University Senate
Meeting
May 3, 2010

I. Approval of Agenda: approved.

II. Approval of Minutes from April 5, 2010: approved.

III. Senate President’s report (M. Schwartz)

• Pheeia: Some constituents were left out of survey. It is being rectified.
• Norm Goodman announced open positions on SUNY Faculty Senate committees and urged faculty/staff to volunteer.
• Elections are under way.
• We now have a formal proposal from the Research Committee

IV. President’s Report (S. Stanley)

• There is still no state budget. Governor Paterson wants to introduce a furlough proposal in May: UUP and other union workers would not to be paid for one day from May 10-14th.
• Resolutions continue to come in from other universities in support of Pheeia.
• SUNY Strategic Plan (on SUNY website). Next is the implementation phase.
• Stony Brook is offering a voluntary Separation program for early retirement incentive. There are approximately 350 people eligible. So far around 54 people have expressed interest. Lines will not be taken away.
• School of Medicine Dean search is progressing.

V. Provost’s Report (E. Kaler)

• David Conover has accepted a position as Director of the Division of Ocean Sciences with the NSF. Dr. Minghua Zhang has agreed to serve as Interim Dean of SOMAS.
• Provost’s lecture series on June 3rd will feature Larry Cohen, President of the Communications Workers of America.
• On May 7th the Provost-sponsored Emeritus Faculty Association will hold it’s annual luncheon.
• The 2010 URECA annual symposium was held on April 28th.
• News on SBSH: Ending undergraduate programs there will result in $6.7 million reduction in the SBU deficit. All sustainability minors and majors will be moved to SBU with no reduction in offerings.
• On April 29th Stony Brook held its Fourth Annual WISE Banquet in celebration of our 2010 graduate of SB’s Women in Science and Engineering Program.
• This year 23 undergraduate seniors have been selected to receive the Provost’s Award for Academic Excellence

VI. UUP Report (K. Southerton)

• Presented UUP’s position on the proposed furloughs.
• UUP position on Pheeia has not changed.
• The Voluntary Separation program is only for the West Campus, not the East campus.
• Please contact UUP with your questions/concerns. There is a contact link on the UUP website.

VIII. Proposed Amendments to the Constitution (R. Kerber)

• First reading of proposed changes.
• The main crux of the proposed changes is to move all committee charges from the constitution to the By laws. Once moved to the By laws, it will be much easier to amend the charges.
• Norman Goodman moved to include the immediate past president on the Executive Committee. This would provide continuity and institutional memory. Dr. Kerber: All in favor: approved by acclimation.

IX. Report on 155th Plenary Session (E. Feldman)

• Read highlights from University Faculty Senate President Ken O’Brien. Dr. O’Brien and former USF President Joe Hildreth met with the chairs of the Senate and Assembly Higher Education Committees and did not receive a warm welcome. They were told that restoration of cuts to SUNY was “not on the table”
• Norm Goodman was re-elected to a third term as VP/secretary of the University Faculty Senate.
• The bulk of the Plenary session was devoted to discussions about the budget.
• Chancellor Nancy Zimpher reported on the Strategic Plan for SUNY.
• The UFS passed a resolution on Pheeia.
• The Governance committee passed two resolutions. The first recommended strengthened faculty input in presidential searches and the second encouraged the committee to develop strategies to conduct action electronically between plenaries.

X. Proposed Pheeia Resolution

M. Schwartz: There were two formal amendments to the Pheeia resolution. One from Charlie McAteer and one from Robert Aller.

Charlie McAteer proposed the following:

If and only if the following SBU University Senate recommendations are included in the final bill:

• Insuring that only SUNY flexibility is for procurement of goods, but not services which could lead to outsourcing Academic, Professional or Classified Services positions either via face-to-face or via electronic methods.

Then include the rest of the 4 bullet items as written.

**********************

• We should be strong in our language. If we are not, then we are basically support Pheeia as is.
• Seeing the alternatives where we use the word “if and only if” then you can go back to the Pheeia survey and what the senate has been discussing with it’s members. There are pieces of Pheeia we cannot really support.
• Most politicians and legislators spoken to are not for pheeia as written.
• Pheeia survey had comments – most support but are not quite sure about some pieces of the document.

Robert Aller:

• Amendment reflects conversations with many faculty and also the work of the Campus Environment Committee.
• Written in a way that essentially focused all power to determine the fate of public lands on individual campuses onto administration. This would be ripe for potential abuse.
• These amendments would put some checks on the authority of campus administrators on how these lands will be developed.
• There should be flexibility for individual campuses to determine, based on their conditions locally, how their campus might be developed.

Michael Schwartz summarized the amendments by both C. McAteer and R. Aller.

Debate on floor.

M. Schwartz: We have a motion. We have a call to question on this specific amendment; we will first vote on substituting the Aller version for the original version. We will then choose between the result of that vote and the McAteer version.

Those in favor of the amendment -- to replace the language from the original with the Aller language:

All in favor of that substitution: 26 for; 18 against.

Now we vote on the two languages that are under consideration.

The Aller version:

“Therefore, be it resolved, that the SBU University Senate supports the passage of PHEEIA presuming the following modifications: “

The McAteer version:

““Therefore, be it resolved, that the SBU University Senate supports the passage of PHEEIA, if and only if the following SBU University Senate recommendations are included in the final bill:

All in favor for wording “presuming” (Aller): 31 in favor
All in favor for working “if and only if” (McAteer); 6 in favor

Aller wording is chosen.

We now vote on adding a new bullet point (C. McAteer)

“Insuring that only SUNY flexibility is for procurement of goods, but not services which could lead to outsourcing Academic, Professional or Classified Services positions either via face to face or via electronic methods.”

Debate on changing wording to

• Insuring that only SUNY flexibility is only for procurement of goods, and not for services thatcould lead to outsourcing Academic, Professional or Classified Services positions either via face to face or via electronic methods. (Changes in bold).

All in favor: passed

Norm Goodman made a motion to add additional language to the end of the following in the Aller amendment:

Therefore, be it resolved, that the SBU University Senate supports the passage of PHEEIA presuming the following modifications and either done by the NYS Legislature and/or SUNY in its implementation policy

A Student made a motion to add an amendment on student fees.

M. Schwartz: There should be a final bullet that there should be no additional types of fees added to those charged to student government in the existing fees. We have a second on the motion. Need to get a sense of the body on formalizing the wording of this bullet.

In summary, students get charged a lot of different fees. The student government fees that are currently paid by the students are passed by the government, collected and then used by the student government. In Pheeia, the student government sees clauses that allow such fees to be passed by the board of trustees, collected by then and used for their own purposes rather than going back to the student government.

There should be a clause included that says “presuming that final legislation does not contain legislation that permits the Board of Trustees to levy student government fees for their own use.

All in favor of this resolution pending precise wording: All in favor. None opposed.

Meeting adjourned 5:15 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by: Laurie Theobalt, Secretary