Remarks by President Christoph M. Kimmich at the Stated Meeting of the Faculty

19 September 2006

On the way in just now you were handed a copy of what will be an annual publication: an introduction to our new faculty.

There are thirty-two of them. They were trained at prominent universities here and abroad, are experienced teachers, scholars, and artists, and enhance the reputation of our faculty and our College. 187 new members of the faculty have been appointed since fall 2000. [Photo] They make up 37 percent of our full-time teaching faculty. Please welcome them.

We are "up" in many respects: in the number and quality of our faculty and the number and quality of our students as our admissions standards continue to rise. [Photo] We're up in the number of grants awarded to our research faculty. My entire administration has been orchestrated by the rumble of earth-moving equipment and jackhammers, and it goes on. First it was the library; now it is the West Quad. [Photo]

The latest budget and enrollment data, with updates also on campus construction, are on the college website, where I hope you will look them up. Briefly then -- before I go on to talk about the new strategic plan, which is our real subject today -- [Photo] total enrollment this morning is about 2% higher than what is was last year at this time -- 15,542. A welcome step up but still short of where we want and need to be. We have about 3,000 new undergraduate students, which is the number of undergraduate and graduate students combined who graduated in June. [Photo] Undergraduate enrollment has risen steadily for six years. [Photo] But graduate enrollment has not. [Photo] I will come back to this in a moment.

[Photo] Our budget outlook is better than last fall. Then we wondered how we would get through the year; now we are beneficiaries of an election year and on somewhat firmer ground. We have not eliminated a persistent structural deficit, but with a total operating budget of about $82 million, and another $4 million for restricted purposes (adjuncts, freshman-year and graduate initiatives, collaborative programs with high schools), we are fairly close to what we require to cover salaries, purchases, and campus maintenance.

There is something new and different this year -- the so-called CUNY Compact has come into force. I've mentioned it before. It is called a compact because its budget is derived from different sources. Of the total of $2.8 million available to the College through the Compact, only one million comes from the University. The rest we have to raise ourselves -- by being more efficient in how we operate, by raising more funds from alumni, and by generating more tuition revenues through higher enrollment. Tuition, [Photo] which we have lived with for thirty years, now funds some three quarters of our operating budget.

The Compact designates funds for certain broad purposes. [Photo] They enable us to hire additional faculty, make improvements in undergraduate and graduate education, support the library and the writing-across-the-curriculum program, advising, counseling, and career services, and pay for upgrades in facilities. We arrived at this distribution in preliminary campus discussions last October, and the list by and large reflects those discussions.

The strategic plan for the next five years takes all these things into account: the terms of the Compact, steadily declining public financing, and the goals and projects to which we want to dedicate our resources. Copies of the plan will be in your mailboxes by the end of the month and posted on the Web.

Our first strategic plan established three overarching goals: [Photo] maintaining and enhancing academic quality; assuring a student-centered campus; and becoming a "model citizen" in the borough of Brooklyn. The new plan preserves these goals -- which have served us well -- but it is more specific. Because we build on the achievements of the first plan and now draw on new capacities, we can address concerns and seize opportunities that were out of reach six years ago.

I have chosen to talk today about four such undertakings because they are important to our future and particularly urgent. [Photo] We need to get to them this year.

Brooklyn College [Photo] has long been constrained by dated or inadequate facilities. We are now in a position to build new facilities for the sciences and for the performing arts. As we approach that moment, we must think innovatively about our teaching and research teaching and performing in the natural sciences and the arts. We will then be able to design and build facilities that will work and serve us well. For the first phase of the new science facilities, that is, the renovation of Roosevelt Hall, [Photo] we have a financial commitment from the State. We have raised almost all the necessary funds for a new performing arts center [Photo] next door by a combination of public and private sources.

This year we will engage the architectural and engineering firms to design these buildings. As a first step, we will convene two small working committees to meet with the respective architects and develop a clear sense of what they should design to serve our purposes. I hope that all of you in the sciences and the performing arts will contribute ideas and suggestions. The outcome of these deliberations will shape what we do in the sciences and in the performing arts for years to come.

Faculty research [Photo] and scholarship inform teaching, engage students in hands-on learning, and advance the boundaries of knowledge. [Photo] They also attract external funding, which supports leading-edge research while demonstrating the strength of our research faculty in the highly competitive world of granting agencies and foundations.

The University is planning to become a major research institution, especially in the sciences. Brooklyn College must be part of that, and not only in the sciences. We must direct resources to new faculty launching their research careers, to researchers who need time to pursue their projects, to undergraduate and graduate students being introduced to research in faculty laboratories. [Photo]

The strategic plan commits the College to building up the quality and productivity of faculty scholarship and grantsmanship. It calls for better ways of allocating start-up costs and renovating offices and laboratories; for increasing the availability of reassigned time; for seeking external funding for research equipment, especially for faculty whose research interests overlap; and for developing research networks to promote collaboration and new strands of interdisciplinary research.

Enrollment [Photo] reflects the College's academic reputation, and in a tuition-financed institution it helps pay for everything we do. You have seen the figures. They are not what they should be. We need to find new markets and devise new recruiting strategies; we need to show prospective students how good our academic programs are and how good our faculty is. We have already begun to reorganize our recruiting and enrollment services. We have commissioned an outside marketing study to determine why students come to Brooklyn College and why they do not.

Most especially, we need reverse an alarming decline in the number of graduate students. It is striking that, [Photo] while enrollment in masters programs seem to rise throughout the country, that is not the case at Brooklyn College. The strategic plan calls for the improvement of our recruiting and admissions practices. It also calls for new programs that attract students who are, more and more, interested in practical, job-oriented programs. Both these matters -- admissions and programs -- require help from the faculty. We have taken some initial steps, such as new programs in interactive media arts and mental health counseling, and we got them into place in record time. We have also taken initial steps in developing online courses -- in the School of Education and the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences. In both these efforts, more is needed.

University-wide surveys [Photo] give us a fairly accurate idea of what our students think of support services on campus. Here's what they think of the library. [Photo]. Here's what they think of computing, both access and services. [Photo]. And here's what they think of academic advising. [Photo]

Some of you may have seen an article in last week's Times on the rate at which students graduate within six years. A graph on the same page includes Brooklyn College, putting us somewhere in the middle. Attentive advising is a way of bonding students to an institution, [Photo] so that they will stay until they graduate. The strategic plan calls for the development of a coordinated and comprehensive approach to academic advising. The approach will involve both professional advisers and faculty, because students look to the faculty for counsel -- formal and informal, accurate and timely. [Photo] Our goal is to establish a culture of advising on campus -- coordinated, user-friendly, and service-oriented.

We plan to streamline the advising process for first- and second-year undergraduates; to foster close links between professional advisers and faculty advisers; to refine the advising services we offer adults and returning students; and to improve academic and professional advising of graduate students.

[Photo] Here too we have taken first steps. We have a new dean of undergraduate studies, who has rethought and begun to reorganize the services we offer students. Dean Donna Wilson -- would you please stand up so that we may recognize you.

These four are our most urgent needs, but of course there is more. To get to where we want to be requires that we work together and invest our collective wisdom and energies. It also requires a strong sense of community, something that's long been close to my heart. Common sense and good manners remain the cement of the campus, helping us work together to reach goals that only a cooperative effort can reach.

And now: early warning. Every ten years, the College undergoes a stringent review by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which decides whether we are to be reaccredited. That review begins with an institutional self-study, prepared by members of the faculty and administration, which leads to a site visit by a Middle States team. We will be required to satisfy specific criteria on a broad range of issues, at the heart of which is institutional planning and accountability. Those of you who keep up with discussions of educational policy in Washington will know -- most recently through the so-called Spelling Report -- how fraught these issues are and how timely. We expect the site visit to take place in the academic year 2008-09, and we must begin work this year. A steering committee, composed of representatives of the faculty, the administration, and the student body, will be appointed shortly. You will hear more about this as we go along.

We have arrived at the subject of honors and awards won by members of the college community since last we met.

Let's start with students:

Ryan Merola, a third-generation Brooklyn College student and a member of the Honors College, was one of seventy-five nationally and of only two New Yorkers to be awarded a Truman scholarship last spring. As the name suggests, the scholarship is awarded to students with a demonstrated interest in public service.

Tien-Der Luo, who majors in accounting and psychology, and Rebecca Khan, a major in creative writing, were recipients of a new award at Brooklyn College this year, the Jeanette K. Watson Fellowship for exceptional undergraduates.

Moses Feaster, class of '06, has the rare distinction of being awarded a National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship for study at Rockefeller University.

Haiwen Chu, who graduated from the College with a master's degree in Education in 2004, was named a Newton Master Teacher this summer by Math for America.

And you should know that the College's cheerleading squad [Photo] won the University's cheerleading champion competition this year.

The faculty [Photo] has, once again, distinguished itself in various ways. We recognize and acknowledge members of the faculty who have won outside honors. Let us hold our applause until I've named them all.

� Presidential Professor Shlomo Silman, Department of Speech Communication Arts and Sciences, was selected for the prestigious Tibbits Prize for his co-invention of a non-surgical device that has revolutionized the treatment of ear infections, particularly in children. The prize is sponsored, among others, by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

� Professor Jeffrey Suzuki, Department of Mathematics, was chosen this summer by the Mathematical Association of America as a winner of its Carl B. Allendoerfer Award, which recognizes mathematicians who publish articles of expository excellence.

� Professor Margaret-Ellen Pipe, of the Children's Studies Program and the Department of Psychology, has been named Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

� And Professor Roberto Sanchez-Delgado, Department of Chemistry, was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in Latin America.

� Whiting Fellows this year are Professors Joseph Entin, Department of English, Michael Menser, Department of Philosophy, and Phillip Thibodeau, Department of Classics.

� And for excellence in the classroom: Moustafa Bayoumi, Department of English, received the Claire Tow Distinguished Teacher Award for 2006-07, a prize that speaks to one of our enduring values: good teaching, working with students, serving as mentors and role models.

Let us applaud them.

I am proud to recognize members of the faculty who have been appointed to named professorships. Please stand when I call your name and remain standing. Let us please hold our applause until all the names have been called.

� Eleanor Miele, School of Education -- Leonard and Claire Tow Professor

� Tobie Stein, Department of Theater -- Murray Koppelman Professor

� Premilla Nadasen -- the first incumbent of an Endowed Chair in Women's Studies, the gift of an anonymous donor. You may have met her outside, where she was distributing a flyer on her current project.

Please welcome them to the ranks of those who hold or have held
these prestigious titles. They deserve our applause.

Major institutional and research grants have been awarded:

From the National Institutes of Health:

� to Professors Ray Gavin, Biology, and Rick Magliozzo, Chemistry, Dean Louise Hainline, and the Director of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, Barbara Naso. More than $3 million to strengthen programs in science and science research for undergraduates at institutions with substantial minority enrollments.

From the National Science Foundation:

� to Professor Lori Scarlatos, Computer and Information Science, leading a team of five colleagues in a program called "Building a Bridge in Brooklyn" that helps minority and female students make the transition to computer science and serve as role models in their communities.

� to Professor Shaneen Singh, Biology, to enable the College to collaborate with Weill Medical College on the use of computational methods to identify and assign functions to lipid-interacting protein domains in genome research.

� and to Professor Dina Sokol, Computer and Information Science, to define tandem repeats in DNA that cause neurological diseases, diabetes, and epilepsy.

Congratulations.

There are those whom we honor because their efforts make us all look a little better every day -- our employees of the month. I would like them to stand and remain standing so that, once I have mentioned them all, we can recognize and applaud them.

[Photo]

Yasmin Ali, September 2005 -- Office of Finance, Budget and Planning

Joseph Allen, October 2005 -- Office of Facilities Planning and Operations

Ahad Farhang, November 2005 -- Office of Financial Aid

[Photo]

Myrna Lugo, December 2005 -- Office of Facilities Planning and Operations

Emir Ganic, January 2006 -- Office of Finance, Budget, and Planning

Alex Rudshteyn, February 2006 -- of the Library

Luis Santiago, March 2006 -- the College locksmith

[Photo]

Tracy Lovett, April 2006 -- the Television Center

Amira Bolton, May 2006 -- Office of Health Programs

Moraima Burgos, June 2006 -- Division of Student Affairs

Congratulations. You make the College work and we thank you.

[Photo]

That concludes my remarks. Are there any questions? If not, I hereby adjourn the Stated Meeting of the Faculty and invite you to join my wife, Flora, and me for a reception on the stage. I would ask each of you, new faculty guide in hand, to take occasion and introduce yourselves to at least one new member of the faculty.