A&S Senate
Tentative Agenda
November 21, 2016
Wang Center, LH 2

 

3:30-3:35 President’s Report

3:35-3:45 Dean Kopp on Analytics

3:45-4:15 Discussion on Creative Writing and Film -  meeting in December will be to vote

The A&S Senate recommends that Creative Writing and Film be transferred as a Program into the College of Arts & Sciences.

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A&S Senate
Minutes
October 17, 2016

I.  Approval of Agenda:  approved.

II.  Approval of minutes from September 19, 2016:  approved.

III.  CAS Dean’s Report:  Film and Creative Writing (S. Kopp)

• I will be in China for twelve days.  Jun Liu , Fotis Sotiropoulos and I are going to nine different universities to focus on synergistic opportunities for Master’s programs.
• We have a graphic designer working on the Strategic Plan to make it look decent.  It has been a collective effort to devise this up until this point.  The next step in the process is the implementation plan.  No we have to look at over what timeline we implement each of these goals.  I will be asking faculty to participate in those implementation efforts.
• Creative writing and Film:  We had six different open meetings since the last A&S Senate meetings for all faculty to attend across the College.  We had a lot of good feedback and input about what are some of the opportunities and what are some of the intersections with our current academic departments and programs.   After hearing all of the input there are few things that I‘d like to suggest.  First it seems beneficial to first have this unit be brought into the college as a program.  We have to work out the organizational strategy that makes sense.  Second because we have other units that are going through their own reorganization at this time and it makes sense to have full knowledge of what’s going to happen to those other units that have some intersections with this program.  I would like to see some more thought and discussion around that.  And third because some of the curricular proposals that are in that document need much more time for input.  What I will propose for our discussion today is that I’d like to come to the next meeting with a specific proposal, which I’ll hand out to you now, which is to bring this effort into the College as a program and in the meantime I will be working on refining a Memorandum of Understanding with some of the other departments that are impacted by this decision and then have for you the knowledge that those programs have had an opportunity to have input.  As I understand in the Senate by-laws that creating a new program is not something that requires Senate approval but I am going to ask for your concurrence or sense of the Senate.   P. Bingham:  Given the chronic deficit of CAS, has a financial analysis been done, what revenues will it generate, what costs will it incur?   S. Kopp:  It operates at a baseline zero in that it does have  deficit like every other unit in the college but it has a tuition return model that is a little more generous than other departments in the college and between that and donor funds it breaks even.  The prospects for additional tuition revenues are very high because they just created a Master’s Program in Film.

N. Goodman:  I believe there is a procedure for establishing any new program.  It has to go through a whole detailed process that goes back to the Provost and then University.  Senate.  The reason for that is because we have to vette all the implications both for resources allocated and for the protection of faculty interests.  So I’m not sure that in fact is that is within the purview solely of the Dean.  S. Kopp:  If you can all tell me what the process is I would, of course, be inclined to work with that process.  M. Schedel:  I searched the by-laws and didn’t find programs.  I will double check.  Katie:  Bob Reeves mentioned financial support for the College.  He has been doing a good deal of fundraising and he feels that he can’t go any farther.  Would seem to have future revenue implications for the college.  S. Kopp: There is going to be a lot of work to do to raise revenue for this program the same way were having to do with other departments.

IV.   FRRP Systemizing Teaching Observations (C. Davidson)

• FRRP had discussions last year about an issue that came up about teaching observations on campus and we were hearing random reports about how teaching observations had been occurring across the campus.  Some departments and programs have really great practices and others have no guidelines in place.  For example faculty members not giving any warning of observations and the instructors not knowing what the stakes are. 
• FRRP investigated what other universities are doing as far as guidelines for teaching observations across their campuses.  We found most schools in our range, for example SUNY Albany, had robust guidelines for teaching observations across the campus.
• Suggestion 1:  Program/Department Statement of Teaching Goals:  Every department/program should have guidelines for teacher evaluation.  They should share with the teacher when they will be evaluated well in advance of the evaluation and make guidelines available to the instructor as soon as possible after they are hired.
• Suggestion 2:  Purpose and Value of Teaching Observations:  Formative observations should precede summative observations.  Summative observations cannot be drop-in or unplanned under any circumstances.  Both kinds of assessment have value.  C. Davidson read the differences between a formative and a summative assessment.
• Suggestion 3:  Consult with the Faculty Center before formalizing our final guidelines.
• What we are proposing is that once the department/program has their guidelines in place, as soon as possible when a teacher is hired, they should have access to these guidelines.  They should know when they are going to be observed, what the stakes will be and when.  This has a substantial impact on a teacher’s future.
• We plan to write up a more formal policy and then present it back to you. 

M. Schedel:  We should have something about teaching observations in by-laws and maybe the committee can come up with very standard language that people can edit which might be a useful way to start.   C. Davidson:  If you pull up the google doc you can see some of the comments on the side that came up today in our meeting today.  C. Marshik:  Whatever policy came out of the senate didn’t require more teaching evaluations then we already do, I think most chairs would go along with it.  C. Davidson:  No, it’s not requiring the evaluations to be done, it’s just requiring guidelines for when it’s done.  M. Schedel:  Do you think we are going to be able to vote on this next time.   Should we require this or should it just be suggested.  Think this will be ready this month or should we push it later.  C. Davidson:  Everyone has a copy of this memo so it’s open for commenting.  I sent this to everyone 30 minutes ago.  C. Haddad:  Why not unannounced visits?  C. Davidson:  It’s a courtesy.   It is extremely stressful to have people popping up in the class.  We are worried about unannounced visits being used to impact their employment.   C. Haddad:  Is this an authentic impression of the true quality of someone’s performance?  Is that the goal?  P. Aceves:  It is something that is done but it’s making that clear and explicit up front and that any point in the semester this may happen.  O. Viro:  Who observes and evaluates?  C. Davidson:  That’s up to your department or program.  It could be peers, other teachers, or chairs.  M. Schedel:  Do you think could have a vote next month or should we wait two more months?  M. Schedel asked for a show of hands.  We will wait until two months.

V.  Open Access (D. Chase)

• No cost on accessing scholarly journals.  They are being shared.  They are being archived and preserved appropriately so there will be continued access to the articles. 
•  I would like to show some numbers:  87,621 is the number of research articles published by Stony Brook affiliated researchers from 1966 to 2015.  The next number is approximately 2% which is the number of those articles published between 1966 and 2015 that published open access which is less than 2% and that number is 1,602 articles.  In the last decade of our research publishing output was 27,468 and this number, the percentage that’s open access is 6% and if we just consider the research published in 2015, that number is 8%. 
• D. Teaney:  Define open access?  D. Chase:  There are two main flavors of open access.  There is green open access which is publishing a draft version of your research article in open access repository like archive.  Green open access is a terrific option because there are no article processing charges.  If you have access to repository you can share and if you have permission from the publisher of the article of record so where you are intending to publish the article or where it’s being accepted the conventional subscription based journal.  The publisher will allow the authors to share a draft version of it in repository.  The other flavor of open access is gold open access.  Gold open access means the authors are publishing in an open access journal.  Publishing in open access journal is what is being measured here.  We consider the articles which are not reflected in the numbers that I am showing you, the number of articles that are being shared in open access repository are going to increase the number of open access articles we are talking about. 
• There will be an open access symposium on October 25th.

Meeting adjourned.

Submitted by:

Laurie Cullen
Secretary