News
Faculty Senate lacks quorum
for vote on department dissolution
The lack of a quorum prevented the Faculty Senate on Tuesday from voting on a report by its Academic Planning Committee endorsing the dissolution of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
The report, delivered by committee chair Diane Christian, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English, found the procedures and consultation the medical school had pursued in deciding to close the department “proper” and recommended the senate approve the closure.
Michael Cain, dean of the medical school, commented on the report, explaining the reasons behind a 14-month review of the department and the decision to dissolve its programs, which at one time had supported renowned clinical and research faculty, but gradually had declined due to lack of leadership and funding support. The residency program, specifically, suffered from a chronic inability to earn graduate medical education (GME) accreditation and already has closed.
Cain said he hoped the program could one day be reactivated when funding becomes available. He pointed out that the department’s only tenured faculty member, Carl Granger, is moving to the Department of Neurology, while most clinical faculty have been hired by Kaleida Health.
As state support continues to decline, he added, UB must work harder to balance the pressure to increase revenue with hiring faculty who can provide the Western New York community and the country with the hallmark “triple threat” embodied in a successful academic health center: excellent clinical care, high-quality teaching and innovative research.
Cain said that since coming to the medical school four years ago, he has tried to integrate these three components into the school’s mission.
He highlighted nine new leadership developments in the school between 2009-11, nearly 60 proposed faculty hires and six active chair searches that will reinvent the medical school as it enters the middle of its accreditation cycle.
He also identified some specific accomplishments: 30 hires in the UB 2020 strength Molecular Recognition in Biological Systems and Bioinformatics; the creation of a new biomedical engineering department; and UB’s growing presence on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus with the construction of Kaleida Health’s Global Vascular Institute and UB’s Clinical Translational Research Center (CTRC), which will serve as the hub of translational research and training in Buffalo. Cain noted that an application was being submitted next week to the National Institutes of Health that would, if accepted, designate the CTRC as one of 60 clinical and translational institutes nationwide.
In response to a question about how the medical school will improve collaboration with outside medical centers without a dedicated university hospital, Cain pointed to a two-year renegotiation process nearing completion between UB, its clinical practice plans (UBMD), Kaleida and Erie County Medical Center to form the Great Lakes Health consortium. The affiliation agreement, he said, will require each entity to produce consistently high levels of medical treatment, education and research.
In other business, Faculty Senate Chair Robert Hoeing, associate professor of linguistics, updated senators on the search for UB’s next president. Hoeing said he had sent a statement, approved by the Voting Faculty, to the SUNY Board of Trustees and Chancellor Nancy Zimpher outlining the attributes that UB faculty feel both an interim and permanent president must possess.
He also announced that a presidential search committee has been assembled that includes faculty representatives selected by the senate’s Executive Committee, in accordance with SUNY guidelines.
Several senators debated whether the seven faculty representatives on the presidential search committee were, in fact, properly chosen by the faculty governance group since SUNY guidelines require a “quorum of the teaching faculty are present” when voting takes place.
William Baumer, professor of philosophy and chair of the senate’s Grading Committee, said the senate’s own bylaws and charter state that the executive committee may nominate and select faculty representatives.
Hoeing added that he worked hard to “live up to the spirit of the law” and has received positive feedback on the process from both SUNY officials in Albany and UB faculty. “We need to get this rolling, and I feel I’ve done the right thing,” he said.
The meeting ended with a lively discussion about the likelihood of further SUNY cutbacks affecting academic departments.
James Holstun, a professor of English, noted that “program retrenchment” was beginning to happen at UB with the dissolution of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. He proposed that the senate draft a resolution as a “message of solidarity” to the president and to the SUNY Board of Trustees that supports faculty at the University at Albany, which recently announced the elimination of its Russian, French, Italian, classics and theater departments.
Ezra Zubrow, professor of anthropology and a former president of the Buffalo Center Chapter of United University Professions (UUP), said the University at Albany’s actions were a “clarion call” for increased UB faculty support of the union as it lobbies to protect academic programs and jobs—jobs, he added, that could just as easily be threatened at UB as at any other SUNY school.
Hoeing agreed to bring up the resolution at the next FSEC meeting, and stressed that now was the time for UB faculty to consider their long-term needs and prepare for changes within the SUNY system.
“We have to ask ourselves, where do we see our departments in 20 years?” he said.
Reader Comments
Jim Holstun says:
Professor Baumer has since admitted that the bylaws he was invoking were ostensibly approved by the Faculty Senate in 2001, but not made semi-public until last week, AFTER the Senate meeting. And They STILL have not appeared on the Faculty Senate website--nine years would seem like enough time to post a PDF.
Regardless of when these new bylaws were actually crafted, even THEY do not authorize the Faculty Senate Executive Committee to disenfranchise the Voting Faculty and name whom they will to a presidential search.
The UB presidential search committee has not been properly constituted; any president whom it names will not have been properly picked, even if Mr. Jeremy Jacobs says everything's okey-dokey.
Posted by Jim Holstun, Professor of English, 10/12/10