Chair: Susan Camp

Recorder: Sarah Lewis

Members Absent: M. Nojan, C. Claboug, J. Fiorini, T. Ramalho, W. Silky, P. Clark, R. O'Connor, K. Marshall, T. Jorgensen, J. McKeown, A. King, D. Nau, J. Langenfeld-Rial, E. Basualdo.

The meeting was called to order at 3:10 PM.

I.    Approval of Agenda
The agenda was approved as distributed.

II.    Approval of January 26th, 2009 Minutes
The minutes were approved as distributed.

III.    FA Chair's Report - S. Camp
The Chair began her report by stating that she and Joan Carroll met with the President this afternoon.  The President expressed to both that she believes that she is sharing sufficient information with the faculty and that the appropriate decisions are being made.  Dr. Camp also stated that the Faculty should continue to work with their respective departments to make "smart" reductions.  Since travel is reduced, she told the Assembly to make use of UUP awards, international education awards, and grant money.  
Dr. Camp then continued that a new Diversity Advisory Board has been created to advise Associate Provost Santos.  She wanted the Assembly to think about if they would want to represent Faculty Assembly on this newly convened board.  She continued that anyone with interest in improving SUNY Oswego for all students and recruiting a more diverse student body, faculty and staff should talk with her.
She then addressed the Assembly about students leaving prior to breaks.  There will be one bus leaving Friday prior to spring break at 4:00 p.m.  Fifty-five students have signed up for the bus.  The Provost will ask deans to use their listserve to notify faculty of the bus arrangements.
Dr. Camp then concluded her report by stating that the "Oswego Daily" e-mail bulletin for faculty and staff will be beginning soon, and a new voice directory service is currently available at 312-2500 after hours, and 312-6263 all day.  
Future reports to the Assembly will be given by Dean Markert on March 16th, and Dean Messere on March 30th.

IV.    Reports of Councils, Committees, and Task Forces

• Personnel Policies Council met on February 16th. They emailed to faculty, a statement on external review and it will be discussed next meeting. They also discussed Library representation on FA councils, which will be discussed at this Assembly meeting. This discussion is important because this will help with the revision of the By-Laws that are in progress.
• Academic Policies Council met on Feb 13th. They reviewed revisions to the Arts Management Minor and sent it back to the department for further changes. The proposed minor in Arts Journalism was not approved. Also, revisions to Human Resource Management major were approved.
• Priorities & Planning Council- Met both on Feb 13th, and Feb 20th. At the Feb 13th meeting, the proposed changes to the Arts Management minor program was discussed and approved unanimously pending a letter of support from Dean of the School of Business, Richard Skolnik. Changes included second track for Business majors and requirement of a minimum GPA of 1.67 (C) for entry into the MBA track. The proposed new minor program in Arts Journalism was discussed and approved unanimously. The proposed revisions to the Art BA Track II: Art Humanities Emphasis was discussed and approved unanimously. Changes include a change in name to "Art History", addition of ART 102 and ART 471 as core courses, addition of one course each from Non-Western, Medieval or Renaissance and Modern or Contemporary Art, and the elimination of the foreign language requirement. The Council also reviewed the CLAS budget planning principles and discussed the possibility of access to the college-wide budget over the past 20 years. At the Feb 20th meeting, Dean Skolnik and John MacDonald presented and explained the proposed major program in Risk Management Insurance (RMI). If approved, the new major will be the only one of its kind in the SUNY system. The program will require the hiring of one new faculty member in the School of Business. This position will be funded by an endowment of $1,000,000. Currently S.O.B. has $750,000 in their endowment fund and plans to raise the balance. VP Grant mentioned the importance of our web presence to student recruitment and suggested that the main site needs to be improved. Our acceptance rate has fallen 10% from it's peak in 2003 to 47% indicating that we have been a position to be more selective than in the past. In response to an inquiry by Schaber, Grant indicated that we do recruitment outreach to neighboring states and Canada but have had little success with the latter. We are attracting an increasing number of Presidential Merit Scholars who might otherwise have gone to institutions such as Binghamton and Geneseo. Grant stated that we have committed to a selectivity matrix with respect to new student admits. We have met SAT and HS/GPA targets for this matrix. Regarding student diversity, students of color currently represent ~11% of our student body and we are looking to improve that figure. Presently we have very few students identifying themselves as Native Americans. The number of students living in campus residence halls is up by approximately 400 students since 2006, and some are becoming overcrowded. It is anticipated that this will be alleviated with the opening of the "Village" condos on Glimmerglass Lagoon.
• General Education Council has met twice since the last Assembly meeting. Memos have been sent to all Dept chairs reminding them about how they will be assessing the infused Critical Thinking component in the major. Departments will still have assessments even if the Critical Thinking course is a cognate requirement that is taught by another department. There are still 3-4 majors that have not submitted CT plans to Gen Ed. The next Gen Ed meeting will be Tuesday, 24 Feb at 8am.
• Graduate Council cancelled last Friday's meeting and will meet again this Friday, February 27th.
• Undergraduate Curriculum Council met on February 11th. They had several proposals to look over, but only MGT 475- Global Business & Society was approved.
• Academic Outreach Council- will meet on February 24th.
• Catalog Coordinator Report reported that the drafts were sent out the day after the last meeting. She thanked the Assembly for the prompt turnaround in the proofreading. The catalog will be sent to printing tomorrow. It has also been discussed whether the paper catalog would still be published, and it will be published in hard copy form this year. There was talk however about phasing it out of hard copy and onto the web.
• Campus Concept Committee has approved a final draft of the Hewitt Quad Program Mission statement, and after its final edit they will be forwarding it to the President and to the Assembly. CCC will meet Tuesday Feb 24 to continue work on the Sustainability action plan.
• Writing Across the Curriculum Steering Committee met on February 23rd. They are waiting for the student survey to be uploaded. They also want to send an email out to faculty to encourage students to participate in this survey. They also discussed about having another workshop related to writing services. They have also drafted a letter for the provost about a writing center on campus. They will meet again March 24th.

V.    Office of Learning Services Report-  Elyzabeth Wengert
Ms. Wengert started her report by saying that she was here to help clear up to the Assembly what exactly the Office of Learning Services (OLS) does on campus.  She stated that there is a campus-wide confusion between the EOP program and OLS.  However, EOP and OLS have two separate budgets and offer different programs and services to students.
The Office of Learning Services offers tutoring out of 3 separate centers as part of its main service to  our students.   The centers are Writing, Learning, and Mathematics and Natural Sciences.  OLS has four graduate students working in the tutoring center itself.  The tutoring centers function under a peer-tutoring model, but she also stated that there are some professional tutors that do teach the students.   She continued to state that the Math and Science tutoring center provided 1880 hours of tutoring in the Fall 2008 semester.  Most people think that most students using the tutoring center are EOP students, however, EOP students only used about 154 hours of tutoring, and the rest of the tutoring hours were for the general student.  Most of the students that come in to be tutored  are  in Math and the Sciences.  
The Office of Learning Services also offers writing tutoring as well, which is called the Writer's Den.  Since most students prefer to write in a quite setting, OLS provides them with a "den-like" setting for them to work in.  However, they are still looking for ways on how to do writing tutoring better.  Writing tutoring is the least utilized, and therefore has the least hours used in the department.  Also there are writing workshops that are offered, many, but not all of these workshops are for EOP students, since the people that run the workshops are funded through the EOP budget.   You can access the OLS website for more information on OLS workshop offerings.
EOP stands for the Educational Opportunity Program.  This program is for historically "underserved and underrepresented" students.  There are financial and educational guidelines for being an EOP student.  The students that enter into the EOP program most often have  a slightly lower  GPA  than what the college  regularly admits .  There are 352 EOP students being funded this year, and there is a1:2 ratio of males to females.  She then stated that not all EOP students are of African-American descent.  40% of the EOP students are Caucasian, and not all African-American students on campus are EOP students.  
She concluded her report that in this fall there was 87 Freshman EOP students.  The retention rate is about the same as what the institution retention rate is.  They are also working on updating their website, which can be found at www.oswego.edu/academics/support/OLS.  She also reported that potential tutee's can now apply online.

VI.    Elections
There were no nominations for the vacant seat on the Student Association Senate.

VII.    Unfinished Business
--Faculty Senate Resolution regarding budget transparency and consultation was affirmed unanimously.
--Faculty Senate Resolution regarding reducing the layers of assessment throughout SUNY was affirmed unanimously.  
-- Risk Management Proposed BS

Dean Skolnik spoke to the assembly about the proposed Risk Management & Insurance Major, and addressed the Assembly about the background of the initiative.  He reported that this would be the first program of its kind in the SUNY system, and would only be the second program in an AACSB accredited institution in  New York State, with St. John's University being the other.
Dean Skolnik also projected that the program would have about 10 students in the entrance class, and would grow to an annual intake of 20 students in 5 years.  The School of Business will recruit students through the New York State Independent Insurance Agents, and the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS).   He stated that alumni support this new program, and will advocate for it as well.  The school will use existing faculty and adjuncts to teach new RMI classes. Since enrollment projections are modest compared to overall School of Business enrollment, the incremental enrollment should not be a major issue. Enrollment in the program may offset decreases in enrollment that could occur because of demographic trends in Upstate New York.  An endowed fund is being established by an alumnus which will be available for recruiting and program expenses. The fund should be fully endowed by the end of the year and available for use at the end of 2010.  
After Dean Skolnik gave his report, the Assembly approved the new Risk Management and Insurance BS unanimously.  

--2010-2011 Calendar was postponed for approval to next meeting due to a date error.
--2011-2012 Calendar was approved by the Assembly by a vote of 30-1.
--2012-2013 Calendar was postponed for approval to next meeting due to a Winter Session conflict.
--APC Proposals of no course may have a grade requirement as a prerequisite, and no course may have a GAP requirement as a prerequisite were discussed and it was decided that more time should be allowed for discussion of the topic at the next meeting.
-- Library Representation on UCC, Priorities and Planning and General Education Council was postponed to next meeting since there was no time for discussion.    

VIII.    New Business
There was no new business.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:02 PM.