Guydosh's Report on 
The SUNY University Faculty Senate
Winter 2003 Meeting

As Plattsburgh State's University Faculty Senator, I recently represented our Plattsburgh campus at the Winter 2003 plenary meeting of the University Faculty Senate in Geneseo, NY. The University Senate's mission is to represent the voice of SUNY Faculty state-wide. It is composed of faculty representatives from each of the State University campuses and is organized much as our own local Faculty Senate. 

The business of the Plenary Session of the University Faculty Senate began with a report by University Senate President Joe Hildreth from Potsdam.  He reported on the formation of the Advisory Committee on General Education which will replace the Provost's Advisory Committee on General Education.  The new committee consists of four faculty from the SUNY state-operated colleges, four faculty from the Community Colleges, and four appointees from the Provosts office.  The committee will review any differences in opinion between campuses and the Provost's Office on whether elements of campus General Education Programs meet the system general education principles which local campuses must adopt.  Hildreth also commented about the work of GEAR, a committee to review General Education Assessment plans of local campuses, about a SUNY student transfer initiative, about a distance learning initiative, about system-wide assessment, which the Senate opposes, and about a Chancellor's proposal concerning faculty misconduct on research.  An element of the student transfer initiative would involve assigning system-wide course numbers to certain courses on a voluntary basis.

Provost Peter Salins then spoke about increases in campus enrollments and then need to tie such increases to available resources.  Salins mentioned that results of the recent faculty opinion survey would soon be available and spoke briefly about the New Vision in Teacher Education.  Most interesting however were his comments on a Transfer Template Project which would begin with teacher education, but later be extended to other programs with high transfer rates, beginning with  nursing and business.  To implement the project, Salins would assemble faculty from SUNY upper-division and community colleges to determine which lower division courses would be required to be accepted at upper-division colleges.  This would essentially end college-by-college articulation agreements in favor of a system-wide articulation.  I asked whether he thought it might be wise to involve representatives of discipline accrediting agencies in the discussions on requiring particular lower-division courses to be accepted by upper-division courses.  I couldn't tell for sure whether he had thought about that previously, but he acknowledged that it would be done.

Chancellor Robert King, during his visit with the University Senate, spoke about his, and the Trustees, budget proposal, calling attention to the fact that SUNY is the only state agency that can make up budget deficits with its own revenue stream.  (Perhaps he forgot about the Thruway Authority.)  He clarified that tuition would be raised only enough to cover the difference between the current budget and the next year's, up to a MAXIMUM of $1400.  (By now you know more of the Governor's own proposal which was unknown at the time King spoke.)  The Chancellor also mentioned his concern about faculty research misconduct and plagiarism and thought that part of the penalty for such misconduct ought to involve some kind of public notification of the misconduct.  He asked for the Senate to review his proposal for setting up local campus processes to respond to such misconduct.  The Senators seems pretty much evenly divided on the wisdom of becoming involved with that proposal, some suggesting that it was a matter for the collective bargaining agent.

There were several resolutions passed by the Senate for forwarding to the Chancellor.  One called for uniform service times for consideration for the ranks of Distinguished Services Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor with both to be five years at full professor and three years at the nominating institution.  Another called for creation of a Chancellor's Award for Faculty Service.  An additional resolution urged local campuses to make available space on the campus web site for the local campus governance body and to post the campus faculty bylaws on its web site.

The meeting concluded with debate and discussion of the report of the University Senate's Task Force on Rational Fiscal Policy.  The report was adopted by the Senate.  A copy is available on my web site.

Senators from various sectors typically meet during the University Faculty Senate meetings to consider concerns related to their sectors to forward to the University Senate and to the Chancellor.  I am currently chairing the sector composed of Comprehensive Colleges.  For your further information, my web site includes a report on issues considered by the Comprehensive College Sector.

As usual, these are all my own perceptions and other folks may have seen things differently.  As I have said in other reports to you, I appreciate your confidence in choosing me to represent the Plattsburgh campus as your representative to the University Senate.  I would be pleased to provide you with more detail about any of the items in this report, if I can do so.