Einstein Senate

Senate Meeting: Wednesday, December 7, 2016

After approval of the Minutes, Dr. Allen Spiegel gave the Dean’s report. He started saying that although he was not going to talk about the election, he is prepared to discuss issues related to the core values and issues related to the Medical School and the health system. Among these issues are the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, the indication of a new director of NIH, NIH budget, and Cures Act.
In his Speaker’s Report, Dr. Jeffrey Segall reported on the past two Councils and the Board meetings. At the Council meetings there were reports and discussions about the LCME and the current tenure award letters that are still being issued by Yeshiva. Regarding the Board meeting, Segall reported that everything presented except for philanthropy was going according to the original budget, and a new fundraising campaign will be going on to address philanthropy.
Dr. Ilir Agalliu, on behalf of Dr. Kelvin Davies, the Chair of the Committee on Committees, indicated that the Committee on Committees had not yet formalized the Senate Advisory Committee on the Reappointment of the Dean because they were waiting for the Senate Council elections to be concluded. Now that the 2017 Senate Council has been elected, the Senate Advisory Committee will be presented at the next Senate meeting.
Ms. Yvonne Ramirez (Vice President of Human Resources and Diversity Office), gave a slide presentation and discussed issues related to the Einstein Diversity & Inclusion Planning Effort. She reported that there is a leadership team composed of several faculty, staff, and graduate students that were subdivided into 4 teams: (1) Diversity and Inclusion Oversight Communication & Awareness team, (2) Conduct an Internal Assessment team, (3) Conduct an External Assessment team, and (4) Training & Education team. The goals of this Diversity and Inclusion Planning Effort are to (a) emphasize under-represented minorities and women for the recruitment, retention and promotion of faculty, staff and students, (b) identify infrastructures, (c) assess strengths and areas of improvement, and to (d) recommend priorities.
Dr. U. Thomas Meier and Ms. Tere Williams, respectively Faculty and Graduate Student Representatives of the Quality of Life Committee, gave a slide presentation to report on the 2015 survey. Within the area of Research and Academics, the most and least satisfactory items were, respectively, Faculty collegiality and purchasing order system; in terms of benefits, personal safety and security on campus was considered highly satisfactory while childcare options was the least satisfactory. In terms of career development, there was high satisfaction for the ability to achieve academic promotion and low satisfaction regarding the Tenure process and the ability to get tenure. The Einstein website was highly rated while the research IT services was poorly rated. There was high satisfaction for the seating area at the Café and poor satisfaction for the prices of catering services; the Falk Center staff was highly rated while the recycling services were poor. For the students (PhD, MSTP, MD), fellows and post-docs, several areas of concerns were identified. Among the ones poorly rated were assistance in choosing rotations, the condition of common spaces, information on how to obtain research tools, Falk Center hours, on-campus social activities, quality of courses, eMed, Benefits, standard of the library, STEP prep, promotion of diversity.
As New business, Dean Spiegel presented a motion to the Senate to form a committee to recommend to the Dean guidelines for acceptable public discourse at officially sponsored campus meetings and events. Discussion was set for the next Senate meeting.