Meeting Minutes #280

Members Present: Alina Makhinson, Alvaro Toledo, Amml Hussein, Andrew Baker, Anna Haley, Anne McPherson, Barbara Angeline, Benjamin Paul, Christopher To, Daijiro Okada, Danielle Santiago Ramos, David Winters, Derek DeLia, Dilafruz Nazarova, Ed Cohen, Ed Demauro, Elif Sendur, Elin Wicks, Ethan Schoolman, Francis Ryan, Francois Berthiaume, Gerben Zylstra, Harini Sampath, Harna Patel, Heather Moulton, Heather Pierce, Jeffrey Zahn, Jehan Mohamed, Jennifer Shukaitis, Jessey Choo, Joydeep Chatterjee, Judith Harrison, Justin Kalef, Kaysha Corinealdi, Kim-Phuong Le, Kristin Dana, Laura White, Lisa Rodenberg, Manar Habbal, Marci Meixler, Mark Bray, Matt Sequin, Meenakshi Dutt, Miranda Lichtenstein, Nadia Mian, Paul Takhistov, Peter (Jing) Jin, Rebecca Reynolds, Robert Isenhower, Ryan Sills, Santiago Cuesta, Shanna Jean-Baptiste, Suneet Bhatt, Tara Kelley, Teona Williams, Thomas Moomjy, Timothy Power, Thomas Davis, Tony Bell, Triveni Kuchi

 

Non-Members Present: Cynthia Duchantier, Parliamentarian; Jason Geary, Provost; Salvador Mena, Senior Vice Chancellor and Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Institutional Acceleration and Integration; Mohini Mukherjee, Assistant Vice President for Global Affairs

 

1. Call to order (Heather Pierce, Chair)

Chair Heather Pierce called the meeting to order at 1:12pm.

 

2. Approval of the agenda (Heather Pierce, Chair)

The meeting agenda was approved without objection.

 

3. Approval of 5/1/2026 meeting minutes (Anne McPherson, Vice Chair):

The minutes for the meeting of May 1, 2026 were approved without objection.

 

4. Chair's Report (Heather Pierce)

Chair Heather Pierce opened her remarks by noting that for the first time, we have 10 lecturer representatives on the Council due to the changes that were made in our bylaws a few years ago. Those seats were filled with competitive elections. 

Chair Pierce then introduced our Parliamentarian Cynthia Duchantier, who is doing a practicum in shared governance, working with both the Senate and the Faculty Council for this semester.

Chair Pierce described our vision for this year, subject to the approval from the body. We want to build on the growth and involvement that we've seen over the past few years under Chair Emerita, Anna Haley. The last few years have seen a lot of a lot more visibility for the Council, which can be built upon, including an increased connection to our constituents. We know we still face a lot of communication issues when it comes to being able to communicate with our constituencies. But with increased visibility of the work of the Council, we'd like a mechanism, or at least to build more systems or structure for the ways that representatives get feedback from our constituents prior to deliberating and voting on issues. We know that there's a very good representation of faculty on the council and being able to speak for how faculty feel about particular issues, but allowing mechanisms by which our constituents can weigh in on these things prior and give us feedback as their representatives prior to us discussing issues, voting on issues, etc., and continue to keep our work more visible so that our constituents remain aware of our ongoing work.

Chair Pierce then reported on several Executive Committee meetings that were held over the summer, most notably, immediately once the hiring freeze was announced. Out of that meeting came what effectively became a full exemption for COADs to the hiring freeze that allowed things like research pay to go through, the hiring of student workers, all instructors that were co-adjutants, etc. Because of that work, that exemption was actually applied to the other campuses. Additional Executive Committee work would be described later in the meeting during Additional Reports.

Finally, Chair Pierce introduced the potential for a by-laws review this academic year. People have made suggestions about the set of standing committees that we have and whether those still align with what we want, as well as whether there are changes to representation that we want to make. We hope to discuss a by-laws review, and if the Council approves the concept, there would be an ad hoc committee that would take a first pass on this work.

 

5. Vice Chair’s Report (Anne McPherson)

Vice Chair McPherson reported that the New Brunswick Faculty Council has 74 representatives elected from academic units and 10 from the Lecturer population, totaling 84 representatives in our body to-date, with only 8 academic units unrepresented in the body. With the exception of a representative who joined the body the morning of the meeting from a previously unrepresented unit, all representatives have a committee assignment.

VC McPherson urged representatives to reach out to NBFC@rutgers.edu with any questions or concerns regarding committee assignments, reminding the body that committees always meet during the hour before the Council's Main Meeting and that everyone should always be holding the 12pm to 3pm Eastern on meeting dates to account for committee work and the Main Meeting, further noting that calendar invitations have gone out to everybody for all of the Main Meetings of this academic year. Remaining meetings are on October 23rd, November 13th, January 29th, February 26th, April 2nd, and May 7th 

VC McPherson reminded committee leaders-for-the-day to follow through on previously emailed procedures for committee co-chair nominations so that voting forms could be distributed in a timely fashion.

VC McPherson thanked the body for patiently enduring an out-of-date website and expressed a hope to update the online Council roster in the coming weeks, then yielded the floor.

Chair Pierce opened the floor to questions.

Dilafruz Nazarova inquired whether the Council planned to continue a formalized use of Microsoft Teams. Chair Pierce yielded the question to VC McPherson, who shared that there is no mandated use of Teams this year, but it is not forbidden. No maintenance work has been done in Teams to documents, information, or access. No former members who previously had access to Teams have been removed from Teams. VC McPherson offered help with adding access should any committee co-chairs need the support, but explained that otherwise, her intention is to not touch Team and focus on the website, focus on individual interactions, and support folks using the tools that work best for them.

 

6. Provost’s Report, Q&A (Provost Jason Geary)

Provost Geary reported on some of the the priorities that we have looking ahead for this year, and that will be focused on.

  1. From the Academic Master Plan:
    1. Improve our retention rate from the 1st year to the 2nd year for first-time undergraduate students. We already have a 92% retention rate, and our goal is to get that amount up to 95%. One reason students may not continue can often be as simple as they have a hold on their account which can often be a fairly modest sum of money. Over the summer, to better understand that phenomenon, there was a small pilot with students who were Pell-eligible, who had a 3.0 or above in their first semester, and who were not registered because they had a hold on their account of $1,000 or more. Of the close to or about 100 or so of those students, close to 40 of them were interested in applying for what would be a grant to help cover those costs, and in the end 37 of these students were registered. Now the idea is to scale that and to really expand it across different populations and different cohorts of students.
    2. Over the summer there was a second pilot focused on completion grants, identifying students who were nearing completion, but who similarly were not registered, often for a similar set of reasons. The pilot was able to get roughly 30 students registered as a result of these efforts.
    3. Expand access to first-year transition courses: the data suggest that students who take such courses are more likely to persist than those who don't, but as it currently stands, roughly half or slightly less than half of our students actually take first-year transition courses, which also falls under the larger umbrella of Experiential Learning.

    4. Reallocating time within the work that our staff, particularly in enrollment management, do, with the goal of ensuring that we have alignment in in these efforts that we're thinking about communication broadly and holistically, and that we're doing what we can to to reach students in order to improve both our retention rates, but also our overall 4-year and 6-year graduation rates.

      These interventions are not just good for our students but also will be reflected in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, a goal that that the President has charged New Brunswick with of moving into the top 10 of public institutions nationally.

  2. Academic Master Plan 2.0 (AMP2.0): In some ways, a reframing, in some ways, a sharpening of the focus that has already been articulated with thinking about several of the goals that the leadership worked on coming up with over the course of the last year, to ensure that we would continue to foster excellence, not just in student success, as discussed above, but also in terms of faculty achievement and excellence:
    1. Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Petra Chrisman, is going to be launching a Faculty Recognition Office to help identify faculty who would be eligible for awards and could be nominated and are well-positioned to be so acknowledged.
    2. Continuing to do work around how we build up the research infrastructure here at Rutgers New Brunswick, and particularly position ourselves to be competitive for large, multidisciplinary grants is work that Wendie Cohick, Vice Provost and Vice Chancellor for Research is doing.

    3. Building upon the Chancellor's signature initiatives and interdisciplinary centers and institutes that have already been established, like the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute.

      Upcoming messaging to come about the launch of AMP2.0

  3. Everything that's happening at the federal level: we continue to have concerns, obviously, about the research landscape and what shifts in funding patterns and grants mean for Rutgers New Brunswick, as well as things like loan limits for students:
    1. Working with deans and with others to make sure that a strategy exists to help students both understand what the implications of these changes are and also help them to plan for those and to withstand those changes in ways that both contribute to their financial literacy overall, but also hopefully help reduce the amount of debt that they are taking on overall.
    2. Many things are caught up in litigation, and we are in a holding pattern about many matters of concern.

Provost Geary yielded the floor, and Chair Pierce opened the floor for questions.

Andrew Baker asked about the planning for the Academic Master Plan 2.0, wondering if the Provost would be open to input from this body about the scope and charge of that planning exercise?

The Provost agreed that would be welcome, and Chair Pierce appointed Andrew Baker to be the point person to reach out on behalf of the Executive Committee on this.

 

7. Report on DHS decision about Duration of Status, Q&A (Senior Vice Chancellor Salvador Mena)

Senior Vice Chancellor Salvador Mena reported on the impacts of the federally mandated changes to Duration of Status, with support from Mohini Mukherjee, Assistant Vice President for Global Affairs, noting that Rutgers Global is a tremendous resource to the Rutgers community, and they've been on top of this issue from the beginning, thus the Chancellor’s Office has been working closely with her office.

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena noted that an injunction has been put into place, which puts a hold on the rule coming into effect for the time being. Nevertheless, Rutgers is staying on top of this issue, as things can change from one day to the next. 

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena has been bringing together groups of folks from across campus seeking to understand what the broad impacts are potentially are on the university and also on our students:

  • Students who are already with us are grandfathered in.
  • There may be impacts to the incoming class and potentially beyond.

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena referred to an infographic developed to summarize the broad impacts of the new policy:

  • Enrollment, and our ability to recruit international students: international students are already having a hard time getting visas; some are choosing to go elsewhere just because of the current climate
    • A working group made up of enrollment professionals and other campus partners is focused on this issue
  • Finances: international students tend to pay full price so there are potential impacts on other revenue-generating units on campus, and broad impacts on the finances of the institution.
  • Academics: time to degree and the appeals process for students
    • A working group chaired by Assistant Vice President Mukherjee is working on this issue.
  • Research Enterprise: our graduate students tend to be TAs and they tend to be working in the labs
    • The Vice Chancellor for Research is working through these issues, bringing together all the appropriate people from the Dean of the Graduate School and other.
  • Student Success: international students experience anxiety, concern, worry over whether they will finish, their finances, and more.
    • Assistant Vice President Mukherjee’s working group is also working on this issue and identifying the types of supports that we need to deploy, the types of outreach, and the education that we need to do.
  • Operations: what infrastructure is needed to support international students and to work with them if they're having to file appeals, for example, to to extend their stay here. Or, as one of many hypotheticals, what can we do proactively to help them complete some programs in a shorter period of time?
  • Institutional Reputation: prior to this current climate, we have been a destination for international students from around the world. How should we recruit students in this current environment? What does the current environment do to the reputation of our institution? How do we ensure that international students know once they get here that we really have them top of mind, and we're there for them throughout their journey, so that at least our reputation as an institution doesn't get tarnished as much in light of the climate in which we're operating.
  • Communications: in recruiting and to the current students, as well as the broader campus community to ensure that everybody understands kind of the proactive measures and efforts that we're making, and because students will turn to faculty directly for information and assistance

Overall, there are five working groups:

  • Academics and Student Success
  • Institutional Reputation and Communications

Assistant Vice President Mukherjee noted that while today’s discussion is focused on the Duration of Status rule, there are also issues with internships and the curricular practical training program, as well as a lot of visa delays. Rutgers Global is focused on providing resources and communicating well to keep students as informed and protected as possible. She shared two links with the body:

Rutgers Global did a student town hall with over 400 students in attendance, and Assistant Vice President Mukherjee noted that academic advisors, as well as advisors in the Rutgers Global offices are inundated with questions from students

The Senior Vice Chancellor and Assistance Vice President yielded the floor, and Chair Pierce opened the floor to questions

Ryan Sills asked whether there are actions we can take in terms of banding with, say, our fellow Big Ten institutions, or other external bodies such as state legislators, to try to pursue an additional means of preventing this rule from taking effect.

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena replied that neither his office nor Rutgers Global is in a position to speak to that. 

Santiago Cuesta noted that he has not seen much support for international students or international faculty and asked whether there are additional sources of information available

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena reinforced the information that international students already enrolled are not affected by the Duration of Status rule change, regardless of how long it takes them to complete their degree and that the impact will be on incoming international students for the next recruiting class.

Assistant Vice President Mukherjee provided nuance that there are some academic restrictions that will still affect even the current students but that they will be able to stay long enough to finish their degrees but there is a challenge that if they take longer than the 4 years that they're permitted, they have to apply for an extension which used to be something they could do internally at the university, and we could approve it but now they're going to have to apply to the government for it which adds an extra layer of work that they have to put in. Graduate students take more time to complete their degrees, and as long as there is a good academic reason for an extension, it's still going to be possible. A lot of the implementation details are still unclear because the government has not provided all the details yet. The rule change was expected to go into effect on September 15th before the injunction. 

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena reinforced that concerned students should contact Rutgers Global and acknowledged that further communication with Advising departments may be warranted.

Andrew Baker asked if a faculty member or a unit would like to communicate a newly discovered dimension of this challenge to a working group, what would be the best way of communicating that?

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena confirmed that outreach should start at Rutgers Global, because working groups are not online.

Assistant Vice President Mukherjee described the makeup of some of the working groups and added that if a student has a question, they can always reach out to Rutgers Global and an advisor there will work with them.

Thomas Moomjy commented that it is Un-American not to extend students grace and time to complete their degrees and that it may be an unattainable metric, whether forcing students to complete their degrees within a certain period of time has a negative impact on their success as students, asking how it is possible to know if they coming out of the degree as whole people, expressing concern that we are losing that in this discussion.

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena thanked Councilor Moomjy for the insights, agreeing that it’s a broader societal, institutional conversation to have which would be shared with his colleagues and the Chancellor, also commenting that there's been a lot of critique of higher education and the cost, ensuring that students graduate with minimal debt and cost as possible is also a real issue.

Benjamin Paul inquired whether we have lawyers to support our students and faculty in these situations.

Assistant Vice President Mukherjee replied that the student legal services for students is a good option, and our students do end up using them, and that when there aren't in-house immigration lawyers at student legal services, they will refer them to immigration lawyers and immigration counsel outside. We also have Rutgers Immigration, and the law clinic out of the Law School, which has been supporting international students and faculty and scholars when they have reached out. And we have had refugee students with asylum cases.

Senior Vice Chancellor Mena expressed a disposition to return to share further updates with the body should it be warranted in the future.

 

8. Standing Committee Reports

Chair Pierce asked the committee leaders assigned for today’s meetings to report on plans for continuing projects as well as any discussed ideas for new projects.

 

8a. Athletic Affairs (Ken McKeever 25-26, Co-Chair)

David Winters reported out from Athletic Affairs in lieu of Ken McKeever, who had stepped away.

  1. Rutgers Youth Athletics Sponsorship has just cut its budget, so the committee is looking into that as an issue to focus on.
  2. Gathering information on the budgets and decision-making within the Athletics Department, and relations between the Athletics decision-making and the rest of the school. Who is holding the levers and flipping the switches?
    1. Anyone with access to reports from the last few years, given to different orgs around the university on the budgets and these relationships is asked to share those with the committee.
  3. Alumni.
  4. NIL.

 

8b. Academic Affairs (Barbara Angeline & Elif Sendur, Committee Members)

  1. Digital literacy, which will encompass AI, academic integrity, and digital accessibility due to the new digital accessibility mandates that are anticipated in April 2027.
    1. Asynchronous courses and concerns and pedagogy for those are also a part of this conversation
  2. Libraries structures, with a forthcoming resolution for the Council body.
  3. The Honors College changes since Fall 2025 and the impacts of those and the successes and concerns involved.
  4. Academic Freedom this semester. 

Andrew Baker inquired about the general direction of the possible resolution related to Libraries.

Barbara Angelina replied that today's meeting surrounded the conversations that will happen and the topics of those conversations. So, the resolution is not yet drafted.

Chair Pierce informed the body that an Academic Freedom bill that she had been working on has not been introduced in the State Assembly, but she is hoping to get it into committee sometime soon. There may be a need for faculty to go down to Trenton and testify at some point. 

 

8c. Budget, Planning, & Infrastructure (Anne McPherson, 25-26 Co-Chair)

 

Old Business:

  1. Continue the conversation with Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer Henry Velez on how the bus transition is going now that there's a new contract.
  2. Continue the IT infrastructure conversations from last year with Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer Michele Norin about end user feedback being included as part of the process of purchasing and incorporating new software and platforms.
  3. Budget Transparency, which we hope former NBFC member David (DK) Kryscynski will continue to work with us on.
  4. The hiring freeze and cost freeze.

New business.

  1. Add Parking on football days on Busch into our conversation with SVP-COO Velez.
  2. Streamlining reimbursement for AI costs and usage, and figuring out end user input for purchasing in the same way that we've been having that conversation about other tech with SVP-CIO Michelle Norin
    1. how do we, the New Brunswick Faculty Council, have a voice in this?
      1. Two members of NBFC been recently appointed to the Academic Technology Advisory Council, which is a New Brunswick Advisory Council. It has not met since the time that we were added to it, and so we have nothing to report to the body yet.
  3. Active learning classrooms.
    1. Opening conversations with Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology and Instruction Paul Hammond to come to talk to our committee.
  4. Procurement procedures.

 

8d. Faculty and Personnel Affairs (Dilafruz Nazarova, 25-26 Co-Chair)

  1. Compiling by-laws from all units across Rutgers New Brunswick and publishing them to the NBFC website.
  2. Analyzing these by-laws, identifying gaps, and comparing governance structures and how much NTTs and lecturers are involved in those structures in various schools and departments.
  3. Faculty parking.
  4. Graduate student support
  5. Faculty support in grant-writing, IRB procedures, etc.
  6. Mergings of programs and area studies, particularly without adequate consultation with the departments or having the input of the departments.
  7. More to come, pending a questionnaire to the committee membership.

 

8e. Student Affairs (Heather Moulton, Committee Member)

  1. Supporting student transition from high school to college.
  2. Supporting graduate student transition into work life or other graduate schools.
  3. Partnering with Student Success Week
    1. work and family
    2. eating, health, nutrition
    3. commuter students
    4. non-traditional students
    5. interpersonal communication
    6. mental health issues
    7. social support
    8. navigation of student resources

 

Justin Kalef observed that in his unit, students do not appear to understand that they should take their studies very seriously, and hopes the committee will take up the topic of how this might be addressed.

Heather Moulton agreed.

 

9. Special Reports

Chair Pierce noted that we have special reports out of 3 of our decanal units, as many events unfolded over the summer.

 

9a. An update to the Council on the School of Engineering convocation (Francois Berthiaume)

The School of Engineering had an outside guest speaker planned for their convocation. This speaker was canceled following what began as allegedly some student complaints. 

Rami Elghandour graduated from the School of Engineering about 25 years ago, went on to be a very successful entrepreneur and more recently, he was participating in activities that Dean organized for Rutgers Engineering students. He also hosted many Rutgers students as interns in his companies. Once the invitation to host the speaker was announced, there were some student complaints related to his social media posts.  Besides his engineering work he's also what you might call a pro-Palestinian activist and is involved in producing movies, one of which was nominated for an Oscar; he is pretty high profile and pretty outspoken in this issue. He's also outspoken in other things, such as DEI, which he supports very strongly, and so forth. There was no public announcement from the university about this invitation.

Despite being a faculty member in the School of Engineering, Francois found out that the invitation had been rescinded when he started to receive get hundreds of emails in his role as Vice Chair of the NBFC protesting this and asking for assistant to reinstate the speaker.

The Dean scheduled ad hoc faculty meetings with individual Engineering departments to explain the situation and the reason for the cancellation, and said during these meeting is that he discussed the complaints with the speaker and tried to make an arrangement with the speaker about what the speech would be about, as well as the possibility of having the speech in a different venue, but the speaker and Dean could not agree on this, and ultimately the dean disinvited the speaker. These Engineering department meetings were done in as individual departments, and at the end of these meetings, in most cases, faculty were asked to vote on a statement to support the Dean's decision, along the lines that the Convocation should be about a celebration of the students and their families, and they didn't want the speaker issues to become the center of attention.

This got some people very angry. There was a protest organized on campus, petitions. Rutgers Police were dispatched and while Francois’s department was having the meeting with the Dean, there were police inside and outside the building, which made it feel like a siege.

These events caught the attention of the media, the press, and politicians. There were arguments and even fights on social media. In Francois’s department, there were some pointed emails, some of which even made it into the press. 

The convocation itself proceeded without the speaker being present. There was a separate event organized at a different time for students that hosted the speaker.

After that, or around that time, the University Senate Executive Committee met with the Dean and voted to censure the Dean about the handling of the situation.

The Council also wanted to respond to this situation, but it happened at the end of the academic year and there were no more meetings scheduled for the NBFC. So, the Executive Committee reached out to Engineering faculty members in the Council, got a little bit of feedback, and called an Executive Committee meeting with the Dean, the Provost, and the Chancellor to have a discussion. The purpose was not to discuss the merits of the speaker, but rather the process and how it could be improved, currently or in the future.

In this meeting, the EC discussed the way the speakers were chosen, then noted that the bar to disinvite a speaker should be very high and the criteria should be very clear, otherwise, it calls into question the university's commitment to freedom of expression. In this particular case, it looks like the university may be taking sides on an issue and may be even favoring the feelings of one group of students versus another. Another point made was the need for a better communication plan to avoid assumptions and speculation, and that the communication plan should also include statements that when the University hosts a speaker, it doesn't mean the university endorses what the speaker’s views are.

When the new academic year started, a few Engineering faculty discussed having the NBFC follow up on this. The Executive Committee discussed that it would be best if one of the NBFC committees worked to develop recommendations, best practices regarding commencement convocation speakers at Rutgers, and ultimately, this could become a resolution that could be presented and voted on.

Andrew Baker made a motion:

MOTION: The Council asks the Student Affairs Committee to discuss and provide recommendations on how to ensure that (a) convocation speakers are selected via a fair and transparent process that includes faculty input, and (b) decisions regarding already-invited speakers are made in a fair and transparent manner.

Speaking to the motion, Andrew Baker clarified that this work could include seeing a drafted resolution provided by some faculty from the School of Engineering but wouldn’t require the SAC to start there. This is a discussion where the voices of more than just the EC and more than just Engineering faculty are appropriate, because this could apply to convocation speakers at many New Brunswick schools. There is a shared governance committee appointed by the Chancellor to focus on commencement, but that is not identical to Convocation. Because Convocations are a primarily student focused event the Student Affairs Committee may be the best place to at least initiate this broader discussion. 

Chair Pierce confirmed with the Parliamentarian that this Motion was in order

Thomas Moomjy referred to the Commencement of 2014 at which Condoleezza Rice had been the announced speaker before withdrawing under pressure and asked if this should be a boarder discussion than the New Brunswick campus.

Chair Pierce reminded the body that our purview does not extend beyond the New Brunswick campus. 

Chair Pierce provided additional information that the Chancellor did note to her in their one-on-one last week that she has started a committee to review this, so perhaps first task for the Student Affairs Committee to do would be to reach out to that group to provide input and avoid creating redundancy. Chair Pierce offered to provide that contact information.

The motion was approved: 42 in favor, 0 opposed

Francois Berthiaume will share with the SAC a drafted resolution from the School of Engineering faculty, and Chair Pierce will share contact information for the Chairing of the committee appointed by the Chancellor.

 

9b. An update to the Council on news from the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (Jennifer Shukaitis)

The Dean of Research in SEBS, Dr. Joshua Kohut was arrested on or about August 26th for Invasion of Privacy. Jennifer Shukaitis provided a link to the body: Rutgers University dean arrested for invasion of privacy after allegedly taking 'upskirt' videos

We don't know who the victims are and their privacy should be respected. He is now barred from campus. He is on paid administrative leave. He has not been to campus since he was arrested on August 26th.

As Dean of Research, he did work with almost all, if not all, the faculty within SEBS. His responsibilities have been divided up among a few different people. 

This is an active investigation, and so there have really been no other updates other than that. 

Chair Pierce asked if there are measures in place to support those whose research is going to be affected by the fact that he's gone. Are there concerns about graduate researchers that have been working with him or other faculty working on grants whose research might be affected by this?

Jennifer Shukaitis confirmed there are individuals in place to cover that work; Executive Dean Laura Lawson has addressed this proactively.

 

9c. An update to the Council news from the School of Social Work (Anna Haley)

To start, Anna Haley clarified that she was speaking as a School of Social Work faculty member and not in her role as the Chair of the Senate, having recused herself from any Senate or NBFC work on this issue.

Roughly 60 Social Work Faculty and Staff organized over the course of the last six or more months out of grave concerns about an expansive leadership failure at the school in the hands of the Dean, in addition to going through the process that is in the EVPAA-held policy for the University around reviews of Deans. They prompted an out-of-cycle, or early review of the Dean. Following that was additional organizing by that group of around 60 faculty and staff, who hold their identities anonymous; the Union of Full-Time Faculty is serving as a liaison to protect their identities.

In that work, these faculty and staff generated a series of evidence that they submitted to the Chancellor, the Provost, the President, the EVPAA, as well as the ECs of the Senate and the Council, as well as the the Union so that the President of the Union, might act as liaison.

In early August, there was a request for the Dean to be removed and for relief of his administrative duties that has been declined. There was a request to have him put on administrative leave during the process of his decanal review, which is going on right now. That was also declined.

As of now, the faculty and staff at the school have been told in messages sent to the full school community, that the New Brunswick Provost has been charged with supervising Deans directly. The Provost is being deployed to provide additional oversight over the Dean on certain sets of matters that are high impact, high consequence: things like promotion and tenure reviews, hiring processes, and more. The most consequential decision-making or planning is supposed to be additionally overseen by the provost.

The decanal review is expedited, with a very strong committee appointed to it. We imagine sometime in November there will be an outcome, but the Chancellor has previously said this will not have any personal effects. So, the school, certainly the group of 60 that have been extremely concerned, are continuing in efforts to figure out how to get through all this. 

Chair Pierce added that a meeting was held with all the SSW faculty and staff, the Chancellor, which was mediated by Chair Pierce, and Senate Vice Chair Paul Boxer was there representing the Senate. It became very clear in these discussions that there are very serious concerns about how this decanal review can possibly play out fairly with the dean still in his seat, given the breadth, but also the severity of the concerns that were raised.

Elif Sendur asked if a reason was provided for why they didn't put the Dean on leave, and why a Provost is doing his job.

Anna Haley clarified that the reasoning is that he deserves due process. The faculty feel conflicted about this; the group of 60 people spent much of the summer culling together what was originally a 38-page, single-spaced document which was culled down to about 12 pages, single-spaced, of comprehensively documentable, triangulated things that have happened, things that have not happened, that should have happened. Everyone has been very careful about the sharing of that document, but it has been leaked. People are terrified that their jobs and livelihood will be at risk, because there have been allegations of retaliation within the school. It has been a very difficult situation.

Chair Pierce clarified that there have been incidences of actual retaliation and then reason on that basis to think that it could continue.

 

10. Adjournment

Motion to adjourned was moved, seconded, and passed at 2:56pm.