August, 2006

Dear Friends,

Please remember that the second Annual Presidential Ice Cream Social is on Thursday, August 10 at 2:30pm to 4pm in the first floor cafeteria of the Newman Vertical Campus Building. Come and join your friends and colleagues for ice cream sundaes and good old-fashioned fun.

I want to share with you some news in anticipation of the new school year.

We continue to participate in a number of external rankings of our academic programs. U.S. News & World Report ranked the Full-Time MBA program 70th in the country, while the part-time MBA ranking improved to 17th, up from 25th in 2005. The undergraduate business ranking remained in top 50 (47th), and the overall undergraduate program was also ranked in the top 50 schools in the Northeast region. Princeton Review named Baruch as a “best value school” and a “best northeast school.” Baruch was also named the most diverse in the country for the 7th year in a row. The accountancy programs received final reaccreditation in late spring from AACSB International – the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business - representing the highest standard of achievement for a business school department.

Faculty News

The College began a series of new investments in the promotion of faculty scholarship and research in the past few years. The emphasis on scholarly activity continues to develop. Faculty research awards increased from $4.4 million to $5 million during 2005-2006 as we added staff to the Office of Sponsored Programs and Research. In addition, the Office of the Provost provided $300,000 to substantially increase funds for faculty travel, summer research, and graduate assistantships. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) Committee was the first within CUNY to have all its members complete the new CITI training, and they were able to reduce review time by nearly 50%. In 2004-2005 (the last year for which data is available), Baruch faculty wrote 23 books; edited 9 books; and had 199 peer-reviewed articles published. An additional 30 articles and 85 book chapters were published. Faculty developed 18 creative works.

I would like to draw attention to one faculty award in particular. The Business and Finance Division of the Special Libraries Association selected Professor Rita Ormsby, information services librarian, as the recipient of the 2006 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Business Librarianship. This award recognizes an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of business and finance librarianship and information science. The selection committee cited Professor Ormsby’s work on a proposal that led to a $240,000 grant from the NASD Investor Education Foundation to develop an interactive computer-based investment guide tailored to young adults making career choices.

Student Awards and Achievement

A large number of Baruch students won awards and recognition for their accomplishments this past school year.

• Bharath Govindarajan, graduate student, earned second place in the Interactive Brokers Collegiate Trading Olympiad.
• Two Baruch College juniors, Winnifred Lee and Yan Kuznetsov, were awarded Colin Powell Fellowships in International Diplomacy sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
• Sarah Li, a Baruch biology major with a 3.916 GPA, was selected as a City University Jonas E. Salk Scholar.
• Nathaniel Younger, a graduating senior at Baruch, won second place in the prestigious Bank of America Youth Entrepreneur competition.
• Sophomore Boris Mordkovich was the second-place New York State winner in the 2006 East Coast Student Entrepreneur Award competition.
• Baruch seniors John Lisyanskiy and Brian Switzer were inducted into Pi Alpha Alpha Honor Society, the national public affairs honors society.

Our students have also recently won some of the most prestigious, competitive national and regional scholarships available including the Goldman Sachs Scholarship for Excellence; Management Leadership for Tomorrow scholarship; New York Society of Security Analysts scholarship; New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants scholarship; United Negro College Fund/Merck Science Scholarship; 100 Hispanic Women; Women Executives in Real Estate Scholarships; INROADS scholarship; Gates Millennium Hispanic Scholarship; Sponsors for Educational Opportunity scholarship; HIAS Scholarship Award; Albert Shanker College Scholarship Award; Jewish Foundation of Women Scholarship; Goldsmith Scholarship; Fleet scholarship; NY1 Scholar Athlete Award; Kiwanis Local Business Group Scholarship; Local 23-25 Unite Textbook Scholarship; Families of Freedom scholarship; Citizens’ Foundation of America scholarship; JPMorganChase--Thomas G. Labrecque Smart Start Scholarship; US Merit Scholarship Hyatt Corporation Scholarship; and the BP Community Scholarship.

Athletics

Baruch College hosted its inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame Dinner on June 8, 2006, honoring nine extraordinary alumni student-athletes and athletics department staff who demonstrated outstanding achievement and commitment. The nine inductees present at the dinner with over 150 participants were Burt Beagle, Yvette Forges-Caraballo, Sean McGee, Sybil Smith, Hilary Williams, Rodger Miller, Al Peredo, Narces Phanor, and Harvey Jackson.

The College had an outstanding athletics year. The Bearcats captured the CUNY Athletic Conference Commissioner’s Cup Trophy in a closely contested race with rivals Staten Island and Hunter. The women’s basketball team won the CUNYAC championship to produce its first NCAA berth and became the first in CUNY history to win a NCAA women’s tournament game. Justin Stack was named CUNYAC Coach of the Year (for the second straight time) for men’s volleyball. Machli Joseph was named CUNYAC Coach of the Year and Metropolitan Basketball Writers/N.I.T.Coach of the Year for women’s basketball. Ray Rankis was named CUNYAC Coach of the Year for men’s basketball.

College Advancement

Baruch College has received the largest foundation gift in Baruch’s history from The Starr Foundation to provide our students with advanced professional development preparation as soon as they matriculate. The Starr Foundation is providing an initial gift of $2 million with matching funds of up to $3 million over the next three years for Baruch to develop a national model for the professional development of our students. We new name for the Career Development Center will be The Starr Career Development Office at Baruch College, and we will expand and develop new initiatives to align traditional career services with networking, mentoring, internships, leadership, and motivation. The objective of the Starr Career Development Office is to successfully prime students for job placement, postgraduate education, and career advancement upon their graduation from Baruch. The Starr Career Development Office at Baruch College will allow us to deliver more expansive services that will enhance the professional lives of our students and will be fully integrated with our excellent curriculum.

David Krell, MBA ‘71 and president and CEO of International Securities Exchange, made a new donation of $2 million to fund an endowed chair in finance, bringing the number of endowed academic chairs at the College to thirteen.

Baruch received $500,000 from our Council Member Rosie Mendez and an additional $142,000 from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer to fund comprehensive external lighting for the Newman Vertical Campus building.

The Office of Alumni Relations completed its first year of operation with a host of activities and now is organizing an alumni weekend “Reunion 2006” on October 14th and 15th. All alumni are invited to attend any of the planned activities. The weekend will honor the Class of 1956 Gold Anniversary Fiftieth Class Reunion, the Class of 1981 Silver Anniversary Twenty-fifth Class Reunion, and the Anniversary of Graduation Classes 1946 and 1966. For more information, visit http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/alumni/reunion2006/

Here are just a few highlights from Alumni Relations’ Spring 2006 semester:

• Regional alumni events were held in the DC capital region, California, and Florida.

• The 2006 Battle for Lexington Ave extravaganza invited alumni, donors, and prospective students to attend the annual basketball doubleheader of Baruch’s men’s and women’s teams playing against (and beating) Hunter’s.

• The following events gathered alumni within academic programs: School of Public Affairs Alumni “Professional Advancement How to Master It!”; Healthcare Alumni Event “Pay for Performance”; Business Journalism Program alumni and student event, Life After Baruch: How to Find a Job in a Tough Market.

• The Baruch Young Alumni Network (BYAN) event, featuring a comedic performance by the NY Boyz of Comedy, marked the launch of a new alumni group specifically targeting alumni who have graduated in the last 10 years.

• Baruch College and the Graduate Student Assembly hosted the First Annual Alumni Networking Brunch, "Leadership in the 21st Century" in May.

• National Urban Fellows/Baruch Alumni held the alumni event "Manifest Your Destiny," featuring actor Hill Harper of CSI New York fame and noted author of Letters to a Young Brother.

I will share with you the profile of our entering undergraduate and graduate classes once the data is in and has been compiled, which we expect to have in early fall.

Enjoy the remainder of your summer.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Waldron