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Tentative Agenda
University Senate Meeting
November 2, 2015

I. Approval of Agenda
II. Approval October 5, 2015 minutes
III. Report of the President of the Senate (E. Feldman)
IV. Discussion of President Stanley's Report with Administration Leadership
V. Discussion the Provost (D. Assanis)
VI. Discussion with the Sr. Vice President for HSC and Dean, SOM (K. Kaushansky)
VII. Active Shooter Guidance and Campus Gun Policy (L. Zacarese)
VIII. Committee on Information Technology Report (P. Aceves)
IX. 171st Plenary Session of the University Faculty Senate (P. Wolfskill)
X. UUP Report (A. Shertzer and C. Gizzi)
Xl. New Business
XIl. Old Business


University Senate
Minutes
October 5, 2015

I. Approval of agenda: approved.

II. Approval of minutes from August 31, 2015: approved.

III. President’s Report (E. Feldman)

  • Thanked the School of Journalism for the gift of a wooden gavel.
  • J. Sanders: If you would notice in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, there is a piece that lists the top ten NYC Higher Education Institutions. We are not mentioned. It would seem to me that the half-life of the mediocre minor league public relations effort we have still has a half-life and we should invite the new VP of Communications to our next meeting to remedy this. I would like to put that on the agenda for the next meeting. E. Feldman: We will take that under advisement.
  • There will be a conference on Open Access on October 22nd in the Library
  • Elections: President Feldman read the by-laws regarding election of new President.
    • “The Executive Committee shall present a slate of nominees for President to the Senate no later than the November Senate meeting. There shall be a ten-day waiting period during which additional nominations of officers may be submitted to the Executive Committee for inclusion on the ballot. Each nomination must include the signatures of ten Senate members in support of that nominee. The slate of nominees will be discussed during the December meeting of the University Senate. If the current president is standing for re-election, the meeting will be run by the immediate Past President. Election will be by secret paper ballot following the close of discussion, and will be announced at the close of the meeting. The President-elect shall serve on the Executive Committee.”
    • If anyone is interested, please contact Secretary/Treasurer Kathy Monahan (Kathleen.monahan@stonybrook.edu) by 5pm on October 30 who will bring those nominations to the Executive Committee. The EC will then present a slate to the Senate at the November meeting and the presidential election will be at the December meeting.
    • Feldman announced that he would be a candidate for re-election. He stated that one year in this office is not enough to make changes.
    • He welcomed senators to consider running for President.
  • Communication: Feldman stated that one of his goals for this academic year is to improve the visibility of the University Senate. Surveys have shown that many faculty and professional staff are unaware of the activities of the University Senate. He asked for suggestions for improving this situation. One plan to help with visibility is for senators to report the actions of the Senate to their constituencies, and he encouraged senators to do so.

IV. Discussion with the President (S. Stanley)

  • SUNY 2020 is our number one priority, although this is going to be difficult because it is an election year. It is always tough to get any type of change that involves potentially increasing revenue in an election year. While there is a justifiable concern about the cost of higher education and trying to keep it low, SBU is an extraordinary value. In term of AAU rankings, we are number eleven in wages earned ten years after graduation and the value of the degree we are providing.
  • How SUNY 2020 was spent: Some have said that it was used to hire more administrators. Not true. We hired 243 net new faculty. That is about three times the number of staff. The major focus was to add faculty to add research capacity as well as adding more class sections for students. We wanted to make sure they had access to the classes they need to graduate. We were able to reduce our student/faculty ratio from 28:1 to 24:1 as a result of these hires. Estimated $70M new dollars have come in from new faculty hires. The Undergraduate Student Government has announced their support for an extension of SUNY 2020. High priority of the Chancellor to move SUNY 2020 forward.
  • SBU will be a tobacco-free campus beginning January 1, 2016.
  • Have appointed over twenty faculty and staff members to serve as Deputy Title IX coordinators around the campus. Hired a complainant navigator and advocate who will serve as a confidential resource for an employee or student who brings forward a case to help them through the process. It is important to change the culture on campus. Over 50 faculty and 150 students have received green dot training – a program targeted toward preventing violence. The University required all students to take the Title IX training course. We have hired both a Title IX investigator whose full-time job is to investigate Title IX complaints as well as a Title IX hearing officer who will coordinate cases. There is a comprehensive Title IX website.
  • N. Goodman: In view of the recent campus shootings, how are we prepared? S. Stanley: We have a very robust plan in place. We ran a full scale model of our plan about 2-3 years ago in collaboration with Suffolk County. We are also going to bring in someone from the outside as well to take a look at our plan to see if there are any gaps in it that we haven’t recognized before.
  • J. Sanders: I was wondering if you could get together with the Provost you might consider setting an example for the other 7,000 institutions of higher education in the United States by looking for recruiting and being active in finding scholars, medical researchers, doctors, nurses coming out of Syria. Universities have played a key role in the 1930’s with the exile from Germany and Fascist Italy. American universities could benefit from these educated people but are doing very little. If each of the 7,000 institutions in this country hired one person for every 10,000 students we could do a lot. We could be saying a lot to this world and we could benefit ourselves. Not the least of which we might get some positive attention to what Stony Brook is doing in taking a leadership role in this effort. S. Stanley: Thank you, Professor. I’ll certainly take that under consideration. There is clearly a terrible human tragedy taking place there. The Provost and I will discuss it.

V. Discussion with the Provost (D. Assanis)

  • With the unanimous support from the University Senate, SBU has established a Department of Civil Engineering effective July 1, 2015. This is very important in order to attract top students and faculty. Nineteen of the top twenty public research universities have a strong Department of Civil Engineering.
  • Dr. Fotis Sotiropoulos has been named the next Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences effective October 15, 2015, joining the Department of Civil Engineering. Dr. Sotiropoulos comes from the University of Minnesota where he was a James L. Record Professor of Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering and the Director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory.
  • Dr. Margaret Schedel has been appointed Director of Consortium for Digital Arts, Culture and Technology (cDACT) effective November 1, 2015.
  • Dr. Eng Kion Tan has been appointed Director of the Confucius Institute effect February 26, 2015.
  • Pleased to announce the 2015-16 Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence. Completed nomination file must be received no later than November 19th.
  • The President and the Provost have established the Stony Brook Online Learning Development Initiative (S-BOLD) in 2014-15, funded initially for four years at $250,000 per year. It is an effort to make an impact on the way we teach our students. Dr. Wendy Tang has been leading this effort very successfully.
  • N. Goodman: Can you give us an update on the Department of Chemical and Molecular Engineering? D. Assanis: We are working with all of the stake holders which include Chemistry and Physical Sciences and Math. We are discussing all the facts so that nobody will be adversely affected. We would like for the new Dean of CEAS to start so he can get a chance to assess the situation. F. Walter: We understand that the white paper proposals to the SUNY’s investment and performance fund have been approved for a second round or second phase re-submissions. Can you give us any updates? D. Assanis: We worked closely with the President’s Office. We submitted a total of ten papers which were due on Wednesday. Four of the proposals are related to enhancing student success and graduate rates. One is related to Open SUNY and the rest of the proposals are related to faculty hires.
  • President Feldman: The Provost asked that I meet the new Dean of Engineering and bring some members of the Executive Committee. This was an opportunity to meet a new and important player in the administration and to be able to talk about the role of governance and shared governance. I appreciate Dennis reaching out to the senate. Also, the five final candidates for the new Dean of International Programs are coming to campus and Dennis has asked that I participate in that final visit of those candidates. This is shared governance in action.

VI. Discussion with the Sr. VP for HSC and Dean, SOM (K. Kaushansky)

  • Inter-professional education: This has become a very important topic in all of education but particularly in health care professions. It is a pleasure to announce a recent grant between the School of Nursing and the School of Dental Medicine to work on their professional training of their students. We are embracing this throughout the Health Sciences. One of the structural improvements that will have to take on in order to further promote inter-professional education is the expansion of Simulation Center.
  • Our new Dean of the School of Social Welfare is Jacqueline Mondros is now on board.
  • In the midst of searching for a founding Dean of the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Have done Skype interviews and have done 5-6 campus interviews.
  • Frances Brisbane, former Dean of the School of Social Welfare, is heading up our effort to improve the Office of Diversity. She is now the Vice President for reaching out and enhancing the diversity in our students, staff and faculty. On the School of Medicine front, Barbara Nemesure is leading the committee that we set up a couple of years ago. We are very excited about how these groups of individuals are going to help us enhance the pool of outstanding candidates of diverse faculty.
  • Presidential initiative: President Stanley launched a Global Health Institute and the founding Director, Peter Small, is now on campus. His appointment is in the School of Medicine.
  • Construction: The curtain wall is going up in the Children’s Hospital. It is hoped that the curtain wall will completely enclose the structure before winter so that the inside can be completed on time. We now have a fully functional F-18 Positron Emission Tomography Isotope Tracer Laboratory on the first level of the HSC. The Laboratory for Comparative Medicine has been opened, although it is not quite operational.
  • Hospital affiliation with Southampton is proceeding nicely. This is a good education link.
  • Recently signed a letter of intent for the affiliation with Eastern LI Hospital
  • We have a very limited footprint for our ambulatory clinical care at Stony Brook. Mostly limited to the Tech Park. We just signed a lease for a 100,000 sq. feet multi-disciplinary clinic in Commack.
  • J. Sanders: What progress are you making on collecting, not on-line, but the physical books for the School of Pharmacy? Are you having any success with pharmaceutical companies that are purging themselves of any physical resources? S. Kaushansky: We hadn’t looked at that opportunity for books. Right now we are trying to re-tool the HSC Library by putting redundant copies in storage but thought the idea of accessing pharmaceutical companies books interesting.

VII. Open SUNY and State Authorization (W. Tang)

  • Dr. Tang grew up in Hong Kong. Her higher education was in the United States. She has been teaching at SBU since 1991. She was a product of a private school and now works at a public university so she has direct experience on both sides. Dr. Tang gave a synopsis of her research/education projects and her administrative experience.
  • You reach a large number of students by using online courses.
  • The goal is to support and promote online education for faculty, students and outreach.
  • The goal is not to replace faculty, reduce cost or reduce faculty/student interaction.
  • Developing guidelines, tools and technologies.
  • Developing a website for faculty resources and student support.
  • Funding will come from Summer Teaching, S-Bold and SUNY IITG (Innovative Instruction Technology Grants).
  • S-Bold was established by the President and Provost in 2014. $250,000 per year for four years. This is for online tools which will enhance the student learning experience and to improve graduate rates.
  • Categories: Large courses with a potential enrollment of over 200 students and hands on, collaborative, interactive and experiential learning.
  • The review process will be the same as last year.
  • We need to be in compliance with State Authorization for SBU to teach out-of-state students. The Governor has authorized the NYS Education Department to participate in the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA). Working with the Stony Brook Council to review state compliance.
  • Would like feedback. We are also seeking reviewers for S-BOLD 2015-16.
  • T. Hyde: In general, as Professors move or flip their courses partly online, the syllabi should go through the relevant Curriculum Committee.
  • How do we handle professors that do not like online teaching?
  • F. Walter: Classes too large. There is no intimacy.
  • Where does the East Campus fit into this program, not only from benefitting from the resources and grants, but also from sharing twenty years of experience that go well beyond SBU’s immediate campus? K. Kaushansky: The School of Nursing has been innovative in developing online course work and reaching out. Sometimes the business of reciprocity has been very bumpy and the SON has received their share of bumps along the way, but it is encouraging to see that these issues are working out with reciprocity across state lines. The flipping of the classroom is also spreading all across the east campus as well. Would like to see some of the experiences we have all gone through shared. W. Tang: Working close with Pat Aceves on these issues.

VIII. Tobacco Free Campus (J. Greinman)

  • SUNY passed a resolution in 2012 for SUNY to become tobacco free.
  • Over 1,000 higher institutions are tobacco free.
  • This will be a community effort.
  • The new policy prohibits the use of all tobacco including smoke/vapor-producing products. IRB approved research permissible.
  • Includes Stony Brook as well as Southampton and Manhattan campuses.
  • This will be phased in which started in the spring of 2015.
  • The ban will take effect on January 1, 2016.
  • The website has a wealth of information including resources to help you quit smoking (http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/tobaccofree/about/background.html).
  • This is not an effort to make people quit.
  • Enforcement is a big question. This is a big cultural change.
  • There is a steering committee that will oversee the effort and to ensure consistency.
  • There are four working groups: Employee (Lynn Johnson), Student Affairs (Peter Baigent), Communications (Nicholas Scibetta) and Facilities (Matt Whelan).
  • The Advisory Council will have members of the campus community.
  • E. Feldman: Are there any particular strategies for the stadium and for international students where smoking is a big part of their culture? J. Greiman: For admissions and recruiting, we are telling students that we are a tobacco free campus. We will be also be educating visitors to the Stadium and Staller that we are tobacco free when they buy tickets.
  • N. Goodman: What plans are there to really change the culture? J. Greiman: Sent emails to 37,000 people last week and there was overwhelming response to a tobacco free campus. There have been long and numerous conversations on this subject.

IX. UUP Report (C. Gizzi)

  • Negotiation teams are gearing up for a new contract. The current contract ends in 2016.
  • We welcome suggestions.
  • SB HSC UUP has a number of events and speakers coming up.

X. New Business: no new business.

XI. Old Business: no old business.

Meeting adjourned at 5:00pm

Submitted by:

Laurie Cullen
Secretary