Reporter Volume 26, No.24 April 13, 1995

By STEVE COX
Reporter Staff
The Faculty Senate Executive Committee tackled gender bias in the
university's tenure policy and revisited the controversy surrounding
the restructuring of the arts and sciences curriculum during a meeting
last week.
	Promotions and Tenure Committee Chair Margaret Acara and
Mathematics Professor Samuel Schack presented a resolution at the
FSEC's April 5 meeting, which proposed extending the seven-year clock
for promotion to tenure by one year for "special circumstances."
	The only covered "special circumstance," however, is women who
give birth. The proposal, a onetime opportunity to essentially extend
the promotion to tenure period to eight years from the date of
employment, would be retroactively available, upon request, to any
woman on the faculty who had a child but has not yet earned tenure.
	Schack explained that "many, many circumstances came to the
committee's mind that could warrant an exception like this -- such as
those covered by the federal Family and Medical Leave Act -- but
pregnancy was the only one everyone could agree on." Schack and Acara
both said the committee offered this proposal as a "first step."
	Bernice Noble, co-chair of the UB Task Force on Women, who
said her task force had looked at this issue on other campuses, urged
begrudging support for the resolution, concluding that "we are
probably quite backwards here. This is the most conservative policy
you could write and still have a policy at all."
	Other FSEC members expressed similar reservations about the
narrowly drafted proposal. The promotions committee will reconsider
the resolution, and it will be voted upon at a future FSEC meeting.
	Controversy also continued to surround the issue of control
over curricular decision-making in the arts and sciences last week.
The latest flurry between administrators and faculty was prompted by
revised undergraduate general education requirements.
	At issue, say several FSEC members, is whether the right of
the Faculty Senate to make interdisciplinary curricular decisions is
impeded by the restructuring of three formerly independent liberal
arts units: the Faculties of Arts and Letters, Natural Sciences and
Mathematics and Social Sciences.
	Functioning collectively, through the Council of Deans of the
Arts and Sciences chaired by Social Sciences Dean Ross McKinnon, the
arts and sciences unit released new, downsized general education
requirements for arts and sciences students, as well as an
experimental liberalized policy of declaring majors.
	The new policy, according to Nicolas Goodman, vice provost for
undergraduate education, will reduce from four to three the number of
courses which could be required of students to achieve "intermediate
proficiency" in a foreign language. It also drops from four to three
the number of hard science courses required of liberal arts students,
and now requires students in Natural Sciences and Mathematics
departments to take just one course, rather than two courses, from
either of the other two liberal arts schools.
	Another important policy change, explained Goodman, is a
"trial run" at allowing arts and sciences students, about half of UB's
undergraduate population, to merely declare, rather than apply for,
their major. With limited exceptions for certain art or music
disciplines, students with 60 credits can declare themselves in any 
departmental major in the arts and sciences unit. Though they may
still have to meet certain departmental requirements to stay in that 
major, Goodman said, this will enable more students to avoid problems 
with TAP and financial aid requirements that students with 60 credits
or more be enrolled in majors.
	Political Science Professor Claude Welch and Lockwood Library
Director Judith Adams expressed dissatisfaction with new undergraduate
general education requirements and the process that led to them. A
mail ballot, which was sent to the 400-plus faculty members in the
arts and sciences, was "substituted for real faculty input," said
Welch, who said he believes the Faculty Senate "fell asleep at the
switch" with regard to this issue this year. "The Senate has a
historic and well thought out concern with curriculum," explained
Welch, "and I don't see much reason to find this poll as
representative of faculty will." Adams urged formal Faculty Senate
rejection of the changes implemented by the arts and sciences deans,
but no action was taken on that proposal.
	In other business, FSEC members received a report on the state
of communications on campus and the Reporter from Editor Christine
Vidal. Vidal detailed changes that have been made in the paper's
format , including a "news orientation" to the front page and new
columns developed in response to faculty requests. She also called
upon faculty members universitywide to offer letters and Viewpoints
articles for publication.  FSEC members urged Faculty Senate Chair
Peter Nickerson to reactivate an advisory board that had existed for
the Reporter to aid in developing the broadest possible coverage of
campus events.
	Also, the FSEC voted to hold another round of balloting for
the office of chair of the Faculty Senate. The panel adopted a
resolution calling for new ballots, with the same four candidates, to
be mailed out to all eligible faculty this week.		The
last round of balloting for the position stirred controversy when it
was discovered that mailing labels from Personnel omitted as many as
250 eligible voting faculty members. This time, the mailing list of
eligible faculty will be culled from lists submitted by each school's
dean. Election results  should be known before the Senate's final
meeting May 2.