting in or listening if you’d like me to. I certainly can’t give you advice. I can only keep you up with where everybody is today in other universities, and it’s nowhere.

Interim Report of PSC/CUNY Educational Technology Committee

Professor Anthony Picciano (Chair of PSC/CUNY Educational Technology Committee) – I appreciate the opportunity to present our report to you this evening. I wish it was a little bit more informal. I would like to take questions as we go along. I think what’s important is that, if you have some question about what our activity is, you feel free to ask it. You have received the report. I am going to just try and highlight several of its key components. I’ve done this presentation about three or four times already to the PSC and other smaller groups at the colleges. If any of you at your local campus would like to have a presentation of this report, I’d be more than happy to come to your campus. We are very much in a data gathering position right now. We do have a report that is due at the end of this year, at which point our committee sunsets, and we will be finished with our business. About a year and a half ago, Acting Chancellor Kimmich and President Polishook had decided to resurrect a committee on educational technology. It was stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement. Chancellor Kimmich appointed five people -- Russ Hotzler, Ray O’Brien, Mike Ribaudo, Ron Spalter, and Roseanne Wille. Irwin Polishook appointed five people -- Sam Santiago, Jane Davenport, Peter Hoberman, David Arnow, who has since left the committee, and myself. We are the PSC representatives. Frank Annunziato, the Executive Director, has also served ex-officio during most of our committee deliberations.

Approximately a year ago in March, the PSC Delegate Assembly had declared a moratorium on distance learning activities in City University. One of the charges that was presented to us by both Chancellor Kimmich and President Polishook was to look at distance learning per se. Specifically, whether there was some agreement within which the PSC could establish a working relationship, wherein distance learning activities could proceed. We developed what we thought was a very fair resolution. It was agreed upon and recommended by our committee, and approved by the PSC. It essentially called for a two-year period of experimentation on distance learning projects, with a number of resolutions, one of which is very important. There is a very important stipulation there, in terms of intellectual property. If a faculty member develops programs, materials, books, technology, that is part of his or her course; the faculty member owns that material. This is the case unless he or she specifically was contracted for that by the college administration, and that faculty member signed off on it. The decision was left to the faculty member.

What was a very important part of that stipulation was that the default is that the faculty member owns the material. If a faculty member had done something that was worthwhile, and had some economic value, and he or she decided to cash in on it, the University could not come in and say, "you did that on our Website and with our equipment, so we now want 25% or 50%." The default rested with the faculty member. On the other hand, if the faculty member wanted the support of the University or the administration, they were going to provide technical assistance. The administration then decided to work in a contract that said, "we’ve provided this material, support, and equipment, and we would like to split the royalties 50/50," and the faculty member says, "that’s fine with me," and he or she signs off on it. That is perfectly legitimate also. The important part of that stipulation is that the default rests with the faculty; he or she retains ownership. I think that is a very important stipulation.

As part of the overall Resolution, the PSC required the committee to produce a report, which is basically a description of what is going on with distance learning at City University. I think it was a good request. This is mainly because it was my sense now, having been involved in this committee for a year and a half, that the University really had very little knowledge about what was going with distance learning within the various colleges. As a matter of fact, as we attempted to collect data it became even more obvious to us that faculty were doing all kinds of things, and that for the most part administrators at the campuses were not even aware of it. We feel that we’ve done the first step in terms of trying to collect any data on distance learning.

Data collection activity consisted of three activities. Rosanne Wille, who’s on the committee, the Provost at Lehman College, agreed to convene the provosts and to give them a simple survey. This was to try and get a broad brush look at what is going on in distance learning at the campuses. This was mainly trying to find out what was going on, who was doing it, and what was the nature of the technology being used. Then we also asked questions about the plans of the colleges in terms of distance learning. That survey was administered in person with a group of provosts in April of 1999. We asked that it be returned no later than June of 1999, and all of the provosts complied. We followed up that survey with meetings with a half a dozen faculty who were actively engaged in teaching distance learning. We followed that up with a group of administrators, who had expressed some interest in distance learning. These were approximately 2-3 hour sessions where we tried to tease out what we had seen from the surveys, in terms of what the faculty were thinking about distance learning and their opinions. The same was true regarding the administrators.

This is a very busy overhead, but the material is in the report. Essentially the result of the survey was that in Fall 1998 and Spring 1999, there were 31 courses that were being offered that fit the definition of distance learning. We had to go back and talk to provosts and the people who supplied the original material because when you look at the surveys, you would think that there were hundreds of distance learning courses being offered. In fact, while there are hundreds of faculty using techniques that can be characteristic of distance learning, such as using the World Wide Web, and the Internet, when you ask what percentage of your class time is being replaced by distance learning activity, it came down to 31 courses. We defined distance learning as 75% of the course being offered in a distance learning mode; that is, only 25% or less was being offered in a regular face to face classroom. Whether this is 100% accurate, I’m not sure. It could be as much as 40-50 courses or it could be somewhat less. In any case, the important element here is that of the tens of thousands of courses being offered at City University every year, the number of courses that fit our definition of distance learning was very small last year. Even if you double this to 62 courses, that is still a very minute percentage of the courses that are offered in the City University.

[Unidentified Speaker] – "Would you define satellite course." / Professor Picciano – Satellite is where they are using some kind of uplink capability to broadcast a course. It could be a point to point activity, or it could be broadcast. I believe that in this particular case, it was a single, point to point, video conferencing type activity, but they used a satellite. There was one such course. Right now there are several courses that are being offered through John Jay through satellite. New York City Tech is interested in using this technology, and a couple of other colleges are actively looking at it. But in 1998-1999, there was one course offered, as reported through the provosts.

In terms of other activities, it was clear from the surveys that all of the colleges, while still a relatively small percent of the courses, had begun to discuss distance learning. About 6-7 of the colleges had appointed directors of distance learning. Many of the colleges reported various types of committees looking at distance learning issues. All of the colleges indicated that they were interested in distance learning. Another major activity, which some of you may be aware of, which started about 4-5 years ago is the CUNY media distribution project, which is point to point video conferencing, which ties all of the colleges together in a common video conferencing environment. I believe all of the colleges will be connected by the end of this calendar year. Right now I believe that there are approximately 14 colleges connected. There have been several courses where a faculty member at Brooklyn teaches a course to students both at Brooklyn College and at Hunter College. There were several courses that paired the Graduate Center and Lehman College. And there were courses between Hunter College and the College of Staten Island. That activity has started. That video conferencing network is about 80% in place right now and will be fully in place at the end of this year.

Another major project is CUNY-Online. It is a grant-funded activity by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which was matched by the City University. This is a group of faculty who are basically using the Web for teaching distance learning. This activity has picked up significant speed this year. It was funded towards the end of the Spring of 1999, and the first courses were offered through this in the Fall of 1999. The official report, which was not part of the earlier data, was that in Fall 1999, 19 courses were offered through CUNY-Online, 11 of which fit the definition of distance learning, 8 of which were hybrid type courses that did not fit the definition. It is quite possible that that activity in Spring of 2000 will attract about 90-100 courses, but a very small percentage of those, 20-25%, would fit our definition of distance learning. I don’t have the data on that; it is still being collected.

Another important activity in terms of distance learning came out of several of the professional programs, particularly the Hunter College School of Social Work. There are a number of major governmental training grants, $1 million and more. They are beginning to require a distance learning component. This is happening in both the federal government, and in New York State. In discussing this with two faculty of the Hunter College of Social Work, they had major grants to the tune of several million dollars, riding on the fact that they would have to start delivering some of their training via distance learning. They are currently doing that, and using the New York City I-NET network. This is where they are training social workers either in social welfare agencies, and in some cases in nursing homes. They are doing it through a distance learning mode. That is a grant funded activity.

We are beginning to see some of this in education. Both the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation are sending out RFP’s for major grant activities that involve Web-based distance learning. The sense is that for most of the professional programs, at least that have training grant activities, the nature of the Web is such that there will be more opportunities to apply for these grants. That was an important component in terms of some of the feedback we were getting from the schools. Last, but not least, is that hundreds of faculty are experimenting with distance learning techniques, using the Web for all kinds of instructional purposes. They are not necessarily abandoning their regular face to face classes, but they are using all kinds of techniques. That has implications for some of the issues we are facing in our committee.

In terms of the follow-up meetings, we looked at five major questions: Why distance learning? Why did you decide to engage in distance learning? We were concerned about the quality of instruction and the parity of distance learning courses vis-a-vis traditional face to face courses. Since we are chartered by the PSC, we were very much concerned about employment practices and incentives. Intellectual property is a very significant part of our discussions, and it is a very difficult area. That is going to be a major area of activity for the University in the next couple of years.

In terms of, "why distance learning" in discussing this with the faculty, there were a variety of reasons, and we would categorize them as the following. One, some are just interested in instructional technology, and they’ve been experimenting with it. They see it as a field of study they are pursuing. Distance learning was another part of that, and they decided to pursue it. Some faculty felt that it adds vibrancy to their programs. I would say this was particularly the case for a number of the graduate and professional faculty. They felt this was important for them to maintain their competition with other schools. Some of the faculty are very much interested in reaching a broader student base. The faculty at John Jay College, in the Criminal Justice Program, are very much interested in going national with their program. This is also true with the Queens College School of Library Science. It is one of the few schools of library science in New York State. They feel that they can attract at least a State-wide, if not a regional, student body by going into a distance learning mode. Also, there are faculty interested in international education. We have had a long history at CUNY in terms of relationships with other colleges in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the idea of extending to actually exchanging courses back and forth has an appeal. Last, but not least, it comes back to this opportunity to apply for governmental training grants. These were the categories of answers that the faculty discussed. I think it gives a fairly decent snapshot of what these faculty were thinking. Keep in mind, all of these faculty do teach distance learning courses.

Among the administrators, they basically nodded and agreed with some of the things that the faculty said. But it was my sense, and I think the committee’s sense, that the administrators were very much interested and concerned about competition. Competition from for-profit distance learning providers, the University of Phoenix, Sylvan Learning Systems, Kaplan, those kinds of organizations. I would say that the Vice President at BMCC gave us a number that we found very interesting. He said, a few courses carry the entire college. If these courses were offered on-line from another college at comparable cost, BMCC would be seriously hurt. Nineteen thousand, of fifty two thousand course enrollments at BMCC, are concentrated in ten courses. We asked him to go back and check his figures. He came back to us a week later and verified that that is the case. He is basically saying that at BMCC, 40% of the enrollments are concentrated in 10 courses. If those 10 courses were offered at a competitive rate, in a distance learning mode, he felt that BMCC would be seriously hurt. We have since had some conversations with a couple of colleagues that we know at other universities. Particularly at the community college level, this number seems to be plausible.

In terms of the quality of instruction, the faculty had said a lot of different things. Let me just share with you some of these quotes. The person who teaches library science at Queens College basically felt that students have to participate. He teaches an on-line Web-based course. There is a lot of concern about interactivity with the students. It was his feeling that students have to participate in an on-line course, and they cannot lurk in the back of the class. He was addressing particularly a Web-based environment, if students want to participate, they have to express in writing what they are thinking, and ask questions which are shared with the entire class. A faculty member at Baruch who teaches accounting says "students have to be active learners, as much of 20-30% increase in participation on the part of students," as compared to his traditional face to face class.

At the Queens Law School, "learning is discussion driven, not content driven." I would say that that these first three comments all talk about a Web-based distance learning environment, whereby the faculty and students have to actively participate in whatever is being taught in that class. These three faculty pretty much echoed each other. They are saying a lot of the same things in slightly different ways. A person teaching German at Hunter College said "a faculty member who is a good teacher in the traditional mode, can be a good teacher in a distance learning mode, but he or she requires training." The issue of training and support reverberated through a lot of the faculty, and the administrative, comments. It was her point that a teacher could be a good teacher in distance learning mode with the proper training. Someone teaching an English composition course at the College of Staten Island felt that "students do a great deal more work," and that "this is very important in a process writing course."

On the part of administrators, I thought that one of the deans at Lehman College made a very good comment. It was his feeling that "the future of distance learning will depend upon it being viewed as comparable to traditional courses." Regardless, he felt that a lot of the discussions they had a Lehman were very worthwhile, regardless of whether or not the faculty pursued distance learning. He felt there were a lot of good discussions about pedagogical approaches. A lot of what you do in a traditional classroom, how it translates to a distance learning mode, can be a very rich discussion.

In terms of employment practices, the major issue was, it takes a great deal of time to put courses in a distance learning mode, regardless of whether you are doing it on the Web, or via video conferencing technology. That issue of how faculty become compensated for that is a major issue right now, and will continue to be an issue for a while. Where faculty are now teaching distance learning courses, there are special incentives being offered -- take a course of release time to develop a course on-line. In some cases they are taking the equivalent of that in the form of equipment. In some cases they are taking it in the form of a special stipend. But approximately a course of activity is being compensated to the fact that you are engaging in distance learning. That’s been fairly consistent throughout the University.

[Unidentified Speaker, Question off-microphone] / Professor Picciano – That’s a very good question. The question is, if faculty are receiving a course of release time for compensation, will that translate into double the enrollments, once this course becomes active. I would say, without any doubt, most faculty who are engaged in the Web-based activities are using very intensive e-mail and group e-mail systems that are not conducive to doubling enrollments as of right now. So the faculty who are involved in the Web-based development are not experiencing double the enrollments. It is not likely that the way they’ve designed their courses, it’s going to be easy to convert that into double enrollments quickly. There is an exception, at Brooklyn College where they have a FIPSE Grant. They are basically taking one of the Biology 100 courses, which was taught in a large lecture size, about 500 students, and developing a number of Web-based teaching modules that could and are replacing segments of that course. It has a lot of animation. But even there, they are using graduate assistants to enhance and provide some of the interactivity. That was one of the few courses that I’ve seen where you could increase enrollments. For the video conferencing, the one faculty member we spoke to, they definitely increased the size of their classes. This was a German program, which had a very modest enrollment at Hunter. I don’t have the exact numbers, but they pretty much doubled the enrollment by having almost a comparable number of students at Brooklyn College. But between the two classes, you were still talking about less than 20 students. It wasn’t that it all of a sudden exceeded hundreds of students. Is the potential there for it? Yes, it is, but it has not happened yet.

[Unidentified Speaker, off-microphone] / Professor Picciano – Let me just share something that Dean pointed out to me earlier. It’s in your report. SUNY has a network called SUNY Learning-Net. It started approximately five years ago. I think they had about 18-19 courses, and they enrolled 100 students. In Fall of 1999, they had in excess of 1000 courses, and their enrollment was about 12,000 students. It’s been doubling almost every year. It is not clear that that is going to continue; it might. Are we in the same situation? We might be. We are not spread out all over the State of New York as SUNY is. We have subways and buses to all of our campuses. It is not clear to me that same pattern is going to happen, that is that we would double enrollments. SUNY-Net is probably a good example for us to compare to, only because they have no history or culture of distance learning. If you want to consider 12,000 students as successful, it has been a successful program. Keep in mind, they have about twice the number of students that we have. I think with the community college enrollments, they are approaching 400,000, while we have about 200,000 students.

Professor Bohigian (Mathematics, John Jay College) – "I can’t avoid that statement: ‘In the absence of a clear-cut workload policy, this will probably have to be negotiated at the local college level.’ This is wrong. It has to be PSC-negotiated, CUNY-wide. You can’t allow individual colleges to set precedents because of strong administrations and weak governance or weak PSC at the body. You’ll get the worst possibility. It has to be a union-negotiated procedure. This is extremely important." / Professor Picciano – It’s a good point and a very difficult point. When we were discussing this with the PSC Delegate Assembly, approximately a year ago, I would say that there was a very strong feeling that there should be a lot of local college control. But the point here is that we do not have a uniform workload policy now. We have never had a uniform workload policy. Anyone who teaches graduate courses, there is no uniform workload policy. It’s pretty much decided at the local college level. Even within the college and within departments. A good example of this: the large class sizes, the jumbo classes. There is no real University policy on that. That has been mostly negotiated at a local college level. I think that is what the administrators are referring to. While we do have a standard workload policy, it has lots of loop holes in it, that return lots of power back to the individual campuses. / Professor Bohigian – "That may be the fact historically, but that doesn’t mean that on a new issue like this, we should make the same errors that exist in those other examples." / Professor Picciano – Let me say that the committee is split on this. There are administrators who would not mind having a University-wide policy. But it has not existed for almost 30 years of the PSC. I don’t know that the committee is optimistic that it is going to be resolved any time soon.

Professor Galvin (Library, Kingsborough Community College) – "Do you have any figures on student retention in these classes? I heard a speaker, the Dean of Distance Education at Nassau Community College, say the drop out rate is very high." / Professor Picciano – We do not have any really solid data for 1998-1999. We will have data as a result of the CUNY On-Line Project. Looking at some of it preliminarily, it seems like the graduate and professional programs have a good retention rate, comparable to what would happen in their regular courses. There is concern in terms of the undergraduate program, particularly in terms of the writing course at Staten Island. But we don’t have enough data on that. That is being collected now. In case some of you are familiar with it, the Graduate Center is the outside evaluator who will be collecting that data. But we don’t have it now. You have to realize that many of the experiments in 1998 were basically faculty driven. These were not administrations coming in with programs. These were in fact a number of faculty doing their own thing. In some cases they received their own grants. In some cases they just decided to do it on their own.

[Unidentified Speaker, Off-Microphone] / Professor Picciano – On the question of copyright. We did not necessarily ask that specifically, because none of these faculty had signed away their rights. / [Unidentified Speaker, Comments made off-microphone] / Professor Picciano – That is our final report. We have not issued that report. We were asked to basically describe what is the nature of distance learning activities in City University this year. Our final report has to address policy. It is a very difficult issue. You and I were on that same committee. We know that there is difference of opinion in the University. As far as I’m concerned, there is no intellectual property policy for non-research funded activity, which is the bulk of what goes on in the University. If you or I or anyone else here develops their materials for their courses, our assumption, and the historical precedent has been, we own it. We know as a result of the committee that was convened by Vice Chancellor Moskowitz, that there are some people in the University who dispute that. The only thing we have going right now is this Resolution that both Chancellor Kimmich and Irwin Polishook signed off on. That is, for this two-year period, faculty by default own their work, unless they specifically sign off their rights via a contract. As far as we know, no one has done that yet. This will be an issue when this two-year experimental period ends, which will be December 31, 2000. We will be making some recommendations. I think that a lot of our recommendations will be process oriented, that there has to be a process developed for developing the policies. One of our conclusions right now is that the University is very much policy weak in this area. It is very gray. There is a very debatable policy in existence regarding patents and research funded activities. I don’t see anything, and we’ve asked Roy Moskowitz. He attended a meeting of our committee. What is the University’s policy regarding intellectual property and copyright. He came prepared. He gave us the documents that basically say, "projects funded by the Research Foundation and Patent Policies." Nothing in terms of the average faculty member who develops materials for his or her own course that has nothing to do with the Research Foundation, and has nothing to do with the application of patents. It is my position, and it’s our committee’s position, that right now there is no policy in the City University that addresses intellectual property.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, John Jay College) – "You said that the final report will be out at the end of the year. Do you mean the academic year, or the calendar year?" / Professor Picciano – Our original schedule was to do this in the Fall of 2000. Our committee sunsets on July 1, 2000. We are a committee that is part of the Collective Bargaining Contract. We will probably continue to function, and have a report in late Fall of 2000. That will not just be a description of what is going on, but recommendations of what the University should be doing. We have been asked, by the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Faculty and Staff Relations, and by the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, to expedite some of our recommendations regarding employment practices. It seems that the discussions regarding the collective bargaining contract have already commenced. We will try to have something preliminarily in June 2000. But I don’t want to rush anything, nor does the committee want to rush anything, and put something in writing that we might live to regret. / Professor Kaplowitz – "My knowledge about the John Jay distance learning courses may be flawed, but my understanding is most of the students enrolled in John Jay’s distance learning courses are John Jay students who are also enrolled in campus-based courses." / Professor Picciano – That’s very true. There are very few of these courses who are being targeted for students beyond the normal students who come to City University. The Queens School of Library Science has a few students, and John Jay I think is mounting a major effort right now, to attract students beyond the New York City metropolitan area. The bulk of these activities are in 1998-1999, and 95% of them were all directed to students who were coming to the school anyhow. They probably took one course in distance learning and one or more courses in a traditional mode. / Professor Kaplowitz – "The third question follows. Both for those students and for geographically distanced students. When we give a grade, as we are told over and over, we are certifying that the student has accomplished a certain level of knowledge and skills. Did your committee address the question about how to ensure that students in distance learning courses are the people who actually are doing the work." / Professor Picciano – It has been discussed extensively. I would refer to the CUNY On-Line Project, which I think is the first group of faculty coming together from different campuses, where there has been some kind of administrative support and identity. In the training that goes into that particular program, the issue of grading is discussed extensively. The basic suggestion is to continue to use standard testing mechanisms, if it is for an assessment. If it is for students to have a sense of how they are doing, by all means, do the Web-based testing. But if you are basing your grade on this, the encouragement is to bring your students back to campus, and have them do their regular testing. One caveat: faculty who are engaged in graduate and professional programs do a lot of papers. Their assignments are to write a 3-5 page paper, etc. They are continuing to do that, and they tend to submit that electronically. / Professor Kaplowitz – "I need not say that whoever submits a 3-5 page paper on-line, is not necessarily the person registered for the course, and receives the grade, the "A" or "B". / Professor Picciano – I think that some of us would feel that some of the papers we get in person, we’re not sure who wrote it.

[Unidentified Speaker] – "This report is so good. I don’t know how you are going to address the enormous fear that I have that we are seeing just the beginning of something that is going to take off like a runaway freight train, especially given the enormous governmental and corporate incentives to engage in this. What I predict is tremendous losses of faculty because of the cost savings, the ability to deliver instruction without faculty. Learning will become tremendously impersonal, and we will have not set up the guidelines to control this." /

Professor Picciano – I think what you are saying is a very important issue. It’s not something that we ignore. There are faculty who will disagree with you. There are faculty who will say that this is not necessarily impersonal. In some ways you can get closer to your students, and you are even more available to your students. But we don’t need to debate that. I think the potential here is very important. I don’t think as a University or as a faculty, we can ignore it and assume it is going to go away. I think we have to be concerned about it, and try to control. So that whatever the result is, there is some kind of feeling that we controlled it, and it is doing well for whatever we want to do in our classes, whether they be local or at a distance. The potential is there. Has it happened yet? Not in anything going on in City University. Particularly, a lot of the Web-based distance learning activities, which tend to be very intensive in terms of interaction between student and faculty, that has not happened yet. You can look at a lot of other schools that are doing Web-based distance learning. It is not the sense that they are all of a sudden teaching to 800-1,000 students. There are models where that might be the case. What I would be more concerned about is when we start broadcasting courses, whether it is on the Internet or through our regular cable TV. Those experiments have started at least two or three times in prior years, and have stopped. There were things like Sunrise Semester that started, with major corporations investing in this. Then they pulled back. The nature of the Web may resolve one of the issues that was a problem with those technologies, and that is the interactivity. The broadcast TV where you watch a program for a half hour is a very passive activity. How you ask a question if you are a student, how you interact with a faculty member, it just wasn’t easily provided for. The Web may solve that problem. / [Unidentified Speaker] – "It’s still not the personal learning that I value so much, and I think so many of us value so much. It is not the face to face discussion. Unless we have some regulations, we are going to find ourselves playing catch-up, and never bring this back. Once it is out, we are never going to get it back in the box."

Professor Cooper (English, York College) – "Has the committee considered the student’s right not to have his or her participation go out over the longer wave? We almost have something analogous to human subject considerations here. The shy student who doesn’t want his face or voice included. Or where there are cameras using close-ups, and it is going to go off to how many places she doesn’t even know about. That’s an important consideration. Has the committee taken it up?" / Professor Picciano – I think it is an important issue in the future. Up until now, it is not an issue because both the faculty and the students who are participating are all volunteers. / Professor Cooper – "Do they sign waivers at the beginning?" / Professor Picciano – They are basically saying that they are participating in an experimental course. There is a recording of it, but they understand that. In terms of video conferencing, I don’t know if there is anything going on in terms of making copies of the video conference, and then doing anything else with it. That has not been reported to us. Is the potential there? It sure is. But it hasn’t been happening.

Professor Burr (Mathematics & Computer Science, The Graduate Center) – "A doubling of the enrollment seems to be some kind of magic number. I assume that’s because people would then get credit for two courses?" / Professor Picciano – I think that’s Stefan’s comment. It’s not clear to me, if you have traded off one course of release time, you are assuming some responsibility for teaching to twice the numbers. That hasn’t happened yet. / Professor Burr – "The reason I ask is because at City College the ratio is more like 3:1." / Professor Picciano – I don’t know the specific at City College. Currently the courses being offered in distance learning have had no effect in terms of enrollment. They are basically teaching the same number of students at a distance, as they would in a particular class. Can that change in the future? It can. The Web-based models that the faculty are developing right now, with the one exception which I indicated to you, are not conducive to large enrollments.

Professor Bohigian (Mathematics, John Jay College) – "Scenario: ‘Jean Smith, I see that you are up for tenure this year. I am a provost speaking to a junior faculty member. I have a little problem here. We want to mount a distance learning course, and we want you to sign away your rights to this, we want to photograph you, we want to use it in the future. You are a little short, but I can support you for tenure, but only if you can do this.’ I am abbreviating the scenario. But I see real potential for danger here. I think we’ve got to get some controls in place. We’ve got to put those controls in place, and not allow the administration to do it. There are so many excellent comments that were made here. There is so much more to be discussed on this issue. It is not open and shut." / Professor Picciano – I agree. This is just an interim report. This represents about a half of our time. This was specifically requested. I think a full report will be issued within the year. I would say that the case of an administrator strong handing a faculty member to do something, that potential exists for all kinds of issues, distance learning or otherwise. We frequently come back to the issue of the large lecture sizes. If a faculty member is teaching Psychology 100, which happens at Hunter College, to 800 students, and that same faculty member teaches 800 students on the Web, that faculty member has already made that decision. I’m not sure that we’ve heard that that’s all been done by some strong arming on the part of administration, but the potential is definitely there. / Professor Bohigian – "That’s bad precedent that should be eliminated."

Old Business

New Business

Chair Sohmer – We have a Resolution on CLT’s that was distributed with this call, coming from Professor Hounion’s Committee.

Professor Hounion (Library, New York City Technical College) – You all have a copy of the Resolution. I will just read it quickly: Whereas, the University Faculty Senate delegates include College Laboratory Technicians (CLT’s), and whereas, CLT’s are not uniformly enfranchised throughout CUNY campuses, therefore, be it resolved, that the University Faculty Senate recommends the establishment on each campus of a mechanism for CLT representation to departmental and college wide personnel and budget committees when issues affect CLT’s on their appointment, reappointment, tenure, and promotion.

We have been dealing with this for a year or so. Some campuses do have mechanisms for CLT representation, but others do not. This Resolution would suggests to campuses that don’t have it, that they should. Any questions for debate or discussion?

[Unidentified Speaker – Question off microphone] / Professor Hounion – There are different ones. Each campus has their own different mechanism. There are some spelled out in their campus plans. / Chair Sohmer – It’s in the governance structure at some places. It’s outside the governance structure if the governance structure doesn’t mention it. At least at one establishment, there is an elected CLT to each of the P & Bs of departments, and the college-wide P & B. We couldn’t find a mechanism which was one that we would universally recommend, but that’s one of them.

[Unidentified Speaker – Question off microphone] / Chair Sohmer – To the best of my knowledge, he sits without vote, but voice. All those in favor of calling the question? Against? All those in favor of this Resolution, as it is written? Against? It carries without dissent.

B. Model Admissions Policy

Chair Sohmer – Bill, would you read your Resolution.

Professor Crain – The Resolution reads, "We do not claim legal expertise, and we do not ordinarily do not issue statements outside the realm of academic affairs. However, as the faculty of the nation’s largest urban university, whose historic mission is to serve all the people of our City, we cannot remain silent in the face of the court decision and Mayoral stance that has left so many of our students of color feeling so vulnerable and full of despair. These students’ histories are marked by a long struggle to gain basic human rights and dignity. But despite major gains, a court decision in the police killing of Amadou Diallo, has made many feel that even today, they could be killed by police, simply because of the color of their skin, and the City’s highest public official will defend the police. We join those who are pressing for a fair and objective civil rights investigation into the case. We call upon President Clinton to establish a by-partisan blue ribbon commission to report on the kinds of police training, supervision, and conduct, that will ensure that such an event never happens again."

I was hesitant to present this Resolution, but I must say many of my students were crying all weekend. The amount of hurt that our students feel over a person getting killed, largely because of his skin color, predisposing the police to thinking he was a bad man. This makes them hurt and angry. It is a bit of a paternal response to say that we take a stand on this issue. That our student are students of color, and we think that the situation is just horrible ourselves. This is why I presented the Resolution.

Chair Sohmer – Any discussion, or should we go to a vote.

Professor Kaplowitz – "I have some suggested amendments. I think the language needs to be changed. If you don’t accept it as a friendly amendment I won’t actually move it. I am trying to be helpful. I do think we should pass something, but I don’t think in this language. I think we should delete the first sentence, and the word "however". We should start ‘As the faculty of the nation’s largest urban university, City University of New York, whose historic mission is to serve the people of our City, we cannot remain silent in the face of a situation that has left so many of our students of color feeling so vulnerable and full of despair.’ The next sentence ‘But despite major gains, the decisions and actions related to police killing of Amadu Diallo has made many feel that even today they could be killed by police, simply because of the color of their skin. We join with those who are calling for a fair and objective federal civil rights investigation, into the policies, training, and practices of the New York City police department. We call upon President Clinton to establish a by-partisan, blue ribbon commission, to recommend the kinds of police training, contact, and supervision that will ensure that such an event never happens again.’ In other words, the focus should be more on the police department’s training, practices, and policies, rather than on what a court of law did. Because perhaps the prosecution did do a good job, or perhaps not. It shifts it to the NYPD. It is more powerful. But if Bill as the mover doesn’t want to accept it, I will not formally make this.

Professor Crain – I will accept it.

Chair Sohmer – Is this a kind of consensual thing here? Because if it is, we can leave it to the Executive Committee to clean it up.

Professor Bohigian – "I have a lot of reservations about what is going on here at the end of the meeting when there is not a quorum. I’m in favor of this, but you are reaching out and flailing out. Federal authority has no authority over local laws, actions, and training. I agree, having been in the military, our rules of engagement, under much more strenuous conditions, would have never taken a course of action like these police officers took. There is no question about that. Let’s do this in a deliberate way. I don’t want to rush through this and make all sorts of errors about the Resolution. Let’s do it properly. This is not meant as a slight to you, Bill; don’t be upset. I’d like to move to table this, and to get this resolved properly, and have it before the entire body. First of all, we will have more impact. It is not fair to try and pass something with a handful of people here."

Chair Sohmer – I recognize your quorum call. I believe we have a quorum call. The Executive Committee will shortly meet. All those who believe that such a statement should be forwarded from the Executive of this party? It is done.