President's Newsletter for Faculty and Staff - February 2008
Dear Friends,
As the new semester gets underway, I’d like to take this opportunity to update you on the progress we are making toward some of the College’s long-term goals. I’ll also fill you in on some recent events and achievements.
I’ll begin by summarizing recent developments in higher education and the broad outlook for Baruch and CUNY in the months ahead.
The New York State Commission on Higher Education
On December 17, 2007, the New York State special Commission on Higher Education issued its recommendations to Governor Elliot Spitzer about the future of higher education in the state. CUNY formed part of the Commission membership with Chancellor Goldstein playing an active role. The Commission recommended hiring at least 2,000 additional full-time faculty at CUNY and SUNY over the next five years, including 250 eminent scholars. The Commission also recommended the creation of a $3 billion Empire State Innovation Fund, to support meritorious research important to New York’s future, and the establishment of a New York State Compact for Public Higher Education to clearly delineate shared responsibility for public higher education resources. Among the Commission’s other recommendations are the creation of a low-cost student loan program for New York State residents attending colleges in the state, the passage of a College Readiness Act to ensure that high school graduates are well-prepared for college, and a strengthening of articulation and transfer throughout SUNY and CUNY with a goal of system-wide articulation of comparable courses and seamless transfer into parallel programs by 2011-2012. The Commission report received very favorable publicity.
The Proposed State Executive Budget for FY 2008-2009
On January 24th, the Governor gave his State of the State speech in which he highlighted several points about higher education, most specifically his intent to set up a special investment fund of $4 billion from the possible privatization of the New York State Lottery to support critical investment in colleges and universities. Specific investment is aimed at the sciences and technology, particularly for research institutions such as SUNY Stony Brook and SUNY Buffalo
Unfortunately, recent signs of economic slowdown have resulted in an Executive Budget far less favorable to CUNY than we expected. The economic downturn has triggered calls for restraint on the part of Mayor Bloomberg and the Governor’s budget significantly lowers expectations for the CUNY senior colleges. Included in the governor’s plan is a call for a 2.5 percent, or $16.7 million, reduction in the operating budget of CUNY’s senior colleges, to be achieved by efficiencies. The budget does recommend a new five-year $2.8 billion capital investment plan for CUNY, of which $2.58 billion is earmarked for the senior colleges. CUNY’s own request, however, was for $7 billion to adequately meet the University’s needs for modernizing our aging infrastructure. Without this funding, various projects, including the renovation of the Field Building at 17 Lexington Avenue, will be delayed or put at risk.
The Executive Budget also does not provide for any investment dollars in support of the CUNY Compact nor does the budget provide for the modest five percent tuition increase the University had recommended. The University’s budget request sought $21.4 million in increased state support with an additional $33.2 million in revenues to be generated from a tuition increase, for a total of $54.6 million to finance an investment program. This budget provides for neither.
The Governor’s budget is currently under review by the New York State legislature. State leaders plan to decide on revenue targets and available funds by February 29 and aim at passing a budget by April 1, 2008. There is still time to improve next year’s budget and I urge you to make your voice heard by writing to your state legislators. Visit www.supportcuny.org to learn about what you can do to help gain critical dollars for Baruch’s future.
The Baruch Means Business Capital Campaign
Our Baruch Means Business Capital Campaign moves ahead with wonderful results. I am particularly grateful to the Campaign Steering Committee and to the excellent job done by the Office of College Advancement. As of last week, we have achieved commitments and cash of $62 million against our campaign goal of $150 million. Still in the silent
phase of the campaign, many of the BCF trustees have not only made substantial gifts to the Campaign but also have helped solicit donations from new donors and friends of the College. Most notable is the recent gift of Larry Field for $10 million to support entrepreneurship education at Baruch. We are deeply appreciative of Larry’s continued support and look forward to honoring him at the Bernard Baruch Annual Dinner on April 30th. Without the combined effort of many people, our Baruch Means Business Campaign would not be as successful as it is.
Search for the Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences
The search for the Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences continues with four candidates invited to campus. The pool of candidates was very strong and we are optimistic that we will be successful this year. In the interim, David Dannenbring is serving as acting dean of the School after Dean Myrna Chase’s retirement in January. The College is conducting about 30 searches for new faculty to begin in fall 2008. The searches are evenly distributed around the campus and represent some newly created positions as well as replacements for retiring faculty. We remain optimistic that our success in hiring over the past four years will continue, particularly as we try to hire endowed chair full professors in ethics and entrepreneurship
Naming the Department of Economics and Finance
On Monday, January 28, 2008, The City University of New York officially approved the naming of the Department of Economics and Finance in the Zicklin School of Business after Bert Wasserman. (’54) Baruch College Fund Trustee Sandy Wasserman’s (’55) very generous gift in memory of her late husband, Bert, is made in support of the Department, one of our key focus areas outlined in the College’s 2006-11 Strategic Plan. The Wasserman gift will endow the department and support the faculty and the curricula of finance.
The CUNY Institute for Demographic Research
At its November 2007 meeting, the CUNY Board of Trustees formally established the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research, housed at Baruch College. The Institute, which builds upon the strengths of the School of Public Affair’s Survey Research Unit and U.S. Census Bureau Research Data Center, will support a diverse range of scholarship appealing to researchers in all three schools of the College and throughout the University.
Enrollment
The College ran its third successful Winter Intersession program during the month of January, with nearly 2000 students taking advantage of the opportunity to take three- week courses between the fall and spring semesters. These winter session classes assist students in completing their degree requirements in a timely fashion, as well as providing the College with some additional tuition revenue. Spring enrollment numbers tracked to plan with the total number of students holding steady to the prior year.
Campus Master Plan
Work on our Campus Master Plan continues apace. As you may recall, the College’s last Master Plan in 1986 resulted in our stunning library building and the award-winning Newman Vertical Campus. During December, the master plan consulting firm FX Fowle conducted an extensive series of interviews with the faculty chairpersons of every academic department, as well as administrators representing all areas of the College. The data collected during these discussions will help fashion a comprehensive picture of the College’s space needs for the coming years.
In addition to the more general vision that will be outlined in the Master Plan, we have also begun more intensive work on the specific plans for the Lawrence and Eris Field Building at 17 Lexington Avenue. Engineers already conducted preliminary reviews of the College’s buildings to determine their condition. As expected, the Field building is in need of major revisions including removal of asbestos, new plumbing, new elevators, and new heating and air systems. It is expected that the renovation of the Field Building will be done in three to four stages and will take several years.
New Investments
Baruch College is known as a technologically sophisticated and state-of-the-art institution of higher education. To maintain that reputation, we will invest approximately $2.0 million this year to support desperately needed technology infrastructure upgrades, including new network switches and servers to provide more reliable service on campus, a new upgraded and unified email system for all full-time and part-time employees, and the accelerated replacement of outdated computers for our faculty and staff. We also facilitated the purchase of additional licenses for Bloomberg terminals in the Wasserman Trading Floor as well as full text, on-line significant new journal indexes for faculty research.
In addition, we funded facilities upgrades for a number of our most heavily used student service offices, and the upgrade of (and creation of) additional study spaces for students in the Newman library, and the creation of more student lounge areas in the Newman Vertical Campus. A “Clean Up Baruch” campaign was initiated by our Buildings and Grounds crews with significant improvement in the overall appearance and cleanliness of the campus. New window installations went live along Lexington Avenue and also 25th Street to give the College more visibility.
Assuring Quality Education
One of the key goals outlined in the Strategic Plan was to build the College’s culture of service and accountability in the pursuit of excellence. I am pleased to report that we have made dramatic strides towards achieving this goal. We have created a schedule of external reviews so that all academic departments and programs are assessed every 5 years by experts in the field; this ensures that our curricula keep pace with national standards, that our programs are structured optimally to play to the strengths of our existing faculty, and that we think strategically about new hires to add the most value. A new, more formalized review process now exists for all faculty who hold endowed chairs or other distinctions.
External accreditation reviews continue to play an important role in helping us maintain the very highest standards for our academic programs. The School of Public Affairs will undergo its six year accreditation by NASSPA this spring. We began the process of preparing for the Middles States accreditation which will take place in 2010 and for the AACSB accreditation of the Zicklin School of Business in 2011. Most importantly, the trend for all higher education accrediting bodies has been toward an ever-increasing emphasis on learning assessment outcomes. This new assessment paradigm has required a dramatic shift in the way faculty design courses and majors, and in the way they interact with each other. I congratulate the faculty on their efforts to review curricula and to assure student learning.
A Boost to Research
On December 7, 2007, I had the distinct pleasure of formally dedicating the Research and Statistical Consulting Laboratory on the 11th floor of the Newman Vertical Campus. . This new facility was part our strategic initiative for the College and support for it was provided by the Baruch College Fund. Under the direction of Professors Shulamith Gross and Karl Lang, both part of the statistics sector of the SCIS department, it has the potential to positively impact virtually ever aspect of research at Baruch College.
Improving Student Services
I am happy to announce that Ben Corpus, VP for Students, has expanded the availability of vital student services to evening hours by keeping many offices open until 8 pm on Wednesday nights. This will be of great help to the many Baruch students who work days and attend classes in the evening. The offices that will now remain open until 8 pm are: Financial Aid, Student Life, The Registrar, Undergraduate Admissions, the Starr Career Development Center, the Student Academic Consulting Center (SACC), Disability Services, The Center for Achievement & Orientation, the International Student Center, the Bursar, Testing and Evaluation, Athletics, the Student Health Center, the Dean of Students, the Writing Center, and the Bookstore. In addition, many offices in the three schools will also remain open on Wednesday evenings to better support students. I thank the deans and VP Corpus and provost McCarthy for coordinating this service.
Achievement and Visibility
In December, The Council for Advancement and Support of Education, an international association of university fundraising and alumni relations professionals, has awarded one of our alumni events its 2008 CASE District II Gold Medal for Alumni Relations Programming. This national recognition went to the 75th Anniversary celebration of The Ticker held in June 2007. At the event, Professor Roz Bernstein of Journalism conducted a panel with past Ticker editors and leading journalists. Over 200 alumni attended the event. Everyone involved with this wonderful event deserves congratulations.
Equally exciting is the news that Baruch College will be awarded the prestigious 2008 TIAA-CREF Theodore Hesburgh Award for outstanding faculty development programs related to our communication programs supported by the Bernard Schwartz Communication Institute. Established in 1997 with a gift from Bernard L. Schwartz,(’48), the Institute collaborates with faculty members at Baruch to infuse communication-intensive activities into the curriculum The award will be presented at the annual meeting of ACE and will be featured in a full-page advertisement in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Mikhail Gershovich, director of the Institute and Associate Provost Dennis Slavin will be accepting the award in San Diego on behalf of the College.
The CUNY Board of Trustees has conferred the distinction of CUNY Distinguished Professor upon Baruch College art historian Gail Levin of the Weissman School’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts The title designates an exceptional scholar with an international reputation. Gail Levin is a professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women’s Studies at Baruch and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include the work of Edward Hopper, Judy Chicago, Marsden Hartley, among others. She is currently in the Netherlands on a Fulbright at work on a biography of the Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner.
We also received the good news that a team of five Baruch accounting students in the Zicklin School won first place at the PricewaterhouseCoopers xACT accounting debate competition, held at Baruch this past November. The xACT xTreme Campus Competition is designed to expose students to real world accounting and auditing issues. Baruch’s winning team beat out 11 other groups of accounting students. Calling themselves Pros: “Profit, Proficiency, Property,” the Baruch team included students Olivia Perkowski, Maxim Bakaleynik, Serhiy Banashko, Alex Aleksandrovich, and Leo Gabovich.
Other Faculty Awards, Honors and Distinctions
I very much hope you had the opportunity to read “A Toy Maker’s Conscience” in the December 23, 2007, New York Times, which profiled Baruch College’s Distinguished Professor of Management S. Prakash Sethi. With recent scandals regarding product safety, especially in the Chinese-manufactured toy industry, the scope of his work in corporate responsibility has the potential to expand dramatically.
On January 3, 2008, Crain’s New York Business ran a terrific piece on “Opting Back In,” a new Zicklin School program designed to help professional women who have been out of the workforce, resume their career paths. The three-day intensive program was designed by Baruch Professor of Management Cynthia Thompson, along with Nancy Leighton, a career counselor, and Peggy Segal, a former private equity banker now specializing in helping women re-launch their careers.
Also prominent in the press was the Zicklin School’s new Master of Science in Real Estate program which received extensive coverage in the Dec. 3-9, 2007 issue of Crain’s New York. Associate Professor Rui Yao spoke of the increased need for advanced training in real estate and the consequent demand for the new master’s level program.
Anyone paying attention to the gathering momentum of the 2008 presidential race will probably have seen a trio of School of Public Affairs analysts on television or in the press commenting on the fortunes of the various political candidates. SPA Dean David Birdsell, Professor Doug Muzzio, and Distinguished Lecturer Mickey Blum (recently hired to direct the School of Public Affairs Research Unit) have been part of the political dialogue on an almost nightly basis. Just in the past month they’ve appeared on New York 1 News, Ch. 2, 4, 7, 11, NPR and in newspapers too numerous to mention.
Closely watching stock market gyrations and the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis, Professor Terrance Martell was quoted in the New York Daily News on Thursday, Jan. 17.. He also appeared on the WNBC, Ch. 4 news the following day discussing the jittery markets and the possibility of an economic downturn.
We are also very pleased by the positive critical attention being paid to University Distinguished Professor of English John Brenkman’s book, The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought Since September 11 (Princeton University Press, 2007), a timely excursion into contemporary intellectual history,
Robert C. Smith, Associate Professor of Public Affairs in Baruch’s School of Public Affairs (SPA), is the winner of the American Sociological Association's (ASA) 2007 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award for his acclaimed work, Mexican New York: Transnational Worlds of New Immigrants (University of California Press, 2005). Since the ASA consists of 44 special interest sections and has over 21,000 members, the award’s prestige is considerable and places Smith in the top rank of scholars in his field.
The CFO survey jointly conducted by the Financial Executives Institute (FEI) and the Zicklin School was released on Jan 30 and picked up in the media by, among other news organizations, Reuters, ABC-TV, Forbes.com and MarketWatch. Zicklin Dean John Elliott was quoted in the Financial Times saying that “The fundamental pressure on the whole economy is the level of uncertainty,” accounting for the mixture of hope and gloom being reported by CFOs across the nation.
On January 30, Professor Elissa Grossman of the Department of Management and the Field Center was honored as the winner of the Acton Foundation’s Master Teacher Award. Grossman, who was nominated by one of her students, was one of three teachers from across the country to win this year’s Entrepreneurship Master Teacher Award.
Carl Rollyson, professor of English at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a 2008-2009 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers to complete his book on the New England poet Amy Lowell. He won on two previous occasions for a biography of Rebecca West and for A Higher Form of Cannibalism, a book on the art of biography.
Last but certainly not least, Professor Terry Berkowitz, chair of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, currently has a one-person exhibition of her work at Madrid’s Galeria Magda Bellotti. The exhibition, titled 1402-1944, features two works, The Malaya Lola Project and Is This Where My Family Lived? Both are installations that tackle war crimes, racial bigotry, and family history.
Kathleen Waldron
