Note: Good morning! I have posted my president's report for
today to the FA website. It is linked to today's agenda and to the
President's Reports page http://phobos.ramapo.edu/facassem/presreports.html
so that you can retrieve this information in detail whenever you
wish.
1. Some key reminders: Lunch is at 12. The next FA is at 1:30.
Commencement is tomorrow! May 25. We begin
robing at 9:15 a.m. in SC136-7 and begin processing at 9:45. We
are encouraged to arrive by 7:30 to reduce traffic problems and to come
in through the North entrance and park in the Oak/Maple Lots. Full details
on the FA website or directly at http://phobos.ramapo.edu/facassem/commencementinfos04.html
The WAC inservice day is Thursday May 27 10-2 beginning in G202. The
full program is available on the announcements page of the FA website
at
http://phobos.ramapo.edu/facassem/announcements.html or
directly at http://phobos.ramapo.edu/facassem/WACmay04inserviceday.html
The All College picnic is Friday May 28 11-2 in the Pavilion, rsvp
Shirlee Caruso. And -- oh yeah -- Grades are due June 1.
2. FA procedure: This is the first of two Faculty
Assemblies today. Whatever agenda items we don't reach this
morning will be automatically relocated to the afternoon meeting but we
don't have a fall back from there so we need to be as efficient as we can
while still being thorough.
The afternoon FA from 1:30-4 will center on the formal full recommendations from ASEC. When we turn to that part of the agenda the report and discussion will be moderated by Carol Bonilla Bowman.
Reminder: Both this morning and this afternoon we will be following scrupulously the three minute maximum guideline for each faculty comment and there will be only one comment per person until everyone who wishes to speak has had an opportunity to do so or we have run out of the time allotted for that particular discussion. The three minute rule, by the way, is from our own FA bylaws. I did not make it up! We will again be attentive to civility and David Greene will keep us on good parliamentary footing.
3) Thanks Part A: As this eventful year comes near
the end, we need to take the time to offer particular thanks to President
Rodney Smith, to Provost Sandy Pfeiffer, to Vice Presidents Vicky Bruni,
Pamela Bischoff, and Cathy Davey, to Vice Provosts Martha Ecker and Kwesi
Aggrey, to all of the Deans, and to many others including Pat Chang, Miki
Cammarata, etc. who have been fantastic this year in their support of the
faculty, in their commitment to shared governance, and in their emphasis on
the Academic Affairs enterprise. They have worked very hard to keep
me in the loop -- and thus keep you in the loop as developments occurred.
They have listened and been responsive as I and others have raised issues
of concern from the faculty. I have never once picked up a phone to
any of them and said "I need to talk to you -- or the Faculty Advisory Council
and I would like to discuss such and so" without an immediate "come on down."
It is no accident that this year has seen such a shift to primacy of
the academic affairs unit, that an additional 5 lines for the faculty beyond
the five already promised have been added as of this coming year, that our
funding for faculty research monies and other resources has increased, that
Faculty Assembly now has its own budget, that a new academic building is
beginning to "swell into reality" and that the Sustainability Center has
become a priority item again. Shared governance is indeed hard work,
it is time consuming, it is not always efficient, and it is occasionally frustrating.
Nonetheless, it is vital to developing and maintaining high quality
in everything that we do and decide and to maintaining high morale
and a strong sense of ownership throughout the community. I am --
and I know we all are -- very grateful to all of the administration for continuing
to honor and to foster such shared governance. Let's show our appreciation!
Thanks Part B: I have had the great pleasure this year
of working closely with a number of wonderful colleagues: Wayne Hayes,
President of the AFT, Babs Varano and Wanda Kosinski, Co-Presidents of the
Professional Staff Assocation, Phil McLewin, Faculty Resource Director,
and Chris Irving, President of the Student Government Association. I
thank them all for their ready advice and cooperation on so many shared interests,
their genial collegiality, and their excellent work on behalf of their various
constituencies. We have been incredibly fortunate in the various campus
leaders this year and I have been the most direct beneficiary of that great
good fortune! Bravo to each of you! I am looking forward to
continued work with Wayne and Phil and to working with the new Professional
Staff Association President, Al Romano and the new Student Government President,
Anthony Dovi.
Thanks Part C: I would like the minutes to record my
enormous appreciation and my thanks on behalf of the entire Faculty Assembly
to Barbara Trottere, Administrative Assistant to the Provost, who has been
an unfailingly cheerful, diligent, and imaginative support for the Faculty
Assembly throughout this heavily burdened year. She has juggled
the calendar, found rooms and arranged set ups, food, media etc. for regular
meetings and for 4 extra meetings
of the Faculty Assembly. She has prepared -- with the help of Christina
Medina, the FA student aide -- envelopes and ballots for each FA so that
we are prepared to do paper balloting right at the meetings. Barbara,
along with Kathy Zdrodowski, has worked the tables for each FA meeting and
maintained the attendance. She has prompted me repeatedly for steps
that needed to be taken, materials that needed to be prepared etc., she
has swiftly turned around each FA's minutes to add in the names of those
attending, she has ordered flowers and sent cards, she has prepared for,
mailed, tracked, and counted half a dozen mail ballots in the course of
the year, she has arranged dozens of meetings -- small and large --
and when she answers the phone and hears my voice -- she doesn't even sigh
(at least not loudly). Please give Barbara a huge thank you! I
would also like to have the minutes record a formal great thanks to Christina
Medina our student aide who has worked extremely hard and brought her great
gifts and skills to bear on designing and refining and updating our FA
website and our electronic resources in between the needs of developing events
as she has assisted me and Barbara with the minutiae of Assembly business.
While Christina is only permitted to work 10 hours a week she accomplishes
a stunning amount in those 10 hours. I am delighted to report that Christina
will be with us for one more year. Huzzah!
Thanks Part D : And then there's the faculty itself!!!! Please
visit our Final FA Project Status Report (see http://phobos.ramapo.edu/facassem/fafinalprojectstatus504.html
) to see the staggering number of things we have addressed and accomplished
or made huge headway on this past year. At the last meeting you
got to see visibly just how many people have been a part of this collective
effort. I have listed specific names where I know them on the page linked
to the final project status report. If I have your name wrong or have omitted
it altogether please let me know so that we can correct the
record and be sure to give credit where credit it due!
I would like today to single out for most special thanks two groups who
have just worked and worked and worked all year long and done so with
tremendous grace and good will. The first group is the Faculty Advisory
Council: Mark Howenstein, Roger O. Johnson, Ellen Kaiden, Carter Meyer,
and Anita Stellenwerf who -- while receiving no release time or compensation
of any kind -- not even a special parking space! -- have nonetheless met
multiple times with me, with various committees on campus, monthly with
the President and the Provost, responded to requests to analyze and make
recommendations on campus-wide issues, stood in for me at meetings I couldn't
attend, and maintained a furious level of discussion via emails on the various
emergent issues throughout the year. Without their support, advice, backup,
and hard work we could not have come anywhere close to maintaining the orchestration
that has been needed to keep all the iniatives before us in any degree
of manageability. I would like the minutes to record my special thanks
to this group as well as to David Greene who has given such sound and reasonable
advice on any number of complex and thorny Parliamentary issues throughout
the year and George Gonpu who has maintained the minutes faithfully and promptly
throughout the year and numerous times has served as ballot counter and witness
for our mail ballots. You chose well when you elected these wonderful
faculty leaders and you have made my job possible by doing so -- so I
thank you as well! Roger, Carter, and Anita are finishing their terms and
stepping off FAC at the end of the summer and they do so with my heartfelt
appreciation for all their contributions. I am looking forward to
working with our newly elected Faculty Advisory Council members: Patricia
Ard, Susan Eisner, and Amruth Kumar as of September -- as well as with
our returning members, Ellen, and Mark.
I would also like the record to show formal and hearty thanks to the Academic
Review Committee (ARC) Stephen Klein, Chair, Shalom Gorewitz, Rob
Mentore, Elaine Risch, Frances Shapiro-Skrobe, and Ira Spar. ARC
has met every week for hours at a time dealing with a sizeable volume of
course reviews, while evolving clearer and more responsive policies, procedures,
materials etc. for program and course review, responding to and analyzing
various curricular and academic questions that have come up throughout
the year about wintersession, honors programs, WAC, implications of recommendations
made by CLA and ASEC, etc. I am not going to go through the full list
of ARC's achievements because Stephen will be reporting a bit later on ARC's
work, but I do want here to specifically thank ARC for all their tremendous
work. In addition to their own meetings, Stephen and various other
members of the committee have met regularly with me, and with others, have
sat with CLA and with ASEC in some of their deliberations, have helped explain
and pitch the Unit Plan to the Board of Trustees Academic Affairs Committee,
have sought input from and met with deans, students, faculty groups, members
of various Task Forces etc. around diverse issues, and have studied in depth
a number of the reports, proposals, etc. that have been put out from
so many different sources over the past two years. Stephen, in particular,
has maintained regular communication via email -- in fact -- as most of
you probably know Stephen is scorchingly fast in responding to email messages.
In short, Stephen -- and the committee as a whole -- have worked tirelessly
in multiple directions to carry out the day to day business of the curriculum
and academic policies and to keep the current program going while we have
collectively been debating how that program might change. Please
give your applause to this extremely hard-working group.
4. Upcoming Initiatives: To turn our attention to the
future, on the Final Project
Status Report I have outlined a few of the key agenda items I see coming
at us next year pp not the least of which is the mid-cycle Middle States
visit and the Presidential Search. You can consult that report for more
details. I was going to describe today the CIRCUIT Task Force that
will be set up to handle the next steps in implementation of CLA/ASEC etc.
once we have finished this phase of our deliberations . However, I
am still getting feedback on the design of CIRCUIT and Stephen Klein, Chair
of ARC has informed me that ARC has pronounced such a discussion premature.
I certainly wouldn't want us to get ahead of ourselves, so I am setting the
topic aside until September.
5. Fall Dates: Some key fall dates to get in your PDA now:
In-service Day for faculty is Thursday, Sep. 2 10-4:30. Classes
begin Sat. Sep. 4 but will not meet Monday, Sep. 6. Sep. 8 is the
first Faculty Assembly from 2-4 in SC136-8 followed by the New Faculty
Tea at 4 in the York Room. Sep. 15 will be the TLTR demonstrations
from 1-4 and Convocation will be held from 2-3:30 on Sep. 22. A more
detailed calendar will be posted and mailed out in August.
6) Nominations needed SBR/Sabbatical We will
need to elect representatives for next year to the All-College Research
Committee or, as it is also called, the SBR/Sabbatical Committee.
Representatives must include one each from Arts, Business, Humanities,
Science, and one At Large. Marshall Harth will be returning
as Social Sciences rep. If any of the rest of you served this year
for a first year of a two-year term and are willing and able to serve the
second year please let me know over lunch or at the beginning of the afternoon
session before nominations close. We will also need to elect representatives
to the various BOT committees, i.e. Capital Improvement, Finance,
Institutional Advancement, Student Affairs. I will take nominations
and self-nominations for all of these positions over lunch and at the
beginning of this afternoon's meeting. Voting will be by mail
ballot.
7) Again my thanks to everyone who has worked so hard to make this
year such an extraordinary year.
9) Draft
ASEC Ballot for Mailing after 5/24 Meeting
Cordially, Kay Fowler, FAP