January 2007 Dear Friends, I want to share with you some news now that the Spring semester is underway. Strategic Plan Implementation It is one year since the College adopted the Baruch College Strategic Plan, 2006-2011, and I thought this would be a good time to give you a sense of the progress we have made against the plan. You may recall that in the Plan, we stated that building upon its history of excellence and opportunity, Baruch College will become an institution of prominence, recognized for the quality and affordability of its education that enables the rapid upward mobility of its diverse student body. We reaffirmed our commitment to the core values of quality, diversity, community, and integrity. And we set forth six overarching goals to guide us through the next six years:
Academics Over the past year the Zicklin School of Business produced strategic plans for improving its overall rankings; for enhancing the quality of the part-time MBA offering (currently a top 25-ranked program); and for the newly established Department of Real Estate. A formal strategy for the Stan Ross Department of Accountancy was developed. In the Weissman School, the small but already high-quality graduate program in applied mathematics for finance, now renamed Financial Engineering, has produced an ambitious plan for growth. Marketing efforts such as a completely revamped website and outreach to the press have reaped a 30% increase in applications and a mention in the Wall Street Journal. Starting salaries for graduates of the program average over $100,000, and an active and dedicated alumni group has self-organized with support from our Alumni Relations Office. The Communications Studies department brought in outside evaluators this fall to assist in planning, and the Journalism faculty have submitted proposals for two new undergraduate majors and are hiring two new faculty. The School of Public Affairs has just completed its own ambitious strategic plan. In addition, the College succeeded in attracting the CUNY Demographic Institute to Baruch and under our leadership, to work closely with the New York Census Research Data Center, opened here in September of 2006. A Center for Non Profit Strategy and Management was proposed to CUNY this month. The College will also welcome a new chief academic officer this June. James McCarthy, Dean of the School of Health and Human Services and Professor of Health Management and Policy at the University of New Hampshire, has been named Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, pending confirmation by the CUNY Board of Trustees. A widely published authority on adolescent and reproductive health care and on demography, McCarthy served as Director of the Heilbrunn Center for Population and Family Health at Columbia University and in a similar position at Johns Hopkins prior to his appointment at UNH. We completed our search for the Director of the Newman Real Estate Institute, and are pleased to announce that Jack Nyman has accepted the position effective February. Jack joins us from a Harvard International Visiting Research Fellowship where he studied real estate development. Prior to that, he was a senior officer in commercial and residential real estate for more than two decades, including establishing and directly managing two successful property companies. He has extensive development and investment experience in the global real estate market from across North America to Asia. Student Affairs In perhaps the most dramatic leap forward in achieving our goals, last spring the College received a $2 million grant from the Starr Foundation – with the potential for an additional $3 million – in support of programs that aid in the professional development of our undergraduates. The Starr Career Development Center has already brought on new staff to offer services that range from advising students who wish to pursue graduate studies to workshops on soft-skill development such as public speaking, interview skills and resume writing. Our enrollment management moves forward with outreach to some of the best high schools in New York City to recruit high performing students for our freshmen class. The entering class of fall 2006 had SAT scores averaging 1118, ten points higher than 2005 and 97 points higher than the national average score. Our goal of constantly improving the quality of students attending Baruch College moves forward. Campus Environment The College is creating a Campus Master Plan for facilities, a necessary preliminary step toward the renovation of the Lawrence and Eris Field Building at 17 Lexington Avenue. The Campus Master Plan is being conducted by the firm FX Fowle, directed by an executive committee comprised of both Baruch College and CUNY executives. We are guided in our efforts by the College Facilities Committee, a large group comprised of faculty, administrators, and students, who serve an advisory role to the planning process. We anticipate that the Master Plan will be presented to the CUNY Board of Trustees in September 2007. The College’s last Master Plan was produced in 1986, and resulted in our stunning Newman Library building and spectacular Newman Vertical Campus, so we are well aware of the impact on the future life of the College that this plan will have. We continue to explore the possibility of a residence hall for students. Market surveys and polls of current students suggest there is significant interest, and CUNY is supportive as it has built a dormitory which opened at City College in fall 2006. Although a 500-person residence hall would house only a small fraction of our entire student body, and thus not negatively effect our commitment to traditional mission, we believe that it would attract exceptional students and enhance the character of student extracurricular life. We are actively looking at several properties in the neighborhood and have identified financing mechanisms that would enable us to enter the housing market with very little financial risk. Building a Strong Foundation The Baruch College Fund has endorsed the launch of a significant fundraising campaign in 2008. I will report back when we have completed the case statement for our campaign. Increasing Visibility Karen Gourgey, director of Baruch’s Computer Center for Visually Impaired People, was granted a patent this fall for her technology breakthrough the Talking Tactile Tablet, an interactive computer peripheral device that visually impaired people can use. The “touch and talk” technology requires no knowledge of Braille, nor any prior computer knowledge. The device is modestly priced and is expected to be widely used by schools for the visually handicapped and others. Gourgey was interviewed by New York Times for a November 2, 2006 segment on the nytimes.com podcast series “Tech Talk.” The magazine Campus Technology, in a piece on best practices in campus connectivity, featured our CIO, Arthur Downing, and Baruch’s partnership with Rave Wireless, “Air Baruch,” a collection of cell-phone accessible applications for academic-oriented uses. The software allows students to use cell phones to check the availability of loaner laptops and study rooms, receive text messages about class changes or cancellations, and to join groups to correspond with students with similar academic interests. An hour-long program for national public television called CEO Exchange will be taped on March 14, 2007 in Mason Hall featuring Sir Howard Stringer, CEO of SONY, and Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, and moderated by CNN journalist Jeff Greenfield. Dean John Elliott appeared on CNBC in December 2006 and close to 100 faculty members from all schools appeared as experts in the media. We have made significant efforts to raise my public profile as President of Baruch College. Some engagements that may be of interest include a presentation on January 31 to the Women’s City Club of New York entitled “Diversity in the Corporate Workforce: Encouraging it, Training for it and Supporting it”; and a presentation at the Conference Board's Annual Diversity Conference: Rhythms of Our World: Examining and Honoring Our Uniqueness and Multiplicities in San Diego on March 29, 2007. We also anticipate an article under my byline to appear in the Spring issue of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine. CUNY Central will launch an ad campaign this year with the theme, “Look Who’s Teaching at CUNY,” which they will run concurrently with their student-oriented “Superstars Choose CUNY” program. We will make sure that Baruch faculty members and students are showcased in both. Thank you for your work on behalf of Baruch College. Sincerely, Kathleen Waldron
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