Draft: Subject to Senate
Approval
MINUTES OF THE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY
SECOND PLENARY SESSION
OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE
OF THE
October 24, 2006
The meeting was called to order by UFS Chair Philipp at 6:45 p.m. in Room
14-220 at the Baruch Vertical Campus. 69 voting
members of 115 were present.
Baruch: Present – Freedman, Hill, Martell.
Absent – Albright, Dumas, Pollard, Smith, Vora.
Vacancies – 1. BMCC:
Present – Agwu, Friedman, Niyazov,
Rani. Absent - Belknap, Chen, Martinez-Lopez, Persaud, Roy.
Barbara Bowen, PSC President, and David Dannenbring, Baruch Provost
& Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, attended.
Governance Leaders present: Anderson (BMCC), Bass (BCC),
Baurmin (GS), Burke (GS), Cooper (CSI), Feinerman
(Lehman), Georges (Lehman), Gillespie (QCC), Ianni (LaGuardia), Kaplowitz (John
Jay), Kraljic (KCC), Levine (CSI), Lopez (Hostos CC), Lowe (Queens), Martell
(Baruch), Mennella (NYCCT), Mettler
(LaGuardia), Oley (ME), Pecorino (QCC), Raj (CCNY),
Read (BCC), Savage (Queens), Schlein (York),
Stapleford (Hunter), Tobey (Brooklyn), and Young (Hunter) attended. Parliamentarian Andrea McArdle,
Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela,
and Secretary Blanchard were also present.
I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as proposed.
II. Approval of the Minutes of September 2006: Minutes were approved as distributed.
III.
Reports: (Recorded
in Reports & Deliberations)
A. Chair
B. Representatives to Board Committees (written)
C. PSC – Prof. Bowen
D. AAUP – Prof. Beaky
F. CUNY Budget – Prof. Levine
IV. New Business: (Recorded in Reports & Deliberations)
A. Discuss Revisions to Student Complaint Procedure – Prof. Kaplowitz led a discussion on the latest draft from the office of CUNY’s General Counsel.
B. Update/Discussion on Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) – Profs. Beaky and Pecorino led the discussion.
C. Tribute to Immediate Past Chair, Prof. O’Malley – A framed copy of last May’s resolution was presented to Prof. O’Malley, to an ovation.
There being no
further business, the meeting was adjourned at 9:05 p.m.
Respectfully
submitted,
Bill Phipps
Executive Director
REPORTS AND DELIBERATIONS OF
THE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SECOND PLENARY
SESSION OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE
OF THE
Welcome:
Chair
Manfred Philipp - Ladies and Gentleman, I’d like to call this meeting to
order. Before we go into the agenda of
the meeting, I’d like to ask Provost Dannenbring of
Provost Dannenbring (
Before I go into the meeting, I’d like to ask people who have never been to a Senate meeting before to very quickly come up to the microphone and introduce themselves. Is there anyone who has never been here before? We don’t want to take much time, but please come up and introduce yourself at the microphone. If you’re a faculty governance leader who was recently elected, you can do the same, please. Yes, go ahead.
Professor
Wilbert Hope (Professor of Chemistry,
III. Reports: (Reports were taken up out of order.)
A. Chair: Chair Philipp- Due to the considerations of time, I’d like to dispense with the oral report. I don’t like to hear myself speaking as much as I like hearing other people speaking. I hope that’s OK. And you have the written report, and if there are questions about it, I will give you an opportunity to ask questions later on. The second item, Representatives to Board Committees is also written. The third item is the PSC Report that’s being given by President Barbara Bowen. President Bowen, please.
C. Professional Staff Congress: President Barbara Bowen- Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here. You move fast here at the UFS. But anyway, I’m delighted to be here, and Manfred tell me when my time is up.
I’m happy to see you all. I just thought as we mentioned before, we’ve been delighted to have a closer working relationship with the UFS, and we had Fred Philipp come and give a very good report at our Delegate Assembly. And that can only be good, having that closeness of information sharing and joint effort whenever we can. We do different things, everyone knows that, but to the extent that we can do things together we will both be stronger, especially as I mentioned before in a period where CUNY management policies are coming thick and fast, and I think it’s important for us to look at both the governance and the terms and conditions of employment in those policies. Usually, those policies such as the proposed Computer Use Policy have implications for governance, some of which you’ve raised in the last discussion, and usually they also have implications in terms of employment and things that are in the contract. And the more we work together, I think the better it is. I’m happy to be able to announce that we will have an improved dental plan as of January 1st. As you recall, no doubt, one of the things we fought harder for was an increase in the Welfare Fund by CUNY management so that we could pay for prescription drugs and not diminish that coverage, so that we could restore the money in our Reserve Fund, because we’d had to dip into our Reserve Fund as the price of drugs went up about 15-18% a year. That’s what had happened with the Welfare Fund. The cost of prescription drugs is going up 15-18% a year. The contributions into the fund to pay for them, the contributions from CUNY management were not going up 15-18% a year and you all are smart enough to know when the costs go like this and the contributions stay flat, you either have to cut your costs - and in our case it would mean diminish the coverage - or you have to dip into your “savings account” rather than your monthly account. We dipped into our savings account. The PSC Welfare Fund had been in deficit for more than 12 years and we were forced to dip into our reserve, and through this most recent contract we were able to restore the reserve, create stability in the near future for the fund, and also put in enough money, and I’ll say something about it in a minute, to improve the dental plan. That is a victory for everybody in this room who wrote a letter to the Chancellor, who signed one of those postcards. We had thousands of letters, faxes, phone calls, postcards, demonstrations where we carried papier mache teeth. I mean we did everything, we demonstrated every month at the Board of Trustees. In a climate where the issue in many collective bargaining rounds in other states, and even in this city, was about how much concession they would take in health care, we were able to get an improvement in health care through two sources. One, as we know, was a contribution, a one-time contribution, part of which comes from our retroactive pay in two different parts, and second was a 20% annual increase in management’s contribution to the Fund. That’s a big increase, 20% annual increase. So what does it mean for you? You will soon be getting a mailing, but the dental plan will be improved in a couple ways. It begins in January, and I think you’ll have till December 12th to decide. There’ll be lots of information out there and visits on campus, but I just want to give you a quick, quick preview. We’ll have two options for dental coverage. One is brand new, and that’s a dental HMO with Delta Dental. That’s a restricted panel of dentists, it works like a health HMO, with very predictable costs. I think a crown is $195. Anybody who has had a crown knows that is not what you pay at the dentist. It includes orthodontia, not full coverage, but a substantial contribution towards orthodontia for children, adolescents, and adults in the HMO, and all the regular services. That’s one option for people who want predictable costs, who have a lot of dental work, who have a big family, kids with orthodontia, and so on. Option B is Guardian, which we currently have, but we’ve had an optional rider, an additional buy-up in Guardian. Now the services that you previously got in the additional buy-up will be free to everyone. So without buying the rider, that level of improved reimbursement will be available to everybody. In addition, or through that program, there will be provision for orthodontia for children and adolescents. Through the Guardian plan we could not get adult orthodontia coverage or partial coverage for that. So those are big improvements, I think, and we’ve tried to go forward with that ethically and creatively. It was a lot of decision-making, but our thinking was to provide a low-cost option for people who really needed or wanted to control their costs, and then an enhanced plan for people who were able to have an enhanced plan and do the Guardian reimbursements, but to have a much better schedule of reimbursements. So I think it’s a big step forward for us. It is not going to cover every single penny you spend at the dentist. But it’s a major step forward, and I think it’s going towards what we should have to be competitive and fair. So we’re delighted to be able to do that, and we did it because we said we would not sign a contract without a Welfare Fund increase, and we stuck to that, and we got a contract with a Welfare Fund increase. So I’m very pleased about that.
We
continue to work hard to make sure the new contract is implemented properly,
and I’d be very grateful for any questions or comments you have about problems
you’re seeing with it. We’re going out
to every campus, and there are things we hear that are happening with the new
provisions that should not be happening.
As I said before, there is enough money for sabbaticals at the 80%
pay. You should not be getting a message
that the sabbaticals are underfunded. There is enough money to support the junior
faculty release time. And that should be
handled in the way that benefits the scholarly interests and agenda of the
junior faculty. These provisions were
hard-fought. So if you have things, I’d
be very appreciative if you’d let me know.
And then I’ll just end by telling you a few things that the PSC is
doing. This group I know is very
concerned with academic freedom.
Somebody here, Diane Sank, mentioned the Hunter survey of academic
freedom last time. On November 1st,
at Hunter the Executive Director/General Secretary of the AAUP is going to
speak about academic freedom at CUNY.
His name is Roger Bowen, (a friend, but not a relative). I’m sure people from other campuses would be
welcome if you’d like to go. Also, the
PSC is sponsoring a health care symposium on health care reform, very important
for us, on December 2nd. And
last thing I’ll mention is that we’re also sponsoring a poetry reading called
“Poetry Resistance”. It’s a fundraiser
for a historically black university in
Professor Rishi Raj (Mechanical Engineering, City College of New York): We just got a red flag from one of your advisors on the Welfare Fund saying that we’re going to have the same situation in five years, what we have faced now. I don’t think the faculty would like to pay their retroactive pay to compensate. What’s your opinion on that? They’re saying that the Welfare Fund, is being overspent right now. My second question is about the sabbatical leave. What guidelines have you given to the colleges, because everybody wants to take sabbatical leave now, at 80%. So who’s going to get first, who’s going to go second? / President Bowen - Let me start with the second one on sabbaticals. The union’s guidelines are in the contract, and the contract in Article 25 spells out the procedure for awarding of what they call Fellowship Awards, which are sabbaticals. And the union very carefully monitors that those procedures are being followed. The union does not however make the academic decisions in each department and in each college, and that’s not the union’s role. Nothing in this procedure on sabbaticals has changed at all, nor is it expected to change. There is no provision for a change of lifting of standards or requirements or hoops to jump through or anything else about sabbaticals. It’s just a change in the amount of money. So just to go back to your question, the union has held meetings with department chairs throughout the university and we’ve worked closely with them on the details of the funding and the implementation of the sabbaticals, but the union’s provision is the terms and conditions of employment and we have set out very clearly the sabbatical terms in the contract. We do not micromanage, nor should we micromanage, the academic decisions in each department. So we are being vigilant in making sure that there is not a hidden, sudden increase in expectations for sabbaticals, nor should there be a contraction of the number of sabbaticals. That’s something else that we’re hearing about. We understand that given the fact that sabbaticals were pitifully funded in the past, there is a huge backlog potentially of people who would like to take a sabbatical. That may be something where a department P&B’s and colleagues are going to have to make some decisions together, I think. It would not be appropriate for the union to lay out a pecking order for sabbaticals in a department. We recognize, and we talked about this at the bargaining table, that in the first few years I’m sure that there will be people who’ve waited 30 years to take a sabbatical and you may have a lot of people, if you’re a department chair, seeking the sabbatical. We’re going to count on people to act as colleagues. We also have enough money in the fund for sabbaticals that there should be when there is funding, and there’s incentives for colleges to give more sabbaticals. So the idea that there should be a sudden constriction especially because of finance is a myth. I understand that there are staffing needs too, but especially in this current year, there is an excess of money because of the way that the contract was funded and a lag in catching up with sabbaticals. So if you do hear about constrictions on sabbaticals, financial constrictions, please let the union office know. Your other question was on the Welfare Fund. The funding that was provided to the Welfare Fund provides for an increase in the spending for benefits that was part of the estimate that we made and we shared with management. We made public and we sent to the City and the State while we were in bargaining. But I am not going to claim that the amount of money we’ve put in the Fund, without a dramatic and continued increase in contributions, is going to keep up with the increased costs of prescription drugs. If prescription drugs are going up 15%, we’d have to have a 15% increase going on and on and on. We have enough for the short term, for exactly what we budgeted in the contract, but I cannot say to you that we’ll never be seeking more Welfare Fund contributions on an annual rate. In fact in this round of bargaining, a one-time increase from the City, is already under discussion and also increases in the annual rate. So, anybody who says that there would be a magic formula to fund a Welfare Fund forever and ever is kidding you, with the cost of drugs and the ridiculous non-health care system we have in this country.
Professor
Susan O’Malley (English,
E. NYS Regents:
Professor Martha Bell (SEEK Department, (
Chair Philipp - Thank you, it was a wonderful report. This is an important time in the season, an important time in the electoral process, and it’s really important that the faculty members of this university be involved in reaching out to their legislators. It’s critically important on behalf of ourselves, on behalf of our students, on behalf of our university. It’s something that we can and should do. As members of the UFS we will be calling out to you to be helping out in the future and Martha is really a role model for us all. Next item on the agenda is Lenore Beaky, reporting on the recent meeting of the American Association of University Professors.
D. AAUP:
Professor Lenore Beaky (English Department,
Professor
Sandi Cooper (History Department,
PSC President Barbara Bowen - Thank you. I just wanted to add on the question that Sandi raised about the AAUP and the difficulty of getting a vote of censure. In the case of the CUNY violations of academic freedom and procedure which they detailed, even though they did not reach a vote of censure they did institute something new after working very closely with the AAUP chapter for CUNY, which is the PSC, and working closely also with Lenore. They agreed to do an investigation of academic freedom at CUNY, to do surveys, which they’ve started to do at Hunter, and other kinds of investigations. They’ve actually had several meetings with Goldstein and others to begin a process which is an informal process and not a censure but a continued pressure on CUNY, an inquiry which will put the pressure on and put CUNY under the spotlight. So I totally agree that it’s difficult to get the vote of censure, and even when you do it hasn’t always created a complete turnaround. But having an inquiry and having all of us here in this room follow it up with things we do on our normal campuses, I think is in some ways as powerful a gesture -- not as powerful as a censure-- but it’s a powerful thing so they have taken that step in our case.
Professor O’Malley- Do you think CUNY could hire Mohammed Yousry? What do you think? I have his phone number. I could find out if he wants to be hired and if anyone would like to try to hire him. I’m just throwing it out; I don’t know. I know that it’s on appeal but it’s becoming increasingly clear that he really did just about nothing. / Professor Beaky - I don’t think I have an answer to that question. Others may. As you may or may not know he’s been sentenced to 20 months and that is under appeal at the present time. / Chair Philipp- Thank you, Lenore, for your very interesting report. The next item on our agenda is a discussion on revisions to student complaint procedures by Professor Karen Kaplowitz.
IV. New Business:
A. Discuss Revisions to Student Complaint Procedure: Professor Karen Kaplowitz (English Department, John Jay College) - I was asked to report about a proposed policy that is coming to the Board of Trustees committee on Monday, November 6, on procedures for handling student complaints about faculty conduct in academic settings. This will be going to the Committee on Academic Program Planning and Review. There was about a year, during which Vice Chancellor Schaffer, the Vice Chancellor for Legal affairs and the Counsel to the CUNY Board of Trustees, met with Presidents and legal counsels at the colleges and developed a proposed policy for students to lodge complaints about faculty conduct, alleged faculty conduct in academic settings. After a document was developed Vice Chancellor Schaffer then met with the University Faculty Senate Executive Committee last spring and with the Council of Faculty Governance Leaders last spring and again in the fall, and this has been changed and there have been many, many iterations. The most recent version was a release by Vice Chancellor Schaffer on October 16. What you have is his last version plus proposed changes, changes proposed by the Council of Faculty Governance Leaders at its meeting last Friday. The proposed changes are underlined if they are proposed additions and bracketed if they’re proposed deletions. Before I go through those I would like to tell you some of the changes that Vice Chancellor Schaffer made in this document. First of all in Item 1, Paragraph 1, he strengthened the statement about academic freedom at our request, and it is a much stronger statement. Also, in Item 5 on the reverse page the appeals procedure had been that only the Chief Academic Officer would consider an appeal by either a student or a faculty member who was dissatisfied with the earlier decision. He changed it to, “if either the student or the faculty member is not satisfied with the report of the Department Chairperson or Academic Dean the student or faculty member may file a written appeal to the Chief Academic Officer within 10 calendar days” and then he wrote, “the Chief Academic Officer, or if the college so desires a committee consisting of the Provost and two faculty members elected by the faculty council or senate, shall review the appropriateness of the recommendations made.” Originally it was only the Provost, but he accepted our proposal that it be the Provost plus two faculty members elected by the faculty council or senate, but it says “if the college so decides.” It turns out that he means by “college” in this phrase the faculty governance body, but when I told him that at our Council of Faculty Governance Meeting we are proposing that there not be that choice, that an appeal be heard only by a panel of the Chief Academic Officer and two faculty members elected by the faculty council or senate, he said that he was persuaded. This was as of this afternoon, but he also told me that he’s going to be consulting on Friday with the officers of the University Student Senate who were just elected and just certified. In preparation for his meeting with the University Student Senate officers, Vice Chancellor Schaffer said that he consulted with the Chief Student Affairs officers and they said, “If there’s going to be a panel of the Chief Academic Officer and two faculty there should also be the presence of the Chief Student Affairs officer.” He asked me to report that this is what is being considered and he would like to know our thoughts about having a panel. He’ll agree to a panel of the Chief Academic Officer, the Chief Student Affairs Officer, and two faculty members elected by the faculty senate or faculty council of the college.(Minor wording changes are reviewed.) The main change that the Council of Faculty Governance Leaders proposed on Friday was that if the informal process is not successful and the student then files a formal complaint, the chairperson -- or if the chairperson is the subject of the complaint, the academic dean -- shall look at it, and if that person deems the complaint to be entirely frivolous it would stop there. But, if the chairperson or the dean considered that there was a possibility of merit in the complaint, instead of a single person investigating and making that determination, a panel of three faculty, who are tenured would do so, who are elected by each department in May when department elections are held. Then if the faculty member or the student were dissatisfied it would go to this panel which would consist of the Chief Academic Officer, and two faculty members, and if we agree with the Vice Chancellor -- though it’s not up to us ultimately -- with the Chief Student Affairs Officer, in other words the Vice President of the Student Affairs. So that’s basically the status. The document has been changed tremendously since we first saw it last spring in response to our suggestions, and we are proposing more changes. Vice Chancellor Schaffer said that he would like to see our document as soon as possible; I told him that I thought I could get it to him tomorrow. He said he would appreciate that so he could think about this and consult before his meeting on Friday with the University Student Senate Officers. If you would like to ask questions or make comments about either the proposed changes by your colleagues or the proposed changes or the contents proposed by the Vice Chancellor, please do so.
Professor
Glenn Lewis (English Department,
Professor
Bill Crain (Psychology Department,
Professor
Sandi Cooper (History Department,
Professor Nkechi Agwu (Mathematics Department, Borough of Manhattan Community College)- In reading the procedures it seems that it is not clear if there’s going to be a review body that has oversight capacity to review systematic irregularities in implementation on the campuses, and I would encourage that you have something like a review body in there that has oversight capacity.
Professor
Frances Ruoff (English Department, Kingsborough
Community College)- After we pass the Chair and we start moving on with this
process, I want my union rep and since Barbara is here could she comment on
this? Because I think it’s a matter of rights protected by the contract. /
Professor Kaplowitz- I’m so glad you said this,
Professor
Lenore Beaky (English Department,
Professor
Kathleen Barker (Psychology,
Professor
Diane Sank (Anthropology,
Professor
Michael Barnhart (History, Philosophy & Political Science,
Dina
Dahbany-Miraglia (Speech and Theater,
Barbara Bowen (PSC President) – Several things have come up about the union’s role and I’d like to address that for a minute, and then one other question about the Senate. The PSC has taken a strong role under Article II of the contract, which gives us the right to consult and negotiate on certain policies coming before the board. We did this on the proposed Computer Use Policy citing the specific parts of the proposed policy that we think are in violation of the contract, and we brought that to CUNY. We demanded negotiations, and that has put a delay in that policy. We are currently reviewing this policy for the same purpose. Under Article XXI of the contract you have the right to union representation at any interview which may lead to discipline. And there are many, many times when you don’t know if it’s going to lead to discipline. There are several things in 4C here that could lead to discipline, and I think one of the things the union will be looking at is whether there’s a kind of sub-discipline procedure put in here. We have spent years as a body negotiating and struggling over disciplinary procedure which is very carefully laid out, and has a lot of protections. We are noticing in several policies that CUNY introduces, a proliferation of new little opportunities for discipline that somehow sneak under or around the established, negotiated disciplinary procedures in the contract. The union is watching this and will be formally be contacting CUNY on the union issues, so it’s very important for us to hear them and you should know that we’re doing that. But the other thing I wanted to say is just more generally a call to the Senate. Listening to my Senate colleagues here I would ask in whose interests is a policy and whether we need such a policy at all. I haven’t heard students clamoring for such a policy. I do not think that this results from student clamor. I think it has another interest, and I would ask the Senate really to take the opportunity that you have in listening to people’s comments to question whether such a policy is needed, whether it’s another attempt by the CUNY administration to cover itself and transfer any liability, any difficulty, onto the faculty, away from themselves, and whether it involves an attempt to police what is said and done. Somebody else mentioned so many other student activities and things that you do with students are covered by existing policies, and we do have a workplace violence policy which covers criminal activities so what else is left? I think the Senate has a real chance and I would look to its leadership, your collective leadership, to do an analysis of really in whose interest the policy is and whether we need such a policy at all.
Professor Anne Friedman (Developmental Skills, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - I just have a procedural question before I go on. Is there a motion on the floor? There is no motion on the floor to adopt this because people are making a lot of comments and nobody’s making motions. / Chair Philipp- If I could interject, the question of the motion will come up after this discussion. It will also depend somewhat on the tenor of the discussion. / Professor Friedman - We’re in a dilemma here and it is not an uncommon dilemma, and that is the dilemma of having been given something that initially we didn’t want, don’t need, that maybe is miraculously somewhat innocuous because we hear that this is just because Columbia had this problem and so on and so forth. We all know that even were that the case, currently once you have a written policy it goes on for posterity and we leave this to our children and our children’s children. So, we began to engage with Vice Chancellor Schaffer and make these suggestions, but it’s the usual idea of being resigned to having to accept something and just trying to make it better or less bad. At this point, given the discussion tonight, the lateness of the hour, I would recommend that we are not ready in any way for this body to make an intelligent deliberation on this, especially if for no other reason that there have been so many suggestions coming forth that I would like to see them put out on email lists so that we could bring it back to our campuses and so forth. Basically, the message to the Vice Chancellor has to be “Thank you very much for listening to us and thank you very much for being amenable to our suggestions, but there is so much more discussion that needs to take place that this probably needs to go on the calendar for the Board of Trustees for the Spring semester.” I’m not going to make a motion to that effect but it’s just an idea that I am putting forward for consideration and maybe somebody else wants to make a motion. / Chair Philipp- Thank you very much.
Professor
Barbara Moore (Student Personnel,
Professor
Stefan Baumrin (Philosophy Department,
Professor
Vasilios Petratos
(Political Science, Economics & Philosophy Department, College of Staten
Island)- First of all, the numbers ought to be heavily weighted on the side of
the faculty -- not 3 and 2, it could be 5 and 2 or whatever. I just wouldn’t
trust them. On the important matter, at the
Professor
Alfred Levine (Engineering Science & Physics,
Professor
Sandi Cooper (History Department,
Professor Emily Anderson (Social Science Department, Borough of Manhattan Community College) - I think we can all agree that we felt we had to give a response to this document and a number of us worked very hard and in good faith to try and make it a better document, trying to protect academic freedom and all of the other things that we’ve talked about. Sitting through this meeting as compared to our meeting on Friday, I’m getting a little bit of a different take on this whole thing and I think that’s extremely positive. I don’t agree that we are under the gun in terms of trying to respond to this by November 6. I think the dialogue that we’ve had with Schaffer should continue but I don’t think we have an obligation to take a vote or take a stand, just to keep the dialogue going. Another thing that I wanted to comment on is the dialogue between UFS and the union. As I was sitting listening to Barbara’s report I found myself getting a little uncomfortable about what should be the nature of the discourse between the union and the University Faculty Senate. I don’t think that talking about the dental plan is one of those things. All the other dialogue we have had I think has been most useful and so I’d like to recommend that we put in place some sort of a guideline for how that dialogue should continue to happen so that it is productive, and other kind of issues would be handled in union meetings and other kinds of forums. Because of what we’ve learned from Barbara I don’t feel that we are under any kind of pressure to make any decision but just to keep the dialogue going on campus and here.
Professor Crain - Echoing what some people said, it seems like we’re always in the position of saying, “Well, this is going to go to the Board anyway so let’s do the best we can with it.” But in this case I think it goes to the heart of academic freedom and I think it’s better to have a position that we could live with, and that is that we do not feel that this is at all appropriate in the current state, if ever. It should not be going to the Board until people can think this out or we just oppose it. I’d ask the Executive Committee to think out a resolution to the effect that we oppose these kinds of formalizing procedures that carry the distinct possibility of repressing academic freedom. Can I make that a motion for the Executive Committee? / Chair Philipp- No, but the Executive Committee will take up your suggestion, I promise you that. / Professor Crain – OK, but parliamentary procedure-wise isn’t a motion always possible from the floor? / Chair Philipp- I’m not entertaining a motion at this time. But we will take up your suggestion. One thing we should notice is that there is a certain kind of natural dynamic to this type of discussion and I notice that the natural end of this discussion has come. Lenore will be the last comment; we have to move with the agenda.
Professor Lenore Beaky (English Department, LaGuardia Community College)- I do not have a motion, however I do want to point out that the time pressure is that this is coming up on the agenda of the Board’s Academic Program Planning and Review Committee, called CAPPR. I am the UFS representative, not the Executive Committee representative but the UFS representative on that committee. Sandi is the alternate and based on our discussions I think we certainly would like to have the dialogue continue and perhaps vote to postpone. After CAPPR there will then be an open hearing for those who wish to testify and then the Board of Trustees will then consider it the following week.
Professor Philip Pecorino (Social Sciences Department, Queensborough Community College) – Suppose there proceeds a complaint from the student and the student doesn’t get a resolution from the faculty member or the Department Chair and the faculty member is invited to appear before the investigatory panel, and the faculty member simply refuses to go, delivering a statement instead that as the proceeding has possible implications for actions that would be taking place under the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement, the faculty member simply invokes them at that time. What would happen? Because I think failure to proceed with the policy of the Board might be deemed objectionable behavior on the part of the faculty member then leading to disciplinary procedure under the collective bargaining agreement. So, simply the faculty member says, “Let’s start now.” That’s a question I don’t think we have the capacity to answer at this time. /
Unannounced Female Speaker- What happens to a person who brings false allegations? / Professor Kaplowitz- It says in the document that no retaliation is to be made against a student who brings a complaint. / Chair Philipp- Thank you, Karen, for this discussion. We should applaud your endurance. At this point I would like to change the agenda as a point of personal privilege to recognize a predecessor of mine. At this point I would like to ask Professor Susan O’Malley to come to the podium. We have here a resolution, now a motion. “Be it resolved that the University Faculty Senate expresses heartfelt appreciation to Susan O’Malley for putting her many talents at its disposal for four years as its elected chair. Be it further resolved that the University Faculty Senate looks forward to her future contributions, and be it finally resolved that the University Faculty Senate proclaims Susan O’Malley as its worthy and eminent Leader Emeritus.” / Professor O’Malley- Thank you. / Chair Philipp- The item itself was prepared by one of the most important people on our staff, Stasia Pasela. Stasia, do you want to stand up and we’d like to thank you for doing this. I’d like to insert a very brief report by Alfred Levine, and the reason for this is that there is a deadline that he cannot give this report at the next meeting. If there is any opposition please let me know.
III. Reports
(cont.):
F. CUNY Budget:
Professor Alfred Levine (Engineering Science & Physics,
Professor Terrence Martell (Weissman Center for International Business, Baruch College) - You’ll note that the October 4th letter was not copied to the governance leaders, either the faculty governance leaders or the student governance leaders and consequently you won’t even get that document unless you either sit on one of the funding committees or, as is the case at Baruch, you actually get it from one of your own internal people. If you do not have it by now I would suggest you distribute it and I would suggest you do what the Baruch Faculty Senate did which is go through the document, make recommendations, send it forward. At least you’ve got something on the table in front of the people who have to make the decision. If it’s there, they’ve got to at least have read it. It will influence something. / Chair Philipp- OK, moving on, quick question?
Professor John Mineka (Math & Computer Science Department, Lehman College) - I would just like to point out that this process of consultation can be extremely formalistic and they simply wave the document in front of you and they’ve already decided how to spend the money, and you can throw in a few remarks but in effect they want to say that they’ve consulted when in fact they’ve made the decision themselves.
Chair Philipp - Thank you. Next up on the agenda is a discussion by Phil Pecorino and Lenore Beaky on the Collegiate Learning Assessment.
B.
Update/Discussion on Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA): (Professor Beaky and Professor Pecorino)
Professor
Beaky- I first became aware of the
CLA, which is the Collegiate Learning Assessment, by reading the minutes of the
Council of Presidents which mentioned that the CLA was going to be given-
future tense- at Lehman and
Professor Pecorino - The CLA is a very ill conceived instrument that has very little scientific merit to it. We can point out several hundred institutions that are using it, but I can point out 2,700 colleges and universities that are not using it. We can point out Presidents in our own CUNY system who have rejected its use, for whatever reasons, but it would be easy to accept that the reason why it’s being rejected is because it offers so little of value to the academic programs of our colleges and universities. It appears to be more an instrument of public relations and politics than an instrument that has any merit for institutional assessment, something that I believe in, and definitely not an instrument with any value in telling the faculty what is working, what isn’t working and needs more attention. I’m so dismayed that when the Chancellor spoke at the Manhattan Institute, he said that what he thought we needed was some kind of measure that would tell us what students know when they come in and what they know when they leave us so we have some idea of what benefit did we cause for them. This is not that measure, not by any means. I’ll just sketch out briefly the way it’s supposed to work, and as unbelievable as it may seem each and every use to which people are claiming to put it has been refuted by the same articles that were handed to us by the Council for Aid to Education, which is the manufacturer of this product being sold to institutions of higher education. It doesn’t surprise me that people making the decision to purchase this product do not involve people who know anything about assessment. The decisions appear to be made by the highest academic offices, in most cases by the Presidents. They take a group of 100 students just entering a college or university and put them through a test that will measure in some way their ability to read, to write and to perform what the creators call critical thinking tasks. Then they take a group of 100 students, a different group who are about to leave the institution, and give them the same device. Through what they call “psychometric adjustments” they claim that the difference is the result somehow of what the academic program produced in the increase of abilities in those who took the instrument. The literature admits that there is no way that they can possibly discriminate what is producing the result from what is not producing the result. They take the measure of students who are about to leave, who may have spent 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 years in higher education and compare it to the group just entering. The group just entering could be a group of people who are needing single, double, triple remediation, who are English as a second language. The group about to leave could consist of a large portion of honors students and high achievers and then compare the result. Although the claim is made that psychometrics accounts for that would be the apparent discrepancy in the sample groups, they do not look at the literature of neuro-science and of psychometrics. There are no quotations in their literature for explanations that the abilities being measured may have more to do with maturation effect and the accrual of experiences, particularly in people in their late teens and early twenties whose pre-frontal lobes are yet developing. In other words what they are measuring could be the result of people growing older and getting better at doing basic things because they read a lot, hear a lot, talk a lot and their brains are developing the ability to handle the information better and, in particular, the ability to control their impulse to rush to judgment. There is also little way for them to screen out the contribution made by students who have taken some courses at other colleges or done other things and then and finally joined the group of people about to graduate. One of the principal things that the Chancellor wanted is a way to compare institutions and on this I must read from their literature: “Some schools offered participation to all students, then took the first 25 or 30 who applied in each class whereas others use the sophisticated, stratified, random sampling procedure. Participation was optional on all campuses, thus it is not appropriate to report or compare individual school means, nor was it ever our intention or need to do so.” So, it means that a device that was created by its own manufacturers for one purpose is being widely used in an attempt to make comparisons of institutions in what I must unfortunately conclude is a public relations thing. There’s no way in which you can use it to improve the efficacy of instruction at the institution. This is why Middle States criticized this device specifically. It’s not an accident, I think, that the people who are associated with this are also associated with efforts to criticize the regional accrediting agencies. There’s no way it measures content in any area. It doesn’t tell us what a student knows on day one and what a student knows when that students is about to leave us. The Chancellor wants an instrument by which we can compare CUNY to other institutions, but the way in which the subject groups are gathered up varies so widely that you cannot make these comparisons. My concerns are about the use of this with regard to pedagogy. If the measure is declared a success and some institution has a high value added, it might lull us into thinking that our pedagogy is just fine when all it really might be showing is that brains have matured. I’m concerned about the failure to observe some basic scientific protocols in doing this kind of research. I’m concerned about the involvement or lack thereof of faculty who know best how to conduct such assessments and have been doing so under the guidance and direction of Middle States. I’m concerned about governance and that faculty haven’t been involved in the decisions to use this and how it is to be used. I’m concerned about research ethics, that human beings are being asked to go through this procedure and there’s no way they could ever derive a benefit from taking this instrument. Some places are paying, some are giving credits toward purchase of books, and some places are not but even there it’s more raising an ethical red flag that you would be paying people to take the instrument so you’d get the people more likely to be interested in getting the money than in sincerely complying with the protocol for taking the instrument. That skews the results. A psychologist who’s been examining this pointed out to me that if a student, particularly one in need of triple remediation, takes the instrument and gets the lowest possible scores, they might have what you call a loss of self-esteem thinking “if this is what I’m expected to do I’m never going to be able to do this. Why should I go through all of this remediation?” There was no consideration given anywhere to this possible impact. In fact, when the IRB issue was raised, people who are connected with the sales of this instrument thought that you didn’t need IRB approval because there were no issues with institutional assessment -- avoiding altogether the fact that these instruments are given to human beings and the IRB is concerned with impact on human beings, particularly when they are being used for the purposes of other individuals. I’m concerned about the politics of it and the Spellings commission and all the debate about what’s going on there. I’m concerned about the financing of it. It costs $6300 for 100 students to be tested and $20 per student if you go beyond the 100. If we start testing people using this and try to derive value, we’d have to do it longitudinally and that means we’d have to do a lot more and that means the cost per campus per year would go up and once a single manufacturer or vendor has a school hooked on something like this the tendency is to raise the price. Once you’ve committed to using the instrument and you can’t get it from anyone else you are somewhat dependent on them as the sole supplier or vendor. Dean Savage - I do think that there are some very serious problems, one of which is the temptation to game the system. Every college is going to find it very difficult to resist. Lenore’s resolution which we can’t vote on tonight, but which I support and hope we pass unanimously next time, calls for the faculty to become more involved in monitoring, administering, knowing how it’s administered with the whole system. One of the things I really want to know is how many students did they have to ask in order to get their hundred? Was it 200, 300, 600 or did they ask only 100 and only 25 only finished the exam, and I would like to know how they chose their people. Many of the things that you both have described will not stand up to close scrutiny. / Professor Pecorino- I believe it won’t stand up to close scrutiny and that’s why I fear for the embarrassment of my university or of any of its leading officers who would make public claims based on the results of the use of this instrument; when it is discredited, and I believe it will be, then so too all those claims and so too the judgment of the people using this instrument to make those claims. It’s easy to “game the system” if I wanted my institution to show some high result I’d say to my director of testing “take all of the people that are taking the placement tests and need remediation and when they’re going through all of those tests ask them if they wouldn’t mind doing one more.” And I’d go to my graduating class and I’d say to my honors students, “you know, you folks are dedicated to the college and we are asking you to do something nice for us in return for all that we’ve done for you. Would you spend 90 minutes or 2 hours and take this instrument for us.” Then, another institution where our results would be compared would say, “Wait a minute, how did you get that result? Did you use the same protocols we used in selecting the students who took it?” They’d be correct. I’m particularly concerned that in the last year it’s being promoted for use in community college. If the neuroscience has any kind of support to those findings, then a community college result will indeed be highly comparable to a four-year college result, maybe even an elite four-year college because it’s only measuring basic abilities, and if it’s the ability of the developing brain then students at a two year college who spend 4 or 6 years there are probably going to show the same kind of result as people who spend 4 or 5 years at a four year college. Then, if the community college president can claim that, “we give as much value added as a prestigious four year school” the head of the four year school will say, “where do you get off making that claim, how exactly did you do this and based on what?”
Professor Angela Crossman (Psychology Department, John Jay College of Criminal Justice) - I think any kind of endorsement of any kind of assessment like this inherently endorses the commoditization of an education, a college education. I think you can go to Harvard and learn nothing and you can learn a heck of a lot going to John Jay or any other CUNY school. It’s a lot about what the students are bringing and putting into the effort. We can do a lot for students, and they have to do a lot to learn as well. I think it shows a lack of trust in faculty and what they’re teaching students as well. I just think that inherently the idea of it is to sell a school but education is not something you buy -- it’s something you earn.
Professor
Bill Crain – I want to thank both of you for the analyses and the
resolution. I think that it comes in a context of the Spellings commission and
the whole accountability movement. It’s incredible that the same people who
want to get government off the backs of people and want to diminish the role of
government are increasingly trying to control and standardize and bring higher
education and all education under bureaucratic control, and they do it through
standardized tests. The SAT’s dominate secondary school education now. We have
so many tests. While I agree that some of these tests might
have some merit but we have the SAT, the ACT, the CPE, now we have the CLA.
How many more are we going to have? Pretty soon everything we do is geared to
tests and how we’re doing on the tests. I guess I’ll have my students learn
about differences between butter and margarine and corporate jets. I guess you
probably can’t game the system that way but I think that the powers that be are
trying to bring us in line and regiment and control us. They’ve got a good way
to do it and I applaud you for your efforts to bring this under faculty control
where we assess things in a way that we feel is legitimate. / Professor Beaky-
What they do is establish correlations between ACT and
SAT scores and the results of this test. They have to do that because it’s not
credible, even to them, to say that a test that asks you to decide whether it
is better to serve margarine or butter is an actual test of writing ability or
analytic reasoning. What offends me most about this is the complete stupidity
of these tasks that students are asked to do, and if anyone can claim that
those tasks are really tests of analytic and critical thinking I would be very
astonished. It’s unfortunate that no one seems to be willing to say these
things at Duke and so this is marching on, but maybe it’s not marching as fast
as we think it will. / Professor Pecorino- I’m told that it has a .82
correlation with the SAT, which means we don’t really need it, we’ve got the
SAT. In one administration of the
instrument there was less than a standard deviation of difference, which I’m told
by statisticians is insignificant. You should also
know that most of it is graded by computer, not by human beings. / Chair
Philipp- Thank you, Phil and Lenore, for this excellent discussion. Lastly, I’d
like to thank our hosts here at
Professor Terrence Martell- I sat here from 6 o’clock on and we talked a lot about some very interesting things. Unfortunately many of the things are going to come into effect next month, next year, five years from now. We spent about 35 seconds on the issue of the Compact. There is $43 million dollars up for grabs that is going to be sent forward in 4 days. I submit to you that virtually no CUNY campus with the exception of Baruch and maybe somebody else will have actually done what they’re supposed to do. I would have liked, in retrospect, to have spent more time on that because there was immediacy. / Professor Kaplowitz- We also should publicize, in keeping with what Professor Martell said, that on November 6 at the Fiscal Affairs Committee, this Compact proposal will be presented for vote by the full board of trustees at the end of November, and there will be a special budget hearing on the same day, November 20, as the calendar hearing but devoted only to the budget and people can sign up. We’ll send out the information by email by Friday the 17th at 3 o’clock to testify. The testimony can be not only for or against the compact, for or against the colleges’ own presentation, but also the level and extent of meaningful consultation or the lack of it. I think we should publicize that. / Chair Philipp- Thank you for you attendance.