Remarks at the Stated Meeting of the Faculty

13 September 2005

I usually open my remarks with information on the year's college budget and on fall enrollment, because I think we should all know where we stand. Today, however, I want to talk about the year ahead. Our latest budget and enrollment information will be on the college website later this week, and I hope you'll look it up and read it there.

The agenda for the coming year results largely from initiatives we have launched over the last five years � and particularly last year. The items of that agenda are: the strategic plan; the Core Curriculum; the natural sciences; faculty hiring; enrollment; campus construction; and fundraising.

First, the strategic plan for 2005-2010. Preparing this plan has been easier than the last one. The previous plan and the changes I discussed here last February gave us a solid foundation and opened welcome opportunities. We have done much preparatory work on innovations and new directions and on how we might become more effective, working in open forums and committees. A draft of the plan will circulate this fall for campus-wide discussions and by spring we'll have a final version.

The strategic plan, as it must, matches our immediate goals to our mission in a way that will direct our resources, concentrate our energies, and permit us to judge our performance.

Last spring, Faculty Council adopted a plan for a revised core curriculum. We now want to breathe life into it. The immediate work will be done by committees charged by Faculty Council. But it is the task of the faculty at large to make the Core � which is our signature program � as current, as rigorous, as stimulating as we can. Since we require our students to take the core, we must give it and them our best. We want to open doors to new intellectual worlds, hone critical thinking and analytical reasoning, and improve writing � and to measure how well we are doing in these things.

The natural sciences. We have recently prepared procedurally a major overhaul of our science facilities. The project will be executed in two stages, described some ten years ago when the College adopted its capital master plan. The first stage is to transform Roosevelt into a science building, relocate some of the sciences from Ingersoll into that building, and then, as a second stage, go about renovating Ingersoll and Ingersoll Extension. In the spring, we prepared a summary of what we want and need in renovated Roosevelt, to give architects a clear sense of what they should plan for. We must now elaborate that summary. To that end, the science faculty will be at work discussing and defining the shape science teaching and research should take at the College.

Academic renewal, of which these are two examples, must be continuous at the College, not only because of new knowledge and new interests, but also because of changing needs and demands among our students and of changing training and expertise among our faculty. Academic renewal is laborious and putting new programs into place can be tricky and complex. To help faculty with the process, the Office of the Provost has put together a guide that will take the confusion out of program development. It will be posted on the college website, and I encourage you to avail yourselves of it.

Faculty hiring. Because it had no funds, the College virtually stopped hiring in the mid-1970s, and for some twenty-five years, while we all grew old, the College added few young faculty. Hiring resumed just before I returned as president and it has enriched us over these 6 or 7 years with a young faculty that is the College's greatest resource, a source of higher academic standing, first-rate teaching, and hope for the future. Younger members hired over the last five years now make up about 30% of full-time faculty. And we continue to hire: this fall 20 new faculty members have arrived (with two others coming in the spring) and 33 faculty searches have been authorized for the coming year. The representation of new faculty grows, and as it grows we improve.

The influx of significant numbers of new faculty, after all those fallow years, has created a cohort, marked by its own ambitions and outlook, training and expectation, priorities and sense of self. We can expect this particular demographic to give rise to differences of opinion, even to friction. I call your attention to these things, of which all of us are to some extent aware, to appeal to your good will and your good sense. The gap is present in virtually every department. The challenge is to manage it, as some departments have done brilliantly, and to profit from the presence on campus � at last � of a cohort of young people we have needed for decades. That will require of us forbearance, generosity, hospitality, responsiveness, and good humor. These new members of the faculty are the future of the College, and as a matter of policy, Brooklyn College does not impair its future.

Enrollment. Our admissions standards have been going up, as have our numbers. But the numbers are not where they should be in order to meet our ever tighter budget. We need to find new markets and develop new recruiting strategies; we need to convey to prospective students how good our academic programs are and how good our faculty is. We are fortunate in having appointed this summer, the result of a national search, a new assistant vice president for enrollment management, and we look forward to new thinking and new ideas. Bruce Neimeyer � would you please stand up so that we may recognize you.

Retaining students is as important to enrollment as recruiting new ones. We have raised our one-year retention figures to over 80% and been singled out by the University for the support mechanisms we instituted to reach that point. Much of the credit belongs to the Office of the Undergraduate Dean, which has been imaginative in integrating freshmen into the College and retaining them after their first year. As you know, after ten years as dean, Ellen Belton has become director of the CUNY Honors College. Donna Wilson has replaced her while we conduct a national search this year. Dean Wilson, who came to Brooklyn College in 1998, is one of the new faculties of whom I spoke and proof that the new faculty is our future. Dean Wilson, welcome.

The physical transformation of the campus continues. The Library Café has doubled in size and will re-open within the week. Over the summer, we renovated and modernized eleven lecture halls in Ingersoll and almost all are back in service. A dozen "smart classrooms" have been installed. The cafeteria is about to get a facelift. And of course, we proceed with the West Quad, laying out a new quadrangle and pouring foundations for a new building. We have put up with noise and dust and inconvenience. You've been very patient, and I think it will have been worth it.

Fundraising. This is not only a Brooklyn College priority but, of late and especially in light of tight budgets, a University priority. We hit our target of $50M ahead of schedule and have now raised it to $75M (to match our birthday). Of first importance this year is a campaign to meet the challenge set by Leonard and Claire Tow, which will bring us a new performing arts center. We will be helped in this effort by a new appointment, after several years of searching. A new Vice President for Institutional Advancement, Andrew Sillen, will join us next month. He comes with good experience and a good track record, both here and abroad � and, as luck would have it, also happens to be an alumnus.

Last spring, controversies here and on other campuses brought the matter of academic freedom into discussion. The matter is important and requires deeper and more thoughtful treatment than was possible at the end of the spring term.

I have asked Professor Robert Viscusi and the Wolfe Institute to organize a conference next spring and to invite national authorities to the campus to discuss such matters as the history of the concept of academic freedom, the nature of academic freedom, the current practice of academic freedom, and academic freedom and freedom of the press. I encourage you to attend. As preparation, a faculty colloquium on academic freedom will meet monthly throughout the fall and into the spring. At each meeting, a different faculty member will choose a reading and lead discussion of that reading. The first colloquium is scheduled for later this week.

I am no historian of academic freedom but do have some knowledge of German history, and the German university is one of the sites where the term we call academic freedom emerged. The Germans called it Lern- und Lehrfreiheit, which translates as freedom to learn and to teach, or, commonly, freedom of teaching and inquiry. Academic freedom, therefore, is protection of authentic academic activity: teaching and learning. It was originally intended as protection from king and church. It survives as protection from interference by the government, typically national, state, and local, but also academic government. We members of the faculty � and I too am a member of this faculty � are engaged in teaching, obviously, and in learning as we conduct our research. Our students, particularly, are engaged in learning, and for that purpose they, too, enjoy academic freedom. Concretely, this means that we respect our students' learning process, their expression of opinion, and their exploration of limits, when they try our patience and test our tolerance.

Academic freedom emerged as an issue on campus last spring when it collided with another freedom: of the press. Freedom of the press is written into the constitution and it has a long constitutional history in the courts. The press can say pretty much anything it wants, short of defamation, and defamation for an entity such as Brooklyn College is a high legal threshold. The theory is that bad information is offset by good, and the remedy for a bad press is a quick, corrective letter to the editor and carefully cultivated good relations with the press. I and those who help me give a great deal of time and effort to both.

In our seasoned democracy we have institutions and we are heirs to a long tradition of civility that enable us, with all our differences, to live together peacefully. We pride ourselves at Brooklyn College for our many ethnic origins, our many colors and customs, our differentness among ourselves, which extends to differences of opinion and in politics. I spoke about that earlier. And we pride ourselves on our civility, on the civil tone we keep even as we disagree. That too is a form of academic freedom that protects us all as we go about our teaching and learning.

In the long perspective � this is the fifth year of my presidency � I can see clearly how our institutional ethos of unyielding decency, self-respect, and a good tone and our institutional solidarity have helped us and will continue to help us.

I had the benefit last spring of sound advice from many in this room, and I always have the benefit of your deep and consistent dedication to the welfare of the College. I have thanked you privately and I am pleased to thank you again here.

The College, as you all know, turned 75 this year.

Here's how we celebrated � with a huge birthday cake, a big crowd, including graduates of the 1930s, [photo] and with the return of President Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor and Mayor LaGuardia, [photo] to lay the cornerstone to what we now know as Roosevelt Hall. Those who watch the borough's television news station � Channel 12 [photo]� will have noticed that the cake appears among the local landmarks in its advertising.

Since we're talking about a long perspective, here's the long perspective and happy history of Plaza Building � before, [photo] during, [photo] and after. [photo]

Again: before, during, and after. Here's where we started [photo] � downtown on the corner of Pearl and Willoughby � when what became our campus was still the home of the Big Top. [photo] To help you get your bearings: that's Bedford Avenue horizontally on top, with the railroad tracks, the cut, as it's called, on the left. Campus construction started as a WPA project in the 1930s, [photo] was interrupted by World War II, and completed in the early 1970s. [photo] We're now busy tearing down the mistakes of the second phase and building something better.

Franklin and Eleanor came back for the birthday party. But they really were here once before. And we've had other presidential visitors as well. [photo] It seems only Democrats pay attention to us. [photo]

But always, our students. Students is what we're about. Some of us remember when students looked like this. [photo] Some of us remember when we looked like this. And now we look like this. [photo]

And like this. [photo] Bravo Brooklyn College. 75 Years.

Once again, the College, its departments and programs, have been recognized for their achievements.

The Princeton Review, for the second year in a row, put the College on its list of the top ten of America's Best Value Colleges � one of only two colleges to make the list for two consecutive years.
Last spring, the School of Education passed all requirements for accreditation by NCATE, the national accrediting agency for teacher education. NCATE is the agency of choice across the University, and its admissions criteria are tough. We were found to have met its standards and expect formal confirmation this fall. Congratulations to the faculty in the School of Education and all those in the liberal arts departments who worked with them.
There's no one here who hasn't heard of the EPA audit, probably the most thorough, door-to-door, room-to-room, nook-and-cranny audit we have ever seen. The auditors spent a week here in April looking for evidence that somehow, somewhere, we were not in compliance with the federal government's stringent environmental rules. They found fewer than 20 violations, all of them minor � a better outcome than that at any of the senior colleges. Our environmental health and safety staff did an extraordinary job and all of you helped.
TOCA, The On-Course Advantage, works as a contract between students and the College to enable undergraduates to complete their studies within the traditional four years. It graduated its first cohort two years ago and now enrolls over 1,000 students. It has boosted our graduation rate and, next month, will be formally recognized by the National Academic Advising Association with the Outstanding Institutional Advising Program Award for 2005. Congratulations to the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies and, in particular, to Jesus Perez, who directs the program and has made it a success.
The Society for College and University Planning, a national organization of planners
and architects, assesses the quality of campus master plans on the basis of their actual implementation. Many plans never get off the drawing board. Ours did, and the College this spring received the Society's Merit Award for Excellence in Planning and Architecture for the 1995 Master Plan. A fine tribute to our colleagues in the administration, especially in Facilities, and to the faculty who gave thought and advice to our planning.
The College's Women's Studies Program is a pioneer at CUNY. Over time it has not only survived hard times but flourished. I have here a check � better, a copy of a check � for $1.5 million, received yesterday, to establish an endowed chair in Women's Studies. The gift of an anonymous donor (truly), this is the second such chair to be created in the last two years. It will allow the program to draw prominent visiting professors to the campus and reach new heights. Congratulations to Women's Studies and its faculty for attracting the attention of a generous donor and developing plans for a promising future.

We recognize and acknowledge members of the faculty and staff who have been honored for the work they have done. I'll go through the list � and then we can applaud them.

Important fellowships were awarded to Irene Sosa (TVR), Philip Rupprecht (Music), Robert Shapiro (Judaic Studies), Geraldine DeLuca (English) and David Forbes (SoE). Sam Leiter (Theater) was honored by the Association for Theater in Higher Education, the most prominent professional association in the field, with the Award for Excellence in Editing. And Martha Bell (SEEK) was honored with the Tri-State Excellence Award by the Tri-State Consortium of Opportunity Programs for her work on behalf of these programs.

This year's Whiting Fellows are James Davis (English), Sharon Flato (Judaic Studies), Geoffrey Minter (English), Bernd Renner (Modern Languages), and Steven Remy (History). The Whiting Fellowships reward exceptional teaching in the humanities with a semester or year leave to pursue scholarship.

Congratulations to all of you.

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.

Luigi Bonaffini � Matthew J. Fantaci Professor in Modern Languages and Literatures
Thomas Bullard (Theater) � Stern Professor in Humor
Malgorzata Ciszkowska (Chemistry) � Jacque Edward Levy Professor in Analytical Chemistry
Hershey Friedman (Economics) � Murray Koppelman Professor, awarded to members of the faculty with strong academic credentials and outstanding service to the College and the community
Richard Magliozzo (Chemistry) � Levy-Kosminsky Professor in Physical Chemistry
George Rodman (TVR) � also Stern Professor in Humor
Lee Quinby, the inaugural incumbent of the new Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy.
William Fletcher, this year's Belle Zeller Visiting Professor in Public Policy and Administration, affiliated with the Department of Political Science.

We applaud you.

For excellence in the classroom: Karel Rose, Professor of Education, received the Claire Tow Distinguished Teacher Award, a prize established a year ago by Leonard Tow, '50, in honor of his wife Claire, '52.

This award speaks to one of our essential values: good teaching, working with students, serving as mentors and role models. As we admit better students, we find that they have higher expectations. Many of you recognize and respond to this, and I thank you. While we value good teaching, we may not be doing so publicly enough. We should do more; I would welcome your suggestions.

Major new research grants, all from the National Science Foundation, have been awarded to:

Dan Eshel, Ray Gavin, and Theodore Muth (Biology)
Simon Parsons and Ted Raphan (CIS)
Peter Lesser (Physics)
Frank Grasso, Dean Louise Hainline, and Anthony Sclafani (Psychology)

Ted Raphan was awarded a research grant from the National Institutes of Health � part of an uninterrupted funding record of 21 years.

And Nancy Romer (Psychology) has been awarded institutional grants of close to $2M this year from Federal, State, and City agencies for after-school programs in local high schools.

You deserve our applause.

I am also pleased to recognize the members of the staff commended last year by department chairs and supervisors for their dedication, their helpfulness, and their courtesy � and selected as the College's "employees of the month."

Would you please stand and remain standing until I have called the entire roll and we can recognize and applaud you.

For September 2004, Lynda Sobieski (Human Resources Services)
For October 2004, James Liu (Library)
For November 2004, David Best (ITS)
For December 2004, Jacqueline Galang (Office of Deputy Comptroller)
For January 2005, Jesus Perez (TOCA)
For February 2005, Andrey Postoyanets (ITS)
For March 2005, Carlton Duane Lee (Admissions)
For April 2005, Kathy McLaughlin (Facilities)
For May 2005, Diana Norkiene (Biology)
For June 2005, Robert Scott (Honors Academy)

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

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.