Spring 2019 Post-Plenary Report
| Spring 2019 Post-Plenary Report |
President’s Report
Gwen Kay, President
Q&A with the Chancellor
Specialized and Statutory
Q: Can SUNY help the sector market and recruit online program offerings, especially to the US military?
A: Graduate online makes a lot of sense for Maritime. Almost all of our current online students are at our brick and mortar campuses. We need to recruit from new populations, such as international students and the military, to develop fully online programs.
Q: As the call for online programming increases, what expanded support will SUNY provide for faculty offering the courses and students taking them?
A: SUNY System is working with the Governor’s office to identify funding for an 8-9 figure investment for SUNY Online, which will include support for instructional designers, media specialists, marketing, student advisement, and other online student services.
Q: When will the head of NYS College of Ceramics at Alfred be reviewed, and will that position be made permanent?
A: There are annual reviews for leadership in all sectors. Presidents identify peers inside and out of SUNY for comparison, campus budgets and performance metrics are reviewed, and the Chancellor has one-on-one consultations.
Health Sciences
Q: Can you provide a status update on plans to diversify funding for the Health Sciences sector through philanthropy and private donors?
A: As an example, of the current $17M in unrestricted Annual Fund giving, two-thirds of that is due to one campus (Cornell). Imagine the opportunities if we could develop the same level of giving across SUNY. SUNY is looking into Endowed Professorship programs, and how to bring in more resources to support scholarships and fellowships.
Q: What are your plans for the sector for the coming year?
A: The Chancellor expressed pride in the accomplishments of the sector, and will be consulting with Presidents about where to make investments. It will be important to follow up on DSH funding.
Alithia Alleyne/Alternate Senator, Downstate Medical Center
University Centers
Q: Are you aware of the Business report reviewing finances at Stony Brook, and what can be done to ensure transparency and faculty involvement in budget processes?
A: The Chancellor has spoken with President Stanley about the report, and would like to have the report forwarded so that she can review the numbers. One potential issue is that medical centers need to maintain substantial cash reserves to deal with emergencies, so it will be important to make sure that factors such as those are being taken into account.
Q: How can SUNY maintain quality and distinctiveness as we ramp up online programs?
A: Differentiation of mission and vision across sectors is key, as we need diverse types of programming. One-on-one mentoring will continue to be important for scholarship and teaching, but at the same time a number of students want options for how to obtain a basic degree.
Q: What are you doing as Chancellor to promote liberal arts and push back against the narrative of higher education as workforce training centers?
A: There is a project under development that will be of specific interest to the comprehensive colleges and university centers, to enhance the distinctiveness of the liberal arts across SUNY. This is currently under confidential discussion; more details will be released later.
Comprehensive Colleges
Q: How can SUNY get the Governor to act to appoint members to College Councils, so that critical searches for campus Presidents can proceed?
A: More appointments to the Councils are expected, now that the budget process is completed, but full Councils are not needed for searches to proceed. SUNY would like to broaden the pools for Presidential searches, and the Chancellor asks for all of us to help identify promising candidates.
Q: How can we work together to advocate for more direct state aid for our core operating budgets?
A: Budget advocacy has been excellent this year. SUNY lobbied extensively for funding to cover the retroactive pay increases from the recent contract, and having that included in the enacted budget is a big win for the system. Advocacy by campuses is important to support the efforts of the system.
Q: Are the mission, identity, diversity, and efforts of the comprehensive colleges sector well understood and appreciated outside of SUNY?
A: Business and community leaders around the state not only respect the sector, but are grateful when there’s a SUNY campus in their district. SUNY is augmenting its communication team and will focus on better communicating the value of SUNY to the state.
Colleges of Technology
Q: Do you find these Q&A sessions useful?
A: Yes, certainly.
Q: Our sector is known for and has invested heavily in experiential learning. Will all campuses be expected to develop online programming? What support will be available to campuses to reconcile the dual focus on applied learning and online education?
A: Applied and experiential learning is a critical initiative, and it would be good to scale it up further. SUNY Online is opt-in for campuses, but most campuses will probably become involved in some format. Ideally the online initiative will result in new enrollments, new opportunities for program development, and new opportunities to collaborate across the system.
Q: What funding will be available through PRODI-G to support undergraduate pipeline efforts?
A: Extending recruitment of historically underrepresented minority students to the undergraduate level is a great idea. High school students today can be PRODI-G faculty of tomorrow.
Campus Governance Leaders
Q: Misapplication of Research Misconduct charges has been a problem at Downstate, and requests by campus faculty governance to restart a fair and impartial process based on national standards have been ignored. Can System Administration intervene to assure fair processes are established?
A: The Chancellor will bring the issue up to her executive leadership, and have Vice Chancellor Wang and Provost Laursen look into it.
Q: New public health laws in New York mandate the use of Department of Health ELAP certified labs for analysis of environmental samples, which places undue financial burdens on our campus labs and creates barriers to training our students on water quality sampling. Will you work to create an exemption for teaching labs, or a certification model more suited to academic labs?
A: The Chancellor will look into these regulation issues. While on the surface this looks bad for education, it will be important to understand the rationale that the Department of Health used to establish the current certification process.
Q: Even as the roles of Campus Governance Leaders have grown on campuses, their participation on College Councils remains varied and restricted. Will you work to include CGLs as voting members on College Councils?
A: One of the most important roles of the College Councils is to hire campus Presidents. It may be a conflict of interest for CGLs to be involved in hiring Presidents that they would later work for.
Chancellor’s Report
Kristina Johnson, Chancellor
Provost’s Report
Tod Laursen, Provost
Provost Laursen devoted his remarks to an update of the SUNY Online initiative.
UFS Elections
President Gwen Kay was re-elected by unanimous consent to a second term.
The following slate of Sector Representatives and alternates was ratified by the body.
Approved Resolutions
The resolution "To Form a Committee to Examine Funding Opportunities for Undocumented Students in SUNY Professional Programs" was referred back to the Graduate Programs and Research Committee.
Gwen Kay, President
- Higher Education Act Reauthorization. Congress is debating the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, with separate Republican and Democratic bills under consideration. Potential changes include who is eligible for Pell grants (including incarcerated students, students taking summer courses, students who have taken more than twelve semesters); use of work study funds to support unpaid internships; changing the definition of the credit hour; and speeding up the process for accreditation of online programs. The legislation will be open for public comment this summer; senators and CGLs are encouraged to provide comments on areas of concern in the bills.
- SUNY Budget. There were a number of significant wins for SUNY in the enacted budget. SUNY will receive direct support to cover retroactive pay raises in the new contract, without having to borrow those funds against future budgets. The funding model for the community colleges includes an FTE tuition increase for those campuses with stable or increasing enrollments, but also a guaranteed minimum budget for those seeing declining enrollments so that they can cover fixed costs. EOP and childcare funding have been restored to the final budget, and the state is covering the matching funds needed for the hospitals to get DSH reimbursements from Medicaid.
- Task Force Updates. The Shared Governance Award task group has selected the winner of this year’s award, and encourages a broader segment of campuses to apply in the future. The Student Mobility Steering Committee is reviewing feedback from campuses on the existing seamless transfer pathways, to determine which are priorities for review. And the General Education working group has distributed a draft Green Paper of recommendations for general education changes, for review and comment.
- UFS Plenaries. In the recent past, several campuses have had difficulties with the expense of hosting our plenaries when their turn in the rotation has come around. SUNY System has agreed to become part of the rotation again, and periodically host UFS plenaries at System Administration. That, plus the willingness of Albany to host early and of Downstate and Optometry to co-host a plenary at the Global Center, means that the schedule of plenaries is now set for the next two years. UFS is also in the process of receiving approval to increase the per-Senator charge to campuses, which will allow the UFS to provide more financial assistance to campuses when it is their turn to host.
- Board of Trustees News. Chairman McCall has announced his intention to step down at the end of the current academic year, marking a significant change in leadership. The Board has approved the our recent UFS Bylaws changes, and now campus ratification is needed for final approval. The May meeting of the Board should see a number of announcements about ongoing Presidential searches.
Q&A with the Chancellor
Specialized and Statutory
Q: Can SUNY help the sector market and recruit online program offerings, especially to the US military?
A: Graduate online makes a lot of sense for Maritime. Almost all of our current online students are at our brick and mortar campuses. We need to recruit from new populations, such as international students and the military, to develop fully online programs.
Q: As the call for online programming increases, what expanded support will SUNY provide for faculty offering the courses and students taking them?
A: SUNY System is working with the Governor’s office to identify funding for an 8-9 figure investment for SUNY Online, which will include support for instructional designers, media specialists, marketing, student advisement, and other online student services.
Q: When will the head of NYS College of Ceramics at Alfred be reviewed, and will that position be made permanent?
A: There are annual reviews for leadership in all sectors. Presidents identify peers inside and out of SUNY for comparison, campus budgets and performance metrics are reviewed, and the Chancellor has one-on-one consultations.
Health Sciences
Q: Can you provide a status update on plans to diversify funding for the Health Sciences sector through philanthropy and private donors?
A: As an example, of the current $17M in unrestricted Annual Fund giving, two-thirds of that is due to one campus (Cornell). Imagine the opportunities if we could develop the same level of giving across SUNY. SUNY is looking into Endowed Professorship programs, and how to bring in more resources to support scholarships and fellowships.
Q: What are your plans for the sector for the coming year?
A: The Chancellor expressed pride in the accomplishments of the sector, and will be consulting with Presidents about where to make investments. It will be important to follow up on DSH funding.
Alithia Alleyne/Alternate Senator, Downstate Medical Center
University Centers
Q: Are you aware of the Business report reviewing finances at Stony Brook, and what can be done to ensure transparency and faculty involvement in budget processes?
A: The Chancellor has spoken with President Stanley about the report, and would like to have the report forwarded so that she can review the numbers. One potential issue is that medical centers need to maintain substantial cash reserves to deal with emergencies, so it will be important to make sure that factors such as those are being taken into account.
Q: How can SUNY maintain quality and distinctiveness as we ramp up online programs?
A: Differentiation of mission and vision across sectors is key, as we need diverse types of programming. One-on-one mentoring will continue to be important for scholarship and teaching, but at the same time a number of students want options for how to obtain a basic degree.
Q: What are you doing as Chancellor to promote liberal arts and push back against the narrative of higher education as workforce training centers?
A: There is a project under development that will be of specific interest to the comprehensive colleges and university centers, to enhance the distinctiveness of the liberal arts across SUNY. This is currently under confidential discussion; more details will be released later.
Comprehensive Colleges
Q: How can SUNY get the Governor to act to appoint members to College Councils, so that critical searches for campus Presidents can proceed?
A: More appointments to the Councils are expected, now that the budget process is completed, but full Councils are not needed for searches to proceed. SUNY would like to broaden the pools for Presidential searches, and the Chancellor asks for all of us to help identify promising candidates.
Q: How can we work together to advocate for more direct state aid for our core operating budgets?
A: Budget advocacy has been excellent this year. SUNY lobbied extensively for funding to cover the retroactive pay increases from the recent contract, and having that included in the enacted budget is a big win for the system. Advocacy by campuses is important to support the efforts of the system.
Q: Are the mission, identity, diversity, and efforts of the comprehensive colleges sector well understood and appreciated outside of SUNY?
A: Business and community leaders around the state not only respect the sector, but are grateful when there’s a SUNY campus in their district. SUNY is augmenting its communication team and will focus on better communicating the value of SUNY to the state.
Colleges of Technology
Q: Do you find these Q&A sessions useful?
A: Yes, certainly.
Q: Our sector is known for and has invested heavily in experiential learning. Will all campuses be expected to develop online programming? What support will be available to campuses to reconcile the dual focus on applied learning and online education?
A: Applied and experiential learning is a critical initiative, and it would be good to scale it up further. SUNY Online is opt-in for campuses, but most campuses will probably become involved in some format. Ideally the online initiative will result in new enrollments, new opportunities for program development, and new opportunities to collaborate across the system.
Q: What funding will be available through PRODI-G to support undergraduate pipeline efforts?
A: Extending recruitment of historically underrepresented minority students to the undergraduate level is a great idea. High school students today can be PRODI-G faculty of tomorrow.
Campus Governance Leaders
Q: Misapplication of Research Misconduct charges has been a problem at Downstate, and requests by campus faculty governance to restart a fair and impartial process based on national standards have been ignored. Can System Administration intervene to assure fair processes are established?
A: The Chancellor will bring the issue up to her executive leadership, and have Vice Chancellor Wang and Provost Laursen look into it.
Q: New public health laws in New York mandate the use of Department of Health ELAP certified labs for analysis of environmental samples, which places undue financial burdens on our campus labs and creates barriers to training our students on water quality sampling. Will you work to create an exemption for teaching labs, or a certification model more suited to academic labs?
A: The Chancellor will look into these regulation issues. While on the surface this looks bad for education, it will be important to understand the rationale that the Department of Health used to establish the current certification process.
Q: Even as the roles of Campus Governance Leaders have grown on campuses, their participation on College Councils remains varied and restricted. Will you work to include CGLs as voting members on College Councils?
A: One of the most important roles of the College Councils is to hire campus Presidents. It may be a conflict of interest for CGLs to be involved in hiring Presidents that they would later work for.
Chancellor’s Report
Kristina Johnson, Chancellor
- Advocacy: Chancellor Johnson described the recent DC Days trip, a two day event in Washington. Day 1 is focused on a SUNY research forum and updates from federal agencies such as NIH, Dept of Energy, NSF, and AAAS, to highlight current research areas. Priorities discussed this year included the opioid crisis, and research in aging and Alzheimer’s. Day 2 is focused on meeting with congressional leaders and staffers to promote SUNY’s role in research. SUNY has a goal to double the amount of sponsored research done across the system.
- Budget: There were a number of successes in the budget negotiations this year: $550M for capital projects across SUNY; the adoption of the funding floor model of support for the community college campuses; state support for Medicare DSH funding to the hospitals; and restoration of funding for EOP and related programs. Extensive meetings with state Senate and Assembly members, and with other groups, was critical for obtaining these budget outcomes.
- PRODI-G: Chancellor Johnson stressed the importance of the PRODI-G initiative in meeting SUNY’s diversity goals. SUNY lags behind many state higher education systems in faculty diversity, even as our student body becomes increasingly diverse. PRODI-G aims to be an evidence-driven program to campuses as they develop individual campus strategies to recruit and retain more diverse faculty. The salary support from system will allow campuses to bring on underrepresented minority faculty and women faculty in STEM in advance of upcoming faculty retirements, which will provide for greater opportunities for mentoring of the new faculty. PRODI-G will also include graduate student stipends to build the recruitment pipeline. Campus PRODI-G proposals and hiring plans are due to System in July.
- Sustainability: SUNY will soon launch a Green Revolving Loan Fund to support campus environmental sustainability projects. Campuses can apply for up to $1M for projects to save on energy budget, such as building retrofits and clean energy purchases.
- SUNY Online: Online program development can help SUNY grow in new areas, and will need investments to provide faculty development support, infrastructure enhancements, and marketing.
Provost’s Report
Tod Laursen, Provost
Provost Laursen devoted his remarks to an update of the SUNY Online initiative.
- Process to date: The SUNY Online Working Committee has been working since fall 2018 to identify opportunities and options for scaling up the fully online programming that SUNY offers. As part of this work, the committee reviewed Request for Information submissions from a few dozen vendors, to explore services that could be used to scale up SUNY’s online offerings. The committee released a draft white paper of findings and recommendations for comments. Some of the main issues raised during the comment period included concerns over academic freedom and intellectual property; quality assurance for the online courses and what faculty development would be provided; how the financial model would work; and what would be the role of System and individual campuses such as Empire State, and commercial online program managers.
- SUNY Online framework: Current plans are for System Administration to establish an administrative unit to create and manage an online environment that provides a common suite of services to campuses to support students, faculty, and campus units; and to engage vendors as needed to provide key business and technical services. Goals include increasing the number of fully online learners in SUNY, recruit NY residents who are going out of state for online programs, and increasing the number of non-traditional out-of-state and international learners. SUNY Online will target programs that fill in gaps in Open SUNY offerings and respond to market opportunities by selecting programs that can scale up to 1000+ students within three years. The working committee has facilitated webinars in a dozen or so disciplinary areas to identify programs and partner campuses that can meet these requirements.
- Fall 2019 pilot: A handful of previously approved Open SUNY+ programs in the target disciplines will be invited by the end of April to participate in the fall 2019 pilot. These programs need to be willing to integrate with the System IT environment (Banner, Ranku, Slate, Blackboard, Starfish, Degree Works, and Transfer Finder), as testing the new system integration is an important goal for the pilot. In addition, the pilot will test how System investments in marketing, student services, and faculty support can facilitate scaling up of the existing programs.
- Fall 2020 launch and beyond: RFPs will be issued in summer and fall 2019 to identify programs, along with stand-alone elective, general education, and core courses, as identified by the discussions in the thematic webinars. SUNY Online will expand its marketing and recruitment campaign, develop budgets and financial models to support budget advocacy, and continue to develop the IT infrastructure. It will establish mechanisms for ongoing engagement with shared governance.
UFS Elections
President Gwen Kay was re-elected by unanimous consent to a second term.
The following slate of Sector Representatives and alternates was ratified by the body.
- Comprehensive Colleges:
- Rep: Bruce Simon, Fredonia
- Alternate: John Keiser, Brockport
- Technology Colleges:
- Rep: Barat Wolfe, Canton
- Alternate: Tim Gerken, Morrisville
- University Centers:
- Rep: Patrick Doyle, Binghamton
- Alternate: Sara Reiter, Binghamton
- Health Sciences Centers:
- Rep: Alexander Schwartzman, Downstate Medical
- Alternate: Phil Glick, U Buffalo
Approved Resolutions
- Campus Governance Leaders, “Proposed Policy for Appointment of Interim Administrators at and above the Level of Dean”
- This resolution provides suggested guidelines for involving shared governance when interim administrators are appointed on campuses.
- For: 37; Against: 1; Abstain: 2
- Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee, “Resolution to Ensure Numerous Pathways to Continuing Appointment and Promotion”
- This resolution asks that appointment and promotion policies align with inclusivity goals of SUNY, that promotion be based on all of the criteria set forth in Board of Trustees policy, and that the guidelines for promotion be made clear as part of the onboarding process for new faculty.
- For: 30; Against: 6; Abstain: 5
- Governance Committee, “Resolution on the Expectation of Professional Employees, as defined by the policies of the Board of Trustees, to Participate in Shared Governance”
- This resolution requests that professional employees of SUNY be made aware of and also be supported in opportunities to become involved in governance activities at the campus and system level.
- For: 34; Against: 5; Abstain: 2
- Operations Committee, “Resolution to Create Common SUNY Onboarding Information Points and Processes for New Employees”
- This resolution recommends the development of a set of recommended onboarding practices and information for use across SUNY, including the establishment of a shared repository of onboarding materials.
- For: 33; Against: 2; Abstain: 5
- Operations Committee, “Resolution to Improve SUNY Reimbursement Processes”
- This resolution requests the development of a modernized travel reimbursement system that will provide for easy and timely submission of reimbursement requests and transparency around approval and reimbursement processing.
- For: 38; Against: 2; Abstain: 1
- Specialized and Statutory Colleges Sector, “Resolution on reaffirming 176-11-1 Resolution in Support of Stand-Alone Unit Head for New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University”
- This resolution restates support for the position that there needs to be a stand-alone head for New York State College of Ceramics, at Alfred University.
- For: 33; Against: 0; Abstain: 2
- Undergraduate Committee, “Resolution on Campus Review of Course Withdrawal Deadlines”
- This resolution recommends periodic review by governance of campus policies, and suggests policies involved with registration deadlines as one area for review.
- For: 33; Against: 3; Abstain: 2
- Undergraduate Committee, “Resolution on Privatization, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance in Online Education”
- This resolution asks that shared governance be clearly involved in the development of policies and procedures for SUNY Online, and that faculty be informed of their rights to retain ownership of their work and their role in the development of online policies.
- For: 31; Against: 2; Abstain: 7
The resolution "To Form a Committee to Examine Funding Opportunities for Undocumented Students in SUNY Professional Programs" was referred back to the Graduate Programs and Research Committee.