Einstein Senate

Council Meeting: Wednesday, July 15, 2020

ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE 
MINUTES OF SENATE COUNCIL MEETING 

WED JULY 15, 2020 

FINAL

PRESENT: Drs. Gordon Tomaselli, Julia Arnsten, Myles Akabas, Anita Autry-Dixon, Jonathan Alpert, Nerys Benfield, Robbie Burk, Jill Crandall, Johanna Daily, Matthew Gamble, Chandan Guha, Tanya Johns, Elizabeth Kitsis, Susan Klugman, Courtney Niland, Victor Schuster, Pamela Stanley , Allison Ludwig, Ms. Shelly Motzkin

VIA ZOOM: Drs., Jonathan Lai, Anne Bresnick, Edward Burns; Mr. Ryan Graff

  1. Meeting minutes from the Jun 24, 2020 Senate Council were discussed and revised.
  2. Dean's Report contained three items:
    • (i) Plans for bringing students to campus. These are changing almost daily, as the number of states for which NYS is requiring quarantine for arrivees is changing almost daily. Dr. Alison Ludwig also gave an update on the plans for delivering education to pre-clinical (first and second year) and clinical (third and fourth year) students.
    • (ii) Recent receipt of a letter from several URM students, plus many other signatories, requesting action from Einstein administration on several areas related to combating effects of racism in: recruiting medical and graduate students, medical school curricula, hiring and promotion, school leadership, and other areas. In response, the Dean's office has composed a letter indicating plans to work on many of these items. Link to the letter is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQnsclUyvj3a8xS_SUdO88eWWo85F7VXdz5OIpip4atsTRA/viewform
    • (iii) Announcement of new Cancer Center Director is imminent.
  3. Other issues discussed:
    • (i) General adherence to mask-wearing around campus. After multiple observations that adherence is good, but not as good as it could be, the council endorsed a proposal by the Dean that we ask various leaders around the school community to record short PSA videos to be played on the screens around the campus
    • (ii) Review of the revisions to the Senate Bylaws. This will happen at a special Senate meeting on August 19. At that meting, Vic Schuster and Jeff Segall will provide a point/counter point regarding the issue of "advise" versus "advice and consent" vis-a-vis the role of the Senate Council towards the Dean
    • (iii) High Throughput computing facility capacity was discussed, and it was acknowledged that we need to build additional capacity and also to better manage existing capacity
    • (IV) Availability at Einstein of small animal models for studying COVID-19 was discussed. 

Respectfully submitted, 
Jonathan Lai, Ph.D. 
Vice Speaker, Einstein Senate