Minutes - April 3, 2017 - 3:05pm
CCSU FACULTY SENATE MEETING
Present: Adair, S.; Andreoletti, C.; Antonucci, C.; Arena, J.; Baratta, C.; Best, F.; Bishop, J.; Bishop, R.; Boncoddo, R.; Boscarino, N.; Button, C.; Callery, T.; Cistulli, M.; Clark, B.; Dhar, P.; Dharavath, N.; Doolittle, W.; Dorfman, K.; Emeagwali, G.; Fothergill, W.; Gamache, J.; Garcia-Bowen, M.; Garcia, V.; Ghodsi, R.; Givens, E.; Grasso, L.; Hernandez, J.; Horton, M.; Jackson, M.; Jarvis, K.; Kapper, M.; Karpuk, P.; Kim, Y.; King, A.; Koulidobrova, H.; Latour, F.; Lewis, J.; Lim, K.; Mahony, M. A.; McGuire, M.; Mejia, G.; Menoche, C.; Nelson, W.; Ngazimbi, E.; Orange, M.; Paolino, J.; Phillips, E.; Sadanand, N.; Salama, T.; Sohn, Y.; Spear, E.; Strickland, A.; Sweeney, D.; Tellier, A.; Thomas, C.; White, C.; Williams, C.; Wizevich, M.
Ex-Officio: Fitzgerald, G; Malhas, F.; Sommers, B; Pease, S.; Toro, Z.
Parliamentarian: Dimmick, C.
President of the Senate: Cohen, S.
Guests: David Blitz (Philosophy); Zdzislaw Kremens (Academic Affairs); Robert Wolff (UPBC Chair)
1. Minutes- Approved unanimously
2. Announcements:
a. AAUP President (M. A. Mahony)
- Elections for CSU-AAUP and CCSU-AAUP began today. Voting ends April 14 at noon. Remind your colleagues to vote!
- The legislature needs to hear from CCSU faculty about the many bills that would weaken unions and/or higher education.
b. SUOAF-AFSCME President (L. Bigelow)
- No report.
c. SGA (J. Effend)
- No report.
d. FAC to the Board of Regents (S. Adair)
- The FAC met on Friday. Many of the aspects of the "Students First" plan are unclear or vague, but it seems that the Community Colleges would be entirely restructured. We should pay particular attention to the appendix to the plan.
- Professor Blitz said, although the document includes an imperfect definition of "system", CSCU is not a system, while CCSU is.
- Senator White wonders when all of these proposals to consolidate and eliminate have been considered; it seems that most of the ideas came out of nowhere, or from the mind of BOR members with no consultation with faculty and students.
- Senator Karpuk said that we could save $35 or so by closing the system office, which he referred to as a parasitical bureaucracy. He compared the BOR to Soviet centralized planning.
- The election of our representative at the FAC will be coming soon.
e. President of the Senate (S. Cohen)
- President Cohen stated that we have two meetings left this semester, one in two weeks and one in four weeks.
- President Toro is launching a five-year academic plan, and is asking departments about which programs we would like to see created or eliminated. CCSU-AAUP President Mary Ann Mahony reminded everyone that any elimination of programs must be conducted in a way that is consistent with Article 5.18 of the AAUP Collective Bargaining Agreement, and that any discussion that would happen as part of this plan does not in any way mean that Article 5.18 is no longer in force.
- There will be a faculty-led review of reassigned time; how much of it is there and how is it divided up? This discussion is not about changing the Collective Bargaining Agreement; rather, we will be examining the reassigned time that is awarded beyond the contractual minimum. An ad hoc committee will be created for this purpose.
3. Committee Reports
- UPBC Chair Robert Wolff presented the UPBC report.
- Professor Blitz talked about the importance of preserving the autonomy of our institution, especially in terms of human resources and information technology.
- Professor Blitz and Senator Best said that they would like to see how much is spent on remedial education. Senator Grasso said that he would like infromation about the impact that remedial education has on students who take advantage of it.
- President Toro said that her cabinet met to consider the recommendations of the committee; she said that the budget would be balanced without across the board cuts. Her top priority is to maintain support for academics. She said that she took to heart the recommendations of the committee.
- CCSU-AAUP President Mahony said that audited financial statements are much more informative than budgets, and we should have a look at CCSU's.
a. University Planning and Budget Committee (R. Wolff)
4. Adjournment
- The meeting adjourned at 4:20pm.