Reporter Volume 25, No.19 March 3, 1994

By MARK WALLACE
Reporter Staff

Discussing the quality of campus life at UB, Peter Nickerson, chair of
the Faculty Senate, told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee last
week that "When you think about it intuitively, you come to the
conclusion that there's a problem."
	"How do we know whether we have a problem?--we ask somebody,"
Nickerson said. When it comes to quality of campus life issues, that
somebody "usually is faculty," he said.
	Victor Doyno of English, presenting the results of a 1988-1989
faculty survey done by the Office of Institutional Studies on the
quality of faculty life, said that the survey had covered 127
different areas and asked faculty two basic questions about those
areas--what their present satisfaction with a given area was, and if
satisfaction was low, how important it was to improve that area. Doyno
said that the survey was "a pretty sensitive instrument, and we
learned a number of things."
	The most important results of the survey, Doyno said, was in
identifying areas of "low satisfaction and high importance"--areas in
which faculty were unsatisfied and felt that improvement was
important. But Doyno also said that it was necessary, in areas of high
satisfaction, "to let people who work in those areas know that we
appreciate them." Otherwise, he said, "soon those areas won't be done
so well."
	Of the 127 surveyed areas, 26 fell in the category of "low
satisfaction, high importance to change." These included the quality
of undergraduate education, faculty recruitment, morale both within
units and across the university, graduate student recruitment and
support, academic advisement, research support, staff recruitment,
support for innovation, and parking, among many others.
	"Right now, I don't think we need more information about the
quality of life," Doyno said. "We should work with the administration,
maybe for the next year and a half, and see what happens in terms of
improvements. We can praise what's good, and work on what's bad." Such
work perhaps could be done through the decanal units, Doyno said,
breaking things down to two to three problems in a particular unit.
	"It's important to facilitate change, and to be specific about
what needs to be done," Doyno said. But he added that it was his
"biased opinion" that it was hard to move beyond the survey stage. "I
think the Faculty Senate should try the gradual, collegial approach
one more time," Doyno said. "But if nothing happens, then an outside
agency should do another report, and publish it."
	William George of Engineering asked why a faculty survey on
quality of life should not be "repeated policy" at UB.
	Doyno said that he thought that "in general, it's good to have
a survey on a five-year rotation, as has been past policy." But he
noted that doing the survey had been a great deal of work, and so it
was necessary to discuss which should be the proper group to do the
survey in future.
	Samuel Schack of Mathematics asked whether faculty believed
that "investing time in this survey would have any results at all.
More needs to be done than just to publish the results," Schack said.
"There also has to be a follow-up on what areas have been targeted,
and what's been done about them. Then people might think the
university cared."
	William Miller of Dental Medicine pointed out that it was
important to establish "who does this survey, and who owns the data.
If the survey is done for the administration, that's one thing, if
it's done for us, there's another set of priorities."
	Dennis Malone of Engineering added that "If you expect the
administration to take this seriously, it's very important to decide
not only who designs the questionnaire, but also what questions are
asked."
	On other quality of campus life issues, Charles Garverick of
Dentistry reported that the value of a campus club for faculty was
both historic and timely. "In the fifties and sixties, there was more
concern about the importance of people doing things on campus,"
Garverick said. "And the Wall Street Journal recently had a front-page
article on the quality of campus life for faculty."
	Faculty life today is "really going downhill," Garverick said.
In the past, being a faculty member "represented prestige," Garverick
said. "It's timely to point out what things are attractive today about
faculty life on campus," he said.
	Garverick said that deliberations were already being made at
UB about constructing a new building for a faculty club. But Margaret
Acara of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences said that it was important
for the Faculty Senate to have input on the location of a faculty
club. And Victor Doyno added that it was "important that we don't get
sidetracked on the issue of a new building. We've been trained to
think new buildings solve problems, but I think there should be place
for a faculty club somewhere on the spine."