Present: M. Rea, N. Rolnick, R. Diwan, K. Fortun, M. Hanna, J. Norsworthy, A. Desrochers, R. Leifer, J. McLaughlin, J. Haddock, A. Van Epps, r. Parsons, P. Boyce
Absent: A. Kapila, P. Quinn,
Guests: Jim McKim, Ruben Mendoza, Lael Dickinson,
Agenda
Approval of Minutes of
Continued Discussion with Faculty from
the
Ruben Mendoza
Summary Reports from Board of Trustees Meeting
Meetings of
the Trustees Committee on Student Life
Student Leadership
Report – Kristine Norgren, President of the
Eric Schmidt
- Grand Marshall
Class of 2003 – David Haviland, Vice President for Student Life and Teresa
Duffy, Dean of Undergraduate
Admissions
Spring 2000 Greek Futures Forum – David Haviland; Eddie Knowles, Dean of
Students and
Norris Pearson, Assistant Dean of Students
Student Life Update
– David Haviland
Trustee’s
Academic Affairs Committee – Mike Hanna
M. Hanna: I’d like to call the meeting to order and change the agenda again. We aren’t going to have the discussion about the National Polls, because the material isn’t ready yet. So we need to approve the agenda, minus the discussion about the polls. Passed. Unanimously.
Approval
of Minutes of
M. Hanna: Now we need to approve the Minute for October 5.
J. Norsworthy: I move to strike my final comment from the record.
M. Hanna: This can be a friendly amendment. Passed. Unanimously.
Continued
Discussion with Faculty from the
Jim McKim, Lael
Dickinson, Ruben Mendoza
As you know, we’ve invited representatives from the
J. McKim: By headcount, we have 2000 students. Divided by two to account for the fact that most are part time means we have the equivalent of 1000 students. Each of about 40 faculty tech eighteen credits a year.
L. Dickinson: I’ve been associated with Lally for 18
years. I got my PhD here. I’ve been on the faculty for three
years. Our maximum class size is 50-55. Typically, 20-45. We don’t have graduate teaching
assistants. Since I came to
N. Rolnick: You teach 18 credits a year? Does this mean you teach on a trimester system?
L. Dickinson: No, we’re on a semester system.
R. Diwan: Do you have 4-credit courses?
J. McKim: Computer Science has some, Lally doesn’t.
G. Gabriele: Could you characterize the kinds of scholarship faculty do to prepare for a class as well as the other kinds of scholarship faculty do?
J. McKim: Many faculty do research though not often funded research. Many faculty go to conferences, some paid for by the conference. I think I would characterize it as applied research. Then we have people who are much more on the clinical side, who don’t do much research.
G. Gabriele: What percentage of the faculty participate in conferences – not necessarily presenting, just attending?
J. McKim: Everyone in Computer Science will now. I’m the chair of the department.
G. Gabriele: Is it the same in Lally?
L.
J. McKim: Faculty publish in trade journals; in the flagship publications of professional groups; in places like the ACE. Refereed journals.
R. Leifer: Since many of the faculty are involved in distance learning, many are involved in distance learning education evaluation – using interesting tools.
N. Rolnick: On this campus, there is a big incentive
to keep the research steam going. Is
this the case at
J. McKim: I evaluate people on a 60/20/20 model: Teaching-Service-Professional Development.
M. Rea: We hear that it’s really one
J. McKim: I want it to be. I don’t’ know if it makes sense to make
We think of the
M. Rea: We’ve had many discussions about representation. Can you share you perspectives on this with us?
L. Dickinson: Recently, there has been massive
upheaval in the
R. Mendoza: I just joined the faculty, so I don’t
have much to say, except that when I joined the faculty at
R. Leifer: Mark asked about representation.
J. McKim: Somehow, clinical faculty got left out of
the governance structure without good reason.
We think that we should be allowed to run for office, to vote, just like
other faculty. AT another Institution, I
was on the
M. Rea: People have been very torn on this issue – because of concerns about real differences between the campuses, as well as about tenure. Can we talk frankly about what the differences between us are?
J. McKim: I don’t think you solve the differences by leaving clinical faculty out.
R. Parson: Wouldn’t it be appropriate for you to be
represented through the computer science department or should
M. Hanna: a number of clinical faculty on this campus want to be represented through their departments. Would this work for you? Is there a real need for separate representation?
J. Norsworthy: Is there a need that would be met, or partially
met, by a faculty council at
J. McKim: We had such a council before the
merger. We’re small enough that everyone
on the entire faculty was on the Senate.
Except deans and department chairs.
Like many
The point now is that we want to be one
L. Dickinson: The question was, “do we want our own representation?” Yes.
R. Diwan: There are two issues: representation itself, and the mode of representation. What is our objective here?
J. McKim: I’d rather see a
J. Norsworthy: At the risk of encouraging revolution,
how would you respond to shuttle buses going between here and there? Is that an idea the
M. Hanna: The question is whether there are enough interactions between the campuses to create a sustainable mechanism for moving people back and forth.
Another issue relates to the library. Can graduate students at
J. McKim: There are limits. I don’t believe
M. Hanna: What about the RH in an email address? Why, if we are one place, don’t ‘we have one domain? [Further discussion on library and electronic resources.]
K. Fortun: You articulated your understanding of our
campus as a place that gives professional undergraduate degrees- and said that
[Clarification from Jim McKim: Since we only offer technical
Master’s degrees, we don’t have the resources to provide nor do our students
have the freedom to take, Liberal Arts courses.
However, the faculty have broad interests that will come through in
their teaching and in day-to-day dealings with students. For example, one of my faculty has a degree
in Linguistics and is something of a student of Oriental culture. Two others are very interested in Biology and
have been keeping up with the Bioinformatics class that we are downloading from
P. Boyce: I think we are kidding ourselves to suggest
that there are no significant differences.
The distance between
J. McLaughlin: What body would faculty at
J. McKim: We want something more specific. Faculty representatives. Enfranchisement.
J. McLaughlin: So you’re saying that you think it would be most effective for you to come to this body to solve your problems?
J. McKim: Maybe we come here by videoconference, as opposed to making the trip. But we need to be here.
M. Rea: I personally would support having two representative invited to participate.
L. Dickinson: Yes.
R. Leifer: We could do that in the short term.
M. Rea: Couldn’t we just decide to invite them?
A. Desrochers: Isn’t it strange that
R. Leifer: I make a motion that we invite two faculty
from
M. Rea: I think this is a generous offer, but it should be finite.
J. Norsworthy: It would be limited by the tenure of this Senate.
K. Fortun: why do we need to vote on this? These are open meetings. And generally – historically – it isn’t a good idea to legislate something that is already possible.
R. Leifer: I make a motion to formally invite members
of
Summary
Reports from Board of Trustees Meeting
Meetings
of the Trustees Committee on Student Life
K. Fortun: As Recording Secretary, I attended the Trustee’s meeting on Student Life, chaired by David Haviland. A lot of information was distributed. I’ve listed the key points of the discussion on these slides – and want to emphasize the concern expressed about scheduling and the effects on student life.
[Student
Leadership Report – Kristine Norgren, President of the
-
Update on renovations:
- Focus on vitality of Union clubs
- Rensselaer/Troy initiative: Plans to open movie theater downtown
- Plans for initiative on campus diversity
- Concerns about the network not working
- Concerns about scheduling: the PRIORITY, that implicates everything else.
Class
of 2003 – David Haviland, Vice President for Student Life and
Teresa Duffy, Dean
of Undergraduate Admissions
- Enrolled record of 1,328 students. Applications up 13%. Yield at 32%
- Average SAT: 1281 (up 15 points from Fall 98 average)
-
“In our market, only MIT yields better
than
- Our minority graduation rate is converging with the majority rate and is 50% higher than at other technical universities.
Spring
2000 Greek Futures Forum – David Haviland; Eddie Knowles, Dean of Students
and Norris Pearson, Assistant Dean of Students
- 25 Fraternities with 931 total members; 4 Sororities with 186 total members
- Greek systems is now under national scrutiny
-
Plans for Spring conference (March 25-26),
to rewrite “Relationship Statement” which is now ten years old.]
[Student
Life Update – David Haviland
- Scheduling since the transition to 4x4 has had dramatically negative impacts on student life
- “Liberal Arts colleges figured something out a long time ago: Students need to learn more than we can tech them, which means that they need time to reflect.”
- Current scheduling doesn’t facilitate productive team work.
- Current scheduling doesn’t reflect how much we value the residential experience, and the importance of creating an overall environment for learning.
- Scheduling corrections will be particularly important as we realign the university with the Rensselaer Plan, stressing the contribution made by all five Schools – and thus the importance of every class in a student’s schedule.
- Possible proposals: switch to Monday/Thursday; Tuesday/Friday schedule. Limit or discourage evening classes.]
J. Norsworthy: The Banner system is often blamed for inflexibility in scheduling. Is this the problem?
G. Gabriele: I think we have too much flexibility. My office has started looking into it. Other universities have a lot more constraints, laid down by the faculty.
M. Rea: Can you share these constraints with us?
G. Gabriele: We’ve started the research, and will get back to the Senate with what we come up with.
R. Leifer: We shouldn’t forget that this was the primary area of discussion with students we had last year.
G. Gabriele: Many schools designate a significant amount of time as “sacred time” when no classes can be scheduled.
N. Rolnick: We’ve found that the only way we can fill up our classes for non-majors is to have them in the evenings.
R. Diwan: This is connected to incentive based
budgeting. Trying to attract students,
we teach at
Trustee’s
Academic Affairs Committee – Mike Hanna
M. Hanna: I
need to give my report from the Trustee’s Academic Affairs Committee and give
an update on appointments. Jim
Napolitano has been appointed as the new Vice Provost of IT. Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer has been appointed
interim Dean of Science. William A.
Baeslack III has been appointed as Dean of Engineering.
The chair of the dean of science search committee is Bruce Watson. The chair of the provost search committee is Doyle Daves. The chair of the search committee fro the Vice President of Research and Dean of Graduate Education is Toh-Ming Lu.
We also talked about the future impacts of the laptop program. We have to be prepared for when the students with laptops now become sophomores and we have another group of freshman. Course requirements, space. There are a lot of things to deal with.
J. McLaughlin: Last year, when we received the laptop program, there were provisions for updating about six classrooms a year. Are you suggesting that there’s a need over and beyond this?
G. Gabriele: yes. I think there were about 20 classrooms upgraded last summer.
K. Fortun: The infrastructure also has to be evaluated. Whom do you call, for example, if you have a problem with the network?
N. Rolnick: I’ve heard of enormous printing problems. Student’s cards don’t always work.
G. Gabriele: Two things aren’t included here: Next year, a very high percentage of students will be Computer Science and IT. So special burdens will be placed on associated classes. Also, first year studies courses are at capacity.
M. Hanna: I’ve
included in the handout my statement on clinical faculty. It may be that the new VP of Human Resources
can help us with this. A trustee said
that it looks as though a category of faculty was created, and no one was
watching it. [See attachment: M.
Hanna’s “report to the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees,
M. Hanna:
Before we lose everyone, there was a discussion one of my colleagues had
with Dr. Jackson that I was asked to share.
A discussion in which it was said that tenure would become a possibility
at
M. Rea: Why are you telling us this?
M. Hanna: Because I was told that we should talk about it.
M. Rea: Are we done talking about it?
R. Parson: If we have a President and Provost who stress the importance of tenure, it will change the nature of our discussion.
M. Rea: With all due respect, isn’t that up to us to decide? Are you suggesting that because the President told us not to worry about it, we shouldn’t? Haven’t we gotten a quite predictable administrator’s response?
M. Hanna:
There is one other point I would like to bring up. In the past, the President of the
N. Rolnick: Any explanation?
M. Hanna: I was told that it was not a format that was favored anymore. We shouldn’t take it as routine that we will observe. I don’t think it’s geared specifically at us. Only the President and her immediate staff attended the meeting.
R. Parson: This might be part of an effort to get the trustees to pull back from involvement in day-to-day activities on campus.
J. McLaughlin:
The chair of the Planning and Resources Committee attends the Trustee’s
Finance Committee. I suggest a report on
what happened at the Finance Committee be included when Trustee Committee
reports are given to the
Motion to adjourn.
Prepared by K. Fortun, Recording Secretary