Survey

Academic Senate: Campus Environment Committee Survey Results 5/13/06

79 Faculty Responded as follows:

• more classrooms that accommodate the number of students enrolled in a class (or smaller numbers of students for classes in smaller rooms);


• smart seminar-type rooms


• We desperately need space for graduate students in Liberal Arts.


• As we hire new junior faculty and senior established faculty who are research active we _must_ plan for their increased needs in terms of laboratory space and equipment.


• We need more resources in the library, especially on-line journals. While we have a fine undergraduate library, it does not adequately support research.


• Air conditioning in Building 8 and updated lab facilities.


• Space for Research Assitants is needed. The entire computer engineering department shares a ~350 sqft area for all the student research activities.


• Secure Project work/storage areas


• Collaboration meeting space


• Space continues to be a real issue on campus. It\'s difficult to get enough classroom space, let alone space that allows more than two people to meet.


• Labs need to be better outfitted with updated equipment and the computer replacement policy of every five years is absurd.


• There are frequently not enough classrooms to accommodate classes. Our college has been asked to accept more students and we are having difficulty finding the physical space for this increase in classrooms, labs and lab facilities.


• There is generally no budget available for lab/spaces etc..for doing research.


• Its a catch-22 situation. The insitute\'s view is probably that the faculty should generate such money from GRANTS..But to get grants, one has to show prior reseach for which one needs labs/equipment.


• Some STARTUP funds are needed to break this viscious cycle


• The library is woefully deficient in books and journals for research. The only reason we\'ve limped along thus far is the proximity of the U of R and the fact we all just go there. This is shameful.


• Meeting and office space is always short... but this seems to be true anywhere, so RIT does not stand out in my mind, in that respect.


• \"Facilities\" in the form of general purpose research support is very much lacking. I refer to the non-existance of machine shops, electronics repair shops, glassblowing shops, etc. Every other university I\'ve ever been associated with had places where you could go to 1) get custom stuff made or fixed as individual work orders (paid by your grant or home dept) or 2) get advice from skilled machinists/electronics guys/etc and then facilities where you could work on it yourself, with occasional help from the technical pros. Not here. 99% of the time I find myself wishing I could just take the work home, since my basement home workshop is better equipt for general woodworking, metalworking, or electronics repair, than anything I have access to at RIT. Admittedly I have an unusual basement <G> but this situation at RIT is pretty sad.


• 1) Performance and rehearsal space for music ensembles and theater exercises, dedicated to these groups only. Scholarly activity in the performing arts requires adequite spaces for performance activities, and we have no such spaces dedicated to these activities. Ingle is not adequite, nor is it dedicated to perfomance. It\'s a multi-purpose lecture hall at best, and able to be \"booked\" by any kind of organization. 2) A \"listening lab\" and adequite cd collection for music research.


• I could personally achieve a lot more if the labs in Gosnell were renovated and air conditioning was installed. The majority of our research takes place over the summer and the humidity and moisture affects our reactions dramatically. A 90% yield in the winter drops to a 60% yield in the summer for the same reaction. The current building (circa 1968) does not meet the state-of-the-art needs of our research. In addition to air conditioning, we should comply with ADA in terms of hoods and sinks in teaching labs and we need to ensure that ALL students have the facilities to do their experiments in industrial hoods to ensure proper ventilation. Many of the labs (both research and teaching) barely meet the needs of our faculty. Improvements: Space, lighting, ventilation, proper door handles, better safety showers and eyewashes, emergengy lighting installation, operational plumbing and steam lines


• Office space is entirely inadequate. I share a small office with another faculty member. It is my understanding that each office was designed for a single person when the building was designed. There is barely room for two desks and two file cabinets and not nearly enough room for books and other materials. Furthermore, the ventilation is poor and there is no AC, so the office is unusable much of the year.


• When I\'m on campus to teach, I use the office as a place to store my briefcase and hang my coat. I cannot use it to do any of my scholarly work, even when I have to be in the office for office hours. I can\'t even do my class prepration or grading in there.


• When I\'m not teaching, I spend all of my time at home where I have a comfortable place to work and ample space to store my reference books and other materials. I intentionally arrange my teaching schedule so I can be at home 2 or 3 days a week so I can do my class preparation, grading, and research. This makes me very unavailable to my students.


• I have long felt that having an adequate office would not only facilitate my research, it would also improve my teaching and advising by making me more available.


• Increased laboratory space in LBJ to support the Labaratory Science Technology program.


• More high quality research lab space. Faculty collaboration/meeting areas.


• The library carries maybe 1/2 of the journals we need for research in my field.


• We do not have a laboratory space to teach the lab in our field so we teach it in our research labs which does not work with more than a few students and interferes with the students who need to do research and wears out the research equipment bought with grant money, or in


• a makeshift lab that does not have lab benches (just some tables), no running water, no gas (for bunsen burners which are needed for sterile work), no electricity except for along the walls. We only have enough pieces of equipment for 3-5 pairs of students and that is only the small equipment. The larger equipment is all shared by the research labs as described above.


• If it weren\'t for us using the makeshift lab or the student room, there is really no place to sit and have research meetings, no place for research students to do written work.


• Sometimes professors have their offices in one building and their research labs in another.


• One can not do research with a significant training and mentoring aspect efficiently under these


• conditions.


• We need more seminar rooms, that is, small rooms with large tables around which everyone can sit facing each other (to accommodate 10-16 students).


• Office space for graduate students.


• Computing equipment dedicated to and available for research projects (needing special software, administrative privileges for configuration and control, able to host server software, regular backup of local disk drives, relatively large network disk drive quotas, etc.)


• Workstation-quality desktop computing (dual monitors, more RAM, reasonably fast processors, relatively large disk drives, CD/DVD-ROM burners, etc.)


• More laboratory space. I teach in a department with a new graduate program and NO lab space.


• More seminar rooms, set up for discussion, group work etc.


• More student meeting places. These work spaces need to be open, but reservable at times.


• More Faculty meeting space. Where we can hold working meetings, social events, etc., so that folks can discuss research/scholarship ideas and develop working relationships.


• A full subscription to Web of Science including SSCI, SCI etc.


• i apologize for not knowing the recent strategic plan before i responded to this survey so i cannot respond


• appropriately.


• Our department needs student meeting space and conference rooms so faculty can meet with students and work on, plan, and stratgize research activities. The conference room at least must be a \"smart room.\"


• Expanded book and journal access at library.


• Expanded stockroom items to include things commonly used in labs (varies by college)


• 1. A better library: more scholarly journals (not e-journals); more books; more micro fiche machines that work; automatic pass to UR libraries (without need to apply).


• More office space. Too many profs have to put filing cabinets out in the hallways.


• More meeting facilities (besides classrooms). Each department should have its own meeting room or lounge.


• More single desks in classrooms (so they can be moved to facilitat group work or discussions.


• Testing rooms equiped for group experiments for 20 + students.


• Not enough rooms. Rooms cold. No faculty socialization area (\"Faculty Club\"). INsufficient meeting spaces.


• Room for graduate assistants to do their work on campus and to store it between work time.


• More dedicated lab space for faculty and student research projects


• More smaller classrooms/meeting rooms for seminar-type courses Configuration should be more like conference table and coushioned chairs for some of these, particular ones being utilized by PhD and graduate courses.


• Library funding hasn\'t kept up with costs of of journals, electronic search programs, etc.


• Need a sound stage, theater and support rooms for filmmaking in CIAS


• Perform a space utilization inventory and reassign space to create effective research clusters of common focus irrespective of faculty departmental affiliation


• If we truly want to be a first class internationally recognized institution then the support needs to be better than embarrassing. I get 400$ per year travel assistance for conferences. This will not do. As faculty in the art department all of our studios are our own, off campus at our expense. The Institute assumes (actually requires) that we do scholarship (and I agree that we should) but to assist us (and the students for that matter) with at least studios would show a little support. I am convinced that the only thing standing between RIT, as it is now and what it truly could be as an excellent institution is the minutia of the organization and lack of respect for the faculty


• All classrooms need to be \"smart\" classrooms, and they need to be smarter than the ones we have now (often now podiums don\'t work,the tv-vcr-dvd carts are impossible to move, remote controls are often missing or don\'t work correctly, the transparency projectors are pathetic, there are never erasers in rooms, much less marking pens), there should be ceiling fans for air circulation, we need to have a cabinet or better yet a built-in-the-wall unit that contains controls for tv/film projection plus put the vcr & dvd payers in the unit and add an audio cd player and a document camera. All rooms need a big screen for movie projection, with good clarity. All rooms now seem to have ethernet hook-up outlets but no blue cords for them and no connection to a big screen for projection (a whole class can\'t look at a tiny laptop screen). We need more classrooms for Liberal Arts!! --build some more floors on building one to even up with the seventh floor (all smart classrooms, of varying sizes), and add some more floors to building six (all smart classrooms, of varying sizes).All Liberal Arts classes should be in Liberal Arts buildings, not spread out all over campus. All faculty and staff (including adjunct instructors) need RIT voice mail--I have been buying and maintaining my own answering machine for over thirteen years. Every faculty member should have their own RIT-provided laptop computer and printer, including adjunct instructors. There should be more small meeting rooms for students to do group work on reports and projects. There should be more auditoriums. There should be a quality performing arts stage and auditorium. The ugly dirty gray concrete stairways in buildings one and six could be painted cheery colors. Lighting in classrooms in 01 and 06 needs to be improved. It\'s good that air conditioning was added to 01 and 06 a few years ago, but it doesn\'t work very well; often you can put the thermostat on cool and the air never comes on. The heat is left on in the buildings too long into the spring. It\'s hard to know which offices are on which thermostat circuit. Building 01 needs a mailroom for Liberal Arts faculty. What kind of a college student union building has no place to eat after 7:00pm? Make more rooms in the SAU for students to meet between classes, work together, etc., so the library can be for quiet study. More lockers for student bookbags and such in the SAU so they don\'t have to carry 50-pound bookbags around all day. Bookstore vouchers for students whose financial aid does not arrive in time to buy books when classes start, especially in September. Book co-op to rent or trade used textbooks for students who otherwise would not buy the books. It would be nice to have a faculty dining room so we could have lunch meetings and lunch colloquia there.


• That\'s all I can think of for now. Thanks for asking.


• add more space for student lounges and meeting places


• More computer labs for design oriented needs. We need greater purchasing power for current electronic devices (cell phones, PDA, media players) for research into design for small devices. Improved offices in building 7 are needed - individual office space. Professional level \"smart\" meeting rooms for industry conferences and meetings should impress and inspire industry to work with RIT.


• **A web hosting service that is current with todayís standards and allows for flexible setups and large space. It is a shame that you can get this for less than $10 a month off campus but at a technical school the standards are out of date and incapable of competing with what is available to the average person.


• The library resource is inadequate to support graduate level scholarship.


• Remove clueless administration, who have incredible power (on paper) but literally no real respect from faculty. Too many decisions are based on petty politics, back door deals, and money grubbing. Faculty opinions are ignored or quashed, students are mistreated and staff are unappreciated.


• Want to improve the entire climate? Remove Deans (and others) who have no valid experience managing people, working collaboratively and seeing the big picture. The admin. in my college is corrupt, I have seen the results of these behaviors in the number of good faculty who have elected to leave or been forced out of the Institute. Lies and miscues from admin abound, with faculty holding the bag for their bad decisions.


• Also, why do some colleges seem to actually help faculty, while others are roadblocks to positive changes? Well, once again in the case of CIAS especially, \'Absolute power corrupts...\' Witness no Portfolio based plans of work in CIAS, witness the administation of CIAS as a whole staffed by cronyism and the use of fear as the primary faculty motivator.


• I hear Al simone speak of ethical integrity, I witness this behavior amongst many faculty, students and staff, but when I see the actions of administration- what a sad joke.


• Of course I could never state these ideas in person, as I would (and have) been targeted by admin. when I\'m the only one mentioning the ethically challenged elephants in the room.


• Why am I writing these off topic ideas here? Well there are no other options. I cannot remember the last time that faculty did evaluations of admin. Admin makes their own rules, and if you disagree, or don\'t kowtow and or kiss their behinds; watch out- you\'ve just gained a big bullseye on your back with a Dean with an itchy trigger finger, who will not tolerate any disruptions to her secretive ill informed master plans.


• There are vitually no physical spaces available to do the kind of scholarly research that is required in my field.


• Not all classrooms are wireless.


• Some laboratory space dedicated to scholarship that is managed by individual faculty instead of the departments.


• Equipment that is dedicated to the same.


• Additional labs, offices (including for graduate students and post doctoral fellows)


• RIT in general needs more \"workshop\" format rooms, such as those in the College of Science, which have round tables and are equipt with AV devices. This will allow flexibility in room scheduling between collesges as well as potentially increasing interdisciplinary courses (discusscion followed by breakout group activities). Personally, I would also like to see more small (20 seat) computer labs created in all the colleges for specialized courses. Finally, RIT should work on creating access points to natural areas on campus, for use in lab exercises, since vans have gone to 6 passenger varieties, making transportation logistically difficult.


• The overall appearance of the campus has improved greatly in recent years. But this masks what is going on underneath. Basic facilites are deteriorating. Computers in faculty offices in liberal arts are several generations old and memory deficient. Using the Internet in these offices is like using a slow dialup connection. One machine takes 9 minutes from power-up to the time an Internet connection is available, and pages that load in 3 seconds on a laptop, take 20 seconds or more on the provided office desktops. Furniture is old, filthy, and run down. Maintenance is poor for everything from access systems, to bathroom fixtures, classroom lighting and projection equipment. Whiteboards in classrooms are not cleaned regularly, resulting in their becoming unusable. Access to needed facilities, such as copiers, is often unobtainable outside of regular business hours. Some full time faculty are housed in tiny, windowless basement offices with insufficient storage space. Adjunct faculty lack ANY office and storage space, making it difficult to keep office hours, have needed materials on hand and meet with students. Adjuncts are often excluded from participation in university and departmental decisions, functions and activities, at least partly because of lack of facilities.


• In my building, (building 14), we have inadequate space for communal activities. We have a mailroom that also houses our refrigerator, microwave and coffemaker, but there is no place to sit. Also, these two functions are really incompatible -- hard to prepare handouts for class when the work table is covered with food or with mail! Also, we have limited space for meetings and no real space to conduct experiments--I usally have to conduct these in my office--far from ideal. Brainstorming for the future often takes place where people can congregate, but that\'s not possible in building 14.


• Please ask the librarians to stop throwing away important texts. They perceive of WML as an undergraduate library [at least in mathematics]. If a larger library is unfeasible, the administration should be clear that it expects students to rely on Rush-Rhees or UB.


• All of the buildings need to be brought up to date. It\'s great to give programs new buildings, but we have old buildings that have poor ventilation, lack proper heating and cooling systems, have outdated and poor lighting and are generally beginning to deteriorate. For example, the building I teach in is not air-conditioned and it lacks natural ventilation on some floors. One of the computer labs I teach in has a leaking sewer pipe which has been oozing something brown for the past 5 years or more. Problems are rarely addressed in the older buildings - and the focus is on new.


• Another issue is the lack of decent faculty offices in our building. Most of the faculty have to share an office with one or more people and our offices are often old storage closets without ventilation or natural light.


• HOW ABOUT SOME CLASSROOMS TO TEACH IN??? WE DON\"T HAVE ENOUGH CLASSROOMS TO OFFER COURSES IN, YET WE KEEP THROWING UP NEW BUILDINGS WITHOUT ANY CLASSROOMS IN THEM. WHY DON\'T WE JUST GET RID OF THOSE PESKY UNDERGRADUATES AND CONVERT THE DORMS TO MORE RESEARCH SPACE?


• Most labs are equipped for teaching undergraduates. Hardware and software needed are not suitable for research level activities. Bring your own money to do that is the noted attitude of the administration. You need a system that has provides sufficient physical and human resources so that research activities can be developed over a period (atleast 3-5 years).


• Al Simone and RIT\'s plan to take on new and incremental activities \"on-the-cheap\" has reached the breaking point. Quiet office space for graduate students and labs for serious research - labs that are undisturbed by dozens of


• undergraduate students struggling to get their required projects completed


• - are almost completely neglected in the Strategic Plan. Heck, we have a


• classroom shortage now. Expanded graduate programs will require the


• introduction of new courses which further compete for classroom space.


• A standard start up package to fund equipment/supply purchases at standard research institutions to support one investigator doing modern research in molecular biology is about 100K. In the dept of biology at RIT, the start up funding is 10K. As such, across the board in molecular biology the supplies, equipment and space are deeply underfunded.


• student computer labs in 7A that are available every day and night; maybe not 24 hours, but later


• than they are currently open. Also, labs that have the same software so that students can easily


• move from lab to lab.


• also, I teach in the summer and air conditioning on the 3rd floor, 7 A would be nice.


• More funds direcied to dept level suppot of research students.


• For the COS if we (students and faculty) are going to do more research and use the summer as a major time to carry out research the entire building needs to be air conditioned.


• 1) limited space for teaching labs and grad students 2) loss of department controlled conference rooms for meetings, seminars, etc. 3) SMFL facility mixes industrial and academic users in common facility making research difficult in production-type equipment. 4) institute commitment of $400K to support a PhD in Microsystems was a joke when other institutions offer new-hires $200-400K start up package. 5) limited analytical instrumentation in SMFL


• Need many more smart classrooms as well as meeting places with access to technology for student groups. The classrooms in Eastman are too amall and inadequate in technology and flecxibility.


• Space and equipment is needed to work on longer term projects which may also be collaborative. It is currently difficult to find someplace to work or store equipment and supplies in a secure environment. No equipment exists for use in scholarship instead of for classroom use. The same equipment cannot serve both purposes. Additionally space for setting up completed projects to show is difficult to find. The ability to control light in the environment is often important.


• It is difficult to find an appropriate space to meet with industry folks when they come to visit. It feel really unprofessional to meet with them in a crowded office, especially when shared with another faculty member.


• The resources in the library are not nearly adaquate for serious scholarship.


• Some colleges, KGCOE and COS, have added and are adding more laboratories, offices, and meeting facilities. This also needs to be done for CAST.


• I can\'t say whether some of these are in the plan or not and I did read it some time ago.


• 1. provide better office space for faculty. some of us share while others are given their own spaces with no consistency across campus. 2. Support staff for faculty. there is really no secretarial support for the regular faculty. only for chairs. 3. repair facilities appropriately. We cant even get a broken window fixed since reporting it 8 months ago. there are no window screens and no air cond. in this part of Booth 7a either. 4. Faculty have no sense of \"community\" and nor does the lower level administration really support it. 5. unclear process for computer upgrading of faculty. While some get a new laptop every 3 years, some are still waiting for their first one even though their teaching requires a more current powerful computer, and others are working on older, dysfuntional equipment. Priority seems to be up to the admin. chair but her process is top secret and inadequate. Some staff are given upgrades while others are ignored making for problems when trying to utilize the support staff


• First, every classroom at RIT--especially those where liberal arts courses are taught--should be, at a minimum, smart classrooms. We still have some conditions where power point cannot be used without requesting projection carts which are cumbersome and not always working.


• Second, as RIT strives to encourage/facilitate the interaction between students formally engaged in scholarship with those not as engaged (p. 9), space is needed for department faculty to connect with students beyond the classroom. We currently have no space for graduate students or undergraduate students to congregate--beyond hallways and outside. As our department grows and student enrollment increases, I recommend space for students to congregate, office space (cubicles, etc) for graduate students, and space for faculty to meet and hold faculty meetings for 15 or more faculty (without having to go to a classroom).


• All in all, RIT does a good job and major improvements have been made; however, greater attention needs to be given to the liberal arts building(s)--any building where liberal arts faculty are housed and where liberal arts classes are taught.


• Offices need to be up-dated and more spacious. Windows need repair.


• More resources for technology and computers


• equipment needs to be checked more frequently to ensure that it functions during class time - connections, especially to www, break often and need to be replaced; color and contrast of projectors should be adjusted more frequently. When the technology doesn\'t work well, students and faculty and visitors end up using/viewing inferior presentations.


• More worktables in classrooms would be helpful. More display boards with adequate lighting to view the work.... and replacement of bulbs more frequently as they go out.


• The office space available to faculty in bldg 7B is inadequate, especially for our increasing need to mentor, advise and meet with students and other faculty. Two people per ofice makes it impossible to maintain confidentiality and is so crowded that reference material and other equipment most often must be stored elsewhere instead of in the office, where it would be immediately available for use.


• Thanks for your ongoing work to create a more appropriate work environment..