Remarks at the Stated Meeting of the Faculty

19 February 2004

I begin with the customary subjects -- the college budget and enrollment. Then I will devote most of my remarks to projects currently underway.

The budget. As you know, late last month the Governor released his budget for the coming year, 2004-2005. The Governor's budget is a recommendation to the Legislature; the State budget is final only when the Executive and the Legislative branches have agreed. In years past, that process has taken months. This year, an election year, there are signs that it may move faster.

The Governor's proposed budget is better than last year's. Then we faced a loss of about $120 million. Now there is no apparent loss; there seems even a slight gain. It is not enough. To cover projected ongoing costs and to fund improvements in programs, student services, and infrastructure, the University needs another $18-20 million. Put simply, the proposed budget does not promise easy financial times in 2004-2005.

Like last year's, this Governor's budget proposes to restructure financial aid for students, giving them two-thirds of their aid while they are in college and the remaining one-third when they graduate. And, like last year's, this Governor's budget proposes to reduce support for the SEEK Program. That translates into less money for stipends, fee waivers, and book expenses.

We all know how we fared last year. After a massive letter-writing campaign to the Legislature, we emerged with a substantial tuition increase but no reduced financial aid and no reduced support for SEEK.

To improve our prospects this year, the University has embarked on a two-part strategy.

First, it will lobby the Legislature to add additional funds and to reject the proposed changes in financial aid and in SEEK. Brooklyn College will be asked to help. Since over half of our students are on financial aid, helping is a good investment. Help means letters, e-mail messages, visits to legislators. I will call on you in the course of the next few weeks.

Second, the University asks the colleges to rely even more heavily on tuition income to meet expenses and fund initiatives and services. This does not mean a tuition increase. It means raising tuition revenue, that is to say, maximizing enrollment in the coming year. It means working still harder to retain students who are doing well. It means doing a better job getting qualified applicants to enroll. Only about 37% of applicants to Brooklyn College actually enroll here. Can we raise that percentage without compromising the high standards we set for admissions? Can we take steps between now and the fall to enlarge our enrollment without compromising quality? Will letters from current students, calls from faculty, more open houses and visits by counselors make a difference?

These questions we need to address right now.

That brings me to my second topic -- enrollment. As of this morning, we have enrolled 14,101 students for the spring semester. Last year at this time, we had enrolled 14,468, that is, 367 more (or 3%). We did not decline significantly in entering and continuing undergraduate degree students. Nor in entering and continuing graduate degree students. And we are up, again, in transfer students.

The decline is in part-time students, both undergraduate and, especially, graduate. These students enroll in one or two courses to upgrade skills or earn more money, to prepare themselves for entrance requirements here or elsewhere, or for their personal enrichment.

There may be as many reasons for the decline as there are students who left us. Their departure may have been prompted by last fall's tuition increase (not all part-time students are eligible for financial aid), or by reduced financial support from employers, such as the Department of Education.

How do we offset these losses and, more especially, guard against future losses? One obvious possibility is to reach out to new undergraduate populations. Another is to build up our graduate enrollment. A large market for masters degrees is swelling graduate enrollments across the country. We need to design new graduate programs to play to that market. We need to continue, and become more diligent in, curricular reform and program renewal. We need to produce concerted efforts we can all support. The responsibility rests with the faculty, but you will not lack encouragement or help.

And another matter related to enrollment and financial health: the federal government has levied against the University an $8.5 million fine, to which all the senior colleges must contribute. That's because the senior colleges have not scrupulously tracked course attendance, with the result that substantial amounts of federal aid to students have been drawn over the last ten years at CUNY by persons no longer enrolled in courses. This is federal fraud. Hence the fine.

Our task is to find a procedure -- short of compulsory attendance taking each day -- that will track reliably who is enrolled in courses. We have checked with other colleges and consulted with the department chairs. The Registrar and ITS have proposed a new system -- a clear, detailed description of what is required -- on the Web. You will be asked to report attendance, not non-attendance. Please help us with this.

For the last year or so, the College has been reviewing its Core Curriculum. The Core Curriculum Committee, a sub-committee of the Outcomes Assessment Committee, and some sixty faculty members, who represent every academic department, are meeting to discuss the uniform academic foundation that the College wants to give its students. These committees draw on the wisdom of senior faculty and department chairs past and present, colleagues who know the Core's history and its traditions, and on the fresh ideas of interested new faculty. They have surveyed campus opinion and informed themselves about the latest research on general education. As at Harvard, which is going through a similar process, they invite to campus distinguished scholars to learn from the larger world of higher education.

I participated in the original design of the Core and I believe in its essential values: it must be as current and as effective as we can make it; it must preserve its intellectual quality and continue to define the Brooklyn College curriculum.

We have always understood the Core as an "active" program, subject to review. After more than two decades, a review is imperative.

The salient points are:

A core curriculum must be a true core curriculum: its courses must be intimately connected and the curriculum as a whole must be coherent. Our original purpose, still valid today, was to provide our students with a common foundation and to give them a coherent general education. In the first years of the Core, instructors shared syllabi to make others aware of new ideas and new approaches, so that all the core courses could be related to one another.

A core curriculum must respond to changes in the disciplines. Core courses introduce students to a broad range of academic matter and must reflect the latest work and the latest thinking in the disciplines and about the disciplines. General education is not bits of knowledge. It is an opportunity to learn deeply and comprehensively, to develop permanent habits of mind.

A core curriculum must incorporate advances in pedagogy. The core courses, which are taken mostly by students in their first two years of college, should reflect our latest knowledge about teaching and learning. Twenty years ago, adjuncts were the exception in the core. Today adjuncts teach more than 50% of our core courses. Are we happy with that? Is that how we want to dedicate scarce funds? How can we make the core more attractive to faculty on regular appointment?

A core curriculum must respond to changes in the student body. Nearly 50% of our students enter Brooklyn College as transfers from other institutions. Under University regulations, these effectively 3rd-year students are obliged to take only one core course. At the moment, they can take any core course they choose -- what appeals to them, what fits into their schedule. Since those students make up nearly half of our student body, the core no longer creates the community of discourse that we envisaged 20 years ago. Can we create upper-level or capstone courses that will unite native and transfer students into a single community of discourse?

We do not need to begin de novo. We have a functioning Core, however imperfect and in need of repair. Let us therefore proceed to improve what we have. Undertaking to reinvent the Core, for which there is no mandate and no machinery in place, only delays necessary and increasingly urgent reforms.

The institution of the Core nearly 25 years ago was an epic moment in the history of Brooklyn College. That process united us in a common undertaking and showed us just how productive we can be when we combine our efforts. The Core put us on the map; it made Brooklyn College a destination of pilgrimage. The moment was glorious. And very much of its time. The current renewal of the Core can bring us together again around a common undertaking, maximize our effectiveness, and strengthen our sense of who we are and what we stand for. It can rededicate us to our exemplary role in public higher education.

For our undergraduates we are primarily a teaching institution, and in the Core we demonstrate our commitment to good teaching. We are no less an institution dedicated to research. Simultaneously with work on the Core, the College is taking steps to facilitate our faculty's research and scholarship. This we owe not least to the new faculty who come to us with legitimate expectations of help with their scholarly careers here.

As a first step, we have renewed and refocused the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and are bringing it to a new level of professionalism. A new director and, soon, a new assistant director mark the beginning of an effort to restaff and reorganize the office toward an emphasis on grant development and service to faculty. The new office will assist the faculty more effectively in finding grant opportunities and writing successful applications and, once grants are secured, in managing them well and dealing with the Research Foundation. The office would welcome a visit from you to discuss grant opportunities in support of your scholarly work.

At the recommendation of the provost, I shall supplement existing travel funds by 25% through a new President's Travel Fund, to be administered by the provost and a committee. It will provide funds for faculty who deliver papers or make presentations at national conferences.

We are assessing in detail the difficulties we can expect to encounter as we prepare and upgrade research labs, provide modern equipment and, especially, the technology many need to conduct their research. Understanding the difficulties is the first step toward a solution.

With faculty across the natural sciences we have begun a broad conversation about the direction that science education and research have taken nationally and should take at Brooklyn College. That conversation began with two very productive town hall meetings last semester; it continues this semester and into the summer. Our goal is to develop a shared vision of the sciences at the College, a vision that will shape our hiring, our support for research, and the kinds of courses, also core courses, we want to develop. Ten years ago, we lost an opportunity to renovate Ingersoll Hall and turn it into a modern science building. The money was there but we were not ready to act. This will not happen again. A new science building is foreseen in our capital master plan, and as we start the process of securing financial commitment for that building, I want the College to have arrived at a clear definition of the role of science on campus. To that end, too, we have begun a faculty development project that will introduce our faculty to new approaches to educating the next generation of scientists, science teachers, and informed citizens.

And now the fun news.

Next year, Brooklyn College celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding -- 75 years of educating the sons and daughters of the borough, of serving as their gateway to productive careers and satisfying lives. We will spend a year celebrating ourselves: what we've done, and what we do now; the achievements of our alumni, who make us proud, and of our faculty, who make our reputation.

We'll let the world know.

We will hold special events and exhibits, assemble memorabilia and sponsor activities. We will give a festive cast to all the occasions we habitually observe in the course of a year: convocation, commencement, Brooklyn College Day. And we'll celebrate the birthday itself. You are all invited to our birthday party.

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.

Lesley Davenport, Broeklundian Professor, Department of Chemistry. Honored by the Metropolitan New York Chapter of the Association for Women in Science together with the Women in Science Forum of the New York Academy of Sciences for her work in science and her support of women in science.

Malgorzata Ciszkowska, Chair, Department of Chemistry. Appointed by the American Chemical Society's Division of Analytical Chemistry as its representative and liaison to the Federation of European Chemical Societies Analytical Division.

Annette Danto, Department of Film. Awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant to set up an International Environmental Roundtable at Chennai in India and to complete a documentary film.

Shuming Lu, Department of Speech Communication Arts and Sciences. Elected President of the Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States.

Luigi Bonaffini, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Awarded the Italian National Translation Prize given annually by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs.

Gerald Friedman, Department of Geology. Elected to receive the Hollis Hedberg Medal in Energy for 2004, an award that recognizes those who have made contributions to the energy industry through their scholarly activities.

Tania León, Tow Professor in the Conservatory of Music, was honored for her achievements by the New York Chapter of "100 Black Women"; her commissioned works continue to be premiered at major music festivals here and abroad.

From the Department of Classics: Professor Edward Harris, who was awarded an NEH fellowship to study in Athens next year, and Professor Donna Wilson, who will be spending a fellowship year at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C.

Gwendolyn Harewood and her staff in the Payroll Office. They were recognized by the New York State Controller for outstanding efforts in delivering payroll services and selected for the Controller's Payroll Achievement Award for 2003.

They all deserve our applause.

If there are no questions, the Stated Meeting stands adjourned.