Headrick will keep to July timetable

Waiting longer, even a few months, would delay the search for a new dean that will be required regardless of which realignment option is pursued, according to Headrick. Putting off a decision until this fall, he added, would push back the search process "so we would lose a whole year."

Plus, Headrick said in an interview with the Reporter, the issue "has been thoroughly studied, talked about, reviewed and analyzed on a number of occasions."

In his academic planning document, which has been the focus of review and comment on campus since it was released in mid-February, Headrick has urged a reorganization of the faculties of Arts and Letters, Social Science, and Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

The two options on the table are to reorganize all three into a new College of Arts and Sciences, or to combine the Faculty of Arts and Letters and Faculty of Social Sciences into a new College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and merge the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences into a new College of Science and Engineering.

Regardless of the option selected, Headrick has called for the new organization to be in place by the 1998-99 academic year.

Some members of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee-most notably Senate Chair Claude Welch and Boris Albini, chair of the Senate's Governance Committee-have objected to President William R. Greiner making a final decision on the reorganization during the summer, when many faculty members are away from campus.

In fact, the Governance Committee has drafted a resolution urging that the decision not be made before Oct. 1 to allow more discussion of the issue.

No matter which reorganization option is chosen, one dean's position will be filled. The search would be for a dean of arts and sciences or a dean of arts, humanities and social sciences. Mark Karwan, dean of the engineering school, would become dean of science and engineering if that option is chosen.

Although Headrick said he favors a College of Arts and Sciences, he said he will listen carefully to evidence supporting a merger of Natural Sciences and Mathematics with Engineering, calling it a "close second choice."

He said the faculty members within that process."

Headrick noted that during the April 29 Faculty Senate meeting he focused on some "key points" in the planning document that he said have been "missed" in the discussion.

They are:

- UB has to take control of its future. The past several years, UB has been reacting to the annual state budget cycle and has ignored the long-term picture, Headrick said.

At the meeting he presented figures from the planning document that projected university operating funds over the next 10 years. The figures, he said, are conservative, and include state support maintained at current levels, "modest" tuition increases and a "turnover pool" in which senior faculty who retire would be replaced by junior faculty, creating a differential that could be used to fund a faculty replacement at the senior level or for other things at the institution.

He anticipated a total of $36 million in additional operating funds over the 10 years that could be used to fund some of the changes he has proposed.

- UB is a complex university with multiple missions and multiple goals.

UB must improve the way it delivers undergraduate education, he noted, and the major responsibility for doing that has to rest with the arts and sciences departments. Making the master's degree a "target" degree for more students would play up UB's strength of upper-division and graduate-level education and give UB a "niche" within the SUNY system, he said. As for doctoral education, UB must look at the job opportunities for its graduates, both inside and outside the academy, he said.

As for the centers and institutes, Headrick rejected criticism that the ideas for centers outlined in the report were a "top-down innovation," when such innovation must come instead from the faculty. He detailed where the ideas for each such institute or center had come, noting that only a few had come "from Capen Hall."

- Academic units have collective responsibilities and collective accountability, an idea that Headrick called "the most controversial and radical" of any presented in his plan.

While units' responsibilities must jibe with the university's overall goals and missions, each particular unit may accomplish its responsibilities through a different "mix of missions," with some having more responsibility for undergraduate education, or graduation education or public service or interdisciplinary programs, he said. Faculty members may make different contributions to the institution, he said.

Victor Doyno, professor of English, asked Metzger, "What's the difference between zero to one-third and zero to two-thirds? What you mean is no more than two-thirds."

Senate Chair Claude Welch, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science, interjected that the purpose of the policy, as outlined by Metzger at the April 23 meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, is to ensure that a transfer student graduates from UB with "at least some stamp of the major; that's why at least one-third of the credits for the major" must come from UB.

Nicolas Goodman, vice provost for undergraduate education, said the idea is that a department should be willing to accept at least one-third of the credits. On the other hand, the department should insist that one-third of the work required for the major should be done at UB "so that, in fact, this is our student," he said.

He acknowledged that it seemed to be a difficult thought to express. "I agree the language in the resolution doesn't quite do it," he said.

Welch asked the committee to provide the senate with a brief rationale for its language and a few examples at its May 13 meeting.

Senators also received a draft policy on conflicts of interest and conflicts of commitment prepared by the Research and Creative Activity Committee.

Committee Chair Philip Yeagle, professor of biochemistry, told senators the policy was designed "to be one of disclosure that will be helpful in providing guidance to the faculty in this new environmentŠin which the university is asking individual faculty to be entrepreneurial."

There haven't been adequate guidelines governing this type of activity "to protect faculty against going down roads or going too far in some directions that would jeopardize their status (at the university)," Yeagle said.

The intent of the committee was to draft a policy that would provide guidance to faculty and help them avoid conflicts of interest, he said.

The senate will vote on the policy at its May 13 meeting.