Faculty Senate

Minutes - October 18, 2021 - 3:05pm - Online through WebEx

CCSU FACULTY SENATE MEETING

Present: Acharya, K.; Al-Masoud, N.; Amaya, L.; Atkinson, S.; Bigelow, L.; Bishop, J.; Blitz, D.; Boscarino, N.; Bray, A.; Broulik, W.; Crundwell, G.; Cruz, A.; Donohue, P.; Drew, S.; Dumpson, N.; Elfant, A.; Emeagwali, G.; Farrish, K.; Foster, P.; French, J.; Gamache, J.; Garbovskiy, Y.; Garcia-Bowen, M.; Gichiru, W.; Givens, E.; Gonzalez, K.; Gu, S.; Halkin, S.; Hedlund, J.; Hernandez, J.; Huang, Y.; Hughes, H.; Jamsheed, J.; Jarmoszko, T.; Kean, K.; Kreeger, J.; Kumar, R.; Langevin, K.; Larsen, K.; Martin, A.; Matthews, S.; Matzke, B.; McCarthy, M.; Medina, X.; Morano, P.; Ofray, J.; Orange, M.; Paolino, J.; Reyna, M.; Roark, E.; Robinson, G.; Salama, T.; Salgado, E.; Savatorova, V.; Schenck, S.; Scott, T.; Sikorski, J.; Small. I.; Smith, J.; Smith, R.; Sohn, Y.M.; Spear, E.; Strickland, A.; Sugg, K.; Sylvester, C.; Tafrate, L.; Vargas, C.; Villanti, S.; Wang, W.; Watson, S.; Whittemore, L.. Zadi, S.; Zhao, S.

Ex-Officio:Burkholder, T.; Elsinger, N.; Fallon, M.; Jarrett, J.; Kirby, Y.; Kostelis, K.; Mulrooney, J.; Robinson, C.; Wolff, R.; Toro, Z.; Tully, J.

 

Parliamentarian: Dimmick, C.

President of the Senate: Latour, F.

Guests: Bucher, L.; Goode, G.; Leonidas, E.; McGrath, K.; Parady, K.; Pincince, T.; Resetarits, P.; Strickland, A.

1. Minutes

• Minutes of September 27, 2021

The minutes of the meeting of September 13, 2021 were accepted.

2. Announcements:

a. AAUP President (T. Burkholder)

• There will be a meeting at 12:15 on October 25th. A Zoom link will be sent.
• Campus Equity week is October 23-31. There is a poster circulating with the events of the week. Please wear your red shirts. The intent is to plaster campus with posters and information for students in advance of Dr. Cheng’s campus visit on November 15.
• Negotiation update: We are still having status meetings between the AAUP principal negotiator and attorney and the Board’s principal negotiator and attorney to figure out what items are still open. That will lead back to either full negotiations, or one side could declare an impasse, which would move on to arbitration.
• There is some activity at SEBAC relating to negotiation of salaries with the Governor on behalf of SEBAC unions. That would take the place of our salary negotiations with the Board. SEBAC is NOT in the mood to reopen the SEBAC agreement; there is no interest in capitulating to the governor.

b. SUOAF-AFSCME President (L. Bigelow)

• No announcements.

c. SGA (N. Elsinger)

• The SGA had a brief leadership retreat this past weekend. Elections concluded last week and 19 new senators were onboarded (more than half the senate.) The leadership team wanted to orient them to the work of the SGA and begin building leadership capacity.
• The incumbent senators should be attending the committees they have been assigned to. If senators are not showing up to committee meetings, the committee chair should contact the SGA President.
• Work will begin soon on getting feedback from the general student body regarding how the transition back to campus has been. Now is the time to influence changes for the Spring semester.
• For those of you who are faculty advisors to clubs, the SGA is currently running a drive to support Maria’s Pantry. Participating clubs can earn bonus dollars for their club budget by supporting the drive.

d. FAC to the Board of Regents (D. Blitz)

• There are a number of issues that the FAC is monitoring, including a modification proposed at the last meeting of the Finance and Infrastructure Committee for a new distribution model for State funds awarded through the System Office. In summary, they are modifying the base budget allocation from $6.5M to $11M, regardless of the university’s size. Specified items, which had previously been in budgets, would no longer be included; for CCSU, that is only the IMRP, which has transferred to UConn. On a positive note, part-time students will now be included in the FTE formula that drives the funding. As for fringe benefits, which are increasing, it was stated at the meeting that the new formula would be advantageous for only one of the State universities: Western. It will be unfavorable for the other three. It was also stated that the university leadership had accepted the formula; their level of support is not actually known. D. Blitz has written to the System Office to ask the difference between what would have been given to each university under the old formula versus what will be given under the new formula. If the difference is in the tens of thousands of dollars, that is minor; if in the millions, it is important to know it and understand the ramifications. If it is a significant number, there should be a phase-in process so that the universities do not have to absorb the difference in one year. D. Blitz will respond to the Senate Steering Committee when he has more information.
• The second point is not directly affecting us. There has been a hiring freeze. It is of interest that the weekly job offerings email that comes from the Connecticut State Community College indicates there are dozens of positions available through the consolidation process. Some of it is musical chairs, but the rest of it is not. In comparison to the almost job freeze at the universities, they are hiring nearly 300 people for the single community college. This includes a very high number (174) of professional advisors – more people than the faculty and staff at the smallest community college. Worse, the System is paying for it, almost exclusively, with one-time funds: HEERF 1 and HEERF2, ARP (HEERF 3), and a $12 million line item of unfamiliar origin. There appears to be an expectation that in 2024, when the special funding disappears, the shortfall of $18 million will need to be paid for by students. D. Blitz has asked how these expenditures will be covered in the future (ad nauseum) and no answers have been given. It is likely it will come from the block grant, and that will affect CCSU. Further details on these numbers have been requested.
• The third issue, a long-term issue, is the question: what effects will the changes occurring at the community colleges have on the enrollment of the four-year universities? Community College students are being incentivized to spend more time at the community colleges and that will undoubtedly impact enrollment at the universities. Today, the Governor and President Cheng held a press conference to announce that Amazon has committed to creating 2,000 jobs for Connecticut students graduating from the community colleges. That is positive for the students who will take advantage of them, but this, too, will impact our enrollment. We have to look at how, in the long-term, changes at the community colleges will impact headcount at the universities.
• • Question from K. Parady of the SGA: Has the one community college been accredited yet? D. Blitz: No, and the president of the one community college has recently announced his retirement. He added that one of the problems with the hiring of all the advisors is that they have to have a plan for how to coordinate their efforts with faculty who plan and teach the courses and who are well-versed in the community colleges’ coursework dovetailing into universities’ majors. K. Parady noted that the Student Advisory Committee to the Board of Regents has expressed concern about the lack of other types of counseling, e.g., mental health, at the community colleges.
  • Question: F. Latour asked about the advisor salaries that would need to be funded after emergency money is used up, and what the community college’s consultant who advised on the community college merger advised. D. Blitz said he would ask for an answer to that question.

e. President of the Senate (F. Latour)

• You should expect a ballot in your mailbox this week for Senate elections. Please watch for it and participate in the election.
• In the life of the university, sometimes there are vacancies to be filled at the executive level. This is one of those times. The position of University Counsel is currently open and three finalists will be on campus in the next ten days. Please participate in the open forums if you can.

3. Elections

• a. Election of one member of University Athletics Board – P. Foster of the Elections Committee informed the Senate it must conduct an election for one seat on the University Athletics Board. Each Senator received an electronic ballot and was instructed to vote if, and only if, they were a Senator or were an alternate representing a Senator at the meeting. The President of the Senate sought the email address of all senators and alternates eligible to vote in the election. An electronic ballot was sent and the election was conducted.

4. Committee Reports (reports marked with an asterisk are informational reports intended for consent agenda only; if you would like a report to be discussed, please inform the President and Secretary by Monday, noon)  

a. Library Committee (H. Hughes & J. Snyder)

• H. Hughes reviewed the Library Committee report. The key thing on the agenda last year was budget cuts. The library is continuously having their budget cut, and this has an impact on students and faculty. She asked senators to make sure that their department’s library liaison is communicating with their department to learn how your department liaison can advocate for the library on behalf of the department.
• D. Blitz noted that most students are not aware of Iliad, and that need to be explained to students. He also spoke about the availability of not just full-text journal articles, but also entire books through Springer.

b. University Athletics Board (P. Resetarits)

• P. Resetarits presented the attached report for the 2020-2021 academic year on behalf of the University Athletics Board. Questions were invited.
• Question: F. Latour indicated that faculty have questions about the effect of the pandemic on travel, sometimes traveling to places where COVID is not being taken seriously. He asked how the life of our student-athletes been with regard to travel. P. Resetarits responded, indicating travel has been reduced – fewer and short trips . T. Pincince indicated that our vaccination rates are very high. Of approx. 435 student-athletes, all but 5 are currently vaccinated. All Fall student athletes are vaccinated. This allows for safer practices, games, and travel. The football team did travel to Florida; all 85 participants were vaccinated and they traveled on a charter plane to limit exposure. Masks were worn at all times. If a student-athlete is not comfortable with traveling to a particular location, they can opt not to go, without penalty. Some athletes did opt out last year. Our conference has limited overnight travel. Because of the mandates and protocols of the Athletics department, T. Pincince feels we have done a really good job keeping everyone involved safe. He expects we will still have student-athletes testing positive; we are testing a percentage of student-athletes every week (40-50/week), randomly, from every team. That leads to follow-up tests. Some of the random tests have been positive, but there have not been additional positive tests because of the original positive test. Athletics has lost one game in two years due to a COVID situation and we had the opportunity to make up the game, but the other team did not wish to do so.
• Question: R. Smith noted that the report addresses mental health and campus integration. She asked what is being done related to mental health and asked if any of the campus integration efforts have been reinstated. P. Resetarits responded: Relative to mental health, M. McCarthy has set up in Kaiser. Student-athletes are made aware of opportunities for support, which includes referral to other on-campus services. A. Strickland detailed the steps that M. McCarthy takes to reach out at the team and athlete level. Athletics also works with the NEC. During NEC Mental Health week, which is coming up soon, additional programs will be offered. Athletics also offer outreach to coaches, since they work with their athletes on a daily basis. T. Pincince responded about on campus integration: club sports, which report to student activities, are back in full swing. Student-athletes are getting back to integrating themselves into the campus population. They are doing what they have done in years past – making sure they are part of campus events. They will be a big part of the upcoming Open House presentations. It is starting to feel like we are moving closer to “normal.”
• Question: G. Crundwell put the following in the chat, taken from the Athletics Task Force report to the Senate: “November 28, 2017, nearly four years ago in the Senate report from the Task Force for the Sustainability of the CCSU Athletics Program “Athletics will develop a comprehensive five-year strategic plan, consistent with that of the University. An advisory committee will be formed to work with the administration, coaches, staff, and student-athletes as well as the University Athletic Board (UAB) on the development and implementation of the plan. Annual reviews will be required to ensure that progress is being made toward specific measures and to determine the appropriate action for the following year(s).” He then asked has a five-year plan been developed? P. Resetarits indicated that C. Galligan headed that Task Force and he is not sure the status of it. P. Resetarits indicated the UAB does review the budget annually, when it is presented by the Athletic Director. G. Crundwell noted that the UAB reports have been void of this information. P. Resetarits duly noted the point that was made.
• Question: J. Jamsheed asked about plans to investigate how to better integrate student-athletes with the broader campus community. P. Resetarits said that several athletes are on Senate committees, in the SGA, and becoming more involved in their classrooms. A. Strickland said they are also attending campus events, such as this past week’s theatre production under the tent. Joint programming is also planned to integrate athletes with the rest of the student body. Athletes are constantly reminded that in return for wanting students to come to their games, they need to go out and participate in other students’ presentations, programs, etc.

c. Academic Standards Committee (E. Leonidas)

• E. Leonidas presented in the report shared with the agenda.
• MOTION: To approve items 2 and 3 on the agenda.
• D. Blitz asked the rationale for waiving the EJI requirements for transfer students with over 50 credits, which would essentially include all community college transfer students. B. Merenstein indicated the rationale is to avoid slowing a transfer student’s progress to graduation. E. Leonidas said this could also be an incentive for departments to offer EJI-designated courses among their upper division courses.
• MOTION: To divide the question, to vote on each item separately. Motion approved 18-10 by roll call vote.
• MOTION: To approve the proposal to revise the admission requirements for the B.S. in Exercise Science. Motion approved unanimously.
• MOTION: To waive the EJI requirement for transfer students with more than 50 credits. Motion approved 39-2 by roll call vote.

5. New Business

a. Approval of new members of Senate Steering Committee

• MOTION: To add L. Amaya (SEST), W. Gichiru (SEPS), and R. Smith (CLASS) to the Senate Steering Committee. Motion approved unanimously (with abstentions).

b. Campus Equity Week (K. Kean)

• Campus Equity Week Poster

• K. Kean spoke in favor of the attached resolution in support of Campus Equity Week, which occurs in the U.S. and Canada on a biennial basis to educate everyone what part-time, contingent faculty do.
• Motion: To accept the proposed resolution on Campus Equity Week. (Crundwell/Bigelow). Motion approved unanimously.

6. Adjournment

• The meeting adjourned at 4:50pm.

SUMMARY OF ROLL CALL VOTES