THE TWO HUNDRED NINETY-NINTH PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK 

November 18, 2003 

The meeting was called to order by UFS Chair O’Malley at 6:30 p.m. in Room 9204/5 at the Graduate School and University Center.  75 voting members were present: 

Baruch: Present – Hill. Absent – Freedman, Giannikos, Majete, Myers, Onochie, Pollard and Wiley. BMCC: Present – Friedman, Martin, Price, White, and Alternate Rani. Absent -- Aymer. Bronx CC: Present – Fergenson, McManus and Skinner. Absent -- Lopez-Marron. Brooklyn: Present –Bell, Jacobson, Shapiro, Tobey and Cranganu. Absent – Antoniello, Cunningham, Haggerty, London, and Romer. CCNY: Present – Benenson, Connorton, Crain, Sank. and Sohmer.  Absent –Broderick, and Buffenstein. Vacancies – 2.  CSI: Present – Foleno, Klibaner, and Levine. Absent – Cooper, Petratos, and Yousef.  CUNY Law School: Present – McArdle. Absent – Andrews.  Vacancy – 1. Graduate School: Present – Baumrin, and Alternates Burke and Weinstein. Absent – Katz-Rothman, Khuri, Kulkarni, Nair and Ofuatey-Kodjoe.  Hostos CC: Present – August, and Singh. Absent Roe.  Hunter: Present – Doyle, Finder, Kaye, Krishnamachari, and Matthews. Absent – Friedman, Sherrill, and Wimberly. Vacancies – 2.  John Jay: Present – Kaplowitz, and  Wylie-Marques. Absent – Holder, Kadir, Napoli, and Mandery. Kingsborough CC: Present – Farrell, Fridman, Galvin, Goodkin, O’Malley, and Alternate Fridman. Absent – Barnhart. LaGuardia CC: Present – Beaky, Gallagher, Lerman, Mettler, and Davidson. Vacant -- 1.  Lehman: Present – Jervis, Philipp, and Wilder. Absent – Heching, Hosay, and Mineka. Medgar Evers: Present – Barker, Donohue, Harris-Hastick, and Alternate Hickerson. Absent -- Patwary. NYCCT: Present – Cermele, Dreyer, Hounion, Horelick, Richardson, and Alternate Gavis. Absent -- Walter.  Queens: Present – Bird, Moore, and Savage. Absent – Brody, Erickson, Habib, and Sukhu. Vacancies – 3.  Queensborough CC: Present –Dahbany-Miraglia, and Pecorino. Absent – Barbanel and Weiss.  Vacancies – 1.  York: Present – Berg, Cooley, and Lewis.  Absent – Frank.  

Chancellor Goldstein, Executive Vice Chancellor Mirrer, and Vice Chancellor Malave attended.   

Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Dreyer (NYCCT),  Fridman (KCC), Friedheim (BMCC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Kuhn-Osius (Hunter), Levine (CSI), Mettler (LaGuardia), Savage (Queens), Sohmer (CCNY), Tobey (Brooklyn) and Tronto (Hunter).  Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were present.  

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

II.   Approval of the Minute of October 2003: The Minutes were adopted as proposed. 

III.  Reports: (Recorded in Reports & Deliberations) 

A.  Chair.

B.     The Chancellor.

C.     Representatives to Board Committees.  (written)

D.  The Vice Chancellor for Budget. 

IV.   Discussion of Proposed Academic Integrity Policy:  Chair O’Malley requested the Senate read the report and comment in writing.  Discussion on this item is recorded in the Chair’s Report of the Reports & Deliberations. 

V.  Resolution Supporting Assemblyperson Ron Canestrari’s Bill on Testing:   Chair O’Malley presented this resolution which was passed by the Executive Committee. As you know, at our last plenary Ron Canestrari came and addressed us. He's Chair of the Higher Ed Committee of the Assembly. This is a bill that he is supporting, so we thought we would sign on to this bill. The Executive Committee I think made one change, but it was very small in the first whereas clause, but we kept the resolve the same. So the resolve is that the University Faculty Senate supports this Assembly bill A07143 (Canestrari) and its equivalent in the New York State Senate, LaValle sponsored it, which precludes CUNY and SUNY from the use of a standardized test or combination of standardized tests as a cut off for admissions and which encourages the review of a student's entire academic and community portfolio in determining admission.

Whereas, The University Faculty Senate on February 15, 2000, adopted a model admissions policy that opposes the use of standardized test cutoff scores as the single predictor and encourages, in many cases, the evaluation of qualitative information (e.g., letters of recommendation and projects) as well as quantitative data; and 

Whereas, The UFS is deeply concerned about the weak predictive validity of the ACT,  SAT, and Regents tests that CUNY now uses for admission to bachelor’s degree programs and proposes to use for some associate degree programs;

Whereas, standardized tests invariably seem to produce lower results for low-income students and students of color; now therefore be it

Resolved, that the University Faculty Senate supports NY State Assembly Bill A 07143 (Canestrari) and its equivalent in the NY State Senate (S 289, LaValle), which precludes CUNY and SUNY from “the use of a standardized test or combination of standardized tests as a cut-off for admission” and which encourages “a review of a student’s entire academic and community portfolio in determining admission.”

The resolution was unanimously approved by the Senate.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:00 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,  

Bill Phipps

Executive Director 

REPORTS AND DELIBERATIONS OF
THE TWO HUNDRED NINETY-NINTH PLENARY SESSION OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

November 18, 2003 

III.  Reports:

B. The Chancellor:  Good evening. It's always fun to be with you. I'll try to make my remarks short so you have time to interrogate. Ernesto Malave is going to be speaking, so I will make my remarks on the budget brief since he is better at this than I am. But let me just give you an overview and Ernesto can fill in the blanks and answer your questions in greater depth.

We're going to be somewhat aggressive this year in asking for more money to operate the University. We're going to be requesting about an 8% increase over what we spent last year and that 8% is in part new programmatic initiatives, and all of our programmatic initiatives, as I have said over and over again, are driven by the Master Plan. The Master Plan is the document that basically posits our academic values, where we want to place our resources, so in that budget, which will be asking for another $130 million to operate the University, we will have not only additional operating aid reflecting new programmatic needs of about $72 million but the rest of the money is mandatory needs. I'm a little concerned when I hear some people saying "don't cut us." Don't cut us means, "give us what we had last year.” But if they give us what we had last year, we'd be behind the eight ball immediately by $64 million." And all of you have been wonderful, the PSC has been wonderful, the Senate has been wonderful about getting the word out about the University's needs. Reflect always that we have mandatory needs and we have new programmatic needs and it's the new programmatic needs that we are working hard to get new money for, but the mandatory needs obviously are a requirement just to keep everything afloat. So that basically is what it is that we are requesting. We're going to ask for the money more in a dominating way for our senior colleges. The new programmatic needs for the senior colleges will represent about $56 million. About $16 million is for the community colleges, and the reason for that is the community college investment program of about $25-26 million, which is exclusively for academic needs. This is not for infrastructure, it's not for clerical support, it's not for administrators. This is for faculty and for academic support and student support for the academic life of the institution. So when you look at the overall request we are hoping, if we get consideration of our request, we'll be looking at about $40 million in new programmatic investment in the community colleges and about $56 million in the senior colleges. Ernesto can go into all of the nuances, but that sort of parameterizes the nature of the request, and again that represents about an 8% increase in expenditures this academic year and what we hope to expend next year.

On the capital side, as you all know we still don't have a Capital Budget. We're spending money that was unspent in the last capital program, which is typical. You don't get to spend it all because these projects are all sequenced on a very tight timeline and if you don't get to bond the project or expend it you just carry it over to the next year. But our strategy is to be aggressive, and when I say aggressive we should be a lot more aggressive because this University has substantial needs. We're going to request about $1.88 billion in our capital program, a real five year program. What the Governor proposed for us this year, which the Legislature never acted upon, was a five-year program but only four years of new bonded money. So we're going back and saying we really need the money in order to get to where we are going. Typically, what we do or what we have done for decades in this University is trips to Albany, meetings with the leadership in the two Houses of the Legislature, certainly meetings with the Governor, but those meetings really take place after the Governor presents his budget, so we react all the time to the Governor's recommendation. We're taking a very different approach this year, which we really should be taking every year, to get out and influence what happens in the Governor's message. I don't know if we're going to be successful but we need partners and we have never really had a partner. The logical partner obviously is SUNY, and SUNY and CUNY have wonderful relationships, we talk all the time, but this year I talked with Bob King, who's the SUNY Chancellor, and said, "Let's agree on a communality of points that both Universities can embrace.” SUNY has a lot of other problems that we don't have; we don't have residence halls, we don't have hospitals, and that serves as a big drag on the SUNY budget and that causes them all sorts of problems, and that's nothing that I can deal with and that's not something that we need to concern ourselves with, but there are areas that are common to both SUNY and CUNY that we both need to address. So we have had now several meetings with the leadership at SUNY and the leadership at CUNY and we have agreed on a set of principles, and we're going to try to walk hand in hand and deal with the Governor's people and deal with the Legislature and say, "Look, each of us have different kinds of problems; SUNY has been aggressive on tuition, we have not been, we have held back, we want to avoid a tuition increase at all costs this year; too many of our students were burdened by the tuition increase this year." Again, having a spike after no tuition increase for seven or eight years is just a crazy way to plan and budget for any kind of enterprise and certainly this University as well. But SUNY is much more aggressive. I think they're going to pull back from that aggressiveness this year for lots of reasons, but we've agreed on some operating principles in terms of how to present ourselves to the Governor and for the first time we will walk in in a unified way, and I think that should be very helpful.

There are areas that I'm concerned about, and one is certainly the capital program. I talked with you at one of the last plenaries about the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities coming forward with a plan to expend $250 million in bonded money alongside of CUNY and SUNY. And I think that's wrong, I think it's wrong on a policy basis, and I've spoken loud and clear about this. My sense is that nobody wants to say no to CICU because they're all over the State of New York, they're in every area of the state; in every county you're going to find representatives of the private or proprietary sector; so they're going to get something. What I want to avoid is any appendage to CUNY and SUNY that says, "As CUNY and SUNY gets a five year plan we should get a five-year plan." That to me is such a very basic breach in good public policy that we really have to speak very aggressively against it, although we will not make friends but we hopefully will influence some people about that. Our plan is to say that the legitimate needs for CUNY on the capital side are between $5 and $7 billion of additional bonded money. We came to the Board in June with a request that I made for $2.7 or $2.6, I forget exactly the number. The Board embraced it, the Governor approved a billion dollars. So, for me, first take care of CUNY and first take care of SUNY and then if magically there is money around then we'll back off, and that's really the message that both Bob King and I are going to make when we testify on the 25th of this month here in New York in front of the Assembly. We'll see where all of this goes. So that's our strategy.

The other part of the strategy is when financial aid was developed as a plan, and it's a very generous plan. When we talk about the State of New York being near the bottom of the list in support for higher education we are extracting TAP from that formula. When you put TAP with operating aid, New York State is a major supporter of public education, and the reason for that is you now have the private sector as a partner in TAP. And when you see how the TAP program has been designed over the years, it has always favored the private sector, it has not really favored CUNY and SUNY. It actually favored SUNY more than CUNY, but hierarchically we are at the bottom of the ladder in terms of how TAP really influences the ability of students to study at the City University of New York. So when the State of New York says we have x dollars to give to public higher education they'll talk about TAP being assaulted but everybody knows. TAP is not going to be assaulted. What is assaulted is the operating budgets, over and over again, where we have no partners. So we have to find a way of saying protect our students with financial aid. Quite frankly, if the parents are making a lot of money I don't see why the State of New York should show largesse to upper middle class families with TAP. I would rather see a more generous package for students at the lower end of the economic strata so that our students are not placed in jeopardy. And when you do that kind of manipulation of the TAP program, do it in such a way that if there is a reduction, operating aid is insulated to some extent, and it never has been. So that is a different approach. This is something that I have talked with Sheldon Silver about last year. He liked the idea and hopefully this could generate some momentum.

The last part of the strategy is - we are going to announce sometime soon, Manfred, because I know this is one of your favorite topics, and something that I am deeply interested in - the campaign for CUNY. It's going to be a very aggressive campaign. We just had a retreat with the Presidents and went thorough all of this. I think people were a little resistant, a little frightened to some extent because this is challenging people, but every University, public or private, has been doing this for years, and when they start developing an operating budget there is an assumption of how much endowment aid, for example, is going to go towards operating aid. We have to do the same thing, but it would be good if the State of New York were to say, "For every dollar that you raise in private money, we'll give you a portion of a dollar." That would be great in terms of public relations and leveraging private money against public money. And that is yet another strategy that SUNY and CUNY are going to try too, because SUNY will be announcing a campaign as well. We're going to be announcing a campaign, and it will be over several years obviously. But if we can get the State of New York to say, "this is a good investment, because if we put in 15 cents, 20 cents, whatever the number is, for every dollar that you raise, that really is a good investment for the State of New York.” And it's a good way for the University to leverage additional money in order to do the things that we're unable to do. So I think we just have to start thinking much more entrepreneurial and trying to find areas that SUNY and CUNY can agree upon and walk in holding hands, metaphorically, to try to influence the Governor's budget.

The Master Plan process is moving along splendidly. I again thank the Senate for your efforts in working with Louise Mirrer. I think, again, transparency and working in a collaborative way will result in a Master Plan that I think all of us will get our arms around and feel comfortable with, so I'm delighted to see the enthusiasm of working with Louise on this, who is driving this for the Central Administration. I think it was last night that we had students come in and we made them part of the master planning process, and they were absolutely fabulous students. One of them came up to me and said, "Where would you go, Stanford or Chicago." I said, "Who are you?" He said, "I am a senior at City College, I'm a Chemistry major, I'm graduating with a 3.85 index, which is pretty good, and I have offers from the University of Chicago and offers from Stanford; everything will be paid for." So, Louise, I mentioned something to him you may not be pleased with. There were a whole bunch of fabulous students there and their excitement about helping for the first time in a serious way in the development of the Master Plan is a good thing. All of us are in this business because we really love being around students. That's really the fuel that helps us move forward and it was wonderful to see them involved.

We have a couple of presidential evaluations that are going on: President Marti at Queensborough Community College - I met with his team; Ned Regan at Baruch - we'll start that evaluation in January. We have a couple of presidential searches at Kingsborough and at John Jay. I gave the charge to both of the teams. They're fabulous teams in both cases. We spent half a day in each campus talking with faculty groups, student groups, administrators, so at the end of this process I envision we will be successful in getting some new presidents for the University. Susan O'Malley and I spent three or four hours together at Kingsborough. I think Susan really needed a ride, so she said to me, "can I hook on with you," and that's the truth. But when we got to Kingsborough we both were moved in the same way. These students were leaving campus to go to jobs or to go home and the rich diversity of those students…I mean it was just so exciting to see all of them there and it just reinforces the good work that all of us do at this University.

Governors' Island -- I'm moving very cautiously but methodically and I gave Susan some brochures. These are just concepts, and I've talked to you about some of these ideas before. I want to be very careful here.

So those are just some of the things that are taking some of my time and for the rest of the time that I have I'll be happy to entertain any questions.

Professor Levine (Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island) - / Chancellor - Doesn't he look good? It's nice to see him back. / Professor Levine - Thank you. I have two questions: one is the issue of the matching money from the State for money that we raise in the capital plan. We do have a program in place, the GRTI program, which came out of suggestions from an old committee that you and I were both on, the SCTM committee, that's been highly successful. Can we set aside a portion of the CUNY capital plan to be matched for GRTI together with expanding GRTI? / Chancellor - If the Governor embraces this, however they will do it, I'll be there with open arms. That's a very good idea. There are lots of other ideas as well. I just don't know if they're going to embrace it but we'll see. I think that would be a terrific way to allocate some of the money. / Professor Levine - My second question: In the Capital Budget the plan calls for spending $410 million for the Science Research Center, that's the shared University research facility, but, please forgive me, piddling small amounts for upgrading undergraduate science labs…Now at an earlier stage you talked about the possibility of public private partnerships for this research facility. Would it be possible to offset some of the proposed money for the research facility and transfer it to support undergraduate science labs? / Chancellor - I would envisage that if we get funding for this consolidated research facility there will be a fair amount of private money that would be generated that we could use either to enhance what we're doing or to offset what we're doing. I would remind you that if you look closely at the proposed Capital Budget, which, let me say at the outset, is deficient, there's just not enough money; we all understand there's not nearly enough money; there is a considerable amount of money that we are proposing to spend on undergraduate science at campuses at Hunter and at City College, at Lehman College, at Queens College, some money at Staten Island. I think we're trying to spread it out as much as possible. It's just not enough, Al, you're right, and we'll do what we can. / Professor Levine - Thank you.

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – I want to ask about a memo that went out from the Executive Vice Chancellor Mirrer to the community college Presidents about the CCIP, the community college investment plan, and read just a little bit of it because it think that most people actually don't yet know what's in it. This has to do with the procedures that the colleges are going to be following during this hiring process, and much of it is from last year, the updating on hiring activities, the spreadsheets and so on, but there's something that I think is new. So a couple of sentences from here: "In addition, at the point where finalists for faculty positions have been identified and prior to any offer being made, we ask that you provide us (the Vice Chancellor says) with copies of the finalists' Curricula Vitae. The candidates' credentials will be reviewed to ensure that appropriately qualified finalists have been identified. Please note that it is not the intention of the Chancellery to select or to rank individual applicants but rather to ensure that all of the candidates hired are of the caliber we expect and have committed to." Well, gee wiz, I was on the Math search committee last year and again this year - at LaGuardia all the search committees are required to have one person outside the department, so that's me for them - we looked at the ad, I read very carefully the ad, looked at the qualifications, we're working on the questions now, we're considering the questions that we asked last year and the questions that we ask this year, are they going to be the same questions, we've drawn up our list of people to be interviewed, we are going to interview them, we're going to discuss all of that. And, you know, we all have tenure and I think we're all interested in getting qualified people and I think that we know how to do that. So I'm just puzzled by these sentences and I can't really parse them either. I don't understand why or how it is that you want to see the names of the finalists but that you're not going to select or rank them. So my question is what is the purpose of this procedure? What is the reason? Can you explain it? / Chancellor - I'm responsible for that. Louise is a much better writer than I am and is the Chief Academic Officer of the University and ultimately I think really needs to get some guidance here. Let me give you some principles that I want to ensure here. One, we talk good talk in this University about doing what we need to do to diversify our faculty and, quite frankly, we don't do a great job. Here we have a wonderful opportunity to hire at least three hundred faculty and I don't see the kind of diversification that I would like to see in the faculty. And I just want to make sure that the Presidents are on notice that this is serious for the University to do this effort and do it well. The second thing that I think we want to accomplish here is that recruiting faculty can either be an easy job if you take paths of least resistance or you do it really well, and for me doing it really well does not mean putting ads in the newspaper and waiting to see who you get and you sit down with a committee and go though all of these resumes. I think if you really are interested in bringing in terrific faculty to this University then you have to work hard to do it. I didn't write this memo but our intention here is to work hard to diversify the faculty, because we have really a wonderful opportunity to do it, and secondly to canvas around the United States and elsewhere people who we are truly interested to come to our campuses and work hard to get them. I just want to make sure that we don't take the path of least resistance. We're not going to choose who the faculty are. These are peers that are going to choose the faculty and make recommendations to department Chairs or Provosts or Deans or the President, however it works on the campus. I just want people to be on notice that I have put myself on a block here, which I'm very delighted to do because I think it was the right thing, but I want it done well. That's the answer. / Professor Beaky - One comment then. I actually was very happy to see the reference to the money and so on for recruiting but we are also being pressured to hire people almost immediately and I don't think that that's consistent. / Chancellor - I don't think you're being pressured to hire immediately. You want my official response to that? Take your time, get the right people, if you have to hire a substitute for a semester in order to get it, that's fine. But when a tenure appointment is made, let's do it well. / Professor Beaky - Thank you.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – There is a concern, like Lenore said, about the micromanagement from the top. I think she brings up a good issue in terms of the faculty authority. I want to ask you about this move afoot at New York City Tech to restrict admissions to the Associate Degree programs by having students have to meet admission requirements, which is a very serious blow to open admissions. My understanding is that the plan is not to take this openly to the Board of Trustees but just let it be done administratively. I think the governance requires that it goes to the Board of Trustees and that we have an open dialogue and debate on this issue. It shouldn't just be done behind the scenes at a local campus. / Chancellor - I don't know anything about this. / Vice Chancellor Mirrer - I know lots about it. First of all, as I said, this is something that was discussed and has been voted on by the faculty at New York City College of Technology. Each year we have a discussion with the Presidents and various people that the Presidents select to have in the room about admissions criteria. We actually haven't had the discussion yet with New York City College of Technology but we will, and if this is something that the President brings up at the time, this is the way admissions are determined for all of our colleges. If there is a specific request to bring it to the Board specifically as an admissions requirement, I would be happy to bring it to the Committee on Academic Affairs. There's nothing behind the doors. / Professor Crain - Admissions decisions must go to the Board. / Vice Chancellor Mirrer - Our Board does not vote on individual college’s admissions. / Professor Crain - You're saying that Associate's Degree now has testing. This closes the open admissions because the Associate's Degree has traditionally been the degree that any high school graduate can get into. There was a bunch of untenured faculty, frankly it's what I heard, being bullied by the President. / Vice Chancellor Mirrer - Somebody in back of you is from the college, so maybe she wants to adjust that. / Professor Crain - But, anyway, my understanding and that of many of us is that admissions has to be done through the Board where we have hearings and an open discussion. This is a major problem. / Chancellor - I don't know anything about this but why don't you tell us what happened.

Professor Lois Dreyer (Chair, College Council, New York City College of Technology) What happened was we looked at the data, at their incoming freshmen for Associate's programs, and we felt that to have our students be successful there was a level…it's almost truth in advertising; to bring in a student who is not qualified to be successful when there are alternative routes through alternative programs that were available to us to shore up these students so that when they came into the college they were well prepared to compete and to succeed. Our faculty felt that was the route we should take. We did a lot of research. I have the data if you want it. Our understanding is that because it was passed by the College Council that it's our decision on our campus and we're behind the new policy. I'll be happy to share it with you. We are a senior college with Associate's programs, we are not a community college; our rules and regulations are a little bit different. We want our students to succeed; they were not succeeding the way we would hope they could. / Chancellor - I think Executive Vice Chancellor Mirrer said that there is a process where Presidents and their senior staff come in with recommendations. We are not obligated to go to the Board on minor changes with admissions criteria, but if this particular one is different in scope and in texture and really requires the Board to opine on this, certainly we will do that. But let me find out more about this. / Professor Dreyer- That is not going to be the case. It was debated for a very long time. It took almost two years to come to this decision. / I also had a question. Each year when you make your budget you alert your Presidents to make their budget, requests and in that missive comes a line that you should speak to your faculty. This may seem simplistic, but could you define faculty for your Presidents? They think that it's only the Deans or only a Chair, bypass shared governance, when we have budgetary committees who are not trying to give the President a hard time but would like to be involved in this process, not to be at the end but to be involved. / Chancellor - I have an answer but Karen Kaplowitz just told me she has a better answer. I'm going to let her give the better answer first. / Professor Kaplowitz - That letter to the Presidents did not go out this year asking for consultation for faculty, and it was with the agreement of the UFS Budget Committee because it's really at this point an exercise and only an exercise and unnecessary work. This year it was too late but I think we did have agreement that the request would be made to the Presidents that they consult on an ongoing basis, especially with those campuses that have a legitimate Budget Committee, as New York City Tech does. / Chancellor - That was a great answer. I'm glad I didn't answer it.

Professor Benenson (Mechanical Engineering, City College) – I hope you answer my question. / Chancellor - I just have all sorts of surrogates here. / I'm not sure you want to,and I don't think anybody else would help me. My question is, I strongly support your comments about the equity issues between CUNY and SUNY on the one hand and the private colleges on the other. What I'm wondering is whether or not you would apply that logic within CUNY and within CUNY colleges. Let me just share with you the perception of many people at City College. Some of this is reality, not perception. The heat is off, the Internet is down, the elevators don't work, the bathrooms are dirty, the plumbing is faulty. Meanwhile, there seems to be funding available for some purposes. The Honors College gets new headquarters, the President has a renovated brownstone, lots of money is available for the high school collaboration. My view is we're having enough problems running a college. We ought to really pay attention to the experience of the vast majority of faculty, students and staff, and I don't think we're doing that. / Chancellor - Let me just make the record that the President of City College has my house. I just gave him the house that was given to me, not because I'm a good guy, it's just that I thought it was the way to get him and I think he's doing a good job. My sense at City College is it's an old campus, it's a huge campus, it's a complex campus, and good things have happened from an infrastructure standpoint. They're probably nowhere near where they need to be. If elevators are not working, if heat doesn't go on, if the plumbing is bad, those things really need to be addressed and if they're not, we have to do something about it. / Professor Benenson - When we raised these issues, we were told there's no money. / Chancellor - I'm sure the President and the administration would love to have the plumbing work properly, the elevators work. I can't imagine that there is some scheme to divert money at all away from that. The problem is that there probably isn't sufficient money around the system in capital money, this is not operating money, to do those sorts of things. When I will testify on the 25th of this month, I'm going to talk about some of the horror stories on our campuses which are real, they're not made up. People can come and do an internal audit and see what it is that we're faced with, and that's why I get infuriated when I see private institutions coming up with hat in hand basically saying, "The money that we want doesn't come out of your budget." Nonsense, of course it will come out of our budget and SUNY's budget and we have to fight for this money. And it's not just City College. I have been to all of our campuses on several occasions and those sorts of things that you refer to are not unique on the City College campus. I think we're making good progress with the limited amount of money but we don't have the budget flexibility in this University to deploy operating aid to certain capital requirements. We don't have the flexibility in the system to marry community college money and senior college money. We could do a lot of good things if we had that ability, especially at the comprehensive institutions, if we were to blend those budgets. We can't because of various statutes that we are faced with. Let me find out about the things that you're mentioning and let's see if we could help, and if indeed we can we certainly will do it. / Chair - Gary, do testify November 25th for the capital budget hearing and bring photographs. We have photographs coming from various campuses so people can see some of the conditions. / Chancellor - I really have one minute. If you can give me a one sentence question I'll give you a half a sentence answer.

Professor Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – I'll try. My question is about your welcome announcement of the CUNY campaign. When you do that, which I assume will be soon, it would be nice if you could involve the Faculty Senate as well as the Alumni, as all properly constituted campaigns do, so we look forward to working with you on the development and running of this campaign. / Chancellor - That is an easy answer. It will have to be done that way because the faculty really need to take an active role here and be part of the announcement.

Professor Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – My question relates to a piece of the response that you gave to Lenore Beaky about the letter asking to see the CVs of the pool of applicant for the hiring at the community colleges and to CCIB. One of the things I think I heard you say is that ads in newspapers are not enough. / Chancellor - Right. / Professor Friedman - And I happen to have seen an ad in Sunday’s ‘Week in Review’ for 26 faculty lines at a number of the different senior colleges. I was wondering, since newspaper ads are not enough, the Chancellery was also going to ask to see the Curricula Vitae of the pool of finalists at City College, 11 lines, Baruch a number of lines? / Chancellor - The answer is no. / Professor Friedman - Can you explain why? Some of us are concerned that there is a double standard. / Chancellor - This is a highly charged effort that we went down with the community colleges. It is an academic investment. This is off budget, this is off balance sheet, this is a pot of money that the students at our community colleges gave by virtue of the tuition increase, and I think there is a special obligation that we have to deliver the best that we can possibly get for the community college students. And that would be my answer to you. / Professor Friedman - I still think it's a double standard because I think we need the best at City College and we need the best at Baruch and I want you to know that folks at the community colleges really see this as a double standard. It's an insult to us. If you're going to do it for our faculty, I don't care where the money comes from, it should be done everywhere. / Chancellor - Last question.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) - I'm actually going to follow up on Anne's question. I find your explanation very noble that you want to create more diversity in the faculty and we, the community colleges, stand charged in your eyes apparently of not doing a decent job in hiring people. But I wonder, we spend three months at it, we begin by looking at resumes, we interview people, we interview associates of people who are being hired, and then at the very last minute the resumes have to go up to you and just based solely on the resumes you're going to pass or fail the candidates. / Chancellor - There is nothing in the memorandum that even insinuates that at all. Louise actually just reminded me that we do this process with all of the cluster hires. These are investments that we're making over and beyond the normal process of replacing faculty, which happens every semester, every year, in the history of an institution. These are special investments that we are making and I think because it is a special investment we want to ensure that we send a signal. We are not going to make a decision. Louise Mirrer, Mathew Goldstein, nobody in the administration is going to tell the President, "you must hire this person over the other." What we want people to know is that you're on notice to do this well, and I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think the students expect it and I think it's the right thing to do and we'll do it. With that I'm going to have to go. Thank you.

A.  Chair:  Thank you. I don't think Ernesto is here yet. Let's just start with approval of the agenda and of the minutes.

Let me start doing my report very briefly. When Ernesto is here, we'll interrupt it. I just want to remind you that Friday is the conference on the University and the Patriot Act at the Hunter School of Social Work. We now have 95 people. The response has been overwhelming, very gratifying I must say. Speakers include Joan Scott from the Center for Advanced Studies who will speak on current cases concerning the Patriot Act, current CUNY cases too;

Ellen Schrecker, who will put the Patriot Act in historical context; Donna Lieberman, who is going to review Patriot Act One and Two, she's head of the New York ACLU; Allan Wernick will speak on immigration issues; Mitch Freedman on implications for librarians, he was the President of the American Library Association last year; and Irving Lerch, who is Director of International Affairs for the American Physical Society and member of the Board of the Committee of Concerned Scientists, who will speak on the implications of the Patriot Act for scientists.

The exhibit McCarthyism at Queens College, 1947 to 1955, will be on display, and there will also be a video clip from the San Francisco mime troupe entitled Veronique of the Mounties in Operation Frozen Freedom. This event should be extraordinary.

Master Plan: To date we've had three focus groups to develop faculty initiatives for the Master Plan. These have been ably chaired by Dean Savage, Queens College, and Robert Kelly, Emeritus from Brooklyn. They will write up our recommendations that will go to the Executive Committee and then to the plenary in January. There will be at least two more focus groups, one of SEEK Directors and College Discovery Directors, and the second sponsored by the UFS Committee on Disability Issues. I don't think that has a date yet.

Faculty Experience Survey Committee is meeting soon with David Crook. The Chancellery has gone over it; now we have to take a look at the changes that the Chancellery made. It will be piloted next semester, not this semester.

I want to make sure you all know about the hearing that has been called by Assemblyman Canestrari who's Chair of the Higher Education Committee, for next Tuesday at the Assembly Hearing Room, 250 Broadway Room 1923. This is on the SUNY/CUNY Capital Budget. How to sign up is in the back of the room. CUNY's Capital Budget has not been passed. This is because SUNY did not line out its Capital Budget because Governor Pataki wants to control the money so he can give it away. The hearings are an attempt to force the calling of a special legislative session in early December to pass the Capital Budget. There is information in the back. Karen Kaplowitz prepared a wonderful summary also telling you how to testify.

The Academic Policy Committee is meeting with Vice Chancellor Louise Mirrer on the new history initiative before the December Plenary. Some of you might be interested in joining that committee to talk about it. This is something she wants in the Master Plan. We're not quite sure what it's going to look like. It looks like required American history for all but we need to talk to her more about it.

I think I won't say anything more about the community college investment and the letter. I think you all expressed it quite well. I wanted also to say that the UFS office is going to be renovated in the spring, and we've been meeting with architects to figure out how to use our space more effectively. And believe it or not they're going to move us into the Trustees' space for several months.

The only thing I wanted to say in terms of Bill Crain's question about the admissions policy, which I think is important, is that John Jay changed its admissions policy I don't know how many years ago. They made it so that everyone who applies to an Associate's program must have a 72 average. We have checked; it did not go through the Board of Trustees. I think the fact is that you got Louise and the Chancellor to say this time we might have a hearing on the changes to NYCCT new admissions policy and have people talk about it fully. / Professor Crain - If somebody did it wrong once in history that doesn't mean…/ Chair - I agree but let Karen respond.

Professor Kaplowitz - The senior colleges regularly change their admissions requirements; they have year after year after year. It never goes to the Board of Trustees. For years at John Jay the assertion was made by our administration that we were not permitted to raise or establish Associate Degree admissions requirements because Associate Degree programs are open admissions programs. We found out that that's true only for the community colleges. It's not true for the comprehensive colleges, which are senior colleges and can set their admissions requirements for both the Associate Degree and the Baccalaureate Degree programs. Because we felt we could not at John Jay meet the needs of the Associate Degree students, who had needs that were better met at community colleges because we were so under funded and didn't have the faculty and the teaching labs and the study labs and so forth, we did an analysis as to which students succeeded and we found that those who had a 72 high school academic average in their academic programs or higher succeeded at John Jay. So we set an admission requirement and we're reviewing it to probably make it higher because we have too many students. We're being forced to reduce our enrollment by 80th Street because it's so dangerously overcrowded. Talk about the photos I'm going to bring to the capital hearing! I mean we are just dangerously overcrowded. So unless you want to propose, Bill, that every college, including the senior colleges, have to go to the Board of Trustees, and you want the Trustees to make decisions about the admission standards at your senior colleges, then you should not propose that for the comprehensive colleges at all because this is opening a precedent that is really giving the Trustees the right to micromanage admission requirements, which is a faculty decision and it was at John Jay.

Chair - OK, speak to this issue.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, Graduate School) – It's rare that we actually get in a situation of debating a social issue in the guise of an academic issue. The issue that Professor Crain raised is a change in the availability of open admission places at a college in the University in virtue of its being denominated a senior college whereas previously it was a community college. I don't know how many thousands of places that were available under open admissions that attenuates. That's why it's not exactly the same as the John Jay situation, and I do think that that's a change that needs to be addressed by the Board of Trustees, because you could in effect end open access at the University by changing the nature of each of the colleges one at time till the last one that had no senior college programs would have 150,000 Associate Degree programs. I'm sorry there are a lot of students at John Jay. That's the way the cookie crumbles. Maybe some day you won't have any more or won't have as many. It can happen to the best of colleges. But this issue that Bill raises is not just an issue about whether or not the New York City Technical College faculty has appropriately debated and vetted an issue of a change in entrance requirements, it's a question of whether or not that number of places which are open to people regardless of their high school averages, and test results, and so on, can be taken out of the enrollment pool of the University.

Professor Cermele (Mathematics, New York City College of Technology) - John Jay set the admission standard at the average of 72. City Tech set an eviction standard. We admit the students and then we reject them. That's a different situation. It seems to me that when this happened that in the B.A. program at the senior college required a Board of Trustees resolution and it required State Department of Education approval, that means when people could be admitted and then rejected. It seems like a similar situation. We're doing the same thing now for AA and AAS programs. So I think it's a different situation entirely from John Jay's.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – I'm not questioning whether the local college thought they were doing the right thing in any case, but we have a policy of open admissions that is fundamental to our University's mission. As Stefan put it, it can be undermined quietly in many ways without it coming out to the public. Always when that policy is at such a broad level there's lots of questions about what comprehensive college and senior college means. But if this continues this is a real slippery slope where you start bringing in testing requirements at Associate's Degrees. We better stop it and bring it out into the open, otherwise this is going through. We have to protect the governance issue here that these have to be opened up and discussed in public. Even if we don't like the Trustees who are sitting there and we don't have any hopes for them, we still have to insist that it's discussed University-wide, because all kinds of pressures come to bear at the local level and it has to be discussed University-wide, it has to go through an open meeting, all this has to be done in the open. This is at the level of State Law. We may be right, we may be wrong, but we have to bring everybody, the whole public involved in this and make people aware of this at the broadest community level. It has to be made public. And I think if you look at governance, I looked at Bernie Sohmer's Redbook, every little admissions change over the years is in that Redbook, little tiny ones. The Redbook consists of Board Policies, every policy, there are tons of policies the Board used to approve. They were mostly approving the initiatives that came from the campuses, but they were approving. Suddenly we have a new thing where it doesn't have to go to the Board? No.

Professor Sohmer (Mathematics, City College) - The assertion was made here several times that the admissions requirements appropriately involve the faculty. I believe that probably at 90% of the campuses not one single faculty member or governance body actually know anything about it but it's set by the President in consultation with the administration at 80th Street. If we are willing to, it seems to me that the resolution has to be that admissions requirements, were they are to be occurring locally, have to occur because there was a consultation between the President and the appropriate governance body of the particular campus. For some faculty that's redundant. For most faculty I'm afraid that's not redundant; it hasn't happened in decades.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – Just for the record, at John Jay the faculty developed the proposal, the Faculty Senate developed the resolution, it went to the college governance body, it was unanimously approved by the Faculty Senate, it was unanimously approved by the governance body, it was transmitted to the Central Administration, it didn't go to the Board, but it was entirely a faculty initiative. At the same time we also raised the Baccalaureate Degree program admission standards. This was faculty.

Chair - I don't want to spend a long time because Vice Chancellor Malave is here. I think the sense is, though, that the Chancellor and Louise Mirrer are willing to have it come to CAPRA so the Trustees know what's going on; it has been passed by local governance but that it should be open to discussion. That's my sense.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate School and University Center) – The metaphor is a can or worms. Now let's say for argument's sake that John Jay's faculty governance, and I applaud how successful you were in pulling off something that Bernie properly calls the closely held secret of the Presidents. I have found out ever since I got here that admissions points were set somewhere in the University unified admissions process but now I found out tonight, just tonight, that the President gets together with some people but we are supposed to be doing that. Why don't we get involved in setting admission standards between faculty and the President before the President goes to 80th Street. We ought to have a resolution emanating from the body which puts us back in the admissions business. / Chair - We will write such a resolution.

Professor Dreyer (New York City College of Technology) - There are some points I'd like to say again. One, we have been a senior college for twenty-three years. In 1980 we became a senior college. The point is that when this came to the floor after we had reassessed our Baccalaureate Degree entrance requirements, we had to look at the Associate's Degree program requirements. The students are deferred. They are offered enormous amount of support, they are still our students, we are trying to let them succeed, but we can't lie to them if they are not ready to do the work. / Chair - But I think the issue right now is it should come to the Board; there should be a hearing. / Professor Dreyer - The governance faculty on our campus dealt with this for two years back and forth. We met, we had tremendous meetings, we had data collection, it was passed by the Faculty College Council, we did what we needed to do. / Chair - And the Board of Trustees should know that it was passed properly by governance. However, it's a change in policy. But anyway, Martha.

Professor Bell (Educational Services, Brooklyn College) – I don't think the issue so much is that this is an admissions policy. John Jay changed their admissions policy by manipulating the high school average, and that happens at each of the senior colleges every year all the time. Admissions averages, now SAT scores, number of units of English and Math and whatever. And we have a committee that does that and reports to the President and all that. What's happening here, as I understand it, is that this is not the normal admissions portfolio. These students are going to be accepted and then they're going to be told they can't enroll because of not passing the basic skills test. The basic skills test policy was passed by the Board and has been passed in a number of versions. The last version required that nobody who had failed could enroll in the senior colleges except SEEK, and the comprehensive schools were exempted from that policy; the Associate Degrees. This is a change in that Board policy on basic skills testing for admissions. If New York Tech were to recommend that they not take anybody below a 72 or an SAT score of 350 or two units of English and two units of Math, I wouldn't think it had to go to the Board because that's something that the University does all the time. The essence is this is a variance from the University policy on basic skills testing and that's why I think it has to go to the Board. / Chair - One more comment and then this will be brought to the Executive Committee and we'll do a lot of talking about it.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia CC) - I just want to make a very small comment on one thing Karen said in passing. I usually don't disagree with her but I think I do here. She said she and the people at John Jay think that the students will be better served at community colleges. Maybe I'm paranoid tonight but it seems to me that community colleges are a kind of volleyball and they're knocked into whatever side of the court people can use them for, particularly this evening. I don't think taking students from John Jay and sending them to colleges where there is a worse student teacher ratio, where the faculty has a higher work load, where there are fewer resources, is really serving those students. It may be getting them out of your way but I don't think it's really helping them particularly as students. / Chair - But this is a policy. I think we've talked about it long enough, unless you want Karen to respond. It's just this policy is in effect. We're talking about a new one that has to do with the change in testing, what Martha said. All right, respond. You're going to say that you have more students than the faculty can teach.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – I'll pass.

[Section with remarks of VC Malave is not yet available.]

Chair’s Report Continued:  Ok, just quickly as the hour is getting late I want to say something about the academic integrity report and where we are. It will not go through the Board until February, so we have some time. What I would like is for people to read this and then in writing give us comments. I've already started to get some comments, I got a good one from Hunter College, so give me your comments. In terms of going through it very quickly, if you know the Diaz memo that used to rule in terms of academic integrity, I have a copy of it here, it was truly a disgraceful document. This is much better. This shows the definitions and examples of academic dishonesty, recommendations for promoting academic integrity, but the policy part of it is page 7 through 10 and then there are examples. Questions that I got from the governance leaders: Once you give me the feedback it will go back to the committee to be put in the document. This is a fairly general document. Your campuses probably have more specific documents and that's fine. I don't see how in any way there would be a problem with the two, but if there are problems let me know because one question was, "Which supersedes, the local or this general one?" I was trying to invent problems and I really couldn't come up with problems but let me know if there are. Any questions on this? Should we maybe for the December plenary have it discussed more fully? No, the campuses need more time. But perhaps individuals could or if you can get it through any campus groups…Phil, come to the mike if you could.

Professor Pecorino (Philosophy, Queensborough Community College) – Rather than comment on anything specific in this proposal my concern is this: Why are we sitting and waiting for the Board to act on this? Why aren't we intervening and saying, "we will define this for ourselves and it will be disseminated through our governance systems." Why are we conceding to them what I believe is our own prerogative? They've got some definitions here of academic dishonesty. Why are we letting them define it? We are after all the ones who have to recognize it and enforce whatever we believe that integrity means. So why are we, as a body representing the faculty of the University, allowing the administration to more or less take the lead on this and then wonder whether or not whatever they do is going to be something we can live with or might be inconsistent with what our local body comes up with? / Chair - Well, governance is an elaborate dance, what can I say. They invited several of us to be on the committee and we agreed and we struggled. I would prefer it to be your way. However, your way I don't think is going to get through the Board of Trustees, I don't see that it's going to work. You should have seen this before Karen and I were on the Task Force, struggling from within. I would rather have it be simply a faculty initiative. It didn't go that way. It is now being looked at by the Chief Academic Officers also. They're taking a look at this joint document of faculty and administration. I think we should proceed with it and struggle with it, but I certainly would be advised by the body to do whatever is your pleasure.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, Graduate School) – What Phil is suggesting is certainly right. The question of how to join the way in which your cooperation…[tape turned over]… rather to have the faculty report and the academic integrity report that the committee has to work on to be debated simultaneously. They are not going to be in a certain sense two coextensive documents. I don't know what Phil's committee has in mind, but certainly the question of definitions, which I think are so horrible they're just laughable, I think that we ought to have our own people who are academics and who know what this stuff is do it. So if his committee is willing to give us a report and then debate this together simultaneously…/ Chair - If there could be a parallel report that would be ready within the month, so that we can go back and forth, I'm certainly willing. Phil, what do you think?

Professor Pecorino (Queensborough Community College) – About governance, if you send this to the Board …/ Chair - Wait a sec, if I send this to the Board? / Professor Pecorino - If they send this to the Board…/ Chair - They! / Professor Pecorino - …in what way does the Board act on it? If the Board amends its Bylaws then it's something that local governance can override in all sections except the one referring to student discipline. If it's not a Bylaw change and it's a policy that's supposed to be enforced on us again, if our local governance plans work against whatever this policy would be, they're supposed to supersede. / Professor Sohmer - No, it's temporal. Depends on which comes first. / Professor Pecorino - So the first one there wins? /Professor Sohmer - Right./ Professor Pecorino - However, we already have at least six units of CUNY plans and programs about academic integrity. /  Chair - No, when I asked that question they said there would be local policies and then there will be these general recommendations. / Professor Pecorino - That's all they are? / Chair - Yes. If you read it carefully there are general recommendations. It is strongly recommended, but there is nothing that is binding. The idea is that the campus policy may be more specific. / Professor Pecorino - So the Board is not asked to make policy but to issue recommendations. / Chair - Their concern, of course, is legal problems and that's why they did it because the Diaz memo was such a mess and they want students to have a due process. That is their concern. Karen, do you want to say something?

Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – What this document says, Phil, it's pages 7 on, if you take the recommendations forward, the document that would go to the Board if anything were to go would be called procedures for application of sanctions for violations of policy on academic integrity.

Chair - Maybe we should have another question. I don't know what I'm addressing. How do we want to proceed then with this? / Professor Baumrin - I want to know if Phil's committee wants to take up my suggestion. / Chair - He says no, he doesn't have a committee to do this. Do you think there is a problem with this general policy and local campus policies? / Professor Baumrin - This is just too much involvement for everybody to have a reasonable opinion about it. How is it going to affect nineteen campuses without [unintelligible]. / Chair - That's why we kept it extremely general. Should we do some thinking about this? Barbara, do you want to say something? But there is no reason why the local campus can't have a more specific policy than this, and certainly Queens College could. / Chair - I guess people should read it, bring it to your campus, give me input. If you really don't like this at all and think we should rip it up and do our own let me know that too and then we'll continue the discussion at our next plenary. Is that OK?

Please send me your comments though on the e-mail or call me about this academic integrity report. Thank you.