College of Arts and Sciences
Council of Chairs
December 9, 2009
2:30 p.m., AS 122
Meeting Minutes
Present: J. Berkowitz, J. Brière, A. DeBlasi, S. Fessler, E. Gaffney, K. Gersowitz (recorder), D. Goodwin, G.
Griffith, R. Hamm, T. Harrison, T. Kinal, R. Lachmann, J. Large, A. Lyons, J. Mandle, G. Moore, S. North, C.
Smith, G. Stevens, M. Sutherland, C. Thorncraft, T. Wormwood, K. Williams, E. Wulfert, A. Zak, K. Zhu, R.
Zitomer
Introductory Remarks: Dean Wulfert called the meeting to order at 2:30 p.m.
Minutes of November 18, 2009: A motion to approve the minutes was made by A. Lyons, seconded by R.
Lachmann. The meeting minutes for November 18, 2009 were unanimously approved with minor corrections.
Announcements:
 Cases for Promotion ONLY due 12/15/09 from Department to Dean for decision by 08/31/10.
 Dean’s Office will be closed from 12/23/09-1/3/10.
 Intersession Energy Savings Initiative. E. Gaffney is the CAS liaison if you have any questions.
 Departmental Planning Meetings will be held in December and January. This year the Dean’s Office
will be requesting a justification for the administrative course releases each Department provides.
 Regularly report departmental initiatives or exciting news to Dona Parker at dparker@albany.edu
(PEAC Meetings).
 Graduate students who have taken a leave of absence from their program should not be continuing to
work with faculty members while on leave. Chairs were asked to remind faculty of this policy.
Old Business: – Discussion of summary data on reinvestment principles group discussion at November 18, 2009
Council of Chair meeting. A sheet summarizing the rankings of each group (Humanities, Arts, Sciences, Social
Sciences #1 and Social Sciences #2) was distributed.
As expected, we found a significant convergence in the rankings of some reinvestment principles. However, we
also saw some differences based on discipline. The Dean reported that there was significant agreement among
the rankings of individual faculty members, with 19 finding investment principle #15 “Invest in programs that
grow high-quality scholarship or art” extremely important.. 12 individuals also found principle # 12 “Retain
high-quality untenured faculty” to be extremely important (with the qualifier “at all costs” being removed from
the statement).
J. Berkowitz questioned how “strong” and “weak” programs would be measured, adding that disciplinary
breadth should also be considered important. He noted that in some disciplines there are clear rankings while in
others there are not. How will we define high quality when making value judgments? He noted that we should
be aware of how other units within the University will be evaluated and he questioned whether mergers really
lead to lean, mean, dynamic programs.
The Dean noted that rankings do exist and that, given our limited resources, at some point decisions will need to
be made, even in the absence of perfect data. What data we use will be very important and should be carefully
considered. Therefore Chairs were also given access to a list of data available from the university.
J. Mandle commented on the importance of open discussion of these issues; however, until we know what our
goals are should we be developing strategies? He also asked how we will determine “strength” for the purposes
of investment.
The Dean noted that is likely that one goal of the University will be to rise above Tier III. Using standard
metrics, the University may commit to investing in departments where already good rankings could be made
stronger through additional investments. The Dean noted that the ongoing strategic planning process may shed
light on some of these strategies and that there will be ample opportunity for faculty input in the planning
process.
J. Mandle questioned whether investing in programs that were on the cusp would provide the same results. He
also noted that although moving out of Tier III is an important goal, it will likely not be our only goal. Part of
strategic thinking is stop trying to be everything to everybody. T. Kinal noted that one does not always gain the
most by investing in the highest ranking programs; more impact could be made by investing in those on the
cusp. He also noted that current strengths are based on previous investments.
The Dean remarked that in some departments or programs faculty who are no longer research productive
negatively impact program rankings. She emphasized that such rankings must, however, be balanced by the
investments made in junior faculty who may be very productive and successful and should not be penalized.
R. Lachmann expressed the importance of supporting high profile research departments because we are a major
research university. We do not want to develop into becoming a teaching college. He noted that faculty joined
these programs to be researchers and if the focus changed, these faculty would leave, which would result in a
heavy loss of productive research faculty. He also mentioned that many avenues to climbing out of Tier III are
closed off to us due to lack of funding.
G. Griffith commented that we need to consider how we approach our path to Tier I or Tier II and consider what
else is important to this University. He noted that some roads might limit student access.
K. Williams noted that studies have shown that organizations that have gone from good to great did not
necessarily first develop strategic goals but simply went with their strengths. He commented that our strengths
do not necessarily come from programs goals, but often come from faculty.
T. Harrison noted that we should not only consider strengths but also opportunities. We don’t want to invest
only in what has been historically strong. Rather than striving for one overriding goal to reach Tier I we should
consider commitment to a vision instead.
D. Goodwin commented that the investment principle developed by the Arts group should read “Do less with
more.” The idea is to do only those things we are good at and don’t become burdened by the things we don’t do
well. It was noted that due to faculty autonomy, many are doing this already.
R. Zitomer observed that in addition to scholarship, teaching is also part of what we do. He questioned why we
are expected to improve based on external criteria rather than building on our unique characteristics, even if
these characteristics are not criteria for Tier I. Historically, as a small university we served faculty and students
well, but by attempting to be all things to all people, this has degraded over time.
G. Griffith noted that we may want to consider qualitative differences between programs, recognizing the
political and ideological circumstances that fostered some programs.
C. Thorncraft agreed that we should build on strengths, but not just focus on our elite programs because many
other programs have great potential and many young faculty are very impressive. The Dean agreed and stated
that we do not just want to maintain our strong programs but also ensure not to lose strong faculty in any
programs. Otherwise programs will gradually slip into mediocrity.
New Business –University Strategic Planning Process
The Dean provided a brief overview of the status of the Strategic Planning process. She mentioned the
introduction to the process for the university community that was provided by School of Education faculty
members Kevin Kinser and Jason Lane. This was a very informative presentation and can be viewed at
http://www.albany.edu/strategicplan/. The Strategic Planning committee has also met with Clint Sidle, Director
of the Park Leadership Fellows Program in the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.
The Provost has asked the committee to consider the following questions: What do we want to be? How do we
get there? Who can help? The Committee has been broken down into subgroups to examine the following:
Institutional Strengths and Weaknesses, Economic and Environmental Trends, Social and Political Trends,
Trends in Higher Education, and Stakeholders. Dean Wulfert is co-chairing the group assessing institutional
strengths and weaknesses.
In addressing the issue of the quality of our current students, G. Griffith noted that he is seeing many more
working students and that we may not be teaching as many full-time students as we have in the past. R.
Zitomer noted that 46% of students graduating from the University are transfer students. These students have a
unique set of concerns, including the difficulty many have in getting into a major. It was noted that improved
articulation agreements with feeder schools should help alleviate some of these problems. In addition to
working and transfer students, the University currently serves a large number of minority and first generation
college students. S. North noted that the number of high school graduates has been declining, and our future
may not rest as heavily on this population as it has in the past.
R. Lachmann noted there are many reasons we may not be attracting the best students but the question we
should consider is what can we do for the students we have while at the same time maintaining our research
focus.
Website:
R. Zitomer noted that someone in media and marketing apparently changed the logo on the Biology website and
said it would be appreciated if Chairs were consulted before any changes were made to departmental websites.
Before adjourning at 4:05 the Dean thanked Professor Steve North for his service on the Council this fall.