Faculty Meeting December 11, 2002 Agenda: 1.News – Grannis 2.Undergraduate curricula – Jacobsen 3.Undergraduate laboratories – Koch 4.Graduate program announcements – Grannis for P. Stephens 5.MAT curriculum proposal – McCarthy 6.Research Associate professor appointment for Chiaki Yanagisawa 7.University budgets, searches, etc. -- Grannis

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.

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 don’t 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 and specify your desired Agendas & slides from faculty meetings are available on the department info page (with current teaching assignments, committees etc.):

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  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,  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 1 st and 2 nd year students. Of the 40 returning 2 nd year students, and based on our expected number of TA/GA lines, we will need to support about 15 2 nd year students on research grants – even if some of these have teaching duties.

University budget The university suffered a 5% cut in budget for AY 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 AY (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/resignations of faculty & staff are not being refilled.

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!

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.

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 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.