Tentative Agenda
A&S Senate
September 21, 2015
3:30 President's Report
3:35 Dean’s Report: “Senior Lecturer” and “Advanced Senior Lecturer”
3:45 TLT presentation on Hosting Syllabi Online
4:00 CAT Restructuring, moderated by Dean Kopp
4:50 Summer Funding, moderated by Dr. Schedel
_________________________________________________________________________
Copy of Kopp’s email about Lecturers:
The College of Arts and Sciences is fortunate to have the service of excellent lecturers who are masters of pedagogy and/or professional practice, and committed student mentors. Our lecturers help fulfill our mission for excellence in teaching in the College of Arts and Sciences. Last academic year, I asked a panel of lecturers to advise me about issues facing lecturers; that group consisted of Kristina Lucenko (Writing), Susan Oatis (Chemistry), Susan Erster (Biochemistry), Peg Christoff (AAAS), Irene Marchegiani (ELLC), Cathy Marrone (Sociology), Steve Marsh (Theater), and Tim Hyde (Philosophy).
In the College of Arts and Sciences, lecturers are appointed on an annual basis, with consideration given to various criteria including performance, capacity for instruction, and programmatic constraints. Within that process, it is vital to communicate opportunities for professional growth, to offer our feedback on achievements and development, and to recognize valuable contributions to the College. In consultation with the department chairs and with the lecturer committee, therefore, we've proposed to create the localtitles of “Senior Lecturer” and “Advanced Senior Lecturer” in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Currently, departments conduct an annual review of all lecturers in the college, making a recommendation for re-appointment or non-renewal to the dean. For select dossiers, upon request of the department, the recommendation may also be made for the local title of Senior Lecturer or Advanced Senior Lecturer. The process of nomination occurs in the Spring semester, as outlined to the department chairs.
The dean of the college will review these recommendations and notify the candidates. Those selected will carry the local title of “Senior Lecturer” or “Advanced Senior Lecturer”. At this time, such individuals may receive a salary adjustment, details to be determined based on the pertinent facts and circumstances. Those who are named senior lecturer or advanced senior lecturer will necessarily continue to be reappointed each year subject to programmatic constraints, though the reappointment will proceed with the expectation of positive continued performance.
The local title of Senior Lecturer recognizes an individual who is at the forefront of education and student mentorship, and a valuable member of the life of their department and college. The local title of Advanced Senior Lecturer recognizes a leader in education who additionally promotes the values and excellence of the College of Arts and Sciences and Stony Brook to the broader community. The criteria for these evaluations have been distributed to the department chairs, are appended below, and will shortly be posted to the College web site.
At the first College of Arts and Sciences Senate meeting on 9/21 I will be on hand to answer questions and receive feedback on this plan. I very much appreciate the efforts of the department chairs, the lecturer committee, and many offices on campus who have consulted to bring this proposal to fruition. I look forward to our recognition of excellence in teaching, mentoring, and pedagogy.
______________________________________________________________________________
A&S Senate
Minutes
April 20, 2015
The microphones wasn’t working due to a power outage.
I. Approval of tentative agenda: approved.
II. Approval of the minutes from March 23, 2015: approved
III. Q&A with Dean Kopp
Dean Kopp: Budget: Right now is the time to prepare our budget for next year and articulate all of our needs to the Provost’s Office. Earlier in the year the departments were asked to give a projection of what courses are needed for their curriculum and we also asked them to provide list of all the faculty/staff that are expected to be here with us next year. Once we have all of that then we will get a better idea of all courses and people available to teach those courses and the remainder represents a difference that we have to cover. Done a great deal of hiring in recent years. Our enrollments are shifting a bit because of the shift from DEC to SB curriculum. Don’t have instructional need yet. Always a challenge to meet our budgetary cap. Big concern is infrastructure (labs, research instruments, etc.). There was a question posed about a focus on undergraduate education. A lot of the budget resides in instruction—we do a lot of teaching. In the past months we have been spending a lot of time cultivating alumni and working on an advancement effort. Plans to increase the size of the advancement office. Started an advisory council of alumni for the college. Six million came for philanthropy which went into department endowments so you can’t spend it right away. We have the largest alumni base in the entire university. Looking at facilities and staffing.
M. Schedel: You’ve covered facilities, research, outreach, funding but did not talk specifically about faculty or graduate research.
Dean Kopp: have not delved a lot into graduate education in the last months. I’ve spend some time trying to ascertain where we are in graduate TA allocations. Met with the Provost and decided we need more time to understand the number of TA allocations for the college. It was very good that we got the same number of allocations as we did last year.
M. Schedel: What about faculty research?
Dean Kopp: Not spending a great deal of time looking at individual faculty research. The one thing that is important to know is that the Dean’s Office had been handing out individual grants for various faculty research initiatives and I am trying to get out of that role. I don’t have the disciplinary expertise. There are two changes that are important. One was what used to be the Dean’s Excellence Fund which was fundraising money raised by the Dean. It was all put into the FAHSS (Fine Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences) Fund, administered by a faculty committee. Some percent of the IDC money for the campus goes into FAHSS. There was as a result a larger pool for FAHSS this year than previous years. Would like to put money in the departments hands and they can use it for Graduate fellowships, etc.
Addendum: This fall, Peter Stephens begins his role as Associate Dean for Research and Facilities. In this role, he is creating workshops on grant writing, fellowship writing, and collaborative opportunities. Additionally, he will be directing two staff members who’ve been moved to his area to provide grant support for faculty across the College. Finally, he’s announced an incentive program giving teaching modifications to faculty writing large center or multi-PI grants. Interested faculty should speak with him.
Question: Can you do anything about TA stipends?
Dean Kopp: Many departments top up their TA stipends with other funds. My hope by putting summer and winter tuition revenues back into department hands is that they might use the money for TA stipends. In doing so, they need to work with my office to make sure that this top-up can fit within their budget.
Question – Could you clarify the expectation that faculty be present on campus a minimum of three days a week that Chairs have recently communicated to departments?
Dean Kopp: Move toward a greater number of MWF classes whenever the curriculum allows. Particularly with a lot of freshmen courses where the freshmen live on campus anyway. Two reasons: One is a simple resource question. Our campus is not being fully utilized across all five days. It is difficult for students to get to their courses because there is a limited number of days the courses are offered. The other reason is student success. We know that the more students have contact with their faculty, the more success they will have. Student contact is the number one variable for student success. Fifteen percent of courses are on MWF.
M. Schedel: We have some faculty that took their jobs here assuming they would be here two days a week. People are worried because they think this is a dictate that you must be on campus three days a week. Thought this would be done through their chairs so that if you are doing your job well then it is alright.
Dean Kopp: I am not going to be in a position to enforce this faculty member by faculty member across the college. It is the chairs who directly work with the faculty. I also understand that the college has different kinds of faculty here at the University.
T. Hyde: Can you clarify revenue sharing model of Masters Programs?
Dean Kopp: In principle it is the same percentages that come back to the departments. What is different with the Master’s Program is that the cost of the instruction was not factored in. One of the things that is nice and clear about the summer program is first the cost of instruction us factored out. Then you get to talk percentages. That was not done for the Masters programs. In some cases, we have complete stand-alone programs with special formal degrees. Different set of courses than doctoral courses.
I plan to work on this. I do not have my arms around it yet. Until I do, it is difficult for me to hand each department funds from revenue part not knowing what the costs are.
C. McAteer: What will happen with Professional staff in regard to the new academic hires?
Dean Kopp: Started by looking at what the distribution of staff is across departments. Found some inequities. Found areas where we are over staffed and some areas that were under staffed. Looking at some of the Centers that were very important at one time but are reduced down to one faculty member and one staff member. We are especially light on technical staff.
Question: Where do you stand in terms of budgeting with regards to adjuncts and lecturers?
Dean Kopp: We are partly through that process. What I found through my first pass is that we collected information that we know have errors. Some departments gave me a list of courses they wanted to teach and then the number of faculty available and it looked like they needed adjuncts. I approached the chairs and they told me they had it covered and they did not need adjuncts. Will be talking to departments in depth.
M. Schedel: Did you cut all the adjuncts and lecturers from the Dance Program?
Dean Kopp: Dance is a program with a minor. It was created with one faculty member and over time grew to have adjuncts and lecturers. There are 25 students in the minor. We have spent a quarter of a million dollars on staffing, adjuncts and lecturers for those 25 minors. It is also valuable from a point of view of offering DEC requirements. In discussion with Amy Sullivan, the program director, she found a rather creative solution. That the offsite dance company she hosts here on campus can be used as a studio for which the students can then enroll in the fall. She can use some of her summer revenue to hire adjuncts and lecturers in the spring.
Question: Did you change grades of undergraduate physics students after they complained to you?
Dean Kopp: I have a very limited role in this. The curriculum itself, the content of courses are owned by the departments. When a student complains to me, I first refer to the student back to the department instructor. If the student is still having issues, they are referred to the department chair. If the student continues to come to me, there are very few scenarios in which I will listen to the student. I look at whether or not university policies were followed, whether the instructor followed the syllabus of the course and whether or not all students were treated equitably in the course.
In the particular case we are talking about, the instructor did not follow the syllabus and it had a small impact on a number of students in the course. I asked for some equitable solution be taken into consideration.
L. Mihaly: ???? (something about communicating with the class through emails on how the quizzes were done)
J. Lutterbie: There is an Academic Judiciary Committee that is specifically designed to handle those kinds of incidents. There is a procedure for bringing in the students and faculty together to communicate these kinds of issues and try to resolve them.
Question: Are you hiring middle management positions while eliminating adjuncts and other faculty. Are both the administrative and faculty budget under the same budget tightening scrutiny?
Dean Kopp: Yes, they are (budget tightening). Not familiar with any increase in middle management positions. The sole area of staff increase that I referred to before is in advancement. That is happening because we have a lot of help from Dexter Bailey’s office which has recognized that we need an overall increase in advancement.
T. Sears: Concerning lecturers: Will there be some kind of career structure for lecturers who have taught many years with a good teaching load yet they don’t recognized and have poor salaries?
Dean Kopp: At the last meeting I mentioned the department chairs have reviewed a proposal which I was going to share today but I think what I’ll do is stick it in the minutes and invite comments. Other campuses have advancement structures in place. Worked with the Provost and Human Resources to create local titles of Sr. Lecturer and Advanced Sr. Lecturer. Have panel of lecturers from across the college headed by Kristina Lucenko who will review the proposal as well as the chairs of departments. Both have endorsed it. Have yet to walk through the mechanics of it with the department chairs. We discussed it informally and want to have it set in place so that the first group of lecturers who would like to go up for this distinction can do so this fall.
T. Sears: Are you going to call for nominations?
Dean Kopp: The departments would nominate individuals from their unit.
Question: The branding perception of Stony Brook tends to be that of (through guidance counselors) STEM. How do you see Arts and Sciences and yourself as Dean helping to promote and change that culture?
Dean Kopp: We are trying to appeal to prospective students and guidance counselors who have sent us the prospective students, how can we turn that around? Early on I was able to talk to some of the folks from Simpson-Scarborough retained by the Advancement Office on Branding. Had limited discussions about this with the President and Provost about we can do and everyone recognizes that for the strength of the campus we have to be seen as a comprehensive university.
Andrew Uroskie: Strong reputation as a graduate institution. We have extraordinary strong doctoral programs and master’s programs. SB has cutting edge research. My concern is that you seem to speak more about undergraduate than graduates.
D. Teaney: Many of our colleagues feel that even the amount of time we spend with our graduate students it isn’t quantified.
Dean Kopp: You hear me talk about undergraduate students in part because I am being asked questions that pertain to our undergraduate mission. It is important to have both strong undergraduate and graduate programs. We have to be extra smart with our resources. It is not because I am less committed to one or the other.
Question: Is the $1 Mil. in funding promised for the Arts and Humanities Artists-in-residence, travel, fellowships, etc. being cut?
Dean Kopp: No. That is a commitment from President Stanley and Provost Assanis. It is a four year commitment.
Question: Why are Jr. research assignments now being waived as something that potentially could be denied or paid by external fellowships rather than as a contractual labor obligation as clearly stipulated in offer letters?
Dean Kopp: This is a rather incomplete understanding of what the Jr. research assignments are. Dean Armstrong was the first to articulate this idea of a Jr. research assignments across Arts and Humanities. He set up the program around 1996 which was that faculty in Arts and Humanities would apply for external fellowships to help defray the cost of Jr. faculty going on leave. This year I wrote a policy that will replace Dean Armstrong’s but made sure it was available to all departments. I want to make sure if we are going to make it possible, we are going to do it for all Jr. faculty across all departments and that they have access to a semester or pieces across a couple of semesters of leave while they are a Jr. faculty member. We are committed to it, it costs money but we are using money recovered in fellowships to pay for it. This year was a very significant year. We had over 90 semesters of sabbaticals, leaves without pay, Jr. assignments, etc. Thirty five were Jr. assignments.
Question: How do you justify intervening aggressively in curricular offerings of programs and departments? Is this not the prerogative of faculty, departments and governance?
Dean Kopp: I am not aware of interventions of a curricular nature. The only discussions are about managing resources.
Question: I have recently received the results of a poll of lecturers conducted by my committee. Will the results be shared with the rest of the campus?
Dean Kopp: I’m am happy to share it. The chairs have reviewed it and offered their input.
Question: A recent survey has been circulated among faculty regarding the future of a specific department (Dean Kopp: By the way that is the Cultural and Analysis Theory department)? Has the Dean realized how disrespectful the circulation of this survey appears? I believe my colleagues are capable of representing their own scholarship.
Dean Kopp: Cultural Analysis and theory was a department formed four years ago under my predecessor. This year the faculty held a chair election that was inconclusive. There was a lot of discussion within the department. I asked them for a self-study to help guide me as to what they were trying to discuss. In the process of that self-study, they came back and said they didn’t think it was a very successful merger. It was merged out of Comparative Literature Department and the Women and Gender Studies program. The needs of those two units are different. If we are going to be creating a new unit, there is a cost. I need input from the entire faculty.
P. Nganang: Since this is my department ??? elections ??. We got the results by email on the 15th of November. The second email said that Professor Harvey won. Two days after that, you sent another email saying that Mary Jo had won.
Dean Kopp: Yes, I have a piece of paper that says “tally” and Robert and “Tally” and Mary Jo. I misread them.
P. Nganang: And as a consequence of that ???? of that merger ???. The election was suspended and no one on the faculty knows why.
Dean Kopp: Those elections are a recommendation to the Dean for the next Chair. I have to appoint the next chair and obtain concurrence from the Provost and the President. What I hear from many faculty in the department even before the election was cast and well after it occurred, was that there was significant dissension within the department. There was fear amongst the faculty. There was the words “tenure decision and “vote” used in the same sentence in reference to some of our Jr. faculty. The outcome of the election was 10 to 9. Clearly there was a lot of anxious discussion going on and I was very concerned so I asked for a self-study.
Question: Why do you persist in asserting that for every research-active member on leave, the College needs necessarily to foot the bill for adjunctions?
Dean Kopp: Two reasons. First we do have to foot the bill for the adjuncts and two, its existing policy on the Provost’s website.
Question: What do you think your biggest challenges will be for the next year, and the next five years?
Dean Kopp: For the next year, the biggest challenge is to figure out our cost of instruction and to be able to deliver on all these missions.
A. Samuel: A lot of the questions online and some that were asked today all come down to the perception that we always chew gum first and then if we can, we walk. I would suggest (and it has been suggested) that we really have to think about walking at least as much as chewing gum and not afterwards as an afterthought. Tell me about walking.
Dean Kopp. I think out next step is to look at a census of all our facilities and instrumentation and needs. We have got to spend as much time doing that.
A. Samuel: The biggest cost in some sense is the kind of expertise that was discussed in Andy’s question which is the world class scholarship that this campus has and that seems to be behind the queue in anything else. So that it’s a choice of do we allow the scholar to spend a certain amount of time doing world class work or do we want that scholar to be here on Fridays teaching undergraduates. The answer seems to be consistently one answer. Rather than let us balance the walking and the chewing of the gum, we focus on the one and then to the extent we can afford it, we focus on the other.
D. Kopp: I think that is a rather strong characterization. I think someone has to be looking at the distribution of when and how we deliver our classes. Seventeen percent of our classes are MWF.
A. Samuel: I’m not worried about Fridays. I worried about people’s ability to be mentoring graduate students, to be publishing their work and to be doing the scholarship that brought them here in the first place.
M. Schedel: We three minutes. Anyone have a very short question? Thanked everyone for their time. Senate body applauded.
Old Business: No old business.
New Business: No new business.
Meeting adjourned.
‘
Submitted by:
Laurie Cullen, Secretary