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FSEC discusses possible further budget cuts
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, spoke during yesterday's meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee about possible further state budget troubles on the horizon for UB and SUNY.
In addition to a 2.9 percent cut to UB's operating-funds budget and $2 million in losses related to SUNY's plans to reallocate funds from UB, Stony Brook University and Downtstate Medical Center to the University at Albany, Binghamton University and the system's comprehensive colleges, Tripathi said reports from the state capital suggest lawmakers want to withhold additional funds from SUNY.
"What we're hearing about the SUNY budget is [there's] an additional $110 million that SUNY has been asked to put aside," he said, noting that the action is being referred to as an "expenditure limit" on SUNY accounts, not a budget cut.
Tripathi said the precise nature of the situation remains "uncertain," but pointed out that further budget restrictions from the state raise serious concerns about the university's ability to implement long-term planning projects or provide appropriate start-up funds to incoming research faculty.
"I hope the campuses and SUNY are given the responsibility to manage our own affairs so we can do the best we can with the resources we have," he said.
Although financial support for UB's capital projects remains strong, President John B. Simpson said long-term funding is important to ensure that physical growth is sustainable.
"We can do a lot of things—and have done a lot of things—ourselves that are highly positive," said Simpson, "but there are also some things where we need help from the state, either financially or in terms of policy."
In other business, William H. Baumer, chair of the senate's Grading Committee and professor of philosophy, proposed an amendment to four UB policies that would reinstate a rule lifted several years ago barring attorneys from serving as advisors during university grievance and academic integrity hearings.
John T. Ho, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics and interim vice provost of graduate education and dean of the Graduate School, cited a recent situation where a student brought a lawyer into a simple grievance hearing and it escalated into a five-hour affair in which no less than three attorneys were present, including legal counsel serving members of the grievance committee, as well as the faculty member who originally brought charges against the student.
Gary Scott Danford, associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, objected to the proposal on the grounds that these kinds of hearings involve situations in which a student's words might have dire consequences on his or her future—up to and including recommendation for expulsion.
"It's a gray area," he said. "It's amazing to me that we want to throw away all these rights because they're inconvenient and get in the way."
Baumer replied that there is a "clear line" between a civil action and a grievance or academic integrity hearing. He also pointed out that all rights to a lawyer remain in effect outside the hearings.
"The law should only come into play if the university fails to follow its own rules," he said, noting that university committees, administrators and faculty frequently make internal decisions that have severe consequences on individuals, including denying faculty tenure and students degrees for failure to meet academic standards.
A majority of senators resolved to pass the amendment on to the full Faculty Senate for approval in May. They also voted to fast-track the item by requiring only one reading in order to be able to put the new rule into effect in time for the 2008-09 academic year.
Also during yesterday's meeting, Matthew Stock, manager of enterprise research computing services in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, presented an update on the activities of the CIO, which embarked on a number of academic support projects last summer in response to a faculty survey.
Stock reported that the CIO has implemented the first two parts of a three-part project to provide file space, backup and archiving services to UB researchers. He also said a collaborative project has been completed between the Center for Computational Research and the CIO in which unused computational capacity from public computing sites, such as student computer labs, is being used to crunch numbers on faculty research projects.
"It provides a staggering amount of computational power at a minimal cost," Stock said.
Other projects in the planning phase would provide researchers information through MyUB about events and resources relevant to their work, create a searchable index of faculty research activities and develop a multi-platform document-collaboration tool through which researchers from UB—as well as other institutions—could edit the same document from different online locations.
In other business, Lisa Stephens, associate for instructional resources for Academic Services-UB Information Technology, gave a presentation on the activities of the Teaching Learning Technology Task Force. She reported the group is working on several projects designed to encourage faculty to use more technology. Among them is a comprehensive index of each classroom's technological features, ranging from flexible lighting, acoustics and white boards to smart boards, media playback, network access, data storage and live video-conferencing capabilities.