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A&S Senate 
Tentative Agenda
February 22, 2016

 

3:30 President Report
3:35 CASA by-laws discussion
4:00 New Business

 


A&S Senate Meeting
Minutes
November 16, 2015

I.  Approval of agenda:  approved.

II.  Approval of minutes from October 19, 2015.

III.  President’s Report (M. Schedel)

  • This is the last meeting of the semester.  Start thinking about agenda items for next spring.

IV.  CASA Constitution Change (2nd reading)  (N. Hollingsworth)

  • No changes, just that the Provost Office asked us to be more explicit as to what the duties were of the Executive Officer.  Amended the by-laws and was posted on the google drive.  We get petitions from Journalism, SoMAS and the Library so they wanted it to be specific that anyone who is a faculty member in those areas are eligible for membership in CASA.  M. Schedel:   Rick Gatteau is fine with CASA no longer dealing with the College of Business.  We also had a long discussion with him about the students on the committee.  Initially he was a little hesitant about that.  They haven’t been showing up to meetings so that hasn’t been an issue but we agreed there should be students on the committee.  The administration is quite happy with the changes.

V.  CAS Dean’s Report (S. Kopp)

  • Campaign for Stony Brook starts on Saturday.  The President will be announcing a $600 Mil. campaign for advancement and philanthropy for the University.  About $400 Mil.  has been raised so far.  All the units on campus have been asked to do is to think about their priorities for fundraising for the remainder of the campaign to get us to $600 Mil.   Along with the department chairs I have been spending some time thinking about priorities for the College of Arts and Sciences and we have put together a wish list of $50 Mil.  We are in many ways able to identify all of the things that we would like to be truly excellent as a great research university.  The chairs and I thought that endowed professorships, endowing graduate fellowships, providing research funds, or undergraduate scholarships would make all of the departments and the programs of the college stronger.  That is not a very surprising list of things to go ask for money for.  It is, however, not a very appealing set of things.  A lot of conversation has been really focused on how to package that.  How to ask for that in a way that conveys an opportunity for future donors.  I am going to say the same things now but with a different list in mind – it has the same outcome.  The list is intended to match our interests as a college along with where our prospects are today.  The areas we came up with were to look at further propelling the Physical Sciences, the area of the Humanities Institute or the public humanities, the idea of core facilities for the Life Sciences, and Digital Arts, humanities, and sciences.   We put a wish list together for Undergraduate programs and scholarships and altogether these things add up to  $50 Mil.  It would likely go in the form of endowment.  Working on trying to develop a case statement for the campaign in time for when the President announces his overall umbrella university campaign.   Very different model then we are used to.  We have a great number in gift accounts across the college right now but because of the way they are set up they are very specific and often in small increments of money.  Have about four years’ worth of interest accrual from endowments sitting in accounts.

T. Sears:    How do you get rid of these accounts with small endowments?  S. Kopp:  Can go back to donor and say here are the challenges we face would you allow us to modify the gift agreement.
N. Hollingsworth:  Is there a website where all of these specific things are listed so that the students can benefit by them (scholarships)?  S. Kopp:  Not yet. Have been working with chairs is to do a single solicitation per year to all students so that they know all of this exists.   Would like to come up with an annual cycle.
P. Bingham:  We turn out in the Life Sciences Building a lot of successful people. They have gone on to be teachers, physicians or dentists but even the physicians and dentists have significant debt.  Are there any high net worth individuals who are not alums but that we as faculty can reach out to through the gift officers?  
S. Kopp:  Absolutely.  This will be a purpose driven model.
P. Bingham:   I don’t know anything about fundraising.  So we are only going to be useful to you only to the extent that we get expert guidance.
S. Kopp:  We have advancement officers who can help.  There are a number of things on campus to entice donors.  Want to cultivate relationships.
H. Nekvaskil:  From the departmental point of view, I presume we should be doing something like keeping track of our alumni and what they are doing or being done by the university in a more centralized way?
S. Kopp:  All the information you have we should be feeding into (didn’t finish his sentence).  H. Nekavil:  So you want us to keep track.  S. Kopp:  Absolutely because you probably know more things than we do.   Will look very different across departments. 
 ???:    Spend 12 hours tracking down alumni.  There is no resources, no graduate student TA.  Don’t have updated information.  Who is googling to look at what they are doing?
S. Kopp:  All of us.  Some of the burden will fall on the faculty and the department.  Some will fall on the college. 

VI.  Dissolution of CAT (M. Bono)

  • Last year our department (CAT) came to a difficult decision but the right one for all of us, that it would be in the best interests methodologically with regard to personnel, with regard to different managerial styles for the department of Cultural Analysis and Theory Department to dissolve.
  • This was a department that was put together in a rather manufactured way.  Tried to collaborate as best we could and realized in bringing ourselves together we might become stronger. 
  • Realized this department was put together at a decanal level and less so on an academic level.  The differences became more extreme as the years went forward.  We got to a crisis point last year when we realized we had to start to think about ourselves differently.  By February we were divided into two co-workgroups, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies.  Both groups got together separately and think about how we might exist much more fruitfully in the future as autonomous departments.  You have seen both of the proposals that both of the groups made.  I think they are incredibly strong.  They are viable.  We are very excited about doing it.   We hope that we have your support. 

T. Sears:  How will the new faculty be affected by the splitting of the department?   M. Bono:  I want to make it clear that most of our faculty members are already affiliated in one or more programs or departments.
S. Kopp:  Asked each faculty member for their endorsement.  They wanted this to happen.
Ray ??:  One of the key things is that the two faculty groups agreed to continue support graduates as we move forward.  
P. Bingham:  Each of these insipient new departments actually existed as stable, healthy functional entities for some time before they were combined for fiscal reasons that we don’t  need to be concerned with these units aren’t going to continue to be efficient and that there is an inherent instability that each of these units as a coherent whole.  Am I on the right track?  M. Schedel:  Yes.
S. Lee:  Have we discussed the Ph.D./Doctoral program.  Did we discuss this further since the last Senate meeting?  Is there just one Doctoral Program or are they also split?
M. Bono:  There will be one umbrella program called CAT where there are three tracks.  Cultural Studies, Comparative Lit and Women’s and Gender Studies.  We have assured the graduate Students in no uncertain terms that the people they want to work with as they move forward will be grandfathered if there are from the other department.
M.  Schedel:  Once more for the recording, once this moves forward each contingent would like to move forward with creating a new doctoral degree but it has to approved by Albany but in the meantime they are going to work together.

M. Schedel:  Any other questions before we vote?  The wording that the EC came up with is:  We hereby propose to dissolve the Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory.  For those of you who agree please raise your hands.

Vote:  31 for, none opposed.

We, the College of Arts and Sciences Senate propose to create a department of Cultural Vote:

F. Walter:  I move to combine motions 2 and 3 on the grounds that it doesn’t make much sense to do one and not the other vice a versa.

M. Schedel:  Would the body prefer to vote on motions 2 and 3 together?

All in favor, none opposed.

Ray ???:  I agree with you in principle but I think we should get a super clear authorization for both these departments and I think I know where it’s going to go  with 31 to 0 for the first one that it’ll just make it that much clearer. 

M. Schedel:  Motion again to have 2 and 3 combined.

All in favor of not combining two motions, none opposed.

M. Schedel:  Motion number 2 is to create a department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. 

All those in favor:  28 for with none opposed

M. Schedel:  Motion number 3 is the proposal to create a department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies.

All those in favor: All those in favor:  30 for with none opposed and one abstention.

VII.  Old Business:  no old business.

VIII.  New Business:  no new business.

Meeting adjourned 4:25 p.m.

Submitted by:

Laurie Cullen
Secretary