Reporter Staff

NEW MINIMUM high school performance standards promulgated by the NCAA precipitated a discussion of admission standards at UB during the Oct. 11 meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.

Beginning in the fall of 1996, entering freshmen will need to have attained a minimum high school average of 2.0 and combined SAT scores of 980, or an average of 2.5 with combined scores of 700, to be eligible for NCAA sports on campus, according to Admissions and Retention Committee Chair Mitchell Harwitz. The new NCAA regulations further require that students complete a "rigorous core curriculum" in high school, Harwitz added. Admissions office personnel indicated to Harwitz that these core requirements would apparently be met by the state Regents program in New York, he said.

Freshmen are currently admitted to UB on the basis of a formula that employs a weighted average of three factors: high school average, SAT or ACT scores and class rank. Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Nicolas Goodman called the existing admission standards "excessively mechanical" and "disgraceful." Although he is reluctant to let the NCAA dictate admission standards, Goodman urged the FSEC to fashion a "somewhat more sophisticated process," possibly relying more on qualitative measurements, including essays, and less on standardized test scores.

Up to 10 percent of the freshman class may be admitted through the Individualized Admissions Program (IAP), according to Assistant Admissions Director Frances Bernstein. IAP allows for separate consideration of factors such as personal circumstances (deaths or divorces in the family), unique community involvement or individual auditions for candidates to fine arts departments. Despite the flexibility in IAP admissions, Harwitz told FSEC members that a review of admissions records revealed that the new standards would not have presented a problem recently. "Although some athletes are admitted through the Individualized Admissions Process (IAP)," Harwitz said, "all of our student-athletes over the past four admission cycles would have met these NCAA requirements."

Engineering Professor Dennis Malone remarked that "if the effect of (the NCAA standards) were that it raised the general standards of the student body to those of the student athletes, that would be awfully nice." The FSEC acknowledged the report without taking action on it.

In other business, the FSEC forwarded to the full Senate a comprehensive package of revisions to the Bylaws and Charter of the Faculty Senate. The changes, produced by the Bylaws Committee, include extending voting privileges to "geographic full-time faculty members with academic rank" which could affect between 250 and 757 people, mostly in the health sciences, and reapportioning the number of senators elected from each decanal unit. The amendments would also allow, for the first time ever, that the chair of the Faculty Senate could succeed himself, serving up to two consecutive two-year terms.

Also, the FSEC approved the moving and renaming of the Center for Applied Public Affairs Studies. On the recommendation of Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs Muriel Moore, the center will be organizationally moved from her department to the School of Architecture and Planning, under the Department of Planning, and it will be renamed the Center for Urban Studies. The center will continue to be located on the first floor of Allen Hall on the South Campus.