Adopted:
MEETING OF
FEBRUARY 22, 2002
President
George Rupp, the chairman, called the Senate to order at 1:15 pm in Schapiro
Engineering Auditorium. Thirty-six of 89 senators were present during the
meeting.
Minutes and agenda: The minutes of February 1,
2002 and the agenda were adopted as proposed.
President’s report:
—The president received Senate approval to have Michael
Feiler fill in as parliamentarian for Howard Jacobson, who was away.
—The president outlined the February 12 ruling of
the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board on two main issues
in the current campaign to unionize students:
1.
On
the question of the status of this group, which the President characterized as
the question of whether students who teach are primarily workers or students,
the regional director ruled that she was bound by the decision in a similar
case at NYU, which concluded that such students are employees.
2.
On
the question of the composition of the bargaining unit, the regional ruling
accepted most teaching assistants and research assistants at Health Sciences,
Morningside, Lamont, and Nevis, along with a handful of undergraduate TAs. The
president said that, except for the undergraduates, such a bargaining unit
makes more sense than the union’s recommendation of a group composed only of
Morningside TAs.
The
administration is trying to reach agreement with the union on the details of
the election to decide whether the UAW will represent students as their
collective bargaining agent. The president said the difficulty of these
negotiations is not a good sign.
The
union has said it will appeal the composition of the bargaining unit to the
national NLRB. The University may appeal the status issue. If there are
appeals, the election will go forward, but the ballots will be impounded until
the appeals have been addressed.
The
president said he thought the NLRB needs to take a coherent position on the
question of a suitable bargaining unit: a regional ruling on the Brown case,
now under appeal, allows no
undergraduates in the unit; the NYU decision excludes RAs.
The
election will probably take place the week of March 11. The president said the
union has raised objections to the list of eligible of voters.
—A number of searches for senior administrators are
under way, in consultation with President-elect Lee Bollinger. A new Social
Work dean, to succeed Ronald Feldman, may be announced soon. A search for a new
Journalism School dean has begun; the incumbent, Thomas Goldstein, is stepping
down at the end of this academic year. There are vice presidencies to be filled
are in student services, investments (to replace Bruce Dresner) and in public
affairs, which was run by Alan Stone until his departure for Harvard a few
months ago.
—Returns so far on applications to Columbia graduate
schools are robustly positive, somewhat in contrast to undergraduate
applications, which remain flat in Columbia College, and are significantly down
in the Engineering School. The returns so far appear to bear out a familiar
countercyclical pattern—grad school applications go up when the economy goes
down. Applications to the School of the Arts are up 4 percent; to the GSAS
Ph.D. program, up 4 percent; to SIPA, up 78 percent, from just under 1100 to
nearly 2000 applicants; to the Business School, up 31 percent; to graduate
engineering programs, up 30 percent; to Law, up 35 percent; to Social Work, up
26 percent; to Architecture, up 8 percent; to Journalism, up 22 percent.
Applications are also up 7 percent in General Studies, but flat overall for
Health Sciences programs.
Sen.
Michael Castleman (Stu., SEAS) asked how much money Columbia has spent on legal
challenges to the campaign to unionize students and on other efforts that he
characterized as “anti-union activities.” The president said Columbia, which
has working relationships with several campus locals, is not anti-union, but is
vigorously opposed to the unionization of its students. He did not give a
figure on Columbia’s legal costs.
Sen.
Stephanie Neuman (Research Staff) asked how much of the increase in
applications, particularly in SIPA, is attributable to international students
and to female applicants. The president said he did not have figures, but saw
no reason why the increase shouldn’t reflect overall percentages—about 40
percent of SIPA’s students are international, and about half are women.
Nominations to committees: Executive Committee
chairman Paul Duby read a short list of late changes in committee assignments.
The Senate approved them.
Report of the Executive
Committee chairman: Sen. Duby (Ten., SEAS) said that a second student caucus hearing on
unionization had been held on February 6, after the last Senate meeting. Like
the first hearing, it was announced on the Columbia home page.
Patsy
Catapano has postponed her report on two years of experience of the policy on
student sexual misconduct that the Senate approved on February 25, 2000. She
will give the report at the March Senate meeting.
At
the Executive Committee meeting on February 15, there had been extensive
discussion of the report on the present meeting’s agenda on faculty salary
equity issues from Faculty Affairs. Sen. Duby and Sen. Letty Moss-Salentijn
(Ten., SDOS) had summarized this discussion at the Faculty Affairs meeting that
afternoon.
There
had also been discussion of the two resolutions on new programs from Education.
In one case, the comments led to a change in the name of the program.
Sen.
Duby welcomed Justine Blau, who has succeeded Debra Elfenbein on the Senate
staff.
Sen.
Duby said extensive renovations are under way in Low Library, and the Senate
conference room will accommodate four people from another office for the next
six months. During that time, Senate committees will be meeting elsewhere.
Old business:
—Update
on discussion of unionization of students who teach at Columbia: In brief remarks about the student caucus
hearings on student unionization, Sen. Hilary Rosenstein (Stu., CC) said the
second hearing focused on more specific issues than the first hearing, partly
because the caucus received many e-mailed questions during the week between the
two hearings.
New business:
—Report
on Some Inequities in Faculty Salaries (Faculty Affairs): Sen. Frances
Pritchett (Ten., A&S/Hum) presented the report, which she had given in an
earlier version to the Senate in April 2001. She said subsequent discussions
have convinced her that it would be impolitic and premature to recommend
changes in salary policy before getting more information. So the present
version of the report seeks useful information on two groups of faculty without
violating the confidentiality of individual salaries.
Sen.
Pritchett said the report’s concern about the first group, language lecturers,
is not controversial. These instructors have Ph.D’s and teach heavy course
loads, with annual salaries well below $40,000 and minimal prospects for
promotion. Such a situation does not do Columbia credit, Sen. Pritchett said.
She said she hoped to see these salaries approach those of assistant
professors. For each academic department in the Arts and Sciences, the report
requests the ratio between the salaries of the lowest-paid language lecturer
and the lowest-paid assistant professor.
With
the salaries of the second group of faculty, full professors, Sen. Pritchett
said the report was in more controversial territory. She said some seem to want
to no limit on the range of such salaries, either at the top, where the
contributions from “stars” seem infinitely valuable, or the bottom, where “dead
wood” faculty are found. Sen. Pritchett said there are numerous
counter-arguments to make to this position, but for now the committee simply
wants to know what the ranges are, in the form of the ratio between the
salaries of the lowest-paid and the highest-paid full professor in each Arts
and Sciences department. She said such data should also be available to review
committees.
The
president clarified the status of Sen. Pritchett’s initiative: it was not a
resolution, an action item, at the present meeting but a report, for
discussion. He understood from Executive Committee deliberations that the
committee would decide later whether and in what form to bring a resolution.
Sen.
Justin White (Stu., GS) suggested seeking average salaries within each
department as an alternative measure.
Sen.
Jonathan Cole, the provost, asked why the Senate limits itself to the Arts and
Sciences when it seeks salary information. Sen. Pritchett said she had no such
intent. She started locally, with a concern about colleagues in her department,
Middle East Languages and Cultures. She said she would be happy to extend the
range of the committee’s inquiry more widely.
Sen.
David Cohen, Vice President for Arts and Sciences, said he has recognized the
problem of language lecturers’ salaries, and last year asked department chairs
to take some steps. Sen. Cohen enlarged the pool for salary raises for language
lecturers from what had been originally budgeted, and also set a salary floor,
making sure that all lecturer salaries were at least at that level. He has also
initiated standard minimum increases at the conclusion of major reviews for
language lecturers: 5 percent after the fifth-year review, 12 percent after the
eighth-year review and for promotion to senior language lecturer, and 5 percent
after the 13th-, 18th- and 23rd-year reviews.
Sen. Pritchett expressed enthusiasm about these measures.
Sen.
Cohen also associated himself with the Sen. Cole’s comment, adding that he is
not enthusiastic to have the Arts and Sciences singled out among Columbia’s 15
units in the committee’s request for salary data, which he would be reluctant
to provide in isolation.
Sen.
Pritchett repeated that she had no intention of singling out any school, and
was interested in having a comparative framework for salaries. But she added
that it would be difficult to compare salaries in Arts and Sciences with those
at Health Sciences, which are on different scales and are funded differently.
Sen. Cohen Arts and Sciences is itself a many-splendored thing, with major
variations in funding among departments.
Sen.
Cohen also responded to Sen. Pritchett’s point about teaching loads, by saying
that language lecturers were expressly hired to teach, with no research duties
in their job description. Sen. Pritchett said she served on the Arts and
Sciences standing committee on language lecturers for several years, and
observed that professional activities were among the criteria for promotion.
She said this makes sense for a professionalizing field, but salaries should
keep pace.
Sen.
Cohen said that a creative leave has been instituted for some language
lecturers. But the basic mission of language lecturers is pedagogy.
Sen.
Pritchett said the creative leave is a valuable improvement, which Columbia
will need along with better salaries to compete for the best language lecturers.
She was pleased to conclude that the disagreement here seemed more a matter of
emphasis than of principle.
The
president suggested that the committee, in its further deliberations, should
consider the boundaries between between Arts and Sciences, the Morningside
campus as a whole, and the University as a whole. He said he could not see the
rationale for the Senate, which is mandated to address issues that cut across
schools, to focus exclusively on Arts and Sciences in this case. Sen. Pritchett
said the committee would consider that question.
—Resolution to Establish a Certificate in
Comparative Literature and Society
(Education):
Sen. Moss-Salentijn presented the resolution for the program, which she said
responds to a disciplinary shift, in which graduate students in the social
sciences are using comparative literature as part of the study of their own
fields.
With
permission from the Senate, Prof. Andreas Huyssens, who will direct the
program, spoke briefly. He said the certificate program will not add to the
time of study for the Ph.D., but is “embedded” in the Ph.D. program curriculum.
The
Senate unanimously approved the resolution.
—Resolution to Establish a Ph.D. Program in
Kinesiology (Education): Sen. Moss-Salentijn said that the Executive Committee
had expressed reservations about the title that had been proposed for the
program—a Ph.D. in “Movement Science and Education.” Partly because an Ed.D.
degree in the field already exists, it seemed inappropriate to refer to
education in the name of the Ph.D. In addition, kinesiology is the name used
for other programs in the same field. Within hours of the Executive Committee
meeting, Sen. Moss-Salentijn said, program proposers from Teachers College had
submitted a new name.
The
Senate unanimously approved the resolution.
The
president adjourned the meeting shortly before 2 pm.
Respectfully
submitted,
Tom
Mathewson, Senate staff