The University Senate will convene for its monthly plenary meeting at 1:15 p.m. on Friday in 106 Jerome Greene Hall.
This is the first plenary meeting of spring 2009, although most of the discussion will be picked up from last semester. Attendance is a major issue, as two resolutions will come to a vote if the body meets the necessary three-fifths attendance quota. Attendance is consistently poor at Senate meetings.
It will also be the first meeting since Columbia College representative Tiffany Dockery, CC ’09, resigned and was replaced by Billy Freeland, also CC ’09, as a senator and as a representative in the Student Affairs Caucus.
The agenda includes reports from the president on the state of the endowment, an update on the new financial conflicts of interest in research policy, and a resolution to limit senate committee chairmanships to two standing committees per person. All of these subjects were discussed at length during the fall semester.
The vote on the resolution to limit committee chairmanships continues to be held up as it requires a three-fifths majority in attendance—a crowd which Senate meetings rarely draw. The vote needs 54 senators—three-fifths of the total number of senators—in order to pass because it would change the Senate’s bylaws.
According to the attendance record of the Senate, 18 out of the 91 senators have not been present at any meetings this school year. Among the notable are several top administrators, including General Studies Dean Peter Awn, Vice President for the Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks, Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin, and Dean of Columbia College Austin Quigley.
University President Lee Bollinger noted the considerable length of time during which the Senate has been unable to act on this resolution due to poor attendance. He pointed to attendance at the Oct. 24, 2008 plenary, as noted in the minutes available on the Senate Web site.
A three-fifths majority attendance is also required for a new resolution that appears on the agenda for this month, approving “research professorships” at the Lamont-Doherty campus.
Currently, according to the proposal, “The members of the Research Staff are required to function as completely independent Principal Investigators, conceiving, designing and leading their own research programs, and raising outside funding to support these activities.” More than 80 percent of this funding comes from grants.
The goal of this resolution is to make research positions at Lamont more attractive to scientists by offering them a salary beyond the grants that most research officers at the University use as their primary source of income.
“The intent is to imbue the title with a substantial level of security, provide key tangible privileges and in so doing associate significant prestige with the title,” the proposal states.
This proposal is unique to the Lamont research staff and will not affect research officers on the Morningside or Health Sciences campuses.
Before the Senate meeting, the Student Affairs Caucus will convene, with University Provost Alan Brinkley scheduled to attend. Student senators will have an opportunity to bring the concerns of constituents at their respective schools to the table.