WELCOME

Welcome to our second session of Faculty Assembly. My thanks to Mary Goldschmidt, Karen Booth, and Diana Catley who reorganized their events to allow us to meet in the Pavilion today. Note: The November, December, and February meetings will be in SC136-138 and the March through May meetings will be back in the Pavilion.

I realized, yesterday, that we had already flown through 5 weeks of the semester! Virtually all of the various Ramapo groups -- committees, convening groups, union, Board of Trustees, searches, task forces, unit councils, the extended council, the new Academic Review Committee, etc. have now met and are well underway. In other words, if you are feeling a bit stressed out -- there's a reason. There is a great deal happening and a good deal of progress being made.

TASK FORCES

I hear from Ed Cody that most of the task forces have made major progress and we should be seeing resolutions and recommendations out of these various bodies fairly much on schedule. I invite any of the task force convenors who wish to update us to jump in during the announcements section at the end of this meeting or to send me information to be posted on the website or to be distributed through Pegasus or both.

BOT MEETING

The BOT meeting on 9/25/02 handled various personnel and fiscal items as well as conferring degrees. An unofficial audit report was reviewed and accepted, the capital improvements projects were reported on, and a Teacher Education grant for $78,332 from the N.J. Department of Education was formally accepted by the Board. Detailed materials are available for review in the library and individual Board committee reports will be made by the faculty representatives to those committees.

EXTENDED COUNCIL --

Convocation

The President's Extended Council discussed the convocation and ways to improve that event for next year. Next year's convocation will be later in September and the speaker will be publicized this spring allowing us more time to build curricular connections. Parents of seniors will also be invited and the faculty will be asked to process next year.

Ramapo Lecture Series

There was also discussion of the Ramapo Lecture Series and plans to set up a group to look at ways to improve the delivery of this course -- including finding a stable source of funds so that series leaders need not hunt high and low for the resources to bring in the speakers they would like to see. Anyone interested in being a part of this discussion let me know or Ed Cody.

EVENTS COMMITTEE -- Founder's Day/Commencement

The events committee is currently finishing up plans for Founder's Day, Nov. 19 4-6 in the Pavilion. We will then take up the issue of Commencement. Please send me your suggestions regarding Commencement so that I can share these with the events committee.

HOLIDAY PARTY, DEC. 7

The Holiday Party is Dec. 7 in the York Room. I need two volunteers to take the lead in planning and coordinating this event.

BALLOTS AND BYLAWS

Thanks to Barbara Trottere for her hard work in arranging for, creating and collecting the ballots on very short notice in the middle of her office move!  The ballots were read by Barbara and George Gonpu with Steve Klein and myself as observers. The temporary amendment to the Faculty Assembly bylaws in accordance with the report of the Committee on Committees was approved 87 to 28 with 2 abstentions. That mandates a temporary amendment of the bylaws so I have posted to the website the bylaws as they are amended for AY02-04 as a result of this vote. Just to remind you of the wording of the ballot (since some apparently did not recall that the ballot called for a temporary amendment to the bylaws) I have posted the ballot itself for your review.

On the temporarily amended bylaws, at the request of Steve Klein, at the beginning of Article VI, I have inserted the precise language from the resolution at the end of the COC report. At the same time -- with your indulgence -- I have removed references to the late lamented Division of Basic Studies, changed all references to "Directors" to "Deans and College Librarian" and all references to the "VPAA" to "Provost/VPAA." I also added in to the italicized section (i.e. the section that will be removed for the next 2 years) the bylaws of the senior seminar committee which were passed several years ago by the FA but had never been entered into the bylaws maintained on the FA website. I understand that my use of the word: "ratification" caused some confusion. I am not calling for a new vote on the bylaws; that vote was accomplished by the mailed ballots. I am just making available to you how the bylaws are affected by that vote and alerting you to the editorial corrections I had made at the same time.

ACADEMIC REVIEW COMMITTEE

The new ARC group, chaired by Steve Klein (SAB) includes Shalom Gorewitz (CA), Rob Mentore (TAS), Elaine Risch (Library), Frances Shapiro Skrobe (SSHS) and Ira Spar (AIS). They met for the first time last week and we will hear a brief report from them later. I will be meeting with them this afternoon to discuss outstanding agenda items and I understand that they will also meet with the chairs of the disbanded committees.

It should be noted here that the ARC replaces all 4 of the former standing committees and assumes all their functions and responsibilities so there should be no dropped pieces. For now, follow the same procedures and use the same forms etc. to submit courses, proposals, programs etc. but instead of sending them to a particular committee, send them directly to ARC through your representative or through the chair.

IRAQ RESOLUTION

A number of faculty have brought before us a resolution regarding a possible war in Iraq which we will be discussing and voting on later in the meeting. At the request of some vulnerable faculty the vote will be a secret ballot completed and submitted here. The results will be tallied during our meeting with Dr. Smith and I will report the results of the vote before we adjourn.

FA WEBSITE AND WORK-STUDY STUDENTS

I continue to work on trying to improve the website and the communication mechanisms for the faculty and among the faculty. I invite you to keep checking in to the website at http://phobos.ramapo.edu/facassem I am delighted to report that we two work-study assistants to the Faculty Assembly began work this week. Christina Medina is here with us today and is already at work on redesigning and improving the look of the FA website . The other student, Fatima Duenas started work this morning.

FACTALK

Finally, I am delighted to report the inauguration of FacTalk thanks to the hard work and creativity of Johnathon Lipkin and Nico Halpern. Johnathon, would you introduce factalk?