Members Comment on Failures of CUNY First

David Arnow from the Computer and Information Sciences Department at Brooklyn College has expanded his assessment of CUNY First on the PSC web page. In addition, the PSC has encouraged members to write comments about their experiences. Some have echoed David’s assessment and a few others have tried to offer helpful suggestions for managing a bad situation.  Now that many BC faculty have used it for the first time to post grades, it might be a good time to read about other people’s experiences and sound off about your own. Here are a few select comments:

Such a terrible choice.

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2013 - 12:44pm.

Dogged HEO staff members have been putting in 13-14 hours days to try to get CUNYfirst to work, basically trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. This on top of implementing Pathways. The system is repeatedly “down.” Even when it is working, it takes about 15 minutes or more to use it to advise a student, whereas in the past, academic advisors could obtain the information they needed from SIMs in about a minute or two. Multiple 15 minutes times the students on your campus and you begin to see the magnitude of the problem.

In 2011 Montclair University sued Oracle for a failed ERP; in fact, the Montclair situation was named one of the 10 biggest ERP software failures of 2011 by Computer World Magazine. Montclair claimed that due to serious mistakes and delays on the part of Oracle, the project cost over $5 million more than the original budget. Montclair also alleged that Oracle staffed the project with unprepared staffers, missed deadlines, didn't adequately test the software, and even used a "rigged" software demonstration that falsely made it seem like some functionality was part of Oracle's base system. This case was recently resolved although I do not know the terms. The last I heard, Cambridge University was also considering suing for the same reasons. (An older suit: Ohio's attorney general filed a lawsuit against PeopleSoft Inc. seeking $510 million in damages stemming from an allegedly faulty installation of the company's ERP and student administration applications at Cleveland State University. Cleveland State University and PeopleSoft USA, Inc. reached a $4.25 million settlement in 2005.) These are just a few lawsuits against PeopleSoft/Oracle by universities; there have been others by private corporations, municipalities and others for cost overruns, poor functionality, missed deadlines, etc. I also believe one of the Univ. of California schools disbanded the product entirely after getting into it almost half way because of how awful it was.

SIMS was imperfect, but was basically responsive to the needs of each college. I’ll never understand why an investment in enhancing SIMS to make it an integrated university-wide system was not done. Just yesterday I spoke to an admissions staff member at SUNY Buffalo where they use Oracle. She described it as a nightmare saying she longs for the days when Buffalo used its own “homegrown” computer information system.

I agree, “we will adjust.” But with the Graduate Center part of the next wave (tsunami?), it is hard to imagine how this very complicated organization (The Graduate School, School of Professional Studies, the Journalism School, Macaulay and especially CUNY BA, the individualized university-wide degree) will fit into CUNYfirst. It is particularly a shame for the Graduate School and CUNY BA, which have invested heavily in resources since 1999 to get Banner to the state it is in now, functioning perfectly for us.

If I Had Chosen this System, I Would Have Been FIRED!

Submitted by Anonymous on May 21, 2013 - 11:19am.

I want to thank you for not only the bold stand you took in your opinion piece in the Clarion, but also for your recognition of HEOs at CUNY and the toll that CF (as we call CUNYfirst) and now Pathways has taken on us.

I am from a Wave 2 school and had to put in enormous hours of OT in the year leading up to our conversion. Now that we are live, CF has slowed down our processes enormously, resulting in extra hours on a routine basis. I rarely leave my office on time. I still have to put in enough extra hours that I end up with a few days off in comp time about three times a year. (And that is with me being somewhat generous in giving time to my college without documenting it since I consider myself a professional and extra hours here and there are part of the job.)

A stack of paperwork arriving on my desk that would take about an hour in SIMS, can take anwhere from 3 to 7 hours, depending on the density of what is included, the complexity of the specifics involved, how slow CF will be on any given day, and how many times it will log me off for no apparent reason.

Even worse is how our end-clients, the students (remember them?), have fared under this system. If those of us who have been using CF for 1-2 years still have problems with it, how can we expect students to master this crucial system?

We were told by someone who was supposedly on the university-wide committee from the beginning that was charged with choosing the vendor, that it came down to two finalists: Oracle and a European company. The person said that the European company was hungry to get into the US market and their presentation, product, and response to questions ran rings around Oracle. Many members of the committee were dumbfounded when Oracle got the contract.

I wouldn't care if this was a workable system, but it is not. It should be clear to anyone who uses CF that it was not meant as a university administration product and that the people who rebuilt it for this market know nothing about college administration and the tasks we have to do on a daily basis. Converting any system is an arduous task, but one usually can expect to get to a point where most things are working well. I don't think CF will ever work well and that we will have problems with it until we finally convert to something else.

I agree with other posts here about the training being inadequate at best. My colleagues who did the CF "Train the Trainer" training were never given any hands-on time in the system. Rather, they were taught how to read Powerpoint presentations out loud (and urged to "smile more"). They themselves were frustrated that they were supposed to train colleagues on campus but were not given the proper training or tools to do so.

Then in the middle of all of the CF problems, we are supposed to implement Pathways, which requires a great deal of administrative retooling in addition to the pedagogical issues. And now we are told that there will be significant changes being made in how financial aid will be delivered, also starting this fall.

How much are we, as HEOs, expected to shoulder at one time? Most of my colleagues are extremely tired, some to the point of increased illnesses. We get little recognition (except for us lucky ones with supervisors who acknowledge our hard work and dedication in the only way they can: thanks and the occasional pizza party) and rarely are eligible for merit raises or other "hard" compensation. And many of us believe that the centralization that CF is supposed to offer will enable "Central" to pull more jobs off-campus (and eliminate some, of course), the way they have moved payroll from the colleges to one central Manhattan location.

Again, I thank you for recognizing HEOs and the work we do to make our colleges run. I feel that the people at "Central" have forgotten what it is like to be on the ground at one of the colleges.

From technophile to technophobe

Submitted by Anonymous on May 20, 2013 - 9:21pm.

EPIC FAIL. Those words can't be strong enough. The worst example of corporatizing ever in CUNY. It was foisted on the lowest level of the hierarchy first. Our campus was told it was being tried out on us first before the Manhattan schools. Lovely! Not only is it poorly designed and nonintuitive, it constantly breaks down. It is so buggy that everyone ends up spending much more time on it than the old system. The biggest frustration is that no one seems to no how to fix anything so the same HEOS keep getting bombarded with help questions. One of our best HEOs has resigned b/c after two years she has had it and would rather retire than deal with CUNYFIRST. For faculty, it's a nightmare b/c instead of making it easy to register student, it's harder. My favorite CUNY FIRST story was the time it took 5 hours and five different offices to fix one small item. Trainers are nice but they never have all the information needed. CUNYFirst help desks are staffed by nonHEOS who are sweet but generally don't have advanced answers. And so it goes......if this is representative of the conditions for teaching and learning at CUNY, then we, as an institution ARE AN EPIC FAIL!

Sandy Cooper: The Road to Pathways

From Academe May-June 2013

The Road to Pathways

By Sandi Cooper

 

To regard teachers—in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university—as the priests of our democracy is not to indulge in hyperbole. It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens. —Justice Felix Frankfurter, Wieman v. Updegraff

---

In 1998, as I came off my first four-year term as chair of the University Faculty Senate of the City University of New York, the new board chair, Benno Schmidt, was asked for his view of faculty rights and authority. Here was an individual who had been a high administrative officer at Yale and Columbia as well as a law professor. In sum, his answer was, “To carry out trustee policy.” If that is shared governance, then what is authoritarianism?

As individuals responsible for the broad oversight of an institution, the selection of top management, and the implementation of policy, university trustees in the private sector usually are expected to fulfill a fiduciary role—that is, to expand the endowment. Presumably this service is its own reward; trustees are not expected to benefit financially from the institutions they oversee. When they make the headlines it usually means that they have either exercised poor judgment or crossed ethical lines, as in the case, respectively, of the University of Virginia in 2012 or the fundamentalist Hillsdale College in rural Michigan in 1999, where the trustees defended their president to the last moment, even after discovering that he had been engaged in a seventeen-year affair with his daughter-in-law. Then we have the 2011 headlinegrabbing scandal at Pennsylvania State University, where the famous football coach Joe Paterno was pulled from his pedestal and the red-faced trustees had to remove the top administration.

Are these rare episodes? Is trustee judgment so reliable?

Who Are the Trustees?

Frequently drawn from elite corporate backgrounds and, for public institutions, from pools of politically connected people, trustees usually have to be educated about shared governance.
Corporate or political ties are scarcely reliable indices of the wisdom necessary to oversee institutions of higher learning, and some trustees, sadly, prove resistant to learning. Of late, following waves of (largely conservative) attacks on the quality of college graduates, some boards have moved into areas of curriculum, degree requirements, and related educational matters.

At CUNY, the governor appoints ten trustees, including the chair, and the New York City mayor picks five (this has been the case since 1976). The chair of the university’s student senate sits on the board ex officio, with voting privileges, and the chair of the university’s faculty senate sits ex officio without a vote, as I did for six years. You can figure out which of these two is courted and respected.
The trustees appoint a chancellor to oversee the eighteen undergraduate and five graduate and professional institutions. With the appointment of Schmidt as board chair by Republican governor George Pataki in 1999–2000, the management of the colleges was centralized, the chancellor became a CEO in the eyes of the trustees (and in reality), and the college presidents essentially became deans. How did this happen?

The university had been in the crosshairs of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who unleashed a campaign bashing CUNY following his election in 1995. Much of his position came from the conservative Manhattan Institute, which openly disdained the generous admissions policies of public higher education. Giuliani set up a commission to investigate the supposedly dysfunctional system. The commission was headed by the same Schmidt who later became board chair.

Schmidt’s report provided the foundation for the centralization of the system. The board transferred its authority to appoint presidents to the chancellor, currently Matthew Goldstein (who was appointed in 1999). The chancellor also appoints a series of vice chancellors. The centralization is evident as well in the actions of the academic affairs vice chancellor, a position taken in 2008 by Alexandra Logue, who manages her near-absolute power by regularly meeting with the campus provosts, the chief academic officers, to “suggest” the policies that will gain approval and funding. Chancellors and vice chancellors have been known to admonish presidents and provosts to “get on the train” if they expect to remain in office as presidents or receive their annual increases.

Bad Directions

Why should faculty members care about this micromanagement? Apart from a handful of faculty leaders, few paid attention to the consolidation of administrative power. Faculty members yawned through proposals to centralize the purchase of paper clips and library books only to awaken to discover a new university-wide computer system that will need debugging for years to come. Then they saw their ability to continue their PhD programs in the sciences disappear: essentially, the chancellor moved those programs to two senior colleges.

Right now, the undergraduate faculties are stinging with anger over a centrally generated proposal called “Pathways,” which promises students easier transfer among CUNY colleges. As the details unfolded, faculty members showed up by the hundreds to voice opposition or to propose modifications to the project at public hearings held by the trustees. Faculty leaders, starting with the executive committee of the faculty senate under my leadership, offered suggestions, explained problems, and proposed alternatives—all of which were rejected. Faculty voices were dismissed as being self-serving, coming from entrenched interests unwilling to embrace “reform” and simply defending turf. As implementation of Pathways drew nearer, the trustees remained oblivious to faculty protests—as they had been when the central administration decided to move certain doctoral programs to new campuses.

Trustees believe in their chancellor and his vice chancellor for academic affairs—despite a local petition opposing them that garnered more than six thousand signatures and a national petition with more than five thousand names. They refuse to heed any argument or evidence from the faculty that the vice chancellor’s program is a flagrant violation of both academic standards and academic freedom. They credit her claims that the new academic requirements were shaped entirely by faculty members—true if you believe that having a small group of appointed “pet” faculty members devise the curriculum is the way to go.

With Pathways, we now have a general education core that makes it possible for a student to obtain a four-year liberal arts degree without a course in literature, foreign language, history, political science, economics, or a lab science. Its proponents insist that no extra hour for basic English composition is necessary and that basic science can be taught without a lab.

A previous vice chancellor pushed a US history requirement on the colleges, partly to deal with the enormous number of international students who knew little of the country to which they had moved. This requirement is effectively gone. Letters from the Modern Language Association protesting the reduction of class hours and requirements were brushed aside with the airy remark that students will have the choice to take those classes if they wish. The current Pathways would permit a student to fulfill a “world cultures” requirement by taking one semester of a foreign language. It is an embarrassment, and the faculty, even those professors tasked with implementing it, are reacting with bewilderment and anger.

A Cheapened Education

CUNY is now divided. The vice chancellor for academic affairs and chancellor promise the trustees that “their” resolution is being implemented with faculty support. The faculties in many colleges have refused to vote through curricular changes to fit this diminished educational model; new curricular arrangements are being implemented by college administrations without faculty approval.

Many students arrive at CUNY underprepared; most are from families perilously familiar with poverty; a majority work, often in several jobs; and they are often parents themselves, with family responsibilities. Faculty members quietly live with the fact that few students do the assignments. Cutting back on the general education requirements cheapens education; this cheapened education may not have racist motives, but it has racist and classist outcomes. CUNY students do not come with middle-class trappings—economic security and comfort with cultural institutions. Moreover, careful analysis of CUNY graduation statistics demonstrates that only a small percentage of students graduate with more than the requisite 120 credits—and those extra credits come not because they lose credits during transfer but because the students change majors or enter a senior college missing prerequisites for a major. In other words, even the premise for Pathways—that cutting requirements was necessary to enable students to transfer without losing credits—is baseless.

What CUNY students need is not a cheap trip through four years of watered-down education but better advisement, convenient and clear access to the requirements of the program into which they want to transfer, and a significant dose of college-level cultural experiences. They should not feel intimidated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, serious theater, a classical symphony, or a conversation based on real knowledge of a subject.

What is sad is that in order to make a case for Pathways, the trustees, some of whom are CUNY graduates themselves, cherry pick a handful of students who say that their community college coursework was disrespected on transfer. The trustees disregard the many contrary student experiences as well as faculty demonstrations, petitions, private overtures, letters, and resolutions. But without listening to the faculty—the people who deal with students daily—no positive improvements will happen. Trustees may have the power alone, but they do not have the knowledge—and neither do their appointed central administrators.

Sandi Cooper is professor of history at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She chaired the university’s faculty senate from 1994 to 1998 and from 2010 to 2012

Medgar Evers College Faculty Rejects Pathways

Last week the College Council at Medgar Evers College (MEC) failed to pass 27 newly revised Pathways-compliant degree programs despite threats and intimidation by the administration. The Pathways framework and related General Education Program will be on the agenda for a vote at the May 20 College Council meeting, and is expected to fail there as well.

MEC is one of several schools that has not passed a Pathways framework and has rejected PW-compliant curricula. Top CUNY administrators were perhaps hoping that with a new administration in place at MEC they could cajole faculty into playing along with Pathways. Senior CUNY administrators have been a regular presence on campus and faculty leaders have been told that there would be dire consequences for the college if they failed to toe the line. Similar to the threats used at QCC and less publicly at other campuses, faculty were told that if they did not pass Pathways there would be no courses for entering students to register for and as a result enrollment would be affected, costing the college millions and threatening the employment of faculty and staff.

Faculty responded to these threats by pointing out that other colleges have refused to pass Pathways without suffering any such consequences.  Instead, it has forced the administrations of these schools to design and/or pass along and implement Pathways curricula without the explicit or even tacit consent of faculty, making clear that they are completely willing to ignore Faculty Governance when they wish. MEC’s resistance to Pathways has forced the CUNY administration to show its true colors, which is contempt for the faculty.  Once again the faculty have called the outrageous bluff of the CUNY administration, which has tried threats, cooptation, and intimidation to get the faculty to go along with Pathways, but to no avail.

This month’s referendum will make starkly clear the depth and breadth of faculty opposition to Pathways. Be sure to add your vote.

Guest Post: Major Pathways Failure at LaGuardia Community College

 

Last week LaGuardia was notified that the CUNY Central Office had rejected the Social Science Department's proposed revisions in its A.A. program in Psychology to accommodate the Pathways curriculum. The problem was two courses, both part of the existing A.A. program, that the Psychology faculty inserted in the Required Core in the "Life and Physical Sciences" and "Mathematical and Quantitative Reasoning" categories: SCB203, Human Anatomy and Physiology, and MAT120, Elementary Statistics.  The University objected that these were STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) courses and therefore could not be included in an A.A. curriculum.

 

The University*s decision left the Psychology faculty with two choices. They could, on the one hand, convert the program to an A.S. degree, which would require approval by the CUNY Board of Trustees and the State Education Department.  This lengthy process could not be accomplished before Pathways goes into effect in September and would therefore necessitate suspension of new admissions to this popular program for at least a year. The other alternative was to substitute a non-laboratory science and a less rigorous math course.

 

The University's decision is based upon a misunderstanding of the difference between an A.A. degree and an A.S. The distinction, according to the New York State Board of Regents, is not one between arts and sciences, but between liberal arts and sciences, on the one hand, and occupational or professional programs, on the other. An A.A. program must contain at least 45 credits (75 percent) of liberal arts and science, while an AS degree need contain no more than 30 credits (50 percent) of liberal arts and science.

 

More troublesome than this technical issue is the idea of the University administration, or its hired faculty committees (all faculty members serving on Pathways committees receive stipends over and above their contractual salaries for their service) dictating to our Ph.D. psychologists which math or science courses are most appropriate to their field. Our faculty members are stripped of their professional status to decide the appropriate educational qualifications in their field of expertise. We are, as one psychologist complained to me in despair, merely civil servants. Curriculum design, once an integral part of our responsibilities, is now in the hands of  administrators, who may or may not be trained in an academic discipline but  answer to a politically appointed board, and the individual professors whom  they pay by the task to implement their ideas of curriculum and give those  ideas professional credence.

 

Another reason to vote next week:  no confidence in Pathways.

 

George D. Sussman, Ph.D.

Professor of History

Social Science Department

LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

 

Problems with Electronic Voting

There are currently problems with telephone and internet voting in the PSC referendum on Pathways. The problem is at the American Arbitration Association. The PSC is aware of the problems and working with AAA to deal with them. If you would like to vote electronically, hold onto your ballots, rather than mailing them in. Hopefully, you'll be able to vote electronically on Monday. We'll post an anouncement when the problems have been resolved.

City Limits: Goldstein to retain $300,000 Salary for 6 years

Retiring CUNY Head to Be Paid for Six More Years

Posted by Jarrett Murphy | May 8, 2013

According to minutes from the April 29 meeting of the CUNY board of trustees, outgoing Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, who will retire on June 30, will undertake a "study leave" for a year at his current salary of $490,000. Once that's done, he'll retire for five months, then return as "chancellor emeritus" for five years at a salary of $300,000 a year. "During his study leave, retirement leave and tenure as Chancellor Emeritus, Dr. Goldstein shall perform such teaching and other non-policymaking duties as shall be determined by the Board of Trustees," the minutes read.   According to the New York Post, Goldstein currently receives a $90,000 housing allowance in addition to his salary; the minutes do not say that that will continue.

 

Calling Goldstein "a true visionary" the minutes praise his "emphasis on high standards, academic rigor and student preparation" which, it says, have "produced record enrollments, with an increase in enrollment among high-achieving students, and increased graduation rates." The minutes notes that "the study leave for Dr. Goldstein was provided for in the offer letter when he was first hired as Chancellor" and represent the first sabbatical he's taken in 14 years.

Union members have noted that half of CUNY's courses are taught by adjuncts who make less than $20,000 annually.

Voting Begins on Pathways No Confidence Referendum

May 8, 2013

Dear Colleague: 

Tomorrow, May 9, voting begins in the first No Confidence referendum in the union’s history. Don’t miss the chance to be part of it. A vote of No Confidence is historically the most profound rejection of political direction a voting body can deliver. If we have an overwhelming turnout and a large majority voting No Confidence, we reposition the faculty to demand that the incoming CUNY administration rethink and replace Pathways.

The referendum is about two things: the quality of a CUNY education and the professional authority of faculty in decisions on curriculum. We take a major step toward reclaiming both if we deliver a resounding vote of No Confidence. [Click here to find out how to vote.] 

The success of the referendum depends on you. Don’t sit this one out. Don’t disregard it because you feel you have already voiced your opposition to Pathways. This vote is different. A definitive result will allow us to go to the new Interim Chancellor—and to the public—with incontrovertible proof that the full-time faculty does not support Pathways and that we demand an alternative. Other expressions of opposition continue to be important: the lawsuits against Pathways are finally starting to move through the courts, and the union continues to work with faculty governance to uphold motions of opposition to Pathways. But the referendum is a strategic vote at a strategic moment. For the sake of your students, your colleagues and yourself, take the opportunity to participate.

Each of us has a stake in Pathways, whatever discipline, professional field or level of courses we teach. Pathways will determine the quality of the educational foundation CUNY students receive and the quality of the curriculum in the academic majors. It will determine whether the thousands of CUNY students who come to college under-prepared meet a rich and demanding curriculum that gives them a second chance—or a curriculum that reinforces their history of being shortchanged by the education system.

Each of us has a stake in reclaiming control of curriculum. A university where the curriculum is not developed and overseen by its faculty is hardly a university.  Pathways is an attempt to strip the faculty of agency, just as teachers in the public schools have been deprofessionalized.

Ballots are being mailed today, and voting begins tomorrow. Participating is simple, and your vote will be completely anonymous. It is shameful that we have to worry about intimidation in a university, but the coercion that has been exercised around Pathways shows that we do; and the secret ballot will allow you to vote without fear. The ballot contains one sentence: “I have No Confidence in Pathways.” As a voter, you can indicate “Agree” or “Disagree.” By casting your vote—and by voting “Agree”—you will help to reclaim the curriculum and the professional authority of the faculty.
We don’t have a minute to lose. I urge you to vote as soon as your ballot arrives.

In solidarity,

Barbara Bowen

President, PSC/CUNY

Brooklyn College Faculty Council Rebukes Provost and Chancellor in Three Pathways Resolutions

As implementation of Pathways moves forward it is becoming increasingly clear how it is degrading educational standards. By strictly limiting the number of hours per course and the total number of courses required for General Education, colleges are being forced to make untenable choices about what to keep and what to sacrifice. What’s worse is that in some cases the local administrations are making these choices themselves, despite the clear directives of faculty governance.

At Brooklyn College, the Provost has eliminated general education requirements related to foreign languages, speech, and ESL. He made these decisions in the context of a Pathways framework that required that the college eliminate some of its existing requirements in order to comply with the Chancellor and Board’s grand plan.

Faculty have been aware of these potential trade-offs inherent in the Pathways system for some time. That’s why the Faculty Council has been so adamant in resisting it for over a year now. In addition, they gave the Provost specific guidance about how to move forward if he implemented Pathways over faculty objection. He ignored these directives.

In response two resolutions were passed yesterday by huge margins. The first resolves:

BE IT RESOLVED, for the record, that the faculty is strongly opposed to the elimination by Pathways of the language requirement from the General Education curriculum of the College.

The second dealing with speech ends:

BE IT RESOLVED that the faculty of Brooklyn College joins the faculty of the Department of Speech Communication Arts and Sciences in vigorously and vocally opposing Pathways’ elimination of the Speech Screening requirement from the General Education curriculum of Brooklyn College.

The third resolution mirrors ones passed by UFS and Baruch. It calls for the elimination of unelected bodies hand-picked by the Chancellor to oversee the Pathways curriculum process. These committees operate entirely outside of governance and are not accountable in any way to the faculty.

BROOKLYN COLLEGE

OF THE

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

FACULTY COUNCIL

May 7, 2013

Resolution Objecting to the Extension of Pathways Common Core Course Review Committees

Whereas, the CUNY Bylaws give the University Faculty Senate and college senates jurisdiction over curriculum, and

Whereas, the central Pathways committees have wrongly usurped the role of these legitimate senates, and

Whereas, although these committees had expired, the Office of Academic Affairs is now extending the life of these committees until the end of June 2013, and

Whereas, if the pattern holds OAA is likely to make these committees permanent, and

Whereas the University Faculty Senate passed a resolution that objects to OAA’s further extension of these extra-governance curriculum committees and calls for a permanent end to them.

Therefore, Be It Resolved, that the Faculty Council of Brooklyn College endorses the resolution as passed by the University Faculty Senate.

It is essential that faculty governance bodies directly challenge the implementation of Pathways and that the faculty support the No Confidence vote. By documenting the failings of Pathways and the depth of faculty opposition, we set the groundwork for both rolling back Pathways under a new Chancellor and fending off additional policies that deprofessionalize the faculty and degrade CUNY's educational standards.

Pathways Referendum Voting Procedures

Dear Full-Time Faculty Members:

Voting in the referendum on No Confidence in Pathways begins this Thursday (May 9). The union’s goal is to enable all full-time faculty to vote and to maintain absolute secrecy of the ballot. To ensure both ease and secrecy of voting, we have asked the American Arbitration Association (AAA) to run the referendum. Voters must follow the simple procedures the AAA has put in place.

Do not discard the ballot mailing from the AAA. The ballot mailing contains your unique Personal Identification Number (PIN), which you will need to vote by telephone or by using the internet. The PIN, issued randomly by AAA, ensures confidentiality. You will also be able to vote by mail by enclosing your marked ballot in the envelopes included in the mailing.

AAA will mail out the voting material on May 8^th. If you have not received the envelope marked “Urgent!—Referendum: No Confidence in Pathways Ballot Enclosed—Please Forward“ by Monday May 13^th, please call the PSC Office (212-354-1252) to confirm your mailing address and be sent a new ballot mailing. Please call promptly to allow time to re-mail the material.

Your vote must be received by AAA by 5 PM Friday May 31^st.

You can vote by mail (using the ballot and envelopes you receive in the ballot mailing), by telephone or through the internet. To vote by phone or the internet, you must use your unique Personal Identification Number (PIN), which you will receive in the ballot mailing, along with the last 4 digits of your Social Security number. Instructions on how to vote by telephone or internet are included in the ballot mailing.

If you will not be at your home address after May 8^th to receive the mailing, please contact the PSC and provide an alternate mailing address (or an email address if you are out of the country) so instructions and a PIN can be forwarded to you by AAA.

ALL full-time faculty are eligible to vote in this referendum, including those who are not union members (for whom the union may not have mailing addresses) and members who have moved without providing the union their new address. If you want to vote and have not received a ballot by May 13^th, please contact the PSC Office. Inquiries may also be made to AAA, but response will be delayed because AAA must check with PSC about eligibility as a full-time faculty member.

NOTE: Please share this information with your colleagues because the union does not have email addresses for everyone.

Deborah Bell
PSC Executive Director

Provost Unilaterally Eliminates Language Requirement at Brooklyn College

Last month the Provost unilaterally ended the college’s foreign language requirement. This was done as part of the Provost’s implementation of the Chancellor’s Pathways initiative. Pathways gives colleges the option of requiring foreign languages, but only for students admitted as freshman or possibly those transfer students without an associates degree. This is known as the College Option.

The Provost did not include that requirement in the Pathways framework that he developed. Instead, foreign language courses are given as an optional choice.

The Provost changed the requirement despite the explicit rejection of the Pathways framework by Faculty Council. In fact, it directly contravenes a Faculty Council resolution passed in May of 2012 that established a framework for implementing Pathways in the event that it went forward despite faculty opposition. That resolution called for the implementation of a language requirement for all direct admit and non-Associate degree transfer students.

Other colleges, such as Hunter, used this option to maintain their language requirement, which was the clear will of Faculty Council. The Provost has argued that this would compromise his desire to preserve other upper tier Core courses. Herein lies the ultimate problem. Pathways is a failed system that is reducing standards and creating a one-size-fits-all curriculum at the lowest common denominator.

The Provost’s decision was taken without consultation with Faculty Council or the departments affected by this change, which are Classics, Judaic Studies, and Modern Languages.

In addition, the Provost has dropped the Speech requirement unilaterally. There will be a resoluion before Faculty Council on Tuesday opposing this change.

These are just more examples of how local administrations are overriding faculty governance in their rush to implement Pathways, which is becoming the Chancellor’s departing sock in the eye to faculty. It also clearly demonstrates how Pathways is devaluing the CUNY education, creating yet another educational impediment for our students.

At Tuesday's Facutly Coucnil meeting the following resolution will be voted on. We urge Faculty Coucnil members to support it.

Resolution on the Language Requirement

Approved by the Core Committee of Faculty Council

April 24, 2013

Whereas the posted College Option under Pathways essentially eliminates any language requirement from Brooklyn College's General Education curriculum; and

Whereas the clear intent of the Contingency Resolution that passed Faculty Council last May was to preserve a robust language requirement for Brooklyn College students; and

Whereas it is the conviction of the faculty that such language skills are essential for the future success of our students in an increasingly small, globally interconnected world;

Be it resolved, for the record, that the faculty is strongly opposed to the elimination by Pathways of the language requirement from the General Education curriculum of the College.

We also call on the Provost to respect the resolution passed last year by Faculty Council and to take no further steps to implement Pathways that are contrary to the official positions of Faculty Council.

We also encourage the faculty to vote NO CONFIDENCE in Pathways starting May 9th.

Below is the Provost’s letter justifying the elimination of the language requirement:

Dear Colleagues

I am writing in response to your inquiry and our conversations regarding the incorporation of foreign language study into our posted Pathways College Option for 13-14.

First, I want to reiterate what I have said for the past two years on the issue of submitting a Pathways program to the university without Faculty Council participation in the process. My two commitments were to keep intact to the extent possible the existing Faculty Council-approved Core Curriculum AND to conduct the planned full review of our general education curriculum by spring 2014. I could not take the Contingency Plan that you reference into account in constructing a Pathways program document because it explicitly stated that: "This resolution does not constitute adoption of the "Contingency Plan" as a new general education framework."

One way in which I attempted to approach the problem of creating Pathways compatible courses that align with the current framework was to invite faculty last May to "scribe" existing courses over the summer into a specific category within the Flexible Core component of the Pathways framework. Most departments who engaged in our approved general education curriculum came forward and participated in that effort in the interest of crafting a program that would serve students as of fall 2013. Languages could have fit (even temporarily) into the World Cultures and Global Issues category but no language courses were submitted in response to this call.

This left the dilemma of how to construct a College Option that is based on a sliding scale of 0-12 credits (depending on whether a student was admitted as a first-time full-time freshman or an advanced standing transfer student) that truly reflects all of the priorities of our current general education curriculum. So, first and foremost, our College Option respects the primacy of the Upper Tier Core as the basis of Brooklyn College's distinctive Core Curriculum. Where our current Core requires that all BC students take Art, Music, Shaping the Modern World, and Classics, the Pathways framework imposed choices within the Flexible Core requirements, and the College Option respects our current Core curriculum by placing these highly-valued BC Core experiences in the realm of student choice.

With language, the issues were more complex: first, because some introductory language courses do not comport with the 3-credit/3-hour policy, and second because in reality less than 20% of our students are actually required to take a foreign language under the current policy. Had a foreign language requirement been promoted to the equivalent of Upper Tier, this would have been inconsistent with current policy. Therefore, until the entire college could reasonably engage in a discussion of what constitutes the general education program at Brooklyn College going forward, foreign languages were treated equally with former lower tier core courses and incorporated into the College Option as an explicit choice and not a universal requirement.

I am extremely sympathetic to the issue of maintaining a language requirement at Brooklyn College, and I am deeply committed to incorporating that issue into our discussions in the upcoming general education curriculum revision effort. However, given the circumstances described above and the fact that the University's deadline for final Pathways program approval has already passed, I can make no change to the College Option that imposes a foreign language requirement for students admitted in the coming academic year.

The one change that I can introduce is to promote the choice of study of a foreign language or literature above the choice of fixed or flexible core courses not already taken in all of our descriptions of the College Option policy. These changes will be implemented as soon as possible next week. While this does not reinstate a foreign language requirement for the coming year, it does provide greater emphasis to the choice of language study, a choice that I am directing CAASS advisors to promote in their workshops and advisement sessions. I urge the Core Committee and the three language departments to incorporate a strong academic advisement outreach to our entering students on this important issue, and I especially urge the departments to work with the Associate Provost for Academic Programs to find ways to incorporate the benefits of language study into programs directed at student success.
I look forward to working with you on crafting a revised general education curriculum and addressing the issue of a Brooklyn College language proficiency requirement in the context of that effort.

Sincerely,

Bill

Pathways Policy Briefing

 

Political and community leaders gathered at the PSC Thursday morning for a briefing on Pathways and its negative effects on our students. City Council members Leticia James and Daniel Dromm pledged to work with other Council members to bring a resolution opposing Pathways to the Council, along with formal hearings. Community reps and student leaders agreed to work together to develop a broader mobilization plan to stop Pathways, which they view as the moving of the K-12 austerity education agenda to public higher ed.

Student Resistance to Pathways Growing

As students become more aware of the nature of Pathways they are increasingly speaking out. Recently student leaders have been joining with faculty to oppose Pathways in governance settings. Students Senators at LaGuardia, BMCC, and Queens have all voted for moratoriums on the implementation of Pathways. Last week students at Baruch College, including the head of the CUNY University Student Senate (USS) spoke out in a new video about the ways Pathways will degrade their education, their degree, and their futures (see above). Here at Brooklyn, student leaders have started to ask tough questions about Pathways and student newspapers have produced articles critical of it.

We urge you to vote “no confidence” in Pathways in the coming weeks. Pathways is bad for faculty, bad for our students, and bad for higher education.

CUNY First Already Failing at BC

In another victory for administrative incompetence at CUNY Central, Brooklyn College faculty learned this week of another capability we used to have that CUNY First will eliminate. For the last several years BC faculty have been able to access student photos along with their class rosters. This feature is extremely useful in large class sections and some faculty even produce seating charts to help them remember student names more quickly. It can also be a big help when evaluating class participation.

CUNY First in its drive to commonality at the lowest common denominator cannot reproduce this function.

Perhaps more importantly, CUNY First will not produce rosters with the email addresses that students actually use, since it will only display official CUNY email address assigned to students when they are admitted. Since almost all entering students already have email addresses, this is extremely counterproductive.

To its credit ITS at Brooklyn College is developing a series of workarounds to preserve these services by funneling the CUNY First data back into the BC Portal. That means that for some things you’ll need to go to the Portal and for others CUNY First. For faculty this means more work, more confusion, and a less seamless experience of managing student data. The opposite of what we were promised by CUNY Central.

Finally, CUNY is still reporting that many students who log into CUNY First are seeing the logo of other colleges on their CUNY First start up page after they claim their CUNY First ID. This is because CUNY bought off the shelf software designed for others and has been desperately, and in many cases unsuccessfully, trying to adopt it to one of the largest and most complex university systems in the world. Why? So they can exert greater centralized control over curriculum, budgets, and student data. For more see our earlier post on CUNY First.

If you know about more failures with the CUNY First system, please let us know: PSCCUNYBC@gmail.com

Below is Mark Gold’s email to faculty:

CUNYfirst Class Rosters

The rosters available within CUNYfirst do not have student photos or alternate email addresses and CUNY has no timeline for enhancing them.

Since these are critical resources for BC faculty, ITS has worked to feed daily CUNYfirst data extracts to the BC Portal rosters.  The legacy rosters with photos and alternate email addresses are available on the WebCentral portal HOME page in the "My Teaching Schedule & Rosters" channel.  They are now available for Spring 2013, and will be available for Summer and Fall 2013.  Note that starting with Spring 2013, student EMPLID's have replaced the legacy SS #'s.

Please note that CUNY has just migrated hundreds of thousands of complex student records to a new system, where information is stored with new values and in new ways.  Our analysis indicates that the quality of the data we are receiving is good, but we fully expect to continue finding conversion issues for months to come.   If you think you see any anomalous or incorrect information on your rosters, please do not hesitate to alert me at mark@brooklyn.cuny.edu, so we can investigate.