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Council of University System Faculty

Executive Meeting: Monday, February 4, 2008

USM Adelphi, Chancellor’s Room

Present:

John Collins (UMBI, Chair), Bill Stuart (UMCP, Vice Chair), Martha Siegel (TU, At-Large), Alcott Arthur (CSU, At-Large), Joyce Shirazi (UMUC, Secretary)
John Collins called the meeting to order at approximately 12:20p.m.
Kelly Baker (UMB), Graduate Student in Microbiology and Immunology, will speak at the Monday, February 11, 2008 CUSF meeting at UMBI regarding the Carbon Neutrality Campaign. She will bring Richard Scott (FSU), the Student Regent, with her.

Patti Cossard, CUSF Legislative Affairs Committee Chair, is sending all CUSF members a textbook recommendation/resolution. John Collins referenced a short list of items, indicating that the publishers do not tell the prices of textbooks, the textbooks need to be unbundled, and new editions are found to be unnecessary by most faculty. Many ideas about what any legislation could do were discussed, such as take the price of books off tuition or pay for books in tuition. Martha Siegel noted that it used to be that the ISBN number could not be given to students. Joyce Shirazi noted that UMCP will no longer stock UMUC books for online classes. Martha Siegel noted that MIT gives away textbooks for free.

Student Research Day (SRD)

The deadline for the submittal of projects is Friday, February 8, 2008 and there have been two projects submitted by UB, and 14 by UMES. The UMES projects are generally the biological type. All of the projects were sent to John Collins and he passed them on to the SRD Committee. Martha Siegel will help to judge the projects. John Collins will send a reminder to the Provosts and CUSF members.

Report to Chancellor’s Council

John Collins presented the CUSF reports from the Legislative Affairs Committee, Academic Affairs Committee, and other information. He will forward to CUSF the memo that he received from Chancellor Brit Kirwan regarding the Academic Affairs Committee report. In his memo Chancellor Kirwan addressed many points pertaining to the three parts of the Volunteer System of Accountability (VSA). He particularly noted that the outcome assessment part is optional. Bill Stuart and Martha Siegel noted that the experimental part of optional outcome assessment is hard to opt out on. They also noted that the difference between this and Middle States Accreditation is that this is an internal document. Martha Siegel noted there are other ways to assess, such as reporting on the number of students going on to graduate school, and by reviewing the results on the national test for education majors for example, to name a few. Bill Stuart suggested that Martha Siegel write a statement in response to the Chancellor’s memo. Other items John Collins noted from the Chancellor’s letter were as follows:

Bill Stuart will coordinate a Faculty Senate Chairs meeting with CUSF and the Chancellor. Closing the achievement gap and the VSA will be the topics. Representing CUSF will be the CUSF Executive Committee, the Academic Affairs Committee and the Chairs of the Legislative and Faculty Affairs Committees. The meeting will be held on Friday, April 18, 2008 from 12pm to 2pm at USM in the Chancellor’s Conference Room. John Wolfe (USM, Associate Vice Chancellor), gave the CUSF Executive Committee a copy of the CD/DVD’s from the Closing the Achievement Gap Conference. It is a three CD/DVD set, with a hard copy of the Power Point Presentations.

CUSF Letters

Martha Siegel referenced the draft January CUSF meeting minutes, and noted that Paul Flexner needs to write a formal letter regarding the Optional Retirement Plan (ORP) and the State’s contributions. She also noted the two letters that CUSF and CUSS should send to the Governor, and a short letter that Vince Brannigan (UMCP, Professor Emeritus) should write with our point of view for JoAnn Goedert (MD Office of the Attorney General, Chief Counsel/Assistant Attorney General), regarding tuition remission.

Elections

Alcott Arthur noted that the elections should be added to the February agenda because we need to prepare for nominations. Joyce Shirazi suggested that each candidate give a speech or make a statement regarding what they will do as a member of the CUSF Executive Committee. We will vote on the procedures for the elections at the February meeting. We will also consider the possibility of voting by email. Alcott Arthur agreed to send a memo to Bill Chapin, the Membership and Rules Committee Chairperson regarding a committee report about the CUSF elections.

The meeting adjourned at approximately 2:45 p.m.

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