THE TWO HUNDRED NINETY-EIGHTH PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

October 21, 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:

Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Cooper (CSI), Fridman (KCC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Mettler (LaGuardia), Savage (Queens), Sohmer (CCNY), and Tobey (Brooklyn). 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 September 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. Invited Guest, Assemblylman Ron Canestrari, Chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee.

IV. Discussion of the Academic Integrity Report: Item was tabled.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:30 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps, Executive Director

THE 298^th PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

October 21, 2003

Chair: We have two distinguished people, one who wants to go to the theater and the other who has a dinner, so we’re going to have to talk very fast and ask them questions very quickly. First, may I present Chancellor Goldstein.

Chancellor: Thank you. I’d like the record to read that I’m not going to the theatre tonight and therefore by deduction that I am going to eat something a little later. I am sorry. And, Ron Canestrari, it’s wonderful, thank you for taking time and addressing the faculty. They are a great group, they do wonderful work every day of the year for our students and I think you’ll enjoy the time with them. I just don’t have too much time tonight. I don’t have anything more to report to this body than I did before. Just to tell you where we are in our ongoing budget travails, that is just recurring events year in and year out. I will be sending a letter first thing tomorrow morning to our budget director of OMB, Mark Page, indicating that we are providing him in his capacity as Budget Director with a plan to eliminate the $5.4 million out of the combined operating budgets of our two-year institutions as an exercise. This is an exercise that was promulgated to address a projected deficit that the City has of about $2 billion for fiscal 2005. In that letter I am quite forceful about saying that the City University of New York certainly at a minimum should not be treated in any way that differs from the Department of Education, because we do in this City have, we’d like to believe, a seamless public educational system that integrates K thorough 12 and our University. In any case, we are obligated by law to provide the parameters of how we would deal with such a cut if indeed that were to be the case. We have not been given a budget cut of $5.4 million but if we are given a budget cut of $5.4 how would we deal with it? So that letter will be signed and delivered by hand tomorrow morning.

With respect to the State Budget, I indicated when I met with you last that the State Budget is in balance for this fiscal year. However, and Assemblyman Canestrari can talk to this more than I can, next year the Governor is indicating that we are facing a rather severe budget deficit and that the year after the deficit looms even larger. This should be placed within the context that we are seeing a bubbling in a very positive way of economic activity in the City, in particular. We do know that there are certain sectors in the City that are very quietly investing capital and are hiring people. It’s most prominent in the fire industry, fire insurance and real estate, financial services in particular. That seems to me to be a good sign and hopefully we are coming out of this recession that we have been mired in for the past few years and hopefully we will see much better signs of economic growth which will then lead to revenues that the State could provide for its agencies, and certainly consistent with our needs as well. We still do not have a Capital Budget. I shared with you the reasons. We continue in every way that we can to get out the message why it is critically important for the University to have a Capital Budget. I am particularly concerned outside of just the need for refurbishing buildings and for building new facilities, because this University is growing, and we are hiring a lot of faculty and a lot of support personnel and we have to place these people someplace, and they have to be given good places to work and our students need to have good places to study. But on the immediate issue I’m deeply concerned about health and safety issues, and we are making that pitch to the Assembly, to the Senate, and certainly to the Governor. So that is really a full-court press. We are now in the stages of putting together the Budget Request that I will recommend to the Board. We will bring this to the Board at the November meeting of the Board, which actually takes place in the first week in December because of some schedule constraints that we have. Ernesto Malave, our Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance, is now going through his due diligence and his consultation with various groups. This body has been particularly active and helpful and I thank you, Karen, and the other members of the budget advisory group here for the Senate; you’ve been splendid and have really given good ideas to us and we will incorporate what we can. We will continue to reform the senior allocation model, which is something that I have been deeply a proponent of, and I’ve shared with you why. The reason that I think we have to reform the senior college budget allocation model is that when a number of our institutions were created thirty or so years ago I believe that many of those campuses were not given the level of critical mass that they needed, the minimal level of administrative support that they need in order for those campuses to move forward. Certainly we see it in the data on faculty, the teaching power. Too many of these institutions are too highly skewed for using adjuncts instead of full-time faculty and we have to make progress to create a much more level playing field with respect to how those budgets are allocated and our commitment is to move forward with that.

Lastly, this is going to be a very active year outside of the whole issue of resources. We will expect to announce sometime in the next few months a campaign for the University, and I’ll talk more about that as this idea continues to gel. We will be developing a new Master Plan for the University. Executive Vice Chancellor Louise Mirrer is again taking the lead on that and I understand a number of sessions have either been already scheduled or have met with this body or subsets or extensions of this body and other entities as well, and we’re excited about the input and want to make this a very real consultative process as we develop a document which really is the basis for our Budget Request this year. We use the Master Plan as a basis for making decisions about how to request funds and how to allocate funds, and I take that very seriously and I expect that at the end of this process we’ll have a very good Master Plan.

I look forward to launching the School of Journalism, which is a very exciting new development. I’ve never seen an idea that has really created such excitement amongst so many different constituencies in the city, not only in media but in academic circles. The idea of having a truly University-integrated School of Journalism that will hit all of our efforts here in the University I think is quite an outstanding idea and something that I look forward to.

In the brief time that I have, I’ll be happy to take a couple of questions and then I’m going to have to leave you. I apologize for that.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – I want to ask you on the CPE, because the results are starting to come in and it’s getting serious; the College Proficiency Exam. It’s kind of casting a gloom over students, it’s starting to have its effect that it’s an axe hanging over students’ head and I’m noticing that it’s making it harder for students to be enthusiastic about ideas and lose themselves in ideas in the classroom because they have this axe; it’s what it is for a lot of students. And I’m wondering if you would consider making it more of a diagnostic for the colleges and the faculty. Instead of kicking students out on the basis of it, if the scores - the scores so far have been really good - would you consider, if the college is having a low success rate, to get on the college, get on us if we’re doing poorly with it and ask us to do more, but don’t make it a make or break test on the students, because I think it increasingly will interfere with this excitement and spontaneity of the class. / Chancellor - Professor Crain, I look forward in the future, and I don’t know when that future will be, when we can rely less on so much testing. We do an awful lot of testing in the schools and the Department of Education. We do a lot of testing here at the City University. With respect to the CPE, it is Board mandated and it is the policy of the Board that the CPE be in place. That’s issue number one. Issue number two, it’s really in its infancy. We have really just administered the first few applications of the CPE and you’re correct that the students are doing very well. Universities really have to be organic institutions, they have to shed things at some point in their life cycle that really don’t make sense anymore and they have to accumulate other kinds of things - and if in the future we feel that this is worthy of being shed I would certainly not disapprove of it.

Professor Galvin (Kingsborough Community College) - We are recipients of the community college investment program. I work in the library and we’re really excited about it, but the problem that we’re running into, and I’m just wondering if you have any suggestions, is we have money to hire new faculty, we have money to buy books, but when we go to the college and say we’re going to need maybe some extra college assistants to order and process the books, we’re told we’re actually cutting back on that. So we got a lot of money, and that was wonderful, but the ability to spend it… if money can’t be spent to enable us to buy the academically useful stuff…Any suggestion? / Chancellor - I think that’s a good question. This is similar to a questions that was asked the last time. Instead of college assistants, I think the individual asked about desks and computers. I think it’s a legitimate question, it’s a question that has merit, and it’s something that we as administrators who are responsible for allocating budgets need to be mindful of, and the degree to which we can be helpful to ensure that the new professionals that we bring in, whether they be faculty or whether they be academic support or student support, have the necessary support services, is something that I’ll be very mindful of and try to help in any way that I can.

Professor Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – I wonder if you could report on how the number of full-time lines at the senior colleges is developing. We’re now past the hiring push in the fall; you probably have some number as to whether the total number of full-time faculty has increased or decreased since last year this time. / Chancellor - We probably do have those data, Manfred, I don’t have them with me. I’d be happy to provide this body with any information that we have. Certainly this is by far in my administration, and this has been an invariant voice here over time, that we must build up the full-time faculty, and we’ve done everything humanly possible to do that. I think we’re making excellent progress. I just don’t have the data in front of me and I’ll be happy to get it to you when I can. / Professor Philipp - OK, thank you.

Professor Pecorino (Queensborough Community College) – I was just going to ask, how is the class going? / Chancellor - Class is going great. Let me tell you, it’s hard teaching. When I was a younger man it was cakewalk, but it’s hard standing up there three and a half hours after the week I have. / Professor Pecorino - I wouldn’t want to swap my job for yours. In any event, here’s the question. It’s an opening shot, so to speak. Are you or any members of your administration currently considering open access, the international movement to give greater access to the body of knowledge produced by human beings, or will you let the faculty take the initiative on this? We plan to do this anyway, my committee and I. / Chancellor - You know this reminds me of a cab driver I had in 1980. I got into a cab and a fellow had bushy hair and wire rim glasses and his name was Jacob Cohen. I got into the cab and I said, "Why do I think Jacob Cohen has a PhD?" And he didn’t answer me and he drove for a while and then he came to a stop and he turned to me and said, "Well, Jacob Cohen does have a PhD." And then I said, "I sort of knew it," and he kept on going and he said, "Let me correct myself, Jacob Cohen almost has a PhD." So I said, "What does almost mean," and he said, "I’m a student at the Graduate School and University Center. I’m working on a PhD in Philosophy." And I said, "Good for you." And I wanted to make sure that this guy was legitimate, so I asked him about some of his faculty and he responded in a way that indicated that he was legitimate. And just as we got to my destination I said, "How close are you?" and he said, "I’ve been working on my dissertation for seven years." And I said, "Why so long?" He said, "I have a difficult dissertation topic." And I said, "What is your dissertation topic?" He said, "I’m trying to prove the existence of God." And that’s about the level of this question. That would take a lot more time for me to do. But I’m interested in it. / Professor Pecorino - You’re interested in it. There’s no work being done by any member of the administration? / Chancellor - Louise would probably have better information. Are we having any people do any work on that? The answer is no, but if it’s something that’s worthy I think, yes.

Chair: Thank you so much.

It’s my great pleasure to introduce Ron Canestrari, Assembly member and Chair of the Higher Ed Committee. He’s serving his eighth term in the New York State Assembly representing the 106th Assembly District, which consists of parts of Albany, Rensselaer and Saratoga Counties. He is the Assembly’s Deputy Majority Leader as well as the Chairman of Higher Education, but also a member of the Standing Committees on Rules, Ways and Means, Banks, Labor, Transportation--I hope you have time for us in Higher Education!--Racing and Wagering, and Local Government. He chairs the Assembly working group on television coverage. He co-chairs the Assembly Intern Committee and is Chair of the Subcommittee on Transportation Capital Improvements. Prior to his election to the Assembly, Mr. Canestrari was Mayor of the City of Cohos and served as President of the New York State Conference of Mayors in 1983. I’m so pleased that he agreed to join us. He’s the new Ed Sullivan.

Ron Canestrari - Big shoes to fill there, so we don’t try that, but he is a good friend. Thank you, Susan, for that introduction and I enjoyed meeting with you Karen and a few others earlier this evening and I learned a lot at that session, too. I’ll keep my remarks very brief but maybe I can have some questions or suggestions from your end. I continue to learn and grow in this new position that I was appointed to earlier this year by Speaker Silver; I am currently Chair of Higher Education. I think actually this past year we had, under the circumstances, as good a year as we could expect with the budget that the Executive submitted to us. We made significant restorations across the board with more that $700 million that was cut from Higher Ed. It’s always been my own priority, but that of our House as well, to ensure that the Tuition Assistance Program and the opportunity programs are number one and two priorities, and we did reject the Governor’s cut to defer the TAP, as you know, until graduation; it was a joke; but nonetheless we did that and I think it was a $270 million restoration right there. We restored all the opportunity programs in addition to some of the scholarship programs too that the Governor had reduced by 50% or more. So I think it was relatively good considering how bad things were initially, and it was historic in terms of process in a lot of ways. The Governor walked away from the budget that he submitted to us and, as you know, in the past there had been a configuration of dynamics to resolve the budget negotiations with the Speaker, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and the Governor and some committees, but the Governor said this is the budget and that’s pretty much it. So we teamed up with the Senate, which no one thought would happen, including me, and reached a consensus and the Governor vetoed it twenty-one times and we overrode each veto. In fact it’s the first time in the history of the State; we’ve never overridden budget vetoes before. We had the bipartisan support on that, and the few Republicans that joined us in our House were all punished and penalized. That’s another story. So this was a historic event and I think the Governor learned a lesson from that and I think there are some things to be said in terms of next year’s process with our own legislative empowerment, if you will, with the results that we had last year, which was considered a setback for the Executive and a success for us at the Legislature and more importantly, I think, a success for the people of the state. We do face a deficit, as the Chancellor indicated, and I’ve enjoyed meeting the Chancellor. When I was first named Chair of Higher Ed. I came down to meet him. In fact we had a TV show. I was impressed by the studio here. With the Honors College students we had a half hour or so discussion and that was an interesting endeavor on my part too. But I’ve enjoyed working with him and his accessibility to me and us in the Assembly, which is quite different I might add than SUNY. And yes, you have a Capital Budget issue out there and it’s a serious one. We cannot get information from the second floor as with the Capital Budget. They want us to approve a five year plan without the specifics, without knowing campus by campus allocation or the projects within a campus. We will not do that. In fact, it’s not been released publicly yet but we’ll do it here, we’re going to have hearings both in the capital and here in the city that I’ll be conducting, trying to put on the pressure to get information out. As a legislative, for example, I want to know if in my district Hudson Valley Community College is going to have something done. We’re not going to create a slush fund for this Executive to run around the State and do what they want. So we want that information and we expect to come back into session. The Governor wants to in the first part of November; I don’t expect that will happen. I think it will be more towards the end of Thanksgiving, the end of the month or the first part of December, and I would hope, with the hearings out of the way and other pressure points that we’re putting that we can finally put this to rest when we do come back into special session. It’s a serious issue and I tend to think there’s something else here besides just not telling us. I don’t know what it is, but we’re fighting over something that’s nonsense. There should be some flexibility with each campus, if certain products don’t work out a certain percent of the funds can be used for new staircases, but we should at least know campus by campus what the plan is before we approve it. That’s the fight, and I expect it will be resolved because it’s important to all of you. You have unmet needs physically on your campuses and this is a step in the right direction if we get the information. So I expect it will be another tough year. I expect we’ll then analyze it ourselves, but we’ll re-fight some of the same battles that we had this year. I would expect he’ll try to cut TAP again and other programs because he knows we’ll put them in. So we use that money, it’s kind of a rear guard action, defending things that we know work as opposed to trying to do some other initiatives--it would be nice to try something different for a change. But I expect that will take place; the deficit could be $6 billion, maybe less because things are getting better chiefly here in the city, and this drives the economic engine of the State, let’s face it. I hope for all of our sakes it is and we can do even more for all of you in Higher Education across the state. Any questions, any comments, any concerns at your end? I’m feeling guilty leaving to go to some Broadway show, but I can always come back.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate School and University Center) – I want to get your reaction about the possibility of parity on graduate school tuition and graduate student aid between the State University and the City University. / Mr. Canestrari - It’s a good question and, to plead ignorance, I did not know that as an issue until I came down here to meet the Graduate School President and Fran highlighted that as an issue. It’s a money issue and it’s some sort of a legal issue too, which I don’t quite understand, but it’s more money than anything else. It should be addressed. Ed Sullivan tried, I’m trying, because I think it should be addressed and it hurts your program. And this thing about the doctoral students running all over the boroughs to try to make ends meet and the situation with being competitive with New Jersey as well, it’s a problem, and hopefully we can do something about it. It’s a money thing but there’s always a way and hopefully we can correct that in equality because it’s just that and I think it’s wrong.

Professor Pecorino (Queensborough Community College) – Mr. Canestrari - Don’t ask me a tough one like you asked him. / Professor Pecorino - With this one you have to tell the future. I’m quite aware New York is no exception by any means to the trend across the country where public higher education is placing more of the burden on students by increasing tuition. Is there any chance in your or my lifetime that we’ll see the State Legislature effectively pass something like a maintenance of effort bill for ten years to secure the public higher education funding at a level where New York State would rank around thirty-seven out of fifty and where students would not be expected to pay more than 25% of the operating budget. / Mr. Canestrari - No. / Professor Pecorino - Thank you. / Mr. Canestrari - I’d support it in a heartbeat. Absolutely right. Because even during the flush times, as you know more than I do, the level of maintenance has decreased, and that’s a shame even when things are good. But do I see it happening? Not with the current political landscape I do not.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – I’m Chair of the Student Affairs Committee of this body. Are you the Chair of the Racing Commission? / Mr. Canestrari - No, just a member. / Professor Crain - Just a member, so I don’t ask you whether it’s good to bet the favorites every time. / Mr. Canestrari - And I voted against casinos in the state. I don’t want OTBs in the City of New York or OTBs in upstate either. But that’s another issue and maybe it was bad issue this budget year. / Professor Crain - One of our problems is that the University is about half part-time students because a lot of students can’t afford to go full-time and TAP really doesn’t cover much for the part-time students, so that’s a problem. I’d like to thank you for the bill that the Assembly sponsored, which would preclude the use of a minimum cut off scores on a standardized test or combination of tests as a sole method of rejecting students from the City or State University. We’re going to try to get you support. Our committee supports that very strongly and we’ll try to get the body tonight to support that bill. / Mr. Canestrari - Good, that will be helpful. That is a bill that Ed Sullivan carried that I took over and I think it does make sense. We’re taking exception to cookie cutter approach that we’re seeing with higher education and elementary and secondary education as well. So we’ll try to lead and continue that fight. By the way, the part-time TAP, if it weren’t for the Assembly and Sheldon Silver, it wouldn’t be there. It’s a fight. Just an aside, and this is a nerve-wracking situation, we had our joint fiscal hearings on the budget in higher ed and we’re going over the different programs and some CUNY students, I think some of the officers in the association, gave an excellent presentation. She was so good and went through her current job situation, how many hours she puts in, her family situation in terms of changing social scene and she almost broke down and cried, and it was instructive. But the student was excellent, so whatever you’re doing you’re doing it well.

Professor Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – My question relates again to the issue of doctoral student support in this University. Some of the heads of the graduate programs have asked me to ask you whether it would be useful for them to meet with your committee or meet with other people to describe the problems that are being caused by the recent out of state tuition increase, especially for doctoral students. So we would be willing to come up and talk to you and other people, because it’s a huge problem that threatens the existence of programs. / Mr. Canestrari - I’d be glad to. I think it’s a good idea. Let’s do it, set something up, and if you have the time we have the time and we would be glad to do it.

Professor Benenson (Mechanical Engineering, City College) – A few minutes ago we heard the Chancellor in response to a question by Bill Crain blame a policy of the City University on the Board of Trustees. I think all of us are aware that our Board of Trustees consists of political appointees many of whom worked or work for the very people that appointed them. There was a bill in Albany, which I haven’t heard much about lately, that would have precluded anybody working for the administrations in the City or the State from serving on the Board of Trustees. It seems to me that this would be an opportune moment for that bill to pass since the Board continues to make political decisions with little or no educational validity. I was wondering what your position is on that bill and where it stands. / Mr. Canestrari - I’m not that familiar with the bill. I fully support it and we had this discussion with Sandi and some others at the early meeting because I think it’s a joke, the politicalization that we’ve seen both at SUNY and CUNY. I would support it without question./ Professor Benenson - But as you pointed out earlier, the Governor is not necessarily immune to vetoes. / Mr. Canestrari - No, but you’ve got to get it passed. / Professor Benenson - …or to overrides. / Mr. Canestrari - I’m not sure it’s even introduced since that. I don’t think it’s even an alive bill in the Senate. I’ve got to check that out. I would fully support it. We’ll try to get it moved this year. / Professor Benenson - The phrase, many of the legislators, if not most, are lawyers, and I’m not a lawyer but the phrase "conflict of interest" comes to mind. / Mr. Canestrari - Sure.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – This is about the capital budget and about a floating proposal that the independent colleges and universities would have the State provide $250 million of tax funds to the private colleges and universities over five years to be matched to build facilities. And one of the arguments that has been made of course it that it would help stimulate the construction industry. CUNY’s budget need for the next five years is $7 billion. We requested $2.6 billion and the Executive proposed $1.5 billion and of course nothing has been enacted because of SUNY’s situation not lining out the budget. But if we want to energize the construction industry we could certainly do it with the $7 billion need and certainly with the $2.6 billion requested need because these are tax dollars that would be used for public institutions. This is just CUNY, not counting SUNY’s capital needs. So we as a body at our last meeting voted unanimously to oppose the proposal that’s been put forward by CICU, the private colleges and universities, and we hope that you also are questioning the wisdom of this, because the privates do get of course Bundy Aid. This would be a terrible precedent, many of us feel, and there is so little money to go around and CUNY and SUNY are so underfunded on both the operating and the capital budgets that we need every dollar and we fear that, even though it’s not stated, any money that would go to the privates for capital project would come out of the capital budgets that go to CUNY and SUNY. So we are really concerned about this. / Mr. Canestrari - I understand that, in fact we discussed this at lunch today in Brooklyn. Our top priority is CUNY and SUNY’s capital budget, without a question of a doubt, and nothing will happen of the proposal until this is in place at some level of funding that’s capable of getting things done here. So that is first. I don’t really believe they’re mutually exclusive because capital is easier than operating is, as we all know, and borrowing in the out years. It can be doable; it’s a little easier to do. I think there are legitimate needs at the private college sector but it cannot be taken at your expense. It just doesn’t work, and we wouldn’t accept that. We would not accept it. I also think it’s much more difficult even with capital in tough financial times to think of doing it. So there are obstacles to overcome. However, Abe Lackman, who is a very shrewd individual and he was in charge of finances for the Senate Majority and well respected, is lining this out very well in terms of grassroots efforts across the State. So those who are opposed to this or see problems with this certainly can’t rest on their laurels thinking it may not happen because he is building momentum for it very well. It’s his responsibility, his job. Don’t discount this proposal in any way, shape or manner. / Professor Kaplowitz - No. Thank you. We don’t and that’s why I’m speaking to the issue because of course the private colleges and universities have an ability to lobby that we don’t. They’re not constrained as we are in many ways and we are very concerned and we take it very seriously and perhaps at some point we can have some private conversations with you about it. Thank you.

Mr. Canestrari - Here comes the bombshell, I can tell. / Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island and The Graduate School and University Center) – That was before I started collecting social security. Back two questions to the question of the quality of Trustees, I realize all the roadblocks placed in the way of getting a legislation passed that might address this issue because we’ve been fighting it for a good decade. But we did mention earlier the possibility of pushing for the restoration of a very old tradition, which was the blue ribbon panel making recommendations. And I was happy to hear you thought that might work, I hope. I have one other sort of practical idea--I don’t know whether you can get into this. We normally down here find out three minutes before the Senate Committee votes who’s going to be approved, which doesn’t give us an awful lot of time to do any investigation and publicity or anything on that level and to deal with the quality of the individuals who’ve been nominated for these posts. It’s held in great secrecy. If there would be some way for your committee to flush out these names in something like a week’s notice, so that we might be able to get into the act, because there have been such horrible appointments made in the last decade, seven years or so. Some of the people on these Boards are public embarrassments. They for example wouldn’t pass our English writing and reading exams. / Mr. Canestrari - I don’t know the answer to that because they would tell us in the Assembly after they tell you, because they know where we are going to come from. But there must be a way to find out. / Professor Cooper -There are Democrats on that committee. / Mr. Canestrari - That’s right. Maybe the Democratic, the Minority Leader on the Senate, Padavan, maybe that’s a contact. I could find that out. I’ll check that out.

Professor Bell (Educational Services, Brooklyn College) – Another graduate problem. SUNY students and SEEK and HEOP students who are graduates and do then go on to graduate school are given tuition wavers at SUNY. There is no such equity at CUNY, and this has been going on for about the past dozen years. So I’m in the position of having to say, "Well, if you want full tuition go to SUNY," to my own students. Many of our students succeed and go to graduate school. At the current moment I have almost two hundred of my graduates in graduate school at Brooklyn College. And most of them have to go part-time and do other things, which is fine, but if the SUNY students are getting tuition waivers I would like to see our students have the same privilege. / Mr. Canestrari - What is the rationale, what’s the reason why it’s this system? I don’t know. / Professor Bell - The reasons CUNY was excluded? Arthur Eve wrote the bill originally for SUNY because that’s where he was at the moment and so it only covered SUNY and it never reached out to CUNY. / Mr. Canestrari - From the beginning of the opportunity programs. / Professor Bell - This was passed about twelve or fifteen years ago. It’s in my lifetime as a faculty member. I wasn’t here at the beginning of the opportunity programs. I’ve only been here for twenty seven years. But this in the past ten or twelve years that kids aren’t being treated equally, and if they make it through college and want to go to graduate school they should have the same privilege as everybody else. / Mr. Canestrari - I agree. I didn’t know. Thank you.

Chair - Thank you so much. I think you’re in time to get to the theatre. / Mr. Canestrari - There’s always time for that. / Chair - But you’ll be hearing from us, we’ll come up and visit you. Thank you so much.

I started the meeting with the Chancellor and Ron Canestrari. Of course we simply didn’t have time to approve the agenda. What I want to add to the agenda, if it’s all right with the body, is I’d like to have a discussion with those people interested on the Academic Integrity Report. I’m not allowed to release the whole thing because we’re still talking about it, if you can believe it, although I have it right here, but what I did was to put some questions that they asked me to ask the faculty. But first let’s go through other things.

Approval of the minutes.

Let me give my report quickly. To date we’ve had two focus groups to develop faculty initiatives for the new Master Plan. I think they’ve been pretty successful. Dean Savage, from Queens College, and Robert Kelly, Emeritus from Brooklyn College, are co-chairing the focus groups and they’ll write up the recommendations. They’ll go to the Executive Committee and then we’ll circulate them to the Faculty Senate. The first focus group covered issues such as the percentage of full time faculty lines, diversity, status of women at CUNY, and graduate education. The second group that was held this afternoon, and I thought was very successful, covered testing, both the ACT and the CPE; evaluation of remediation policies; ESL and Counseling. The third focus group will be held on Friday, November 14, at 9:30 at John Jay. It will focus on articulation, graduation in a timely manner, general education, academic program review, teacher education, and new programs, majors and schools. If you want, you may join the third focus group. Call the UFS Office. There may also be a fourth focus group on disability. Did that happen today, yes, you’re going to plan a fourth? Excellent. So that will be the fourth one. And I don’t know if ESL is going to hold a separate one. I’ve been communicating with them.

Second, I think in the back there is the flier for the conference on the Patriot Act and the University. This will be held on Friday, November 21, at Hunter School of Social Work. Today we got the last speaker set and I am so pleased at the line up. The speakers include historian Ellen Shrecker, who will put the Patriot Act in a historical context; head of the New York ACLU, Donna Lieberman, who will review the Patriot Act One and Two with us; American Library Association past President Mitch Freedman, who will speak on how the act compromises librarians; columnist Allan Wernick on immigration issues; Carol Corillon, Director of the Committee on Human Rights at The National Academy of Sciences, The National Academy of Engineering and The Institute of Medicine--she’ll speak on the implications of the Act for scientists; and historian Joan Scott of Princeton’s Center for Advanced Studies, who will speak on current university cases that involve the Patriot Act. So I hope you’re coming. I’m really excited. It should be a good day. There will be plenty of time to ask questions too.

Third, faculty experience survey. It’s been scrutinized by Vice Chancellor Mirrer and the Chancellor and now it’s back in Dean David Crook’s hands. He promised me that it would be ready in two days’ time. This is a faculty experience survey that we hope to pilot it this term. We hope that this information will be used in the evaluation of Presidents as part of their performance measures.

Four, Rita DiMartino, the new Trustee, was supposed to come today. She couldn’t come but she will be joining us next month.

Five, the internal committee of journalism professors has been formed. Glenn, have you heard anything from them at all? First, let me just say who’s on the committee: Karen Hunter, from Hunter College; Roslyn Bernstein, Baruch; Wayne Svoboda, Queens College; Linda Prout, appointed by the UFS, from City College; Glenn Lewis, also a UFS recommendation, York College; Paul Moses, Brooklyn College; Greg Donaldson, John Jay; Joshua Mills, Baruch; Christopher Hallowell, Baruch; Adrian Meppen, Brooklyn College; Anthony Mancini, Brooklyn College; and Louse Mirrer, Jay Hershenson, and Mike Arena. So that’s the committee. Glenn, do you want to say quickly what has happened?

Glenn Lewis (English, York) - Basically, it began with Louise Mirrer giving an idea of what the overall view of the program should be and what they’re looking for. They’re looking pretty much to do a one year Master’s Program, which I think is smart, because Columbia has gone to a two year program. The Columbia program is something like $45-50,000 a year; same thing at NYU. If we can offer a comprehensive one-year program, which would include work over the summer as well, I think there’s a likelihood that we can get more students from the City University who can afford it. One of the things that I brought up at the meeting was that I felt we should consider at some point a minimum requirement for recruitment of a certain percentage coming from the City University. I don’t like the idea of so many graduate programs at the City University really being constructed and run for everybody but students from the City University. I think that’s a mistake and I think it should start to change with this program. Another thing as well is that we talked along the lines of doing probably a 30-36 credit program so it could be done within a year. It will be a combination of broadcast journalism and print journalism with some online journalism as well. Another thing that was brought up by Vice Chancellor Mirrer is the idea that it should definitely be housed in a neutral site in Manhattan so that there really is a University-wide flavor to this and no sense of ownership among any of the colleges involved. I think there were extra people representing Baruch and Brooklyn because those schools do have Master’s Programs in journalism, and I think there was to some degree a feeling of their programs maybe being a little threatened by this. So I think they do deserve to have that extra representation there. One of the things that came out of this was to look at a more interesting way of doing the program. One of the things that seemed to get strong support was the idea of creating a University news service that would be a function of this program. In other words all of the broadcast journalism and print journalism courses would be hooked into this new service and all the work for these courses would be producing real articles or real pieces of television that would go to everything from community newspapers and local cable channels to national networks and to major newspapers. The idea, which I guess we’ll be talking about in the future, is do we try to sell this and make money for the program and the University or do we do it as an accommodation? And also there was a lot of talk on team teaching, and the idea of involving people from around the University who are doing anything connected with urban studies and making some of the more advanced courses team taught between a journalism person and a person from urban studies, so that we hit quite a few of these areas. / Chair - When is it going to start? / Glenn Lewis - I think we’re all hoping Fall 2005. Obviously, there is no capital budget yet. She asked us to finish our deliberations within four to six months, and I think as soon as we do the idea is to do a national search for a very prominent person to be the Dean of the school. She also talked about the idea of maybe hiring five full-time new journalism people for that School of Journalism and then the understanding would be that at least several of us from the committee would be involved with teaching there and that we would be drawing people at least on a part-time basis from around the University. So it’s really hard to tell because it’s hard to tell how many programs are going to be involved. Right now we’re trying to talk about one central program, but it hasn’t even been made clear yet if some of these other existing programs that are now at Baruch and Brooklyn will be brought under this umbrella and kept the way they are or blended into this program.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – I’m just interested in what you said about the Graduate School, that it tends not to service CUNY graduates. Glenn Lewis - From what I’ve been hearing overall, at least in some of the existing programs in the University, there is a tendency to draw quite a few students from outside the University. / Professor Cooper - But that’s what graduate programs do. / Glenn Lewis - I understand, but I think one of the other things that we’re trying to get across here as well is that because so many of these quality graduate programs, at least in journalism, are so expensive and so out of the reach of our students, if we don’t offer a certain proportion of our students something affordable that can give them the leg up in a very competitive industry, then who will?

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate School and University Center) – I think that’s a very good idea. I’ve served on the admissions committee to my program several times and I’ve been involved well over three decades and one of the things I’ve noticed is that as the program gets better and better it’s less and less likely that any City University graduate qualifies to be admitted to a PhD program in Philosophy anywhere in the City of New York. So the idea of building in a preference say for 25% or 30% in this program from the City University is perfectly reasonable. / Glenn Lewis - Don’t you believe that you can do this without hurting the quality of the admissions? / Professor Baumrin - Absolutely. / Glenn Lewis - Can I ask one more question of you? Is there a true recruitment effort among these programs in the University to let students know what’s available as far as graduate programs in the University and to try to get our best students involved in our own graduate programs?

Professor Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – Just to answer that, in the sciences we do have a specific recruitment program. We have bridge programs that facilitate students going from CUNY colleges to the graduate program. The other thing is of course the department Chairs are on the executive committee in my programs, so they have a vested interest in doing that. They are the same people who advise the students who run the program here. But there is a problem: The Graduate Center is not financially competitive with other programs. Our students are financially better off going somewhere else. / Unidentified - Why is that? / Professor Philipp - Because we can’t give them the tuition remission and the financial aid that other people can give. They don’t charge graduate students any tuition in the sciences. Doctoral education in the sciences historically in the United States has always been free everywhere, public and private. I never paid a penny in tuition as a doctoral students at a private university. So why should they come here where we are uniquely charging them tuition. They’d be crazy.

Professor Savage (Sociology, Queens College) – I found in my field that there is actually quite an active outreach effort attempting to see if students are interested in going on. I first tried to persuade them not to make such a mistake since I believe it’s currently a bad career choice given the job market. But I think that there are major problems, one of which Manfred has mentioned, and that is the lack of multiple year financial aid packages. Having said that, a measure of the success of a really top ranked graduate program is precisely that it is going to recruit its graduate students from a national recruitment pool and we shouldn’t expect as New York City produces a declining proportion of Bachelor’s graduates in the country, because New York is shrinking as a source of Bachelor’s degrees, that we should expect that a steady source of our doctoral students is going to come from the City University. It’s going to get smaller. As your programs are becoming very successful, it’s going to get smaller.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – Since there is a tremendous paucity of people of color in the print and broadcast media, certainly beyond anchors, there is a tremendous need, and the cost, as Glenn said, for the private schools of journalism, aside from Baruch and Brooklyn of course, but NYU and Columbia, is just prohibitive. I think that this is a very unusual circumstance and there have been these conferences that have been held for journalism students at CUNY for the last two years and have drawn five hundred students from throughout the colleges. There’s a tremendous need and interest on the part of CUNY students and I think this is wonderful.

Chair - Thank you. Two short things. One is twenty nine of us are going to Governors Island on Thursday. We’ll let you know how it goes. We have one more spot: we can go up to thirty if anyone else wants to come. The second is the newsletter should be out in your boxes in two weeks.

Now my least favorite subject, which is The School of Professional Studies. The School of Professional Studies governing board, the faculty governing board, met and voted that all credit courses offered by what I call SOPS must be approved by the governing board and all resumes of all faculty teaching the courses must be reviewed. The Executive Committee is proposing that resumes of all faculty teaching in SOPS be reviewed by a relevant EO at The Graduate School or by an appointments committee of a relevant campus department, and that courses that are said to articulate with a SOPS course must have been approved by local governance. Thanks to Charles Tobey, Chair of Brooklyn College’s Faculty Senate, and Martha Bell for all the work they did with the SOPS fiasco at Brooklyn College. I think we’ve gotten through it. So that’s where we are with SOPS. I don’t know if you have any questions or anything you want to say or if we can move on to academic integrity.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – I saw in the Sunday Times that we have a search for Associate Dean of the School of Professional Studies. / Chair - That was in your packet for the last Executive Committee meeting. / Professor Kaplowitz - We should have a person on the search committee. / Chair - Yes, there will be two faculty members on the search committee and I certainly hope that the governing board faculty will be consulted. All right, anything else on SOPS?

Professor Philipp (Chemistry, Lehman College) – I think the intent was to include not just the EO but the EO and the Executive Committees of their programs so that the advice would be a little broader, not just the EOs in their personal capacity. / Chair - It shouldn’t just be one person at each program at The Graduate Center. / Chair - Right. Let me just change this.

And your committee just discussed it.

Professor Barnhart (Kingsborough Community College) - Yes, we did. Michael Barnhart, Chairman of the Academic Policy Committee. We were just discussing SOPS and said this is something new I guess that we need to throw into the hopper in terms of our considerations. I guess my only concern is how much further can we go in terms of possibly pushing them in the direction of further faculty control over the curricular development related to SOPS. / Chair - This is one attempt with this resolution that will go to the Executive Committee and then come back to this body for discussion. / Professor Barnhart - I guess my question is should my committee continue to pursue this in terms of additional possible changes. / Chair - Well if you’ve got some ideas and some strategies, they’re always appreciated since this is a very difficult situation.

Professor Baumrin (Philosophy, The Graduate School and University Center) –This is a comment on clarification. The School of Professional Studies nominally is associated with the Graduate School and falls under the purview, along with the CUNY BA, of the President of the Graduate School. Hence, the vetting of curricula vitae through the Executive Committees of the Graduate School is not asking for anything that oughtn’t already to have been there. Permitting the CVs to be reviewed by department P & B committees is also perfectly all right and they never should have made a proposal which didn’t include that. / Chair - Agreed, but getting them to agree to this is another issue.

Chair - Now, academic integrity. The policy, here it is, the draft of academic integrity. We met yesterday and I thought I would be able to give this to you. We got into a few little tangles so I’m not able to give it to you. I put questions to be resolved concerning the academic integrity reporting the back. These questions Dean Hill, who chairs the committee asked me to get faculty input on these questions. What’s in quotes is from the policy. [Reads question 1] So the proposal is to have a new grade, the XF grade, which indicates that a student has plagiarized. Because of the F grade policy, when you give an F a student may retake the course. A PEN grade may be assigned when the XF grade is pending. The question that I want addressed is "Is the XF grade a good idea? And then "Should the XF grade be removed once the student graduates or should that student have it forever on her transcripts?" These are the kinds of things we discussed at the Academic Integrity meeting last week.

Professor Pecorino (Queensborough Community College) – I have four things to say in opposition to both proposals, and that’s proposed policy, that’s not a passed policy. First the XF grade it’s irrevocable. I understand they think that’s a good way to punish them but suppose it’s in a course that’s an absolute requirement for a degree. That would in fact amount to an expulsion from the degree program if not from the college, because if you need a passing grade in that course and you can’t get one…/ Unidentified - You take it again. / Professor Pecorino - And you average it out? OK. Second, knowing about this grade on a record, which I suppose faculty would if they check in SIMS, it’s got to be some place, what would it be. It says the faculty assign an XF grade.

Professor Kaplowitz (English, The John Jay College of Criminal Justice) – Can I just, before you continue, give a little background to supplement Susan’s. The idea behind this is that right now because of the F grade policy, which was proposed by Stanley Fink when he was a Board of Trustees member and was opposed by the faculty, allows a student to take a course again that they’ve gotten an F grade in and then if they get a C or higher that higher grade counts and only that grade counts. So for students who plagiarize or cheat and one does not want to bring charges and have the student dismissed or expelled or put on suspension, the F grade is not the most punitive grade. A D grade is the most punitive or a D- grade, and an F grade in fact is a grade that allows students to take the course again and get a higher grade and often it’s a kind of reward for working the system. So what we wanted to create was a deterrent. Something that was not as extreme as disciplinary charges and possibly once it goes out of your hands to the disciplinary committee it could be an extremely punitive action, but something that was a deterrent and that would be a way of students getting an F that would be an F that could not be changed and could not be improved. The idea would be that the student of course because it’s an F grade can take the course again for credit and that A would count but the XF would still be there, unlike the F grade. In terms of averaging our thought was, and we’re trying to work it out, that the XF grade not be available on the SIMS system, that it would be in the record but not available for faculty to see it. We don’t want to bias. This hasn’t been made clear yet, but the point is that if other people could see the XF grade it would be a deterrent effect. And it would be a due process with the student--it couldn’t just be given by a faculty member.

Professor Pecorino (Queensborough Community College) – So if they’ve got to work out those details, it’s still a bad idea. Why? Because if the faculty will be aware of it they certainly will be aware of this XF process if it’s created. It might be daunting and discouraging them then because they might think it’s too extreme. There are other measures that maybe they would prefer. But the basic reasons why I’m opposed to it is it’s not needed, if a student violates academic integrity and the faculty process arrives at an outcome that’s reported to the office of student affairs. When the office keeps a record the repeat offender can be penalized for the second, third, whatever the college policy is, offense. So it does the same thing as the XF being recorded but the offense is recorded in a different manner and you don’t have to worry about the computers and the SIMS record or whatever because it’s confidential in the Office of Student Affairs. Second is putting this matter into the disciplinary process, when members of the disciplinary review process are often not involved in classroom situations and can’t really maybe identify with what’s going on with the incident. So why take it so far out of the academic departments and faculty process of review. Also, the disciplinary process is often reported by faculty to be biased in favor of the students. Students have all kinds of support that they’re given through the process; faculty thus far have practically none. Third, it’s too daunting to put a simple offense of a classroom cheating incident through the entire disciplinary process when we can create an alternative process with due process involved in it for the student within the department, namely the grade review process where the students gets notified of what the student’s rights are and that first review is reviewed again by a second faculty committee. So these two measures that are proposed are basically not needed and will lead into more complications that are going to be, I think, off-putting the faculty. Why go though all of this? / Chair - The difficulty is going to be that you haven’t seen the whole report. I’m just taking something out of context. I think this is useful but at the same time this XF grade is an extreme thing and we’ve got it so that most of it does take part at the departmental level and academic versus disciplinary and all of that. But out of context I’m not sure this is going to work. But let’s continue.

Bernie - I just feel this is the wrong venue for this kind of discussion and I would propose that this be tabled until some sensible and smart committee comes up with a recommendation that the faculty can reasonably accept. It’s a motion to table to a time indefinite.

Chair - Voting. Then it’s tabled. My concern is when I see you next this report will be done. The meeting on the Academic Integrity Policy was planned for tonight. The Chancellor said he had to be at dinner at quarter of eight; Mr. Canestrari said he had to be at the theatre at eight. I had a meeting yesterday with Karen on this policy. I had pressured Vice Chancellor Hill to distribute this policy tonight so that we could look at it. It was decided yesterday I couldn’t. So it seemed to me to make sense to distribute some of the questions that we were arguing about in the committee to get faculty input but perhaps this doesn’t work without the whole context. I certainly stand advised by that. It’s just by next month I fear this is going to be a done deal. I hope it won’t be and that I can get it to you and then we can discuss it in some kind of sane manner. / Unidentified - Who’s drawing it up? / Chair - Otis Hill, Vice Chancellor of Student Development and Enrollment Management, is drawing it up with a committee. The committee was only going to have one faculty member on it, which was me, but I fought to get two. There are a number of list of administrators and two faculty. Karen and I have been trying to get a decent policy. We thought that maybe we could get some good ideas from this body, but I don’t know if this discussion works out of context.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – A point of information, if not order. I am getting the impression based on the last phrase in the first number one point involving the Dean of Student Affairs or the Chief Academic Officer, that the thrust of the committee that the two of you are on wishes to preserve the policy which has enraged a great many of us for a very long time in some fashion or another by continuing to give the Student Affairs Office the final say in these grades. / Professor Kaplowitz - That’s not it. We got that changed. / Chair - We got it changed. / Professor Kaplowitz - I think Susan’s right. Out of context it doesn’t make sense. The key part that we got changed is that the faculty will decide the grade. Chair - I think this is over. There was a motion to table and a second and there is no discussion in the motion to table. We tabled this discussion, this report. What is the sense of the body, what would you like? Would you like to continue talking about this? I think the sense of the body is that we should see the whole report and then proceed in some kind of rational fashion and that I was wrong to try to take these questions out of context.

Professor Benenson - Can I make a friendly recommendation? My friendly recommendation is whoever writes the report ought to be somebody that has passed the writing test without cheating because this is incomprehensible. It’s self contradictory and it doesn’t really mean anything. I can’t figure out what it means.

Chair - I think this discussion is over and we’re going home. See you next month.

Professor Pecorino – Point of order for the good of the body. I’m very happy to have so many members of the group here but I think we may have outgrown the size of these two compartments. Is it possible to schedule slightly larger space.

Chair - Let’s see what we can do. Anyway, I’ll see you next month with this report in hand.