Spring 2020 Post-Plenary Report - DRAFT
Spring 2020 Plenary, the View from the Executive Committee
COVID, COVID, COVID. Just as the Winter Plenary discussion was dominated by the budget discussion, the impacts that COVID-19 has had and will have on campuses, the SUNY system, and the state was the principle focus of sessions for the Spring Plenary.
Resolutions, Spring 2020 UFS Plenary
Requests from committees
President’s Report
Gwen Kay, President
(Slide deck - PDF)
Q&A with the Chancellor
University Centers
Q: While the mission at all SUNY schools has been disrupted by the current COVID-19 outbreak, the University Centers have been struck particularly hard. Labs are closed; faculty and graduate student research and scholarship has been interrupted. Students, faculty and staff are working remotely or in unprecedented situations. This leaves concerns for the upcoming year in terms of financial deficits, enrollment drops, and fear of retrenchment. How will SUNY ensure the University Centers recover and even potentially use this crisis to inform innovation?
A:
Comprehensive Colleges
Q: Like their colleagues in other sectors, faculty and professionals in the University Colleges (or comprehensives) sector have worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks to transition to emergency remote instruction in order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and shield our increasingly stressed public health system. SUNY’s workers across the state have demonstrated great creativity, fortitude, resilience, and commitment to supporting our students and patients, wherever they are in these challenging and troubling times. We salute these efforts and celebrate our successes. Today, though, we ask you to join us in making a case for the enduring value of in-person, face-to-face education. Our sector occupies a niche in which we have a competitive advantage, our campuses have a physical and social infrastructure we don’t believe should be abandoned, and our colleges are often the largest employers in our counties. Many of our students are mourning the loss of their on-campus lives, activities, cultures, and identities. Given that SUNY Online targets adult learners and can be scaled up only so rapidly, our colleges will continue to be the educational home for the vast majority of SUNY students. How, then, should our sector contribute to positioning SUNY to capture what could well be a countercyclical increase in student enrollments through a smart mix of in-person/face-to-face and online teaching and learning?
A: The Chancellor agreed that residential, place-based learning is key to so many of our universities, colleges, and community colleges, and offered thanks for building a sense of community on our campuses. Students love the on-campus experience and want to get back to it. It is important to get back to in-person instruction, and the experiential learning that it allows. When we reopen though, we need to consider how to allow for social distancing and other safety measures. This could mean offering larger courses in an online/remote modality, while for smaller, experiential courses, labs, clinical experiences, and so on, we need to figure out how to go face to face safely. We also need to be ready to help faculty and students who do get sick.
Health Sciences
Q: The Academic Medical Centers (AMC’s), of the SUNY system, are in the very epicenter of the pandemic. How will the Chancellor address and advocate for the survival of the AMC’s, which train the majority of those entering the medical field in the NYS? What is the vision on rebuilding the infrastructure of the AMC’s after the crisis abates? Are we missing a once in a lifetime opportunity for the students to learn, contribute and mature, by not allowing them to participate in the clinical care of the patients in the current crisis?
A: Our Academic Medical Centers have been in the epicenter of the response to the pandemic, and System has been meeting weekly with Presidents of these campuses to coordinate the response. The cessation of elective surgery during the crisis has had a negative impact on hospital budgets, exacerbating the situation. SUNY has been coordinating access to personal protective equipment and other needs, so that we can respond to FEMA programs and requests as a system, and is working to make sure our hospitals are clinical trial sites as treatments and vaccines are developed. Finally, we have pivoted to early graduation within the last week, and 200 of our graduates should shortly join the fight against this disease.
Specialized and Statutory
Q: Our sector has a very high percentage of programs that rely on physical experiential learning and skills development that cannot be replicated in an online environment. We understand that licensing and accrediting bodies are making adjustments given the situation this spring semester, but issues with summer programs such as the Maritime Summer Sea Term, research and showcase/production opportunities for students, and uncertainty about the fall semester and beyond loom large. Can you tell us what SUNY is doing to begin discussing and addressing these experiential needs and how can we create a stronger SUNY based on the lessons we're learning from this ongoing experience? Related to that, are there larger nationwide discussions in higher education that can help provide guidance as we try to deliver students as complete an education as we can provide?
A: The Chancellor has been in frequent contact with the admiral at Maritime, and the summer sea program is being delayed until late July. The trend across higher education with regard to in-person experiential learning is to delay, and to reduce density and time of exposure. Suggestions from conversations with other systems include various hybrid structures, such as breaking down large classes into small groups with appropriate PPE to reduce exposure. We are building a bridge to a new normal and should look at a 1-2 year timeframe given vaccine development time. Students have asked for 5 things; one was “be kind with our questions, and we will be gentle with our answers”. The Chancellor wants every student to get experiential learning, as it helps students develop career plans and in many fields results in better opportunities.
Campus Governance Leaders
Q: We believe there is an unprecedented and rampant proliferation in the number of administrators throughout SUNY while the number of faculty and support for faculty have stagnated. We would like an independent audit to examine this. At some campuses, administrators are hired for every new, trivial initiative that can be handled by an already bloated staff. Then, each new administrator wants to hire their own team - certainly at least one assistant. What do the numbers say? What is the administrator-staff/faculty ratio across SUNY and how has that ratio changed during the last 5, 10, 20 years? Can you authorize an independent audit so we can see if these perceptions are correct? Can you set limits on administrator-staff/faculty ratio - say 1 administrator per 5 (or 10) faculty members?
A: These numbers should already be available for analysis. The Chancellor stated that we need to get through the current crisis, and then we should plan on looking not only at staff/faculty ratios, but also student/faculty ratios, which the Chancellor thinks are still too high. In terms of staff levels though, SUNY has lower numbers of administrative staff in relation to student enrollment than a number of other large state systems. Also, in the case of research universities in particular, having adequate staff levels to support instruction and other student needs is important to allow faculty focus on scholarship and innovation.
Technology and Agriculture
Q: We are concerned about support and resources for faculty and staff with regard to applied learning, but more so about the academic burden and mental health of our students going forward as we ask them to continue to be flexible but still meet the high standards for the certifications and licensing they need to move into their desired profession. What is SUNY doing to ensure students (especially those who are scheduled to graduate this semester and are in programs that require specific ‘hands-on’ lab experiences, such as Auto Tech, Vet. Tech, Nursing etc.) are able to achieve these credentials?
A: This was one of the first areas of concern that SUNY raised with the NYS Education Department as planning for remote instruction was under way. Campuses have proposed alternative means for achieving clinical and other experiential learning requirements, and NYSED has relaxed its approval processed and has worked with campuses to approve and implement the proposed alternatives.
Chancellor’s Report
Kristina Johnson, SUNY Chancellor
(Slide deck - PDF)
The Chancellor devoted most of her prepared remarks to a discussion of SUNY's response to the pandemic
Provost’s Report
Tod Laursen, SUNY Provost
The Provost's remarks focused on operational and governance responses by SUNY to the COVID-19 pandemic.
SUNY Online Q&A
Kim Scalzo, Interim Executive Director, Academic Technologies and Innovation
(Slide deck - PDF)
Spring 2020 UFS elections
COVID, COVID, COVID. Just as the Winter Plenary discussion was dominated by the budget discussion, the impacts that COVID-19 has had and will have on campuses, the SUNY system, and the state was the principle focus of sessions for the Spring Plenary.
- Budgets for the system and for campuses will be hit hard, and painful decisions are on the horizon. We need to ensure that governance has a voice in those decisions.
- There is currently uncertainty as to whether or not classes will be back on campus in the fall; which classes and which students will be residential and which will be remote; and how this might vary from campus to campus. Now is the time to stay involved as campuses plan for various contingencies.
- Everyone on our campuses should be aware of the central clearing house that SUNY has established to organize resources and communications around SUNY's response to the pandemic: Your Resources for Remote Learning During COVID-19.
Resolutions, Spring 2020 UFS Plenary
- There were no resolutions proposed at the 185th UFS Plenary
Requests from committees
- Communications (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
- Equity, Inclusion and Diversity (report)
- If you hear reports from your campus community of individuals being negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of their held identities (e.g., race, gender identity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, ability or disability status, age, immigration status, and so on) – or as a result of the institutional response to the pandemic – please share with the Acting Chair.
- Ethics and Institutional Integrity (report)
- We would be happy to continue to receive any comments on ethics advisory boards, and ethical issues
relating to Open Educational Resources. - See their white paper on "Fair Access? White paper on Ethics and Open Educational Resources"
- We would be happy to continue to receive any comments on ethics advisory boards, and ethical issues
- Governance (report)
- Please let the Chair of the committee ([email protected]) know how academic policy changes due to COVID-19 are being handled on your campuses. Are they going though appropriate shared governance structures?
- Graduate Academic Programs and Research (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
- Operations (report)
- If you have not already, please respond to UFS President Kay’s request for local title counts.
- Programs and Awards (report)
- Please share: Shared Governance Award deadline - November 17, 2020
- Please share: Adjunct in Teaching Award deadline - November 10, 2020
- Please share: Chancellor’s Awards deadline - February 16, 2021
- Student Life (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
- Undergraduate Academic Programs and Policies (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
- But see their Supplementary Report on the "Free Freshman Year" Proposal.
President’s Report
Gwen Kay, President
(Slide deck - PDF)
- Budget update: The approved budget includes some good news, including $550M for critical maintenance, $50M allocation per hospital; and restoration of $2.5M for EOP and other educational programs. Even before the impact of COVID-19, there were a number of bad news items in the approved budget, such as no Maintenance of Effort and no renewal of the revenue floor for the community college campuses. In response to the budget impacts of the pandemic, SUNY is now looking at a hiring freeze for the fall and the potential for mid-year budget cuts if state revenue targets are not met. The current Presidential searches will probably go forward as well as planned PRODiG hires, but other hiring is still to be determined.
- COVID-19 response: Some federal funding is coming to higher education through the CARES act, with half of the first round of funding going directly to students. SUNY is active in lobbying for additional response to the pandemic, documenting the scope of support campuses will need. As SUNY and campuses work to be flexible and responsive to student needs, many decisions are being made that deal with topics that should involve shared governance in the discussions.
- Financial impacts of COVID-19: Campuses are tracking COVID-19 expenses and lobbying for funding to deal with crisis. Rather than direct refunds, students are receiving credits on meal plans and housing to apply to next year. Federal guidelines require that work study students be paid if campuses are paying essential workers, even if those students are unable to perform their job duties because they have been sent home from campus. Also, for this year only, credit requirements for maintaining financial aid (e.g., the Excelsior funding) are waived, but students need to contact their campus financial aid department to inform them of their circumstances.
- Academic impacts of COVID-19: 1. The pivot to remote instruction has disrupted programs that require clinical and applied learning experiences. New York State Ed has been flexible in approving alternative clinical experiences, but the same has not always been the case for accrediting bodies that oversee some of the licensure programs. 2. Academic programs may need to adjust their assessment plans this year, but if so it will be critical to document what changes were made and why. 3. There have been calls for converting all grading to pass/fail, given that students and faculty were not expecting this regime of remote instruction. Wholesale conversion to P/F can lead to problems with accreditation, and students may need grades for progressing in their programs or applying to graduate school. As campuses make expanded options for P/F available, students should consult with their advisors before opting to take courses P/F. 4. SUNY is in discussion with UUP and campus governance leaders to develop guidelines for how, it at all, to count teaching and scholarship activities this semester toward promotion and tenure.
- Committee updates: The Elsevier contract has been renewed, but with a more limited scope. The new contract includes a core list of 248 titles, and full access past issues of the journals covered by the prior contract. Interlibrary loan and article purchase will need to be used to access journals no longer included in the contract. Looking forward to new committee business, most of our standing committees (i.e., Graduate & Research; EID; Student Life; Governance; and Operations) will be involved in a post-COVID-19 assessment.
Q&A with the Chancellor
University Centers
Q: While the mission at all SUNY schools has been disrupted by the current COVID-19 outbreak, the University Centers have been struck particularly hard. Labs are closed; faculty and graduate student research and scholarship has been interrupted. Students, faculty and staff are working remotely or in unprecedented situations. This leaves concerns for the upcoming year in terms of financial deficits, enrollment drops, and fear of retrenchment. How will SUNY ensure the University Centers recover and even potentially use this crisis to inform innovation?
A:
Comprehensive Colleges
Q: Like their colleagues in other sectors, faculty and professionals in the University Colleges (or comprehensives) sector have worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks to transition to emergency remote instruction in order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and shield our increasingly stressed public health system. SUNY’s workers across the state have demonstrated great creativity, fortitude, resilience, and commitment to supporting our students and patients, wherever they are in these challenging and troubling times. We salute these efforts and celebrate our successes. Today, though, we ask you to join us in making a case for the enduring value of in-person, face-to-face education. Our sector occupies a niche in which we have a competitive advantage, our campuses have a physical and social infrastructure we don’t believe should be abandoned, and our colleges are often the largest employers in our counties. Many of our students are mourning the loss of their on-campus lives, activities, cultures, and identities. Given that SUNY Online targets adult learners and can be scaled up only so rapidly, our colleges will continue to be the educational home for the vast majority of SUNY students. How, then, should our sector contribute to positioning SUNY to capture what could well be a countercyclical increase in student enrollments through a smart mix of in-person/face-to-face and online teaching and learning?
A: The Chancellor agreed that residential, place-based learning is key to so many of our universities, colleges, and community colleges, and offered thanks for building a sense of community on our campuses. Students love the on-campus experience and want to get back to it. It is important to get back to in-person instruction, and the experiential learning that it allows. When we reopen though, we need to consider how to allow for social distancing and other safety measures. This could mean offering larger courses in an online/remote modality, while for smaller, experiential courses, labs, clinical experiences, and so on, we need to figure out how to go face to face safely. We also need to be ready to help faculty and students who do get sick.
Health Sciences
Q: The Academic Medical Centers (AMC’s), of the SUNY system, are in the very epicenter of the pandemic. How will the Chancellor address and advocate for the survival of the AMC’s, which train the majority of those entering the medical field in the NYS? What is the vision on rebuilding the infrastructure of the AMC’s after the crisis abates? Are we missing a once in a lifetime opportunity for the students to learn, contribute and mature, by not allowing them to participate in the clinical care of the patients in the current crisis?
A: Our Academic Medical Centers have been in the epicenter of the response to the pandemic, and System has been meeting weekly with Presidents of these campuses to coordinate the response. The cessation of elective surgery during the crisis has had a negative impact on hospital budgets, exacerbating the situation. SUNY has been coordinating access to personal protective equipment and other needs, so that we can respond to FEMA programs and requests as a system, and is working to make sure our hospitals are clinical trial sites as treatments and vaccines are developed. Finally, we have pivoted to early graduation within the last week, and 200 of our graduates should shortly join the fight against this disease.
Specialized and Statutory
Q: Our sector has a very high percentage of programs that rely on physical experiential learning and skills development that cannot be replicated in an online environment. We understand that licensing and accrediting bodies are making adjustments given the situation this spring semester, but issues with summer programs such as the Maritime Summer Sea Term, research and showcase/production opportunities for students, and uncertainty about the fall semester and beyond loom large. Can you tell us what SUNY is doing to begin discussing and addressing these experiential needs and how can we create a stronger SUNY based on the lessons we're learning from this ongoing experience? Related to that, are there larger nationwide discussions in higher education that can help provide guidance as we try to deliver students as complete an education as we can provide?
A: The Chancellor has been in frequent contact with the admiral at Maritime, and the summer sea program is being delayed until late July. The trend across higher education with regard to in-person experiential learning is to delay, and to reduce density and time of exposure. Suggestions from conversations with other systems include various hybrid structures, such as breaking down large classes into small groups with appropriate PPE to reduce exposure. We are building a bridge to a new normal and should look at a 1-2 year timeframe given vaccine development time. Students have asked for 5 things; one was “be kind with our questions, and we will be gentle with our answers”. The Chancellor wants every student to get experiential learning, as it helps students develop career plans and in many fields results in better opportunities.
Campus Governance Leaders
Q: We believe there is an unprecedented and rampant proliferation in the number of administrators throughout SUNY while the number of faculty and support for faculty have stagnated. We would like an independent audit to examine this. At some campuses, administrators are hired for every new, trivial initiative that can be handled by an already bloated staff. Then, each new administrator wants to hire their own team - certainly at least one assistant. What do the numbers say? What is the administrator-staff/faculty ratio across SUNY and how has that ratio changed during the last 5, 10, 20 years? Can you authorize an independent audit so we can see if these perceptions are correct? Can you set limits on administrator-staff/faculty ratio - say 1 administrator per 5 (or 10) faculty members?
A: These numbers should already be available for analysis. The Chancellor stated that we need to get through the current crisis, and then we should plan on looking not only at staff/faculty ratios, but also student/faculty ratios, which the Chancellor thinks are still too high. In terms of staff levels though, SUNY has lower numbers of administrative staff in relation to student enrollment than a number of other large state systems. Also, in the case of research universities in particular, having adequate staff levels to support instruction and other student needs is important to allow faculty focus on scholarship and innovation.
Technology and Agriculture
Q: We are concerned about support and resources for faculty and staff with regard to applied learning, but more so about the academic burden and mental health of our students going forward as we ask them to continue to be flexible but still meet the high standards for the certifications and licensing they need to move into their desired profession. What is SUNY doing to ensure students (especially those who are scheduled to graduate this semester and are in programs that require specific ‘hands-on’ lab experiences, such as Auto Tech, Vet. Tech, Nursing etc.) are able to achieve these credentials?
A: This was one of the first areas of concern that SUNY raised with the NYS Education Department as planning for remote instruction was under way. Campuses have proposed alternative means for achieving clinical and other experiential learning requirements, and NYSED has relaxed its approval processed and has worked with campuses to approve and implement the proposed alternatives.
Chancellor’s Report
Kristina Johnson, SUNY Chancellor
(Slide deck - PDF)
The Chancellor devoted most of her prepared remarks to a discussion of SUNY's response to the pandemic
- COVID-19 timeline: description
- SUNY Online support: description
- Closing the digital divide for our students: description
Provost’s Report
Tod Laursen, SUNY Provost
The Provost's remarks focused on operational and governance responses by SUNY to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Pivoting to remote instruction. Description
- Promotion and tenure issues: description
- Grading. Student Assembly had advocated for wholesale switch to pass/fail grading, but we want to make sure we don't do unintended harm. Some program requirements can limit the acceptance of P/F grades, there are issues with transferring P/F grades among campuses, and some students may need/want to have grades reported for their courses. SUNY is preparing guidance for campuses as they determine what modifications to grading will be adopted for this semester.
- Assessment. description
- Recruiting and admissions. description
- Resources. description
- Planning for summer and beyond. description
SUNY Online Q&A
Kim Scalzo, Interim Executive Director, Academic Technologies and Innovation
(Slide deck - PDF)
- COVID-19 remote instruction support. Description
- Packback Tool: description
- SUNY Online pilot, lessons learned: description
- SUNY Online, next steps: description
Spring 2020 UFS elections
- Keith Landa was re-elected as Vice President / Secretary, by acclimation
- The following slate of sector representatives and alternates was ratified by the UFS
- University Colleges: Anastasia Pratt / (Bruce Simon, alternate)
- Health Science Centers: Brigitte Desport / (Pam Youngs-Maher, alternate)
- Colleges of Technology/Agriculture: Tim Gerken / (Elizabeth Frisbee, alternate)
- Specialized and Statutory Colleges: Carlie Phipps / (Gary Scott, alternate)
- University Centers: Cemal Basaran / (alternate to be determined)
- Campus Governance Leaders: Lisa Glidden / (alternate to be determined)