December 2004 -- Vol. 1 No. 2

Dear Faculty and Staff Members of the Baruch College Community:

One of my goals as president is to provide more information about critical issues to all members of the community and to build a greater sense of community at Baruch College. This, I believe, will make Baruch a better place to work and a stronger college.

Toward that end, I recently began holding wine and cheese receptions for small groups of faculty and staff. The guests are randomly chosen, and my goal is to invite all employees over the next year or so. I have also met with the faculty of the schools, spoken at several departmental meetings, and attended numerous student events. I hope to meet many more of you as I accept your holiday party invitations.

Budget and Enrollment

Over the past few weeks, we have provided additional reports about the budgeting process and about enrollment management. These reports are available on the Faculty Senate website. The budget process is a long and complicated affair due to our varied sources of funding and dependency upon Albany. Nevertheless, we are determined to provide more information about how financial and resource allocation decisions are made.

Enrollment is strong with 15,150 students registered this fall. More than 9,000 students applied for 1,700 freshman seats--an impressive applicant pool, attesting to the reputation of our college. You are all to be commended for the remarkable quality and vitality of the college. Next year, we expect to maintain this level of enrollment, but we will focus on more specific program enrollments where needed.

Supporting Faculty Research

Scholarly inquiry is central to the life of an academic institution. And yet professors, particularly those in the beginning of their careers, often encounter obstacles to conducting research. At Baruch, we have several programs to assist these scholars.

The Eugene M. Lang Junior Faculty Research Fellowships was created in 1998 by Eugene Lang, a businessman known for his education philanthropy. To date, 40 professors from all three schools have been awarded fellowships, including seven new recipients who were honored at a recent reception. They are Raquel Benbunan-Fich (Statistics), Jay Dahya (Economics and Finance), Thomas Desch-Obi (History), Charlotte Strunk Hansen (Economics and Finance), Mehmet Ozbilgin (Accountancy), Jaihyun Park (Psychology), and Ying Li (Accountancy). The fellowships will fund research, travel, and other expenses.

The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowships gives junior faculty members in the Weissman School a leave from teaching to conduct significant research in the humanities. This year’s recipients are Shelly Eversley (English), who will conduct archival research for her book, Integration and Its Discontents: African-American Literature, 1944-1967, and Noriko Watanabe (Modern Languages and Comparative Literature), who is researching rakugo, a 300-year-old Japanese storytelling genre.

Finally, the college encourages faculty to apply for research and other grants to support their activity. Last fiscal year, Baruch received approximately $3.6 million in grants and contracts—up from $2.1 million the previous year. Many of those awards were for research, and earlier this month, Chancellor Goldstein honored faculty researchers throughout the university.

Those honored from Baruch were Stan Altman (SPA), Kapil Bawa (Marketing), Neil G. Bennett (SPA), Hector Cordero-Guzman (Black & Hispanic Studies), James Coyle (Marketing), James DeFilippis (Black & Hispanic Studies), Barbara Fife (SPA), Kevin Frank (English), Janet C. Gornick (Political Science), Barry Hersh (Newman Real Estate Institute), Stephen Immerwahr (SPA), Anita Mayo (Mathematics), Thomas Desch-Obi (History), Carroll Seron (SPA), Shoshanna Sofaer (SPA), Kristin Sommer (Psychology), Edward B. Tucker (Natural Sciences), Gregg Van Ryzin (SPA), Lynne Weikart (SPA), Joseph B. Weintrop (Accountancy), and Renee Weiss (Accountancy).

Given the size and caliber of our faculty, we can do even better. Alan Evelyn, director of the Office of Sponsored Programs and Research, reports that the first quarter activity for 2004-2005 shows a significant increase in the number of proposals submitted and $1.3 million already received from a number of entities, including Atlantic Philanthropies, the New York City Department of Education and the National Science Foundation.

We encourage the faculty to continue to pursue grant activity, and I have asked the provost and the academic deans to make a concerted effort with the faculty in the coming year. In addition, I asked Brian Kell to join the Office of College Advancement as executive director of government and community relations to initiate grant proposals to government agencies.

Anniversaries, Recognition, and Events

Baruch’s chapter of the Golden Key International Honor Society celebrated 15 years on our campus in November. During that time, the chapter has inducted about 4,500 students, including more than 270 who joined this semester. In addition to promoting academic excellence, Golden Key sponsors community service projects that all Baruch students can participate in. Recently, our chapter was recognized as having the Best Service Program for its extensive activity with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.

The Weissman Center for International Business celebrated its 10th anniversary at a gala dinner to honor George Weissman, Class of ’39, and his wife, Mildred. The Weissman’s generously endowed the center and have continued to support its activities by offering study abroad opportunities and providing a stimulating lecture series of prominent international speakers.

The Direct Marketing Club of New York honored 14 Baruch students for creating winning campaigns in the Collegiate Echo Competition. Our students, all members of Harvey Markovit’z direct marketing course, created a campaign to encourage women who own small business to use the Advanta credit card. The student winners are Hye-Youn Kim, Jorge Miranda, Sachin Panjwani, Lara Solomon, Jonathan Futter, Divanna Gilleaudeau, Michael Stromer, Debbie Avery, Asaph Elan, Prianka Advani, Anita Raghavan, Lijo Joseph, Chaim Langer, and Marcela Solano. Instruction in direct marketing got a boost with the opening last week of the new direct marketing laboratory in the Newman Library.

The Baruch Performing Arts Center hosted more than a thousand elementary school children on campus last week with TheatreWorksUSA, the oldest professional touring children’s theater in the country. The series of eight events is just one of the many activities BPAC offers to enrich the cultural life of the college and community.

Zicklin faculty conducted a two-day seminar in the Subotnick Center on "Teaching Microstructure and Using Trading Floors in MBA Programs" for 55 people from 34 academic institutions across the U.S. and Europe. Led by Robert Schwartz, Bruce Weber, and Avner Wolf, the seminar was designed to help other academic institutions incorporate state-of-the-art technology like our Wasserman Trading Floor into their curricula.

New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi highlighted the School of Public Affair’s First Annual Conference on Municipal Finance and Leadership last month. In addition to a roundtable discussion, the event featured short presentations by winners of the Municipal Finance Competition, which invites scholars, public policy experts, and Ph.D. candidates to conduct original research using the school’s archives of the city’s 1975 fiscal crisis.

New Administrators and Staff

I am delighted to welcome a number of new people to our administration and staff: Rosemary Fllori (Registrar), Erika Goodman (College Advancement), Lai Louie (Financial Aid), Steven Matthews (Building and Grounds), Christopher Millevoi (Building and Grounds), Richard Mitten (Weissman), Tresia Smith (Skills Assessment and Testing Office), and Kim Spicer (Human Resources).

These new members of the Baruch community work in a variety of capacities at the college—from office assistant to fundraiser—but all are important the successful operation of the college. I know that you will give them your full support.

Please Join Me

I hope that you will drop by the college’s Holiday Party on Wednesday, December 15, from 3 to 6 pm, on the 14th Floor of the Vertical Campus. Everyone is welcome, and I look forward to greeting you then.

I wish you and your families the very best holidays and a New Year of 2005 filled with peace.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Waldron