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Faculty Meeting September 24, 2004

Faculty Meeting September 24, 2004. Agenda: News Search status for 2004-5 Graduate program Undergraduate program. Graduate Student Tuition. There is still not an announced policy but a “nearly final draft” exists.

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Faculty Meeting September 24, 2004

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  1. Faculty Meeting September 24, 2004 • Agenda: • News • Search status for 2004-5 • Graduate program • Undergraduate program

  2. Graduate Student Tuition • There is still not an announced policy but a “nearly final draft” exists. • We believe that grants will be required to pay tuition for 6 credits at the in-state level starting in spring 2005 ($3450/year). The balance of tuition costs will be waived (the remaining 12 credits of registration) and can be used for matching against federal programs. • Grants paying pre-advancement-to-candidacy students if they serve as TAs will be exempt from charge. Request for exemption by chair to Grad School required for this. • No charges for grad students on grants in summer before matriculating. These students will be registered as students for INS reasons, and tuition waived. • Expect BNL and CSHL (other external bodies) will be required to pay tuition at the same level as Stony Brook grants, starting with grants submitted at some date in near future. • Roughly 2/3 of collected funds to be returned to department to defray the loss of the stipend supplements for TAs that we now get.

  3. Graduate student travel • New policy regarding travel abroad by students (and also suggested for postdocs, faculty): Advisor provides dates, places visited, reason for trip to Chair and Graduate Director. Chair informs student in writing to contact International Academic Programs to provide info, including health, contact info for emergency, sign waiver of liability, insurance info. • I feel this policy is cumbersome, intrusive of privacy, and susceptible to misuse. I do not see that IAP is in a good position to handle the requests, and for the moment am forwarding every instance from Dept. to them to help demonstrate the unsuitability of the process. • I welcome any comments, questions on implementation, complaints etc. that I will share with the administration. • As written, it seems that faculty, postdocs, staff also need to register their foreign travel with Int. Academic Programs. For now, I will submit these to help inundate the in-boxes – let me know if you are travelling. • See materials on Dept info web page: • New fees for VISA applicants (F-1 and J-1). Information on the Department information web page:

  4. Department information web pages: General information web page (for faculty, research, staff and grad students) http://sbhep1.physics.sunysb.edu/~grannis/dept.html special page for faculty only (e.g. presentations and documents from faculty meetings) http://sbhep1.physics.sunysb.edu/~grannis/facmtg.html The master people data base from which e-mail lists, web lists of people and addresses has been taken over by Kim Kwee Ng from John Hasstedt. Diane Siegel is now keeping the primary Excel list. We are updating the lists; need the input from the groups

  5. Department Chair • My term as chair will expire in summer 2005, after 3½ years in the job. • I do not plan to accept a second term appointment: • I want to be able to focus more upon research • It is useful for us to rotate this job – new perspectives and priorities • Allow a wider field to choose from if we think of this job as a limited time commitment • I still plan to retire in the next few years (and remain an active member of the department and high energy group), opening the possibility of future hires of young people • I have agreed with the Dean that the department will propose a search committee for him to appoint. I would like to see the search committee come to a conclusion by early in the spring semester to allow a sensible overlap of the old and the new.

  6. Long Range Planning Is it time to do another long range planning exercise? Several unexpected resignations since last LRP. We have moved on most (not all) of the recommended new hires from the last LRP. It may be helpful to guide a new chair. In this case, I would suggest having such a committee operate as soon as we have an internal choice of new chair, appointed jointly by outgoing and incoming chair.

  7. Faculty searches: • I have requested four searches for this year using some extra departmental support for start-up funds and some salary sharing as a carrot. This plan is viewed as innovative by the Dean and is responsible (I think) for our success relative to other departments. • Theoretical or computational astrophysics • Theoretical nuclear physics (joint with BNL/RIKEN) • Physics of biology (possibly joint with BNL) • Nanodevice physics

  8. Faculty searches: The Provost/Dean have approved us to advertise for the first two at present. (Without firm commitment yet that we can proceed to a hire, but we should be optimistic). Committee for Nuclear Theory: Smith*, Drees, Pietralla, Shuryak, Verbaarschot Committee for Astrophysics: Simon*, Brown, Gonzalez-Garcia, Lattimer, McGrew Advertisements appeared in Sept. Physics Today. We will close applications in mid-December and interview beginning in January. (Actually, the administration messed up the ads, managing to post only the astrophysics position in Physics Today; the online PT ad does list nuclear theory as does our own web site.) Getting the word out is necessary.

  9. Faculty searches: The Physics of Biology and Nanodevice Physics hires were not approved for a search, largely because of the larger cost of startups. I have recently been given guarded but somewhat positive advice to proceed to develop a proposal for a search in biological physics, providing that we could frame it as a joint hire with BNL, and connect to biological physics activities on campus. The chair of the BNL Physics Dept. and Assoc. Lab Director for BES had agreed verbally to search for a joint appointment in an experimental area. We are exploring the possibility of a joint theoretical/computational hire as well. Meeting next week with BNL Physics, BES, Biology, Material Science to try to generate a proposal. My original idea was to search without restriction as to experimental or theoretical orientation. Seeking a new person with some connection to existing activities in our department, with synergy to other programs on campus or BNL (CSHL) would be desired.

  10. Shops : Current rates for on-campus work: Machine shop: $37/hour, inclusive of costs for consumables. supplies Electronics shop: $44/hour, inclusive of costs for consumables. Rates for off campus: $52 (Machine shop); $62 (Electronics shop) New policy is that shop income from research grants is taken by administration; Department only makes money on work done for other campus administrative units (Physical Plant etc.) and a portion of off-campus income. Search for new junior electronics engineer is now in progress; interviews are nearly done; hope to hire in a month or so.

  11. Other Business: Graduate program: Laszlo Mihaly Undergraduate program: Emilio Mendez

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