Governance Council
Monday, April 20, 2015
3:00 PM
UNH 306
Cynthia Fox, Chair
Minutes
PRESENT:
Chesin, Sorrell; Cruz, José; Fox, Cynthia; Gulatee, Yenisel; Janiszewski, Caitlin;
Malavasic, Jolene; Moore, Chris; Scheck, Helene; Zemel, Alan
The meeting convened at 3:10 p.m. once quorum had been reached.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
The minutes of April 13, 2015 were to be voted upon at the next meeting.
CHAIR’S REPORT
The Committee of Council Nominations which peoples councils for next year will meet Thursday
morning. Helene Scheck is the GOV representative who will attend.
Nominees for Vice Chair are about to be announced for the election on Monday, April 27 as follows:
David Wagner, Sociology; Jim Collins, Anthropology; Karen Reinhold, Mathematics. It is exciting to
have 3 candidates, as it has been many years since that happened. It is also possible to nominate from the
floor.
As none of the candidates are currently Senators, GOV reviewed the election procedures in the Charter.
A motion was made and unanimously approved for GOV to recommend that all of the candidates have
the opportunity to speak on the Senate floor.
Regarding the renaming of CCI, GOV’s recommendation that the proposal should go to UPPC, UAC and
GAC, and then to the Senate floor elicited an objection at the SEC meeting that the proposal should not
come to the floor as a Bill but rather a Resolution. The argument was that the name is not strictly related
to curriculum and does not imply substantive changes. GOV Chair Fox went back through past legislation
to research what had happened in the past, reviewing the long list of changes, mergers, and creation of
colleges and noted that last year there had been exceptions to the general previous practice: two
department name changes were approved by the SEC and never went to the Senate floor. The rationale
given at the SEC was that we have been following the wrong procedure.
GOV then discussed what a resolution would look like on a name change, and the difference between a
bill and a resolution, which is an expression of an opinion. A resolution would come from the SEC, not
from GOV. It was discussed that the practice of ceding authority to the SEC to prevent legislation from
going to the Senate floor sets a precedent that could be problematic. The policy of permitting the SEC
alone to decide that faculty accept all aspects of such proposals, thus deleting a whole group, has the
potential to negatively affect the university. A member voiced that it seemed the previous college name
change was already as a step away from Information Studies, and that this name change takes another step
away from the Humanities aspect of the curriculum. It was thought the proposal should go to GAC and
UAC, and to the Senate as a bill in order for those bodies to determine if there are issued that need to be
addressed and if the name change could affect substantive changes. That is the whole point of
consultation. Per the Bylaws charges of the SEC, that body cannot prevent a bill from going to the Senate
floor. GOV considered the argument that this should be a resolution rather than a bill and determined they
disagreed, as 1) there is a potential curricular impact, and 2) proposals should go through the normal
review process.
A motion was made that the proposed name change of the College of Computing and Information to the
College of Engineering and Applied Sciences be affected through a bill and therefore go through the
normal forces (UAC, GAC, UPPC and the Senate). The motion was unanimously approved, with 1
abstention.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
StartUp New York Advisory Committee
GOV had received a request for a nominee to serve on the StartUp New York Advisory Committee.
Members put forth 2 nominees for consideration, each of whom had agreed to have their names put
forward and it was thought would add a lot to that initiative. The candidates were considered to be
knowledgeable about what the Committee does and to have good questions to ensure that proposals,
especially the very first ones, will be done right. Chair Fox summarized that StartUp New York is the
governor’s ten year initiative that has gone on for a year now and is supposed to be an economic
development engine. Startup companies can use university property, and neither those companies nor
their employees pay taxes for 10 years. The businesses must contribute to the university’s mission. It was
noted in the paper the previous week that they had hired only 76 new people for the new initiative state
wide. UAlbany has a liaison Michael Shimazu working in support of the initiative. The 1 company we
have approved is not a new company but moved, so it is unclear how it qualifies as a new StartUp
business. The composition and charges of the Committee were also reviewed.
A motion was made and unanimously approved that GOV recommend Kajal Lahiri to serve on the
StartUp NY Advisory Committee. Chair Fox would indicate that an alternate recommendation had been
agreed upon and could be provided should Professor Lahiri be unable to serve. The nominees would be
contacted regarding GOV’s recommendations.
A second motion was made and unanimously approved that GOV recommend the GSA student
representative of the StartUp NY Advisory Committee be the GSA Vice President or their proxy.
Charter amendment proposals:
Amendment proposals had been forwarded for discussion from UAC, GAC, CAA and LISC.
Some of the changes asked for, for instance by CAA, should take place if the current Charter Amendment
1415-02 passes in the Senate.
UAC recommends that the work of the Appellate subcommittee be located elsewhere, possibly in the
Office of Undergraduate Education. GOV also came to that conclusion in prior review, as the work was
more an administrative operational function; however, as the work would involve appeals made regarding
administrative policies, it was wondered if it might be more apt that such matters be reviewed by a
governance body under a different lens to get better clarity and to be careful of a systematic bias.
Conversely, it was thought perhaps such review was a function of undergrad education, as part of the job
is to write and help make a case but also to vet and decide if the case should go forward. The opinion was
voiced that only administrators have perspective, that they do tend to err on side of the student, and are
found to be fair minded. Perhaps this was not a governance issue or the best use of time for Senate
representatives, nor perhaps was the time drain of constituting the committee. As the membership is a
very large group, decisions could be impartial by virtue of the broad base. The issue turned out to be more
complicated than originally thought. GOV agreed that UAC is a really important committee with a
significant workload, and that its charges should be reviewed to make the work more manageable and
equitable. The issue was seen as somehow needing to be addressed, but there was not sufficient time to
think about it this year. GOV also had questions about Gen Ed and other issues raised, and it was unclear
what UAC meant by its requests. Chair Fox would ask Bob Yagelski either for further elaboration or for
him to come to a GOV meeting to answer some questions, provide more detail and / or make suggestions
on how to solve the problems.
NEW BUSINESS
The contingent faculty concerns regarding voting and representation in the Senate is a big issue, as 1) they
do not get to vote for their own Senate representative and 2) there is no mechanism to inform them who
their representative is. The second item seems like easy fix. They do not get the announcements, but
perhaps there are distribution lists we could include. The question has come up before. PT faculty are
always changing, and there are about 400 each semester. Staff Support Elisa Lopez was tasked with
asking ITS if the listserv allfacstaff-l includes contingent faculty.
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting adjourned at 5:01 p.m.
Respectfully submitted by
Elisa Lopez, Recorder