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Minutes for April 20, 2005
A meeting of the University Senate was held at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday, 20 April 2005, in Maxwell Auditorium.
Present were: Chancellor Cantor; Senators Babiracki, Behm, Bennett, Beran, Breese, Brown (I.), Carter, Carty, Cihon, Dekaney, Diaz, Donovan, Easton, Fiese, Flusche, Freund, Gensemer, Gilbert, Gilman, Glauser, Hartmenn, Himes, Hogan, Horwitz, Jeneault, Johnson, Karpoff, Kelly (J.), Kelly (R.), Kornfilt, LaGay, Lantier, Letterman (M.), Letterman (R.), MacInnes, Marcoccia, Maroney, Martin, McKay, Mulconry, Murphy, Nicholson, Onsi, O'Rourke, Pellow, Phillips, Potter, Poulin, Robertson, Robinson, Rodriguez, Rosenzweig, Sanford, Sauer, Schiff, Sherman, Smith (C.), Sternlicht, Tucker, Tussing, Urtz, Vitharana, Wallace, Ware (E.), Wells, Wolf.
Presiding Officer: Chancellor Nancy Cantor
On motion duly made and seconded, it was voted to approve the minutes of the University Senate meeting of 23 March 2005, as written. The Chancellor then called Agenda Committee Chairman Pat Cihon to present the report of the Agenda Committee, which included:
- A motion as follows:
The University Senate recommends to the Board of Trustees of Syracuse University the conferring of appropriate degrees on May 15th and 22nd, 2005 upon those candidates who will have qualified for such degrees by Friday, May 13th, 2005 or May 20th, 2005 at 12:00 noon, and upon those students who complete requirements for degrees at the end of the various summer terms and at the end of the fall semester of the 2005-6 academic year. Motion carried;
- A motion to approve the report of the Subcommittee on Nominations, which was the makeup of committees for 2005-6. Motion carried;
- Cihon asked senators to mark their ballots for faculty Agenda Committee members, and hand them in to the Recorder for counting and report;
- Committee for Diversity. The chairman called Prof. Tej Bhatia who announced that the winner of the 2005 Diversity Award was the Young Actor Theater Group.
- Prof Cihon called on Prof. Sam Gorovitz, who spoke in praise of Prof. Nahmin Horwitz, who was retiring and leaving the Senate after 40 years as follows:
Universities are the strangest of institutions. They must be readily amenable to change, and to efficient change, in response to changing times, lest they disappoint and alienate the society that depends on and sustains them. Yet they must not change with the wind, lest they lose the basic character that sustains their special strnegths and contributions.
They are both radical and conservative, an awkward mix. It's a highwire act of some delicacy, and there's not much in the way of safety nets. Universities must be bold enough to invite the hemlock, and deft enough to avoid drinking it.
This can only happen if, even as they evolve, they maintain a steady moral and intellectual compass. And that can only happen if there are strong voices within to remind them of what they must be, and dedicated faculty willing to labor tirelessly to help them maintain their highest values.
Nahmin Horwitz, for decades, has spoken with such a voice and labored with that dedication. I have a list--a long list--of the committees he has served on, and in some cases led, during his thiry-five years on this body. Those details don't matter.
The big picture does. And the big picture is that Nahmin hs not just served this University Senate with distinction, but that in doing so as he has steadfastly done, he has served every member of this University community--the advocates of change and the keepers of tradition alike, the alumni and the students yet to come, those who help us do our work and those who grumble or marvel at how we do it. He has served the whole of higher education by helping this fine institution keep a steady compass. For that we are all in his debt.
Nahmin, we thank you, and we applaud you.
The body rose and applauded, after which Prof. Horwitz thanked everyone.
The Chancellor called Prof. Mike Olivette to give the report of the Committee on Curricula, which included a motion to approve the merging of the PhD programs in Computer Engineering, Computer & Information Science and Electrical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. The motion carried.
In the absence of the chairman, the Chancellor called Prof. Tom Maroney to present the report of the Committee on Appoinment and Promotions as follows:
| Architecture |
to Associate Professor:
Elizabeth Kamell
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| Arts and Sciences |
to Professor:
Marina Artuso
Uday Banerjee
Jerry Evensky
Madonna Harrington Meyer
to Associate Professor:
Andrew Cohen
Michael Gaddis
Winston Grady-Willis
M. Gail Hamner
Linda Ivany
Claudia Klaver
Jackie Orr
Jane Read
Jeremy Shiffman
Hongying Wang
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| Education |
to Associate Professor:
Barbara Applebaum
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| Engineering and Computer Science |
to Professor:
Gustav Engbretson
Prasanta Ghosh
Jianshun Zhang
to Associate Professor:
Andrea Costello
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Human Services and
Health Professions |
to Associate Professor:
Kim Jaffee
Ambika Krishnakumar
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| School of Information Studies |
to Professor:
Bruce Kingma
to Associate Professor:
Martha Garcia-Murillo
David Lankes
Ian MacInnes
Jian Quin
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| Law |
to Professor:
Lisa Dolak
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| Management |
to Professor:
Amiya Kuma Basu
Elletta Callahan
to Associate Professor:
Kasing Man
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| Visual and Performing Arts |
to Associate Professor:
Doug Easterly
Miso Sucha
Errol Willett
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A motion to endorse the recommendations for promotion carried.
Professor Maroney made a motion recommending that the following faculty members, now retiring, be honored with the title Emeritus, to be added to the rank at which they retired:
Karl Barth, Professor mathematics
Steven Bossert, Professor of education
Goodwin Cooke, Professor of Practice in international relations
Cissie Fairchilds, Professor of history
Nahmin Horwitz, Professor of physics
G. Burton Harbison, Professor of music
- Lawrence Lardy, Professor mathematics
Julia Loughlin, Professor of sociology
Samuel McNaughton, Professor of biology
Donald Meinig, Professor of geography
James Newman, Professor of geography
Milton Sernett, Professor of African American studies
The motion carried.
The Chancellor called Prof. Elizabeth Toth, who presented the report of the Committee on Curricula, which included a motion to approve the new courses and changes in the School of Public Communications and the School of Education listed in the report. The motion carried.
The Chancellor called on Prof. Louise Phelps, who presented the report of the Committee on Academic Affairs, which included the list of SU Scholars for 2005, as follows:
- Jaime Benson (Arts and Sciences)
- Tyera Eulerg (Public Communications/Arts and Sciences)
- Katherine Hogan (Architecture)
- Lara Jeremko (Management)
- Lisa Lowe (Information Studies)
- Linda Ober (Public Communications/Arts and Sciences)
- Cory Pattak (Visual and Performing Arts)
- Richard Pepe (Engineering and Computer Science)
- Linsey Phillips (Engineering and Computer Science)
- Paul Swartz (Managment/Arts and Sciences)
- Meagan Weatherby (Arts and Sciences)
- Kenneth White (Visual and Performing Arts)
Phelps read the list, and congratulated the students on it, and the body applauded. She referred the body to the remainder of the report, which was a summary of tasks committee members had worked on during 2004-5.
The Chancellor called Prof. Fran Tucker to give the report of the Committee on Athletic Policy, which included extensive appendicesd with charts showing 6-year graduation rates, team cumulative GPAs, male and femal participation rates, a summary of the committee's work during 2003-4, an overview of the NCAA Division I academic performance program. Among the comments and suggestions were:
- an expression of concern over the proportion of women students participating in athletics; senator urged the committee to tackle the issue;
- that Title IX had knocked women out of coaching jobs; senator would like that tracked, currently as well as historically;
- senator asked for additional data on the cut scores mentioned in Appendix C (p. 12 of the report);
- senator thanked the committee for its work, and asked what the committee's take on the 50% at risk graduation rate was. [Tucker said that some student athletes were "at risk" when they were admitted; others made themselves "at risk" by the way they went through the system.]
The Chancellor called on Prof. Fred Easton to present the report of the Committee on Computing Services. Easton pointed out that the committee had discussed among other things the matter of wireless networking, had found no pressing need to put it into classrooms, but did think it should be available in student study areas and public spaces. He further reported that some decisions made about computer technology had served to isolate parts of campus [e.g., Mac users were unable to access Myslice, which had replaced SCORE], and that there was need to provide comparable benefits to those groups. In the discussion, a senator asked if the committee felt it knew how faculty felt about the computing services provided, and suggested a survey be done across the colleges.
In the absence of the Budget committee chairman, the Chancellor called Prof. Eric Schiff to present the committee report, which was a report on the new Responsbility Center Management (RCM) budgeting system to be adopted by the University beginning in 2006-7. Schiff highlighted various parts of the report, and opened the floor for questions and discussion. A senator commented that for many years faculty members had complained of too low salaries, and were told by the administration that there was no more money. The senator asked whether there was any reason why faculty should not become cynical, in view of the large new bonds for major physical plant buildings issued and debt service reported in the University's budget. The Chancellor responded that there had been a consistent effort to close the gap between salaries at SU and those of its comparison institutions, and that the need for new academic space had come out of conversations with faculty. She added that the debt services had already been programmed into the budget. She said a balance [of faculty needs and that of academic space] needed to be maintained constantly.
Under new business, the Chancellor recognized Mallory Blackburn, a student representing the Student Environmental Action Coalition, who publicly thanked the Chancellor for her support of their initiative re: SU deriving 20% of its energy from renewable sources beginning July 1st. The body applauded, and the Chancellor thanked Lou Marcoccia and the others involved in the changeover. She recognized Prof. Tej Bhatia, who rose to say that since a representative of the Young Actor Theater Group group was now present, he wished to award the Diversity Prize, and to invite members of the body to a reception outside the auditorium after the meeting.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned.
Teresa Gilman
University Senate Recorder
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