Faculty Meeting December 11, 2002

1
Faculty Meeting December 11, 2002

• Agenda
• News Grannis
• Undergraduate curricula Jacobsen
• Undergraduate laboratories Koch
• Graduate program announcements Grannis for P.
  Stephens
• MAT curriculum proposal McCarthy
• Research Associate professor appointment for
  Chiaki Yanagisawa
• University budgets, searches, etc. -- Grannis

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News
Holiday party December 20 at noon in
S-240 Over the semester break, we will move the
Math Learning Center to newly rehabilitated S240A
and move the Junior Lab to A129. Physics help
rooms will move to old MLC space (A125/127) and
should be ready for us in late January (may have
to start the semester with just 1 help room
(A131) ) During Spring, graduate student space
now in B119 will move to the larger B120 (current
Jr. Lab) Provost has called for improved
connections with BNL. I am working on a proposal
for a new graduate program in Accelerator
Science, centered in Physics Astronomy but
joint with BNL, Applied Math, Elec. Engineering,
Computer Science, Mechanical Eng. It would
have to have new lines to be workable.
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News
SEFA United Way please consider in year end
giving Richard Yoepp has retired as Machine
Shop Director Walter Schmeling will be interim
director. Even if you dont use Notes mail, you
probably have an account. Make sure your Lotus
Notes (notes.cc.sunysb.edu) account is set to
forward to your mail server of choice. People
within Notes may send you mail that goes into a
black hole ! To set a forwarder send mail to
admin_at_notes.cc.sunysb.edu and specify your
desired e-mail account. Agendas slides from
faculty meetings are available on the department
info page (with current teaching assignments,
committees etc.) http//sbhep1.physics.sunysb.ed
u/grannis/dept.html
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Graduate Program

• Laszlo Mihaly will take over as Graduate
  Director in Summer Peter Stephens will step
  down after 3 years and will be on leave in
  2003-4.
• All instructors for graduate courses should
  prepare course syllabii that reflect the material
  that is actually covered in the courses. Our
  students rely on this! Please prepare a web page
  (supply url to Peter Stephens) or text file (also
  to Peter).
• Visit of prospective graduate students March 28
  30, 2003.
• We took in a large class in 2002 (we expect 40
  of the 44 matriculated to continue in 2003).
  The university support for TA/GA is limited and
  must be supplemented by 2500 per AY to compete
  with other departments. We must set our goals
  lower for 2003 20 new incoming PhD students
  to give us the right overall number of 1st and
  2nd year students.
• Of the 40 returning 2nd year students, and based
  on our expected number of TA/GA lines, we will
  need to support about 15 2nd year students on
  research grants even if some of these have
  teaching duties.

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University budget
The university suffered a 5 cut in budget for
AY2002-3 that was suggested last spring and made
official in fall. It is not a one-time cut any
longer! With the worsening NY State budget, we
now expect that there will be another 5 cut
imposed for the spring semester (a 2.5
additional cut for the spring). The full 10,
plus an additional 1 cut to cover UUP merit
raises/costs of early retirements will be
subtracted from the base budget for AY2003-4.
(Actually it is 11 of not quite the full state
budget, so maybe 9-10) President Kenny has
issued a hiring freeze on all state lines,
adjunct, RF IDC (not regular RF hires) effective
last week. This means that no new hires will be
made without explicit approval by the President
at least until the next NY Executive budget in
Feb. 03. The search underway (nuclear
experiment or RHIC spin) could be cancelled. I
will await better information to agree to
invitations of candidates. Retirements/resignatio
ns of faculty staff are not being refilled.
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University budget
Some help might come from SUNY tuition increases,
but the Governor has withdrawn his support for
doing that and State Assembly is unlikely to get
out in front on this. Other states/public
universities are affected by the economic
situation private universities also to some
degree due to economic downturn. If passed to
CAS this size cut would be impossible to absorb.
College budget as a whole is 96 salaries and
TA/GA. Attrition due to retirements etc. are
insufficient to cover the cut. Do not expect
reduction in target enrollments, as this
generates income. What effect of the cut on the
department? Since we, like the college have a
budget that is dominantly salary we cannot absorb
a 11 cut. We may lose some control of the leave
money that we had for the duration of the
squeeze. Meanwhile enrollments increase. We
need to be careful about proliferating courses
for fixed faculty size. We are probably better
off than most departments!
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Searches
In my tenure as chair so far loss of 5 faculty
and no demonstrated success in new hires fire
the incompetent chair? We have a long list of
needed searches

• Biological Physics
• AMO experiment
• Astrophysics/Astro instrumentation
• CM experiment
• CM theory
• Molecular electronics
• Nuclear experiment
• Nuclear theory
• RHIC spin

I hear you and understand the pressure to get
moving on these appointments! Joint appointments
with BNL may help ½ line easier than 1
line But in the present climate, we are going to
be unable to satisfy our needs quickly.
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Searches
Making choices on how to proceed will be
extremely difficult for the department there
are legitimate arguments for any of the searches
on our list, and sorting out a priority when
there are few options available will cause
friction. This department has succeeded over the
years (amazingly well) by coming together with
common purpose. The next couple of years will
challenge us, but we need to retain the
collegiality that has characterized the
department in the past. The advice of the Long
Range Planning committee of Feb. 2002 is now
largely outdated, due to resignations,
retirements and budget problems. I foresee the
need of a special panel to work with me and to
advise on how to optimize our opportunities in
the near term. To be effective, this panel will
have to forego parochial interests and consider
the health of the department as a whole.