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FSEC expresses concerns about CTLR closing
By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor
Concerns about the closing of the Center for Teaching and Learning Resources and a diminished focus on helping faculty members improve their teaching capabilities were expressed at yesterday's meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.
Faculty concerns were expressed in conjunction with a discussion of the CTLR and a plan focusing on UB achieving placement in Fortune magazine's "Top 100 Companies to Work For" list.
The plan was discussed by Scott Nostaja, interim vice president of human resources at UB, in conjunction with his presentation on how large UB will become, what with plans to hire from 700 to as many as 1,500 more faculty and from 600 to 900 staff members while enrolling 10,000 more students in the next decade.
Nostaja said he has begun exploring the goal of UB placing in Fortune's "Top 100 Companies to Work For" list, where Wegmans, the regional supermarket chain, has appeared 10 times, including in the number 1, 2 and 3 spot in 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively.
Assembling an "initial think tank" of 20 UB faculty and staff members from various departments and programs across the university—a meeting with "no deans or vice presidents" present—Nostaja asked them if his idea was good, bad or crazy.
"The general reaction was 'yes,' this is a very good idea and it's probably something we could do, recognizing there are going to be challenges along the way," he told the FSEC.
According to several FSEC members at yesterday's meeting, that would include deciding what to do with CTLR, now that it is without a director, and another UB center, the Educational Technology Center, whose director left UB last fall and has not been replaced.
The discussion of CTLR was led by a former director James N. Jensen, professor and director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. As part of a report about the Faculty Senate's teaching and learning committee, Jensen spoke about the reduction of CTLR to a collection of videotapes, DVDs, books and other materials.
UB closed its Office for Teaching Excellence in 1995 for budgetary reasons, but then-Provost Elizabeth Capaldi reopened it as the Center for Teaching and Learning Resources in March 2001, with its first slate of workshops and programs presented that fall.
Jensen told the FSEC that while he was director, the CTLR had "a very unusual budget model. There was essentially no budget. The provost's office would pay the bills. The center would simply submit invoices and those bills were paid."
His directorship ended after a year, replaced by "faculty input" via the Faculty Senate's teaching and learning committee.
Eventually, CTLR was moved to its smaller quarters, some of its staff were re-assigned to other areas at UB and it was announced that the contract of the center's associate director would not be renewed.
"At that point, you could see this gradual kind of diminution," Jensen said. "Things were looking pretty bad."
Jensen and Peter Nickerson, chair of the Faculty Senate, met with Lucinda Finley, professor of law and vice provost for faculty affairs, about the situation. Nickerson said his impression of the meeting was that the senate "could be involved with programmatic issues of the center, but not with staff issues."
Jensen said Finley is working with a group of UB staff members and faculty to determine what lies ahead for CTLR and ETC. He said the plan is to inventory each center's resources, investigate similar centers at other institutions, and commence a national search for a director for a combination of the two centers "because there's a natural connection" between them.
However, the two centers "have had a history of not working together, a sort of oil-and-water relationship," he said.
Gayle Brazeau, associate dean for academic affairs, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, objected to the closing of "the major thing that teaches people to be better educators," saying CTLR would be lost if merged with ETC.
"If we want to be one of the Top 100, this is part of the development," Brazeau said. "It's inconceivable that this university that wants to be excellent in everything has sort of let this (center) dwindle away. This is one of our major responsibilities: teaching and learning. That's our job. As new faculty and existing faculty, we need to have that knowledge.
"I'm just so afraid it's going to get lost," she continued. "Look at our peer institutions; they all have very strong programs in this area.
"We're asked to excel in our research. But one of our main responsibilities is being good educators and we've sat quietly and watched this go on for almost a year now and not said anything publicly. We need to say something publicly. If we don't air our voice again, we are going to do a disservice to the 27,000 students on this campus and to our junior colleagues and our established faculty."
H. William Coles III, assistant vice provost for the Educational Opportunity Program, agreed, saying the center doesn't seem to be a priority for the UB administration.
"The only advocates we're going to have for this program are the Faculty Senate," he said. "If we don't push it, it looks like it may just meander here and there, and we can hope that it turns out well."
The committee proposed drafting a resolution that asks the administration to share with the Faculty Senate "at the point of development" any ongoing plans, including any merger plans, for CTLR and ETC, as well as the job description for a new director and budgetary scenarios.
In other business, President John B. Simpson commented briefly on the announced budget proposal by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, saying "It's basically what we're going to call a budget that does nothing positive and does nothing negative." While it preserves basic operating costs of the university and funds negotiated salary increases for staff, it does not fund enrollment increases, change tuition policies for the state university system, or provide money for hiring additional faculty.
"I'm not particularly happy about this," he said. "It's nothing that allows the kind of growth and expansion UB is planning."