Thomas Egan, vice chair of the Board of Trustees and a recent Pataki appointee, authored an eight-point plan for turning over tuition revenues and policy, campus administrative decisions and strategic planning to individual campuses. Egan released his report for consideration by the full board during a Nov. 13 mini-summit of campus presidents, government leaders and trustees held at a Bolton Landing hotel. The full Board of Trustees endorsed Egan's rough plans at that meeting, sending them on to SUNY administrators to be fleshed out. They will meet again Nov. 21.

Headrick called Egan "one of the driving forces of the new trustees" and credited him with bringing the "Rethinking SUNY" process together after it appeared to have bogged down. Egan's proposals, in effect, "put each campus out there on their own, including the level of tuition they charge," said Headrick, adding that the proposals are consistent with the kinds of changes he and Greiner have advocated in Albany.

Greiner echoed Headrick's enthusiasm for the proposals, calling them "sound for the system and sound for UB." Also, among Egan's proposals was the spinning off of free-standing health science centers from SUNY to not-for-profit corporations, saving the hospitals from potential bankruptcy and shaving roughly $75 million from the SUNY budget. "Every unit in SUNY has a serious stake in seeing this take place," said Greiner. "If we are unable to get this through the legislature, the rest of the system will eat that $75 million."

Greiner acknowledged some resistance to the plan, including many presidents of university colleges, but felt that consensus could be reached on the "general principles." College presidents fear that university centers will use their new-found freedom to increase enrollment, gobbling up the state's undergraduate pool, but, Greiner argued, that is unlikely to happen. Many of the proposed changes, even if adopted by the Trustees, will require action by the state legislature before becoming effective.

In other business, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Nicolas Goodman briefed the FSEC on the current state of faculty advisement of undergraduates. A comprehensive handbook has been produced by Goodman's office to assist faculty in their new role as advisors

Goodman said that, while still in need of tweaking, the computerized Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS) is fully operational. While it should prove a useful tool for faculty advisors, Engineering Professor Dennis Malone stressed that DARS is "not a substitute for faculty advisement."

Lockwood Library Director Judith Adams expressed concern that some departments were distorting the intent of the Faculty Senate in mandating department-based advisement by hiring professionals to do advising, a task which the Senate intended that professors do.

Goodman agreed, urging that faculty advisement should involve more student contact with faculty members than many have now. "A majority of undergraduates don't know any faculty member who knows them by name," he explained. However, faculty members, particularly those without tenure, need to see faculty advisement built into the faculty rewards system somehow before investing time in it, according to English Professor Joseph Fradin, who explained that "it takes time they feel they just don't have."

Another problem deterring faculty advisement is the "massively complicated general education program...that is far more complicated than any rational individual would ever design," said Goodman. Perhaps exposure to its intricacies will move more faculty to seek to design a better program, Goodman speculated.