University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: April 3, 2003

By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor

Citing concerns about the lack of clearly defined processes to assure faculty involvement in the selection, appointment and review of deans, the Faculty Senate Governance Committee Tuesday asked the Faculty Senate to attempt to clarify the process.

Two resolutions, which call for "a clear definition" of the processes used to appoint deans, "with evidence of meaningful consultation with faculty be made know to faculty" and that previous procedures for review of deans adopted in 1994 by the Faculty Senate continue to be implemented, were introduced for a first reading in the senate by committee Chair Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and interim chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering.

Senate Chair Michael Cohen, professor of neurology, said that he felt that over the past year, deans have been appointed in "rather a random way" and that he had been "put out" by the process. Several senators maintained that faculty have no input in the selection of deans—regardless of what's on paper—because without a mechanism to enforce procedures that may have been followed in the past, "rules only hold so far as the provost finds them acceptable," said Hadas Steiner, assistant professor of architecture. Steiner pointed out that faculty members in the Department of Architecture had forwarded the names of five colleagues as possible candidates for dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, and that the provost didn't accept any of them.

"The issue is this: Faculty need to feel that somehow they have some input into the appointment of deans," said Malone. A governance committee report noted that recent decanal reviews didn't follow procedures listed in the dean review policy. Malone said governance committee members generally agreed that there needs to be clear criteria set forth by which deans should be reviewed and appointed, as well as making sure that decanal responsibilities and goals are made known to both the dean and faculty.

"Faculty comfort with a dean is desired, but not necessary," said Malone, adding that consultation with faculty "doesn't mandate agreement, since circumstances may make that impossible to achieve."

The resolutions may receive some fine-tuning before a second reading at the next senate meeting on May 6, reflecting several senators' desire to explicitly place the responsibility for achieving adequate faculty input squarely on the provost's shoulders. "The ultimate responsibility for these matters lies with the provost and the president," said Malone.

In other business, Uday Sukhatme, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), updated the senate on recent activity and changes in the college. His report included an assessment of some of the problems facing the college, as well as programs that have been implemented to strengthen it.

Faculty-retention programs have been initiated, including the first promotion-and-tenure workshop, which was well-received and attended by many younger faculty members, he said, adding he hopes to make it an annual event.

"We go to a lot of trouble hiring faculty; we want to make sure they are successful and we have to do everything from our side to try and encourage them to do the best they can," he said.

Problems facing the CAS, says Sukhatme, are inadequate funding for graduate stipends, several departments that have critical staffing shortages, a lack of space and fundraising, which he said will play an increasingly key role because of declining state support.

"As far as reputation is concerned—the national reputation, for whatever it's worth—these rankings are very much size-dependent and the fact that the college has fallen behind (in staffing) is hurting our reputation. There are several departments that are below the critical size and have lost a lot of faculty over the past 10 years. We now have accurate data on this and we are trying to do what we can. For the first time, many of these needs have been addressed," said Sukhatme.

"I was somewhat surprised," he added, "to find development efforts at the college are at a very low level. However, the ingredients for doing something do seem to be in place. They do have good databases of addresses for (former) students, but they haven't used them to good effect," he pointed out. Sukhatme said he's brought his concern about the lack of development personnel to the attention of the administration and that the problem is being addressed. "We're pursuing this very aggressively," he added.

As far as the teaching activities are concerned, he explained that in the past four years the college has had an increase in undergraduate credit hours of 15 percent—the college teaches 306,000 undergraduate credit hours. The number of graduate credit hours has increased by about 20 percent, with 28,300 credit hours being taught. CAS also has undertaken a review of graduate-level research, he said.

Prior to his coming to UB, Sukhatme said there wasn't a "culture of assessment for graduate research." That process began just three weeks ago, with the Department of Mathematics being the first to get started.

He noted that his experience at the University of Chicago—where he was interim vice provost for academic programs before coming to UB in August—demonstrated to him that "external review can carry more weight than the department just saying I want something."

"I think it's very important to have an external assessment and view how others view us," he said.

The number of hires over the past two years has remained steady, with 38 faculty hired in 2002 and the same number expected to be hired this year. There are 38 searches in progress, noted Sukhatme, with 27 of those completed.

"Because many universities are not hiring this year, we had a very good pool of candidates and very often we've been able to get our first choices to accept coming here,"

The number of tenure-track faculty in the CAS currently is 412, which is a relatively small faculty "for a college of this magnitude" he said, but for the first time at least, the decrease that had been "continuously going on seems to have been stemmed and there was a slight increase last year and I anticipate a slight increase this year."

Also at Tuesday's meeting, a resolution designed to prevent students from resigning from more than five courses without consultation with an adviser as a condition of further resignation was introduced for a first reading by the senate's Grading Committee, chaired by William Baumer, professor of philosophy. The measure is intended to discourage students from grade shopping, abusing the option to resign and "polishing transcripts," Baumer said.

The senate may vote on the resolution at the May 6 meeting, the final meeting of the academic year.

After a third reading and several revisions, the senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for university support of open software and standards. John Ringland, chair of the Computer Services Committee, associate professor of mathematics and author of the resolution, noted at last month's Faculty Senate meeting that during the past year, "there has been a groundswell in the use of Linux and open-source software, even a little at UB."

However, "UB is still far behind many other academic institutions, such as MIT, Princeton and Cambridge, in getting administrative support for open source software."