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Tentative Agenda
University Senate
April 3, 2017


I. Approval of tentative agenda
II. Approval of minutes from March 6, 2017
III. President’s Report (E. Feldman)
IV. Discussion with the President (J. Greiman)
V. Discussion with the Provost (M. Bernstein)
VI. Discussion with the Vice-President for the Health Sciences (K. Kaushansky)
VII. Report from the Graduate Council (M. Simon)
VIII. UUP Report (C. Gizzi, K. Moriarty)
IX. Old Business
X. New Business


University Senate
March 6, 2017
Minutes

I. Approval of agenda: approved.

II. Approval of minutes from February 6, 2017: J. Sanders: My question of Judy Greiman was not how much of the Dean of Students salary are we paying but how many Deans of Students are we paying and I’d still like to know. Also, he suggested inserting pages numbers in the minutes. Minutes approved as edited.

III. President’s Report (E. Feldman)

  • Dr. Feldman thanked the body for the feedback from the last Senate meeting concerning actions taken about open access and Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration. The feedback was very positive.
  • Communication: Feldman reminded senators to communicate with their department about the actions of the Senate.
  • Elections: Senators will be receiving a nomination letter for the re-election as Senator and committee members for the University Senate. There are three openings for the State-Wide Senate which has a similar structure as our Senate. The state-wide Senate meets at three plenary sessions per academic year at various campuses throughout the state. Among the advantages of attending state-wide Plenaries is that you get to network with other colleagues at other SUNY campuses and get to hear about SUNY issues directly from the Chancellor and her senior leadership including the Budget Director and SUNY Provost. N. Goodman: As a State-wide Senator or committee member, you get a chance to influence SUNY policies which can help Stony Brook. S. Walker: How many year commitment is it? E. Feldman: It’s a three year commitment. Travel is paid for by the Senate Office.
  • Survey: The Administrative Review Committee and the Executive Committee have worked hard to ensure that the results of the survey are confidential. The survey is on the Senate website and is password protected with your NetID. We want the campus community to be aware of the results of the survey and have access to it. The Executive Committee has met with senior administrators to discuss the results in detail including areas of concern. Our chief administrators have been very welcoming to suggestions to improve the campus. I have had multiple requests from students from Statesman for interviews. However, I prefer to discuss improving Stony Brook directly with our chief administrators rather than through the newspapers. R. Kelly: Melissa Woo and DoIT were very helpful with setting this all up. The Committee has had requests for additional information including three special reports for the Dean of Arts & Sciences, the Dean of Libraries and the PEG Board. In each of these cases, we go a little deeper into the numerical results looking at the different categories for the data such as faculty vs. staff, location, etc. We can then break out the results for those categories. We also look at all of the comments. The survey report you see on the Senate website has sample comments which reflect the numerical scores. If one part of the university is asking for more detail, we will prepare a detailed report with all of the comments but not until we filter those comments to make sure that no one can be identified with their comments. Question: Are the additional reports made public on the Senate website? R. Kelly: Typically, we have not done this, but it can be discussed by the Executive Committee. .

IV. Tuition on Research Grants (ToRG) (C. Taber)

  • Since 2004, Stony Brook has had a policy for charging tuition on research grants to support research assistants. The policy has been that we charge 6 credits per semester for students who are full time. This money is divided so that two thirds of it goes back to the graduate program from which the student comes and one third is used by the Graduate School to support stipends or salary support for graduate students. The programs that have been supported centrally include growth lines which are lines that are used for direct support of graduate students. These are essentially extra TA lines and the childbirth accommodation policy. The old policy which was established in 2004 charged 2004 tuition. In 2009 this was updated to 2009 tuition. The policy update before you updates this 2009 current tuition to include tuition updates in the future as tuition increases. A grant will be charged tuition based upon the rate that applies when it is submitted and for the life of that grant. This change was approved by the Graduate Council and the Research Committee. There is another change that is relatively minor but for some people it can be quite important and that is that we are now going to allow pro-rated tuition charges. J. Sanders: How open is the accounting of this? C. Taber: The Graduate School under the policy, reports every year to the Graduate Council including a breakdown of what each graduate program receives and what the Graduate School uses it’s one third for. Question: What is the rate? C. Taber: The current charge at 2008/09 rate is $4,188 for six credits. Starting April 1st it will be $5,436. Vote was taken to adopt the policy: All in favor, none opposed, no abstentions. Passed Unanimously.

V. Discussion with the President (J. Greiman)

  • President Stanley is in Texas at the SXSW.edu conference so he could not be here.
  • Budget: The budget process has started. Your VP Coordinators and other finance people have just completed initial submissions for the new process in alignment with university priorities. Each area has been asked to structure their budget in ways to support the University’s strategic priorities. We have a budget process website.
  • Project 50 Forward: The website underwent a major upgrade including some interesting improvements. One is the Click Portal Solutions which manages the business of research and the other is Travel Services (Concur) - a multifaceted travel app.
  • Diversity: The Chief Diversity Officer search is moving. The committee has presented three great candidates. We will soon release the 2017 work plan and the use of the money that has been set aside for diversity ($750,000 in this current year). There is a huge array of things that are happening around diversity from recruitment of students to increased applications from underrepresented minority students. There will be at least two more town hall meetings on April 12th and May 3rd. There are community building efforts including the development of a Brookology website for employees. I would like to congratulate Chuck Taber on receiving the 2017 Giving Back Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.
  • Executive Order on Immigration: There is 90 day suspension on immigrants from six countries. It applies if you are outside of the U.S., don’t have a current visa and didn’t have one on January 27th. Current visa and green card holders are exempt from the Executive Order. The U.S. Refugee program will be suspended for 120 days and when it comes back on line, it will have a cap of 50,000 refugees per year.
  • Questions from the last meeting: I don’t have the answer on the Deans.

J. Sanders: Can you answer a question from the December meeting about the NYC police spying on Muslim students at SB? The President said he had no awareness about this.
J. Grieman: The allegation was that President Stanley had not told the truth by not remembering something that happened in 2012. In fact he didn’t remember. He was reminded by the research you gave me. At that time people did not know on this campus that surveillance that was looking at publicly available information about some of our students was happening, although we were not involved. To the best of our knowledge it’s not happening now. We do not plan to issue a statement now about something that happened in 2012.
J. Sanders: How about a statement of principle that the President will not allow and strongly condemns singling out a certain group of students for their religious beliefs or their national origins. J. Greiman: I believe the President has already made several statements about immigration and undocumented immigrants. You can read them on the website. We have taken multiple actions around supporting our students. E. Feldman: I’m not clear about what you said about 2012? J. Grieman: Apparently the question came up about surveillance which was done in 2012. E. Feldman: Could you clarify that? J. Greiman: There was surveillance at a number of Higher Ed universities. It was monitoring things like Facebook accounts and other publicly available things about certain students. E. Feldman: Was this targeted at Muslim Students? J. Greiman: Yes, but the University was not involved and was not aware.

V. Discussion with the Provost: (M. Bernstein)

  • The COACHE Survey (Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education) on faculty job satisfaction has been launched. The results are useful and the data is invaluable. I encourage all faculty to take the survey. The survey closed on April 10.
  • We are actively searching for a Dean of SoMAS. The search team has identified four very interesting and compelling finalists. We hope to decide within the week.
  • Cluster Hires: I met with the Executive Committee about a variety of topics including cluster hires. I have taken steps with the leadership of the cluster hire groups to learn where the clusters are in their work, where they are in their hiring plans, were they are in their future trajectory, etc.
  • Survey: I am actively involved with the Deans regarding the Senate survey and its findings. I am formulating a plan to address some of the issues and concerns that were raised in the survey with respect to academic units on the west campus. I have been very gratified that the Deans on the west campus have been open and engaged with my office in this effort.

O. Vero: There is no funding for the Young Scholars Program. Was it some political decision to shut down the program? M. Bernstein: Nobody is questioning the academic quality of the Young Scholars Program, but I am not prepared to put in more resources into the program at this time. It is not a free program. It costs money to have high school students training with our mathematicians for less than full cost. I am not able to identify further resources for this program at this time. E. Feldman: In that same email in which you copied me that there were state regulations about being able to provide a tuition discount. N. Goodman: CAPRA met with you and the VP for Finance who stated that we are going to be in for tough financial times. J. Sanders: I think they are going to get even tougher in a year or two because right now the stock market that is soaring. The cuts to higher education are going to get worse not better under Donald Trump.

VI. Discussion with the Vice President for the Health Sciences Center (K. Kaushansky)

  • There are rumors in the Schools of Dental Medicine and Nursing that the School of Pharmacy is bleeding resources from all other schools. One rumor suggested that I intended to close the School of Dental Medicine because I want to put all of the money in the School of Pharmacy. Communication is important and I hope that by speaking about this item in front of this body we will communicate better. Not a cent of any school’s money is going into the School of Pharmacy which is funded entirely on tuition that will be charged to the students who enroll matriculating into our new School of Pharmacy. There is a mechanism by which the 1.5% of the charges from the clinical practice plans goes to the President to support health sciences initiatives. Startup funds for the School of Pharmacy will be borrowed from this fund for the first three years until tuition dollars begin when the School of Pharmacy will pay back this loan. They will be located in temporary space in the Basic Sciences Tower.
  • Nursing: We are starting a program to provide a seamless transition of nursing students from Suffolk Community College into the baccalaureate in Nursing at Stony Brook.
  • The Keck Foundation is a very prestigious foundation. For the first time in seven application cycles of trying to get Keck funding, we close and will have a site visit in March. Lily Mujica-Parodi is the principle investigator in a collaborative application between Stony Brook and Harvard for funding to understand the metabolisms behind the neuropsychotropic metabolism.
  • School of Medicine Curriculum Committee today considered a three-year curriculum for students to achieve an M.D. degree. Only a small fraction of our students will be considered for this program which is modelled after NYU. There is only 6-8 of these programs in the country.
  • The School of Medicine LEARN Curriculum is doing extremely well.
  • The Bridge: We have gotten many complaints about the bridge between the east and west campuses including people getting lost, poor lighting, and safety. We have walled off the construction site and installed new lighting and signs.
  • Stony Brook Hospital: We have two major searches going on for a Chief Executive Officer and a Chief Information Officer. An interim CIO has been named.
  • ICE agents: I am the President-Elect of the Greater NY Hospital Association which includes 250 hospitals. At our last board meeting a number of hospitals CEO’s were very concerned, especially the safety net hospitals like ours, about ICE agents in public areas of hospitals. I cannot think of a better place for an ICE agent find undocumented people than the emergency room of a safety net hospital. Patients are now beginning to be fearful about coming in to get health care.
  • Strategic Planning – We have received 350 survey results. Leaders in the Health Sciences have convened to work on clinical, educational, research and community outreach strategic plans. We are going to each department for feedback and suggestions.
  • Retaliation: I discussed with the Executive Committee today the issue of persistent concerns about retaliation by a supervisor toward a member of the faculty or professional staff when there is a disagreement. Concerns about abuse, sexual harassment, etc. were raised. There will be zero tolerance of such efforts of retaliation.

J. Sanders: Do you have a policy in the hospital or the medical campus about undercover agents, ICE agents that are out of uniform or any other government agents carrying out their professional duties?
K. Kaushansky: I bet you we don’t but I will look into that.
C. Gizzi: I’ve had a number of questions from caregivers who have been concerned in a situation where an agent might try to interact with one our patients. K. Kaushansky: I want to put up signage but I don’t want to be the only hospital in the region to do so. We would have to comply with a legal warrant for somebody’s arrest. C. Gizzi: I’m glad to see that you have zero tolerance for bad behavior, retaliation, etc. K. Kaushansky: When I got here six years ago, one of the biggest complaints was a concern of problems with work environment and harassment. We were way above the national norms in complaints and concerns about the learning environment. We made clear rules, anonymous sites, conducted focus groups to understand the problems and are very gratified to see those yearly surveys showing less and less concerns.
J. Greiman: There are existing policies wrapped into the HIPAA regulation covering patient privacy. We will be pulling those back out in the forefront.
S. Larson: I understand the first class for the School of Pharmacy will be in 2018 and you also said there was going to be fifteen new faculty members hired. If you are not taking any lines from the existing schools, where are those fifteen lines coming from? K. Kaushansky: From the tuition. Susan: But there haven’t been any students yet so there is no tuition. K. Kaushansky: As I explained, for the first three years the School is going to be in deficit supported by the 1.5% fund that Sam has for the health sciences. The School will pay back that debt in years 4-6. S. Larson: We seem to be losing lines. K. Kaushansky: We do believe the School of Pharmacy is a very wise investment for this campus.
C. Gizzi: I received some calls regarding some non-renewals in the SHTM. K. Kaushansky: The SHTM has a $2.5M fixed budget deficit. With Bob Megna’s new budget plan we are being asked to have a budget deficit reduction plan put in place over three years. There is a Ph.D. graduate program called Health Technology and Management that was costing the School about $1M a year. It was decided that the program needed to be one of the unfortunate programs to be put on the chopping block. C. Gizzi: I heard it was multiple programs and retrenchment. K. Kaushansky: It wasn’t a retrenchment.

VII. Report from the Secretary of the School of Medicine Senate (M. McNurlan)

  • One of our primary activities has been trying to find a President of the SOM Senate.
  • We have also discussed the merging of basic science departments at length. The proposal from Dean Kaushansky was to merge Pharmacology, Physiology and Biophysics and the bottom line was that merger would not be going forward.
  • The Senate has been involved in the Strategic Plan which a major undertaking for the School of Medicine.
  • We have been doing some tweaking to our governance structure. Three of our standing committees have co-chairs that are administrators including Admissions, Curriculum and Student Affairs in order to comply with AAMC regulations. These positions are ex-officio, so they do not vote.
  • We gathering some information to try to come up with a plan to salvage the Department of Anatomy.

VIII. Report from UUP (C. Gizzi and K. Moriarty)

K. Moriarty: The next UUP general membership meeting is on March 9th. We are also having a constitutional convention information session on March 29th. UUP/State will be coming down to give us a presentation on the status of the upcoming vote on constitutional convention. I am continuing to have my meet and greets sessions with all departments on west campus. Contract negotiations are continuing. The three major areas are pay including job security and health care. Officer elections are being held this month.

C. Gizzi: There will be an HSC UUP Chapter meeting will be tomorrow, March 7th. They will present our budget and will also be discussion the NYS constitutional convention. Ballots for the elections will be mailed out Wednesday.

Meeting adjourned.

Submitted by:

Laurie Cullen
Secretary