October 2005 — Vol. 2, No. 2
Dear Faculty and Staff Members of the Baruch College Community:
I am pleased to share some plans and news with you.
Strategic Planning Update
Progress on our strategic planning process, begun earlier this year, continues apace. In June the College hosted a major planning retreat, involving members of the Strategic Planning Council and members of each of the planning committees and task forces. Over 70 participants, including faculty, administrators, students, and alumni, gathered the week after Commencement to discuss the future of Baruch College and strategies for making our collective dreams realities.
Throughout the summer, committees and task forces, composed of over a hundred members of the Baruch College community, continued to meet—both in person and electronically—to prepare recommendations on topics that include curriculum, faculty research, excellence in teaching and learning, student affairs, finance and productivity, enhancing the College’s visibility, and improving the physical campus. Each of these committees subsequently presented recommendations to the Strategic Planning Council late in September. These reports are available to the Baruch College community through our strategic planning Blackboard site, which can be accessed through a distinct tab at the top of all Blackboard users’ opening pages. In addition, all reports are available at the Newman Library Reference desk.
A draft of the strategic plan will be released campus-wide on November 1 to provide an opportunity for both formal and informal discussion and feedback. There will be town hall meetings for students as well as faculty and staff. Presentations and discussions will be held throughout the fall at regular faculty meetings, including those of each of the schools and the Faculty Senate. Meetings with student leaders, the leadership of The Baruch College Fund, alumni groups, and the central administration of CUNY will be held to ensure all constituencies have the opportunity to be heard. In addition, written comments will be solicited through Blackboard and e-mail.
Our goal is to have a College-wide strategic plan in place by early 2006 to ensure that when we begin a new capital campaign we will have our strategic priorities established.
Academic News
In addition to other support provided annually by The Baruch College Fund, we received $500,000 to support Faculty Development for the 2006 fiscal year. This support is an extraordinary vote of confidence in the faculty and represents an interest in promoting teaching and research to improve the experience of all students at the College. The Provost’s Office, the academic deans, the Joint Committee on Research, and the Committee on Excellence in Teaching and Learning have identified projects that we believe will significantly improve teaching at Baruch College and provide new support for faculty research. These include master teacher workshops, support for graduate assistants, summer support for research projects, one-on-one teaching feedback through videotaping, and conference travel support for faculty.
In August the Department of Education of the State of New York approved the new undergraduate BBA degree in business real estate to be offered by the Zicklin School of Business. We are very pleased with this approval, which now allows us to create a first-class business real estate degree program at Baruch College. The College has a new Department of Real Estate in the Zicklin School and continues to offer its Bachelor of Science in real estate and metropolitan development through the School of Public Affairs. We are also happy this fall to welcome three new faculty members in the area of real estate to the Zicklin School of Business, including the Newman Chair of Real Estate and chair of the new department, Professor Ko Wang.
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Baruch’s Computer Center for Visually Impaired People a three-year grant of $964,107 to implement PeopleTech, a project to create an effective working infrastructure that integrates faculty, students with disabilities, and the assistive technologies that facilitate effective instruction, including student assessment and evaluation. This is a thrilling opportunity to enhance access to excellence for all students with disabilities.
Faculty News
This fall, we welcome a number of new faculty members to the College: in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, Daniele Artistico and Loren J. Naidoo (Psychology), John Maciuika (Fine and Performing Arts), and Michael Staub (English); in the Zicklin School of Business, Micki Eisenman and Mary Kern (Management), Sang Young Song and Ana Valenzuela (Marketing), Susan Young (Accountancy), and Ko Wang and Suparna Chakraborty (Real Estate); in the School of Public Affairs, Dall Forsythe; and in the Newman Library, Linda Rath and Katherine Shelfer.
Congratulations to Public Affairs Professors Gregg Van Ryzin, Doug Muzzio, and Stephen Immerwahr for winning the Louis Brownlow Memorial Award of the American Society for Public Administration. They won the prestigious prize for their Public Administration Review article “Drivers and Consequences of Citizen Satisfaction: An Application of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Model to New York City.” The article was based on their citizen survey, conducted during 2000 and 2001, which was supported by the Citizens Union and the School of Public Affairs. This award brings great credit and visibility to SPA and Baruch College.
From September 29 to October 1, language teachers and scholars from Nigeria, Japan, Denmark, and the Czech Republic joined faculty from CUNY colleges and other U.S. institutions to debate foreign language teaching programs and practices in a wide array of cultural settings. “The Geolinguistics of Foreign Language Teaching: Will Minority Languages Become Extinct?” addressed second-language acquisition, the increasing dominance of English, and the precarious survival of minority languages in the global environment. The event was organized by Wayne Finke, professor of modern languages and comparative literature at Baruch and director of the American Society of Geolinguistics. Speakers included Baruch professors Juan Alcaide, Alfonso Guerriero, Jr., and Renee Nishan.
Baruch English/Business Journalism Professor Christopher Hallowell was a highly sought-after consultant and guest on National Public Radio in the days following Hurricane Katrina. Hallowell’s 2001 book Holding Back the Sea (HarperCollins) foretold the dire consequences of poorly maintained levees on the coastal regions of Louisiana and Mississippi.
Distinguished Guest
On Saturday, October 22, the College hosted a small luncheon on campus with Cherie Booth Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A passionate defender of human rights around the world, Mrs. Blair is the president of the Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba Memorial Trust, whose goal is to educate the children of poor widows in India. The trust currently educates more than 2,200 children in 15 states. The Loomba Trust was founded by Raj Loomba, brother of Dr. N. Paul Loomba, professor of management at Baruch College. Mr. Loomba graciously offered to introduce Mrs. Blair to Baruch College during their trip to New York for the official launching of International Widows’ Day at the United Nations.
Student News
Two Baruch College students, Ladylaura Simao and Doreen King, have been chosen as recipients of the highly prestigious and competitive Belle Zeller Scholarship. This scholarship requires that candidates show a blend of outstanding scholastic performance (3.75 GPA or higher) in conjunction with an outstanding record of community involvement and leadership within the College and/or university communities. Approximately a dozen of these scholarships are awarded annually to full-time students within the CUNY family.
For their leadership and participation in Disability Mentoring Day, two Baruch students, Mudhaffer Al-Momani and Steven Swartztrauber, as well as Barbara Sirois, director of disability services, were invited by the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities to the New York Stock Exchange on October 4. There, they joined Matthew Sapolin, executive director of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, when he rang the opening bell to highlight October as National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
Baruch is always looking to invest in our future. On Friday, November 4, and Friday, November 18, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions will host the College for a Day program for high school seniors. Students will attend two sample college-level classes, tour College facilities, and meet with current students and representatives from our Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Offices. The program will attract hundreds of prospective students and introduce them to the Baruch College experience. I thank those who have volunteered to teach a class; those who wish to volunteer can contact David Keller in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.
The Generosity of the Baruch Community
As an international community, Baruch College feels deeply the devastating effects of natural disasters around the world. I am grateful to the faculty, staff, and students who have reached out and given their assistance in our organized efforts to make a difference in the lives of the many people who have been affected by the uncommon number of recent disasters. The fundraising efforts and clothing drive for the victims of Hurricane Katrina will continue through the end of this month. To date, more than $7,000 has been collected. Efforts have also been made to help those who survived the horrible earthquake that wracked South Asia and the devastating mudslides in Central America and southern Mexico, with contributions totaling approximately $3,000 thus far.
Sympathy backed by action is a hallmark of an engaged university. I, personally, have felt our community’s generosity throughout my first year and the beginning of my second year as president. I look forward to realizing all of our efforts to improve our world—within the College and beyond.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Waldron