Winter 2020 Post-Plenary Report
Winter 2020 Plenary, the View from the Executive Committee
Here is a list of the top issues and items for action back on our campuses, from a poll of the Executive Committee members:
1. Budget, budget, budget
Far and away the top item listed by Executive Committee members was the SUNY budget and how to advocate for SUNY in the current budget negotiations between the governor and Legislature. Not surprising, given that President Kay, Chancellor Johnson, and CFO McLoughlin all discussed the budget in their presentations (see reports below) and budget advocacy was the focus of the sole resolution for this Plenary. Campus governance organizations and individuals across the system are encouraged to review the resolution and budget materials, and become involved in budget advocacy as they feel appropriate. Letter templates for contacting the Governor’s office and the Legislature are available for campus governance groups, individuals whose campuses have endorsed the UFS resolution, and individuals where campuses have not (yet) endorsed the UFS action. Remember, any advocacy efforts by faculty and staff have to be done outside of normal work time and cannot use any official resources (such as campus email addresses).
2. Other
While no other topic came close to the budget in the lists from Executive Committee members, there were a number of other issues mentioned:
Resolutions, Winter 2020 UFS Plenary
Requests from committees
President’s Report
Gwen Kay, President
(Slide deck - PDF)
Q&A with the Chancellor
Campus Governance Leaders
Q: Repeated incidents of racial conflict and harassment on our campuses have disrupted student communities and given rise to student demands for action. Will you assist in the development of a protocol or University-wide policies for campus reactions, including contingency plans and strategies for messaging about free speech and responding to these kinds of events?
A: The chancellor replied that she is happy to participate in developing protocol and best practices with regard to free speech and response to incidents of bigotry bias and hate. This is of central importance to her, the Board of Trustees, and leaders at every level. A task force on safety, equity, and inclusion will assess what individual campuses are doing and examining best practices. Presidents will be asked to talk about their practices, with an eye to developing a tool kit of best practices for responses to bias incidents. Some things are already evidently key: First thing is to be immediate in response. Address the issue at once, having the stakeholders get together and reaffirm the institutional commitment to free speech and condemnation of bigotry. Second, have coherent policies in place and work every year to educate the community on those policies. Remember that our students change annually and so there needs to be a continuous attention to culture. Third is long-term culture change.
Q: Given the long history within SUNY of conducting open searches for presidential and cabinet-level positions, which allows participation in the process by the entire campus community, can you discuss what appears to be a shift toward closed searches? Has there been an assessment done to determine if closed versus open searches have better outcomes, and, if so, can that evaluation be shared with us?
A: We talked about this in the Fall. There is literature out there about the benefits of a closed search. We now have 10 searches going on (two concluded). Of those 10, as we pursue the strongest possible candidates, it has become clear that some of the best candidates will not enter the pool if it is an open search. If we want great leaders (I know we do), let’s not handicap ourselves with an open search. Trustee Tamrowski discussed the closed search, but suggested that community members be allowed to participate in the search process (on campus) with a confidentiality agreement. Remember that faculty on searches are representatives of the campus - the campus does have a voice in even a closed search.
Technology and Agriculture
Q: Now that SUNY Online’s pilot is in full swing and we know so much more about the unique issues associated with such a complicated initiative, we had two related questions. First, could you outline how success is being defined for SUNY Online, and what measures are being used to assess success? And second, what do you think campuses should be focusing on to remain relevant to this flagship initiative, to show commitment to your vision while staying true to our sectors’ respective missions, and to contribute meaningfully to the assessment of the success of this vision?
A: This takes time and we are still defining success, but development of a common technology platform for SUNY Online and the numbers of unique students we are reaching are markers of success so far. Future success will be defined in terms of capturing a significant number of the 40,000 New Yorkers going out of state for online education, growth in our online master’s and graduate programs, increasing numbers of international students enrolled, and involvement of more full-time faculty with SUNY Online.
Campuses should engage in gap analysis to link workforce development to our programs. We should be looking to Integrate machine learning into every discipline.
Q: Lastly, we would like to revisit the test optional issue we discussed together at the last plenary in light of the coalition of advocacy groups that have filed a lawsuit against the University of California to stop requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores. We believe that you were supportive of campuses making the decision to move to test optional, but in our sector at least two campuses made the request and were not successful. Can you please clarify the guidelines for campuses to become test optional, and whether you are concerned about a similar lawsuit being brought against SUNY?
A: It is a campus decision.
Specialized and Statutory
Q: We want to again thank you for your work with the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University on the appointment of Dr. Gabrielle Gaustad as the vice president of statutory affairs. While this is a positive change, there has been concern expressed on the campus as to her workload as she is still also the dean of engineering, which itself is a full-time position. The NYSCC Faculty Council is currently reviewing the VPSA position description to better understand the VPSA's responsibilities and the opportunities that the VPSA can offer the NYSCC and Alfred University. Can you tell us about how this position will be assessed at higher administrative levels moving forward, and the process by which adjustments in the description or workload will occur over time as the position evolves?
A: SUNY doesn’t appoint the leadership, it approves it. The personnel review isn’t under their purview, and they are at more of a distance with regard to the position. The chancellor’s office believes that the majority of Dr. Guastad’s portfolio and her job description is with the school of ceramics, but we will stay vigilant about the situation.
Q: Campuses and programs across the system have a variety of teaching and learning practices, and in recognition of this variation have been adding in more title categories such as “professor of practice,” “lecturer,” and “senior lecturer,” with different job duties and compensations than the typical faculty line. We have noticed that at some campuses the addition of these new titles has gone through a robust shared process, with administration and governance both fully involved together to great results. On other campuses and at other times, this may not always be the case, and so faculty have distinct concerns such as wanting to ensure that a tiered system does not result from these additions. So our question is can your office help reinforce with campus administrations a culture of incorporating shared governance in creating and maintaining these positions, and how can we share our best practices and examples with you in service of this?
A: She said that she recommends that we work together with the provost’s office and the vice chancellor for human resources to think about these titles. Paul Patton could get a working group together on that. UFS should follow through with this if it remains important to us.
Q: SUNY Online is a huge initiative, and is getting a lot of traction. There are SUNY Online ads everywhere on social media! The pilot programs in the initiative are set and proceeding, and so our question is about the campus-based online programs that are not part of that specific cohort. Will this plan also support marketing of online programs that are not part of this initiative from the SUNY level?
A: SUNY is advertising all of the campus programs alongside SUNY online. The system funnels the requests – when someone clicks on an ad to reach the information page, if they are interested in SUNY Online programs they are sent to that page, and if they are interested in other programs, they are sent to the specific campuses that have the programs they are interested in. Response time is within 10 minutes from system, but there is a big need to improve the response time from campuses when they are redirected there. There will be further discussion on how to achieve that.
University Centers
Q: As a follow-up from the last plenary in October, we questioned you about liberal arts as a priority. You stated liberal arts are fundamental to society and an announcement was forthcoming. To date we haven’t received news of this announcement. What is the update or status of this in history and how do you plan to use your public voice to help promote the importance of humanities and liberal arts and to the individuals who pursue them?
A: SUNY has ongoing negotiations with a philanthropic entity to invest in history education in the State of New York. No further details can be given at this time, but hopefully an announcement will be forthcoming by the fall.
Q: Student health – mental and physical – need to be a high priority on our campuses. There are disparities among the campuses in their abilities to provide quality health care in terms of both personnel and infrastructure. What is SUNY doing to ameliorate these inequities?
A: There is a clear need for mental health support for students, faculty, and staff. Recent budget allocations have allowed some initial mental health programs drawing on the professionals in our health centers, such as the mental health telecounseling pilot, but efforts to date are not sufficient to meet the need. There is a task force in place to determine the scope of the need and how best to meet it.
Q: Following up on a resolution the SUNY University Faculty Senate passed last spring (April 2019, #182-01-1) about interim appointments -- you shared this resolution with Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Paul Patton -- we would like to know what progress has been made in establishing clear guidelines for these appointments with the active involvement of shared governance.
A: I’m unsure of the current status of those guidelines, and will report back later.
Comprehensive Colleges
Q: During the Fall 2019 plenary, you identified SUNY Achieve as the rubric for the coordination, assessment, and return on investment analysis of a wide array of system initiatives focusing on inclusive excellence and success for all students, particularly those whose people have been underserved for far too long. Would you tell us more about what you all have been learning in System from SUNY Achieve, particularly about our sector?
A: SUNY Achieve is an umbrella initiative to focus on enrollment, retention, and student success. The Chancellor mentioned the adoption of co-requisite classes as an example. Students in English co-requisite classes achieve and succeed as least as well as students in remedial English classes, and earn credit toward their degrees while doin so, suggesting that SUNY should move away from the use of remedial classes.
Q: Near the end of 2019, participants in the SUNY Diversity Conference were focusing on troubling incidents at Syracuse University and other colleges and universities in New York State. Over the course of the year, the people in all our sectors continued doing the everyday work of making SUNY the most inclusive system of public higher education in the world. As we enter 2020, how are we doing?
A: To support free speech in a respectful environment, three things are crucial: clear policies; immediate reactions to troubling incidents on campuses; and long-term strategies for continuous cultural improvements on campus.
Q: On many campuses in our sector, our exit interviews and other data suggest that many of our students are leaving involuntarily because of personal and family financial hardships and emergencies, including basic needs insecurity. Is there someone at SUNY System who is charged with system-wide strategic enrollment management--with a portfolio that includes both recruitment and retention? If so, who are they and what are they doing to assist the comprehensive sector with our most pressing retention challenges and opportunities?
A: The Provost oversees enrollment issues; SUNY has established the Re-enroll to Complete initiative to deal with the 50,000 students who step out from SUNY without completing their degree, the majority of whom have student debt repayment that will begin six months after stopping their degree progress. So far the program has returned nearly one-fifth of those students back to active degree status, and returning students are beginning to graduate.
Chancellor’s Report
Kristina Johnson, SUNY Chancellor
(Slide deck - PDF)
Provost’s Report
Tod Laursen, SUNY Provost
(Slide deck - PDF)
CFO's Report
Eileen McLoughlin, SUNY CFO
(Slide deck - PDF)
Bylaws and Standing Rules revisions
Sandra Rezac, Governance Committee Chair; Keith Landa, UFS VP/Secretary
(Slide deck "UFS Bylaws and Standing Rules: A very brief review" - PDF)
The revised Bylaws and Standing Rules passed by a vote of 37 For, 3 Against, and 1 Abstained (out of 45 Senators and Officers eligible to vote). The 82% positive vote was well above the 2/3rds margin needed for passage. The revised Bylaws and Standing Rules documents await final formatting for publication on the website. In the meantime, here are links to the working documents, reflecting the approved language for the Bylaws and Standing Rules.
Here is a list of the top issues and items for action back on our campuses, from a poll of the Executive Committee members:
1. Budget, budget, budget
Far and away the top item listed by Executive Committee members was the SUNY budget and how to advocate for SUNY in the current budget negotiations between the governor and Legislature. Not surprising, given that President Kay, Chancellor Johnson, and CFO McLoughlin all discussed the budget in their presentations (see reports below) and budget advocacy was the focus of the sole resolution for this Plenary. Campus governance organizations and individuals across the system are encouraged to review the resolution and budget materials, and become involved in budget advocacy as they feel appropriate. Letter templates for contacting the Governor’s office and the Legislature are available for campus governance groups, individuals whose campuses have endorsed the UFS resolution, and individuals where campuses have not (yet) endorsed the UFS action. Remember, any advocacy efforts by faculty and staff have to be done outside of normal work time and cannot use any official resources (such as campus email addresses).
2. Other
While no other topic came close to the budget in the lists from Executive Committee members, there were a number of other issues mentioned:
- SUNY Online: This continues to be an area of interest and concern as the first-year pilot goes forward. How is the pilot working, how does it differ from Open SUNY, what impact will it have on existing campus online programs, how will additional programs be selected going forward, and other questions still need more complete answers. Interested campuses should review the developing offerings, and look for gaps in programs available to target student populations.
- Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity: Campuses continue to deal with difficult situations and conversations, as seen for example with recent events at Syracuse and Binghamton. Members were impressed with the work of Art Force 5, who presented on their activities to use art to open dialogue. The group facilitated a mosaic tile painting project during the Friday sessions at the Plenary. Senators also heard about programs by various SUNY campuses with programs to provide access to higher education for current and formerly incarcerated students, which have clear implications for social justice and EID issues.
- Modern States program: One item of new business led to an active discussion on the last day of the Plenary. Empire State has entered into an agreement with Modern States whereby students can access introductory courses from a variety of online providers, typically MOOCs, and if they pass a corresponding AP or CLEP test, the students will be awarded Empire State College credit for those courses. Given the focus on seamless transfer across the system, members questioned whether this meant that campuses which normally wouldn’t accept such test results for credit will now be in the situation that they must accept the credits as they are being transferred from Empire State. President Kay and Alternate Senator MacMillan from Empire State will provide more information on the program to the Senate going forward.
- Enrollment issues: SUNY as a system continues to experience declining enrollments overall, due to changing regional demographics and other factors, but the trends are affecting sectors and individual campuses differentially. University Centers continue to be stable or growing, while the community college sector and a number of the comprehensive colleges have been hard hit.
- UFS Bylaws and Standing Rules: A year and a half of work by the Governance Committee and its Bylaws Task Group resulted in major revisions of the Bylaws and Standing Rules for the UFS, adopted overwhelming at this Plenary. The Governance Committee will review and update the associated Introduction, History, and Guidelines materials, and collate it all into a new governance document to be published for print and posted online.
Resolutions, Winter 2020 UFS Plenary
- Executive Committee: “184-01-1 SUNY/CUNY Budget Resolution”
- This resolution asks the Governor and Legislature to increase the share of SUNY and CUNY operating budget that is covered by public funding instead of student tuition, fully fund SUNY and CUNY critical maintenance needs and capital projects, and establish a SUNY endowment. It also asks that SUNY UFS expand its coordination with governance bodies and union chapters across SUNY and CUNY in budget advocacy.
- For: 36 / Against: 0 / Abstain: 0
- Letter templates that you can use for advocacy efforts: For CGLs / For individuals (with campus endorsement) / For individuals (without campus endorsement yet)
Requests from committees
- Communications (report)
- Review the membership information for yourself and others from your campus listed on the Members page of the website. Please check all of the appropriate tabs of the embedded spreadsheet. If there is any information that needs to be updated for your campus, please email Jennifer Reddinger in the UFS office.
- We need stories for the Bulletin! If you have ideas for news items, essays, or opinion pieces dealing with shared governance, higher education issues, what's going on on your campuses, etc., please email those ideas to Joe Marren, Chair of the Communications Committee.
- Email any comments or suggestions for the new website organization to VP/Sec Keith Landa.
- Equity, Inclusion and Diversity (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
- 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.
- Governance (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
- Graduate Academic Programs and Research (report / presentation)
- 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 be sure that your campus is aware that the deadline for receipt of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service, Librarianship, Professional Service, Scholarship and Creative Activities, and Teaching for academic year 2019-2020 is Tuesday, February 18, 2020.
- Conversations in the Disciplines applications are due Friday, March 27, 2020. The program guidelines are posted on www.suny.edu/provost/cid. For additional information, contact Dr. Ann Hawkins, Assistant Provost for Graduate Education and Research, or Yvette Roberts, Special Assistant to the Vice Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Program Manager for Faculty and Staff Awards at [email protected] or (518) 320-1670
- Student Life (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
- Undergraduate Academic Programs and Policies (report)
- No specific requests at this time.
President’s Report
Gwen Kay, President
(Slide deck - PDF)
- Budget and Advocacy. The State of New York is dealing with budget shortfalls, but there are still priorities for SUNY that need to be addressed if SUNY is to meet its mission to provide quality education to our students, including development of our physical spaces, student financial assistance, and support for research. Specific priorities for SUNY this year include the base level funding to the community colleges, covering the debt service for our hospitals, and $500M in capital projects and critical maintenance. Last January UFS passed the “New Deal for SUNY and CUNY” resolution to advocate for greater support for public higher education in the state budget, an action endorsed by many of the SUNY campuses. Look for similar actions this year.
- Task Forces and Committees. The provost’s General Education Advisory Committee has been established to finalize a new SUNY General Education proposal by the end of the Spring 2021 semester, working from the White Paper and the Green Paper developed in the first phase of the review. Plans are to have some interim pieces of the final proposal finished by the end of Spring 2020 and Fall 2020, starting with a revision of the Information Management competency, and updating of the designations and descriptions for the “Other Worlds” and “Foreign Languages” categories in the current framework. The Board of Trustees has established a Mental Health and Wellness task force to review campus resources available for students and staff, to explore the impacts of FERPA and HIPPA regulations on programming such as the recent telecounseling pilot, and report on best practices in a final report this spring. An Advisory Group on International Education will look at ways to increase study abroad participation, recruitment global students to our campuses, and virtual exchange opportunities through online collaborations. And finally, the Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology has conferences coming up on Digital Equality (March 19-20, Syracuse) and SUNY CIT 2020 (May 26-29, Oswego).
- Board of Trustees Actions. Two of 13 Presidential searches have been completed. How open the remaining searches will be continues to be a question. Several searches are likely to be representational, with final discussions limited to search committee members, and those that are open will likely have processes in place to limit documents and discussions to members of the campuses involved. In other action, the Board has established a Hospital Governance Task Force to establish best practices in setting up governance boards for the hospital and avoid the current situation in some hospitals where the head of the hospital reports to the head of the associated medical school, when they are the same person.
- State of the State Highlights. The governor made mention of SUNY multiple times in his State of the State address, including recognition of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry award to M. Stanley Whittingham at Binghamton, and shoutouts to the Brookhaven National Lab and Cold Spring Harbor at Stony Brook. Several proposals in the address would have impacts on SUNY, including the establishment of a global center for research on hemp, raising the family income limit for the Excelsior Scholarship to $150,000, and an increase in support for EOP programs in the executive budget which is soon to be released.
Q&A with the Chancellor
Campus Governance Leaders
Q: Repeated incidents of racial conflict and harassment on our campuses have disrupted student communities and given rise to student demands for action. Will you assist in the development of a protocol or University-wide policies for campus reactions, including contingency plans and strategies for messaging about free speech and responding to these kinds of events?
A: The chancellor replied that she is happy to participate in developing protocol and best practices with regard to free speech and response to incidents of bigotry bias and hate. This is of central importance to her, the Board of Trustees, and leaders at every level. A task force on safety, equity, and inclusion will assess what individual campuses are doing and examining best practices. Presidents will be asked to talk about their practices, with an eye to developing a tool kit of best practices for responses to bias incidents. Some things are already evidently key: First thing is to be immediate in response. Address the issue at once, having the stakeholders get together and reaffirm the institutional commitment to free speech and condemnation of bigotry. Second, have coherent policies in place and work every year to educate the community on those policies. Remember that our students change annually and so there needs to be a continuous attention to culture. Third is long-term culture change.
Q: Given the long history within SUNY of conducting open searches for presidential and cabinet-level positions, which allows participation in the process by the entire campus community, can you discuss what appears to be a shift toward closed searches? Has there been an assessment done to determine if closed versus open searches have better outcomes, and, if so, can that evaluation be shared with us?
A: We talked about this in the Fall. There is literature out there about the benefits of a closed search. We now have 10 searches going on (two concluded). Of those 10, as we pursue the strongest possible candidates, it has become clear that some of the best candidates will not enter the pool if it is an open search. If we want great leaders (I know we do), let’s not handicap ourselves with an open search. Trustee Tamrowski discussed the closed search, but suggested that community members be allowed to participate in the search process (on campus) with a confidentiality agreement. Remember that faculty on searches are representatives of the campus - the campus does have a voice in even a closed search.
Technology and Agriculture
Q: Now that SUNY Online’s pilot is in full swing and we know so much more about the unique issues associated with such a complicated initiative, we had two related questions. First, could you outline how success is being defined for SUNY Online, and what measures are being used to assess success? And second, what do you think campuses should be focusing on to remain relevant to this flagship initiative, to show commitment to your vision while staying true to our sectors’ respective missions, and to contribute meaningfully to the assessment of the success of this vision?
A: This takes time and we are still defining success, but development of a common technology platform for SUNY Online and the numbers of unique students we are reaching are markers of success so far. Future success will be defined in terms of capturing a significant number of the 40,000 New Yorkers going out of state for online education, growth in our online master’s and graduate programs, increasing numbers of international students enrolled, and involvement of more full-time faculty with SUNY Online.
Campuses should engage in gap analysis to link workforce development to our programs. We should be looking to Integrate machine learning into every discipline.
Q: Lastly, we would like to revisit the test optional issue we discussed together at the last plenary in light of the coalition of advocacy groups that have filed a lawsuit against the University of California to stop requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores. We believe that you were supportive of campuses making the decision to move to test optional, but in our sector at least two campuses made the request and were not successful. Can you please clarify the guidelines for campuses to become test optional, and whether you are concerned about a similar lawsuit being brought against SUNY?
A: It is a campus decision.
Specialized and Statutory
Q: We want to again thank you for your work with the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University on the appointment of Dr. Gabrielle Gaustad as the vice president of statutory affairs. While this is a positive change, there has been concern expressed on the campus as to her workload as she is still also the dean of engineering, which itself is a full-time position. The NYSCC Faculty Council is currently reviewing the VPSA position description to better understand the VPSA's responsibilities and the opportunities that the VPSA can offer the NYSCC and Alfred University. Can you tell us about how this position will be assessed at higher administrative levels moving forward, and the process by which adjustments in the description or workload will occur over time as the position evolves?
A: SUNY doesn’t appoint the leadership, it approves it. The personnel review isn’t under their purview, and they are at more of a distance with regard to the position. The chancellor’s office believes that the majority of Dr. Guastad’s portfolio and her job description is with the school of ceramics, but we will stay vigilant about the situation.
Q: Campuses and programs across the system have a variety of teaching and learning practices, and in recognition of this variation have been adding in more title categories such as “professor of practice,” “lecturer,” and “senior lecturer,” with different job duties and compensations than the typical faculty line. We have noticed that at some campuses the addition of these new titles has gone through a robust shared process, with administration and governance both fully involved together to great results. On other campuses and at other times, this may not always be the case, and so faculty have distinct concerns such as wanting to ensure that a tiered system does not result from these additions. So our question is can your office help reinforce with campus administrations a culture of incorporating shared governance in creating and maintaining these positions, and how can we share our best practices and examples with you in service of this?
A: She said that she recommends that we work together with the provost’s office and the vice chancellor for human resources to think about these titles. Paul Patton could get a working group together on that. UFS should follow through with this if it remains important to us.
Q: SUNY Online is a huge initiative, and is getting a lot of traction. There are SUNY Online ads everywhere on social media! The pilot programs in the initiative are set and proceeding, and so our question is about the campus-based online programs that are not part of that specific cohort. Will this plan also support marketing of online programs that are not part of this initiative from the SUNY level?
A: SUNY is advertising all of the campus programs alongside SUNY online. The system funnels the requests – when someone clicks on an ad to reach the information page, if they are interested in SUNY Online programs they are sent to that page, and if they are interested in other programs, they are sent to the specific campuses that have the programs they are interested in. Response time is within 10 minutes from system, but there is a big need to improve the response time from campuses when they are redirected there. There will be further discussion on how to achieve that.
University Centers
Q: As a follow-up from the last plenary in October, we questioned you about liberal arts as a priority. You stated liberal arts are fundamental to society and an announcement was forthcoming. To date we haven’t received news of this announcement. What is the update or status of this in history and how do you plan to use your public voice to help promote the importance of humanities and liberal arts and to the individuals who pursue them?
A: SUNY has ongoing negotiations with a philanthropic entity to invest in history education in the State of New York. No further details can be given at this time, but hopefully an announcement will be forthcoming by the fall.
Q: Student health – mental and physical – need to be a high priority on our campuses. There are disparities among the campuses in their abilities to provide quality health care in terms of both personnel and infrastructure. What is SUNY doing to ameliorate these inequities?
A: There is a clear need for mental health support for students, faculty, and staff. Recent budget allocations have allowed some initial mental health programs drawing on the professionals in our health centers, such as the mental health telecounseling pilot, but efforts to date are not sufficient to meet the need. There is a task force in place to determine the scope of the need and how best to meet it.
Q: Following up on a resolution the SUNY University Faculty Senate passed last spring (April 2019, #182-01-1) about interim appointments -- you shared this resolution with Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Paul Patton -- we would like to know what progress has been made in establishing clear guidelines for these appointments with the active involvement of shared governance.
A: I’m unsure of the current status of those guidelines, and will report back later.
Comprehensive Colleges
Q: During the Fall 2019 plenary, you identified SUNY Achieve as the rubric for the coordination, assessment, and return on investment analysis of a wide array of system initiatives focusing on inclusive excellence and success for all students, particularly those whose people have been underserved for far too long. Would you tell us more about what you all have been learning in System from SUNY Achieve, particularly about our sector?
A: SUNY Achieve is an umbrella initiative to focus on enrollment, retention, and student success. The Chancellor mentioned the adoption of co-requisite classes as an example. Students in English co-requisite classes achieve and succeed as least as well as students in remedial English classes, and earn credit toward their degrees while doin so, suggesting that SUNY should move away from the use of remedial classes.
Q: Near the end of 2019, participants in the SUNY Diversity Conference were focusing on troubling incidents at Syracuse University and other colleges and universities in New York State. Over the course of the year, the people in all our sectors continued doing the everyday work of making SUNY the most inclusive system of public higher education in the world. As we enter 2020, how are we doing?
A: To support free speech in a respectful environment, three things are crucial: clear policies; immediate reactions to troubling incidents on campuses; and long-term strategies for continuous cultural improvements on campus.
Q: On many campuses in our sector, our exit interviews and other data suggest that many of our students are leaving involuntarily because of personal and family financial hardships and emergencies, including basic needs insecurity. Is there someone at SUNY System who is charged with system-wide strategic enrollment management--with a portfolio that includes both recruitment and retention? If so, who are they and what are they doing to assist the comprehensive sector with our most pressing retention challenges and opportunities?
A: The Provost oversees enrollment issues; SUNY has established the Re-enroll to Complete initiative to deal with the 50,000 students who step out from SUNY without completing their degree, the majority of whom have student debt repayment that will begin six months after stopping their degree progress. So far the program has returned nearly one-fifth of those students back to active degree status, and returning students are beginning to graduate.
Chancellor’s Report
Kristina Johnson, SUNY Chancellor
(Slide deck - PDF)
- SUNY Budget Request: Chancellor Johnson described the state budget environment in which SUNY is making its request, including the $6B deficit being driven by Medicaid expenses. SUNY is asking that several items from the 2019/2020 enacted budget be continued in the 2020/2021 budget, including $550M for critical maintenance, $100M for hospital capital funds, guaranteed base allocation for community colleges, the second year of retroactive salary costs, and support for appropriated programs (e.g., PIF, EOP, EOC, etc). New requests include base support to cover the TAP gap, increases in funding for critical maintenance and capital projects, and coverage of the hospital debt service. In response to questions, the Chancellor discussed the importance of cost savings in operations to present as ‘matching funds’ for SUNY’s budget requests, how PIF and other program funding can provide key start-up packages for new faculty, and that the variation in funding per student that is seen across sectors would only be addressed if new funds were available to ensure the realignment was not at the expense of current funding to specific sectors or campuses.
- Nobel Prize Award: There were over 40 references to SUNY in the Governor’s State of the State address, including the mention of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Dr. M. Stanley Whittingham from Binghamton. Chancellor Johnson remarked that Dr. Whittingham was asked to address the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm, an additional honor extended to only a few of the awardees each year.
- Key Events and Stakeholder Outreach: Chancellor Johnson reviewed recent events across SUNY, including the 2019 Diversity Conference, OEP McConney Award ceremony, Best Practices for Supporting Veterans and Military-Affiliated Students conference, Erasing Hate forum, ribbon-cutting at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, and the Student Success Conference, among others.
Provost’s Report
Tod Laursen, SUNY Provost
(Slide deck - PDF)
- PRODiG Update. In the first year of the program, 74 Underrepresented Minority (URM) and/or Women in STEM faculty were hired across 20 campuses, almost reaching the goal of 80 PRODiG hires that had been set. Participating campuses each had to do a self-study of their past faculty hiring practices to provide a baseline for comparing progress in hiring of diverse faculty going forward. Initial results indicate that the program has increased the percentage of URM new faculty hires at most (but not all) of the participating campuses.
- General Education Implementation Update. The General Education Advisory Committee has been officially charged and has met to begin work on finalizing a new framework for SUNY General Education by the end of Spring 2021. The plan is to have components of the new framework presented to the Board of Trustees at the end of Spring 2020 and Fall 2020, so watch for ongoing reports out from the committee. Initial work is focusing on four task groups: Values/Guiding Principles; Compliance/Regulatory Context; Cultural Sensitivity; and Information Management.
- Task Force on Promoting Student Safety, Diversity, and Inclusion. This new task has been set up in response to recent events on a number of SUNY campuses. Its goals are to collect information on the factors contributing to climates of conflict on campus; take an inventory of the resources and processes campuses currently have to deal with campus conflicts; and establish best practices and toolkits that campuses can use to deal with incidents of bias, hate speech, and conflicts over free speech.
- Online Advisory Committee and SUNY Online Update. There is some indication that the marketing that has been rolled out with SUNY Online has also generated applications for existing Open SUNY programs as well as traditional on-campus enrollments, but it’s difficult to track and quantify these effects, given the multiple pathways to enrollment that exist. The Online Advisory Committee is meant to be a long-standing body to provide feedback on program development and deployment, marketing, student and faculty support services, and to engage campuses in planning and advocacy for online initiatives and educational innovations.
- Global Learning for All. How can we provide significant global learning experiences to all of our students when student mobility (traditional study abroad) is not an option for significant numbers of our students? This task force is charged with defining what we mean by global learning, how it fits with the SUNY mission, what can be done on campuses and across campuses to provide global learning experiences to our students, and how to measure the effectiveness of our global learning initiatives.
- Strategic Enrollment Planning. SUNY total headcount enrollment continues to decline, reflecting national and regional demographic changes, but the trends differ across sectors. Doctoral campuses have seen steady enrollments, and graduate enrollments across the system are actually up. There have been increases in the numbers of fully and partially online enrollments, while traditional face-to-face enrollments have seen significant declines. Re-enroll to Complete and other SUNYAchieve programs can help campuses maintain enrollments in the face of these demographic changes.
- Update on Provost Office Structure. There has been a streamlining of the organizational structure in SUNY Academic Affairs over the past year, with a reduction of about ten executive positions. Some highlights include elevation of Global Affairs to a vice chancellor position, to be filled once the Global Learning for All taskforce has defined global learning goals for SUNY; consolidation of academic services and student life functions into an Academic and Student Services division; moving SUNY Press into Academic and Student Services to promote collaboration with library services and the open education initiative; and the transfer of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to Senior Vice Chancellor Miller’s portfolio and the SUNY SAIL program to SUNY Human Resources.
CFO's Report
Eileen McLoughlin, SUNY CFO
(Slide deck - PDF)
- SUNY 2018/2019 Financial Statement. SUNY overall has a net positive working capital of approximately $2B, but long-term post-retirement benefit obligations of over $12B represent an area of concern. Total direct state appropriates (30%) and hospital revenues (28%) provide a majority of system revenue each year, with net tuition and fees (14%) being a substantially smaller portion of revenues. On the expense side of the equation, it is notable that student services (24%) are now a larger component than funds spent on instruction (22%). Hospital expenses (28%) are essentially in balance with hospital revenues.
- SUNY 2020/2021 Budget Request. SUNY’s budget request was presented in detail by Chancellor Johnson during her remarks. CFO McLoughlin emphasized some of the key priorities that SUNY is discussing with the Executive branch and the Legislature: closing the TAP gap; opportunities for workforce curriculum; renovating 3,000 classrooms and 3,000 lab spaces to support a rejuvenated curriculum; and fostering instructional innovation such as individualized adaptive learning. SUNY is asking for a 1.9% increase in direct operating budgets, and $1.3B in capital requests for 2020/2021.
- Financial Sustainability Initiatives. System administration is looking for savings in operations areas in order to promote sustainability and free up funding for higher priority areas, and to strengthen SUNY’s position in budget negotiations. Managed print is a promising area for savings, given the $50M+ and over 1 billion pages printed in offices across SUNY. Consolidating acquisition of printer devices and supplies could save the system millions of dollars each year. In addition, SUNY is developing an eProcurement platform to coordinate purchases across all categories of goods and services, and several pilot groups of campuses are using the platform for joint purchases.
Bylaws and Standing Rules revisions
Sandra Rezac, Governance Committee Chair; Keith Landa, UFS VP/Secretary
(Slide deck "UFS Bylaws and Standing Rules: A very brief review" - PDF)
The revised Bylaws and Standing Rules passed by a vote of 37 For, 3 Against, and 1 Abstained (out of 45 Senators and Officers eligible to vote). The 82% positive vote was well above the 2/3rds margin needed for passage. The revised Bylaws and Standing Rules documents await final formatting for publication on the website. In the meantime, here are links to the working documents, reflecting the approved language for the Bylaws and Standing Rules.