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President’s Report to Academic and Professional Faculty

Andrew Bruso

Read President Donald P. Christian’s November 2016 Report to Academic and Professional Faculty.

President ChristianI wish to open this month’s report, coming on the heels of a historic presidential election, by acknowledging that the outcome has generated mixed reaction among members of our community — uncertainty and concern among some, satisfaction for others. Our campus is a diverse array of different races, religions, national origins, sexual and gender orientations/identities, ages, physical abilities, intellectual interests and viewpoints. This is a time when our ability to live with ambiguity and change will be fully tested, and as college president, I urge patience and tolerance with each other. In the midst of this national transition, the College will remain true to our values of providing access to high-quality educational opportunity for all. Know that I am committed to our educational mission and the academic and human values at the core of our work. As educators, we must seize this opportunity to help our students understand and be mindful of the historic, cultural, social and psychological elements at play at this time in our nation through our coursework, our conversations and our treatment of each other.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  • Mumps – Assessment of current outbreak, actions taken to date, guidance for event planning (especially if children are involved), thank you and praise for the work of many to manage this.
  • Alumni Reunion – Our Oct. 14-16 Alumni Reunion was a resounding success, with record participation, high spirits, and a well-balanced slate of events. Thanks to all who made this event successful.
  • SUNY Meeting on “Individual Campus Strategic Enrollment & Educational Effectiveness” – A campus team met with SUNY officials on Oct. 17 to discuss progress on our Performance Improvement Plan and other topics related to strategic enrollment management and educational success.
  • Fossil Fuel Divestment – I strongly support the spirit of this resolution, and I’m mindful of the importance of divesting in a way that programs and scholarships supported by endowments are not harmed.
  • Fall Open House – Thank you to all who contributed to making this critical student-recruitment event so meaningful for prospective students and their parents
  • Diversity Initiatives – Our Diversity and Inclusion Plan was submitted for SUNY review on Nov. 1; Inclusion and Diversity Council to be formed and begin work; I am serving as an invited presidential panel member at this week’s SUNY Diversity Conference.
  • Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) – New federal rules regarding overtime pay require salary increases or other changes for some employees. This will further strain our financial picture.
  • My Absence from Campus Dec. 19-mid/late January – For a routine knee replacement surgery and recovery.
  • Holiday Party – Save the date for Dec. 3 academic and professional faculty reception at President’s residence and Dec. 16 for Classified Holiday Luncheon.

Mumps. As you should know by now, the College has 13 confirmed cases of mumps, mostly among students on the men’s and women’s swim teams, and including one athletics staff member. While we continue to take precautions to reduce spread of the disease, it is possible additional cases will occur. I offer a brief recap of actions we’ve taken, and encourage you to educate yourselves by reading our campus messages about the mumps outbreak and to assist us in reducing its spread.

We’ve learned a lot about the mumps in recent weeks, including that immunizations are not 100% effective (all the affected individuals had been immunized), and that immunity is often compromised in settings such as a college or the military, where many people live together in close quarters. We are not the first SUNY campus in recent months to experience mumps. We immediately notified students and faculty when the Student Health Service discovered the first two suspected cases of mumps, even before test results confirmed the diagnosis. We immediately contacted the local and state health departments for guidance. We’ve continually updated the campus and health department as additional cases have been confirmed. Per health law and campus protocol, we sent home 20 students who have not been vaccinated for mumps. They will not be able to return to campus until the disease subsides here. Student Affairs has been in regular contact with these students’ faculty to ensure that their education does not suffer unduly; I am grateful for your cooperation in supporting these students.

While health agencies have indicated there is a low risk of transmission, we have barred swimmers from the Elting Pool until after Thanksgiving, and canceled campus events where small children would be at risk of exposure, such as trick or treating in the residence halls and kids sports night in the Athletic and Wellness Center. We have allowed other events, such as the Saturday Arts Lab, to take place, with the added steps that organizers of these events notify parents that they should not come to campus if their children have not been immunized and should not allow any students affected with mumps to participate in the events. We received very positive feedback from participants about our full and open communication about the mumps in the days before our Oct. 29 Open House.

If you are planning an event that involves visitors, especially children, and you are unsure about whether to hold the event, please discuss this with your supervisor and the Student Health Service. Student athletes and residential students and staff, in particular, have had special educational sessions about mumps and precautions to reduce its spread. Cleaning has been enhanced in residence halls and the gym and pool where affected students have been identified, even though surface contact is regarded as a low-likelihood mode of transmission.

Unfortunately, the swim team has lost much of its fall season due to the outbreak, but Athletic Director Stu Robinson and his staff are working with the NCAA closely to hopefully salvage some of the season next semester.

I thank the many campus employees who have scrambled to attend to this situation with the best interest of our students and employees in mind. I especially want to thank Dr. Jack Ordway, Director of Student Health Services, and his staff, several Vice Presidents and our Emergency Management Team, Admissions, Residence Life, Athletics, IT/Telecom and Communication and Marketing, who have all handled this health crisis on campus with urgency, professionalism and aplomb, on top of their daily workloads. I think the media coverage we’ve received about the mumps at New Paltz reflects that this has been well-managed and widely communicated. I continue to be impressed and grateful for how our campus community comes together in such situations.

For continuous updates about mumps, its symptoms, precautions to take, and the latest on our campus situation dealing with mumps, please visit this web link: https://www.newpaltz.edu/healthcenter/healthcenterupdates/.

Alumni Reunion. This year’s Alumni Reunion (Oct. 14-16) was an outstanding success in all ways. Attendance was better than double last year’s, and included alumni from 55 different class years spanning several generations. The diverse array and balanced scheduling of events and activities, including “affinity group” activities (EOP, First World, several sororities and fraternities, the Psychology Department, as examples) created wonderful opportunities for our alumni to interact with each other and to learn more about the College in 2016. I sensed greater interest and engagement by our alumni in our continuing success, and heard from several how much more welcomed they felt on the campus than in previous years. All of these are positive indicators of the progress we are making on our strategic plan initiative to “Engage Alumni in the Life of the College.” Congratulations and thank you to Alumni Relations Director Shana Circe, her staff, and the many other members of our community who worked to make this event so successful.

SUNY Meeting on “Individual Campus Strategic Enrollment & Educational Effectiveness.” SUNY Provost Alexander Cartwright and other system leaders are meeting with a team from each SUNY campus to discuss progress on Performance Improvement Plans, strategic enrollment, how the campus works within its region, and how SUNY can provide support. New Paltz representation in our two-hour meeting on Oct. 17 included faculty governance leaders Anne Balant (Presiding Officer), Sarah Wyman (Organization Committee), and Ro Milham (Graduate Council, Sustainability Committee), Provost Arnold, Vice Presidents Eaton and Halstead, Assistant to the President Ray Schwarz, and me.

We provided written summaries of 2015-16 progress on strategic plan initiatives (to be distributed soon to the campus community) and on our Performance Improvement Plan priorities including enrollment, diversity, completions, applied learning, and alumni/philanthropic support. We also shared data showing that students are attracted to the rich array of majors available at New Paltz; that our primary SUNY competition for students is with the four university centers, not other comprehensives; and that we compete with New York private colleges and universities for students nearly as much as with other SUNY campuses. We discussed our constraints of limited student housing and academic space, and its impact on planning. We were encouraged to be more aggressive in developing online offerings and to explore market-driven and interdisciplinary graduate programs. We also discussed the need for system-level advocacy for additional state support and funding, and were reassured that this is an issue of focus. We left the meeting with a clear sense that SUNY leadership is positively impressed with the directions our campus has been taking, and that some of our work provides a model that other campuses might benefit from adopting.

We discussed priorities for some of the one-time performance improvement funding that SUNY will award this year, through a more streamlined process than used last year. Provost Arnold will be sharing soon a campus process for proposing funding requests

Fossil Fuel Divestment. The agenda for this week’s meeting of the Academic and Professional Faculty includes consideration of a resolution calling for the SUNY New Paltz Foundation to divest all endowment funds from fossil fuel companies, and to reinvest in sustainable companies. The resolution sets a timeline of May 2017 for eliminating direct investment in fossil fuel companies, and a five-year window for eliminating indirect investments in mutual funds. This resolution was brought forward by the Sustainability Committee and approved by the Academic Senate as written.

I support the spirit of this resolution and my goal would be to divest as expeditiously as possible without harming the integrity of our endowments and the returns that support students and programs.

I hope that academic and professional faculty who will be considering this resolution will read in advance my position on this matter, as presented by Provost Arnold at the Academic Senate meeting. In brief, when this issue was brought to me by students on the Environmental Task Force, I expressed my full and strong support for the overall action, consistent with our campus’s sustainability goals, and I committed to bring this issue forward to the Finance Committee of the Foundation for consideration at its Nov. 17 meeting, which I have done. I will strongly encourage the Foundation’s support and action. We have already discussed next steps with our investment managers. I tried to help students understand 1) the role of endowment returns in supporting student scholarships and other academic programs at New Paltz, and 2) the importance of avoiding or minimizing damage to both endowments and the dollars they generate by divesting in an informed, thoughtful way. The Foundation Board Directors and I have a primary fiduciary responsibility to safeguard both endowments and the funds they generate, even as we commit to restructuring how our endowment funds are invested.

I encourage the academic and professional faculty who will be considering this resolution on Friday to adopt multi-factor thinking as you consider this resolution, and to recognize that education is also one of the most socially responsible forms of investment we can make.

Fall Open House. I am grateful to the many faculty and staff who contributed to a successful open house for prospective students and parents, a key event in our student recruitment efforts. While I regret missing this year’s event due to a conflict with conference travel, I am not at all surprised that every indication I have received is that the community portrayed so very well the educational and student-life opportunities that we have to offer. Thank you!

Diversity Initiatives.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan. Our draft Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan was submitted for SUNY review by the Nov. 1 deadline. I am grateful for the excellent work of the 22 person task force in developing this plan under very tight timelines; co-chairs Rita Celariste (Educational Opportunity Program) and Dr. Reynolds Scott-Childress (History Department) provided careful and dedicated leadership. While the task force was convened in late spring, not all members could participate over the summer and work began in earnest at the start of the academic year. The initial draft plan the task force developed incorporated input and ideas from many members of the community, gathered through open forums and individual feedback, and I am grateful for that broad interest and involvement. The final version incorporated some of my and members of the Cabinet’s thoughts and suggestions. The plan is ambitious and was developed under pressing time constraints, which means that it almost certainly includes ideas and initiatives that are aspirational and may not be possible in the early implementation of the plan. One of the early tasks of the Inclusion and Diversity Council (as envisioned in the plan) will be to prioritize the most immediate initiatives to frame our work. We will share the plan broadly with the campus community after we receive feedback and approval from SUNY.

Inclusion and Diversity Council. In the meantime, the campus has work to do. I will in the next few weeks appoint members of the Inclusion and Diversity Council (described in the draft plan) and charge this group so that we can identify the most immediate priorities and begin to launch key new initiatives early in spring semester 2017 and grow and expand ongoing work. The Diversity and Inclusion task force did not define the membership and composition of the ongoing Council. I will appoint the initial members in consultation with Tanhena Pacheco Dunn (AVP for Human Resources, Diversity, and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer), Dr. Anne Balant (Presiding Officer of the Faculty), and others, and will ask this group to advise on the most appropriate composition of the Council moving forward. We are pleased to have national diversity and inclusion consultant Dr. Steven Jones (whose work with our campus began in 2014 and is noted in the plan) visit New Paltz on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 to help launch the Council and the community in this work, as well as provide further training sessions on multicultural competency.

SUNY Diversity Conference. I was invited to join three other SUNY presidents on a panel to highlight our diversity and inclusion efforts as part of a SUNY Diversity conference this week. The invitation reflects the high regard at SUNY System for the excellent work of our campus in this realm. I spoke about our work on cultural competency development with Dr. Jones; our Diversity webpage; upward enrollment trajectories of underrepresented students; the process for developing our diversity and inclusion plan; our new organizational structure integrating Human Resources with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Earlier in the week, Provost Lorin Arnold, Chief of Staff and Vice President for Communication Shelly Wright, Tanhena Pacheco Dunn, and I took part in a one-day SUNY conference on “Cultural Competency and Inclusive Excellence Institute for Senior SUNY Leadership.” The institute focused on identifying, examining, and addressing unconscious bias and how it manifests itself within the workplace, and the role of campus leaders in cultivating community wide engagement to help transform organizational culture into one that is truly inclusive and culturally competent.

Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The U.S. Department of Labor, under the authority of the FLSA, has issued new law with regard to salary minimums for positions deemed exempt from the law. There are some positions, based on the criteria and guidance from the DOL, that are not eligible for compensation for overtime. This year, the FLSA requires all employers to raise the minimum salary for exempt positions to $47,476 by Dec. 1. This is double the minimum previously established in 2004 and impacts what we consider professional or administrative positions. Faculty are among several positions that would not be impacted by this change. We will, as provided in the DOL guidance, review individual positions impacted by this change to ensure that duties and responsibilities continue to align with the exempt and non-exempt criterion. We will adjust salaries to the required minimum as appropriate and ensure overtime compensation for positions deemed non-exempt. Those impacted by the FLSA changes will receive communication from Human Resources soon. As the College prepares to finalize compliance with this federal mandate, we recognize that this comes at a financially challenging time. We are mindful that some of the salary increases may introduce salary compression, and we hope to address those in the future as our finances allow.

My Absence From Campus Dec. 19-mid/late January. I will be away from campus for a few weeks following routine knee replacement surgery, scheduled for Dec. 19. While there is no really good time for me to be away, this schedule will allow my recovery during the holidays and the January break, a “slower” time on campus. I plan to resume work-related matters from home, especially by phone and email, as my recovery allows, and hope to be back before the start of the spring semester. As always when I am away from campus, a Vice President will serve as designated “officer in charge” to ensure that campus matters move forward and we are able to respond promptly to issues that arise. I had a previous knee replacement ten years ago, and hope that this next surgery has the same positive impact on my quality of life as the first. And, I’ll gain some biological (or bionic) symmetry.

Holiday Party. Please save the date for the annual Holiday Reception for academic and professional faculty at the President’s residence, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2:00-4:00 and 4:00-6:00 p.m. Invitations will be coming soon. Sandy and I hope that you will take time out of this busy season to join us and your colleagues for fellowship and conversation.

Our Classified Staff Holiday Luncheon will be from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Friday, Dec. 16, in the MPR.

Best wishes to each of you as you approach the end of another busy academic semester. I look forward to seeing you at Friday’s faculty meeting, where I will respond to questions.

Sincerely,
Donald P. Christian
President