Remarks at the Stated Meeting of the Faculty
21 February 2001
We've come full circle. A year ago almost to the day I spoke to you here for the first time. Twelve months later, we can check our progress.
One sign of our maturing relationship is that I've dared to ask you here today without inviting you to lunch. In February, you're on your own. But next September, when we meet again, the curtain will be closed to conceal the surprise, and we'll all gather again on the stage. I look forward to it.
Other matters have matured in the meantime. Have you seen Whitehead lately? In a Facilities blitz over intersession we renovated and repainted all 26 classrooms and the results are dazzling. In Ingersoll, we'll renovate 11 large lecture halls over the next academic year, using our own funds and funding by City Council. The scaffolding around Ingersoll and Boylan is to replace the windows with new models of proportions that preserve the buildings' original Georgian lines. The wooden deck in front of Whitehead is now largely replaced, and we've refashioned the access to Plaza and the computer labs there. The theater we're meeting in today is scheduled to get a complete face-lift starting next month. We may have to find another venue when next we meet.
We're going to do more, and everybody gets to say what: at my request, the Faculty Council Committee on Campus Planning is conducting a survey asking what areas you believe to be urgently in need of attention. Please respond. We all have a stake in our physical plant. One need only visit Whitehead to appreciate what physical plant contributes to the quality of life.
Our fund raising campaign, launched last fall, has produced gratifying results, both in terms of donations pledged and in terms of the engagement and re-engagement of our alumni for the College. The College matters enormously to our alumni. They remember Brooklyn College as the experience that launched them into the world. They remember their old professors by name and in detail, ask if they are still teaching, describe -- and here their feelings intensify -- how deeply their professors influenced their lives.
Their intense attachment to Brooklyn College accompanies a curious gap in their information. Open admissions hit the papers nationally and seems to have left an indelible impression. At every alumni gathering anywhere but here in New York, someone will stand up and ask about open admissions, and the tension in the room will rise as the group waits for a response. My reply -- that open admissions ended in 1976 -- is met with bafflement. When I go on to describe our rising admissions standards, the improving quality of our entering classes, the Core, our Honors Academy and the respect it enjoys among the CUNY colleges, the awards won by both our students and our faculty -- the tension in the room breaks and I have even gotten applause.
Flora and I make three or four trips to alumni chapters across the country every year, and I meet individually with wealthy alumni every week, sometimes several times a week. At these meetings what I can say about you and about our students is my working capital.
It is paying off. Over these twelve months I have received no fewer than four multi-million dollar commitments, exceeding anything we have raised in any previous campaigns. These gifts are very new, so new in fact that we are still completing formalities, and too new for me to be more explicit about them. In the next few months and into the summer, I expect to have firm answers to these and to other requests. As the campaign matures, I'll make a formal announcement. Let me leave it at that for the moment. I ask you to respect this quiet phase of the campaign. We must keep the news to ourselves. I thank you for all you have done, and continue to do, to make these efforts work.
The strategic plan has now reached its final stages. Thank you all for your comments, which have been integrated into a final version of the plan that you will soon receive. That final version preserves three commitments that we will now reduce to specific initiatives: (1) a commitment to first-rate academic programs, taught by a distinguished faculty to an academically able student body; (2) a commitment to a student-oriented campus, where students attain their educational goals, complete their studies at the College, and bond themselves to the institution and to one another; and (3) a commitment to making the College a "model citizen" in the immediate neighborhood and in the borough at large, extending its cultural, artistic, and educational resources to the community and contributing to the reform and renewal of the local school system.
To help us reach these goals, we have established two task forces. One will help us determine how we should assess what we do, whether in offices or in the classroom, and how well we do it. The College has long practiced self-assessment. The need to rationalize our procedures of self-assessment surfaced in the self-study the College prepared for its re-accreditation three years ago and belongs necessarily and properly to our reaccreditation. The matter before us therefore is not self-assessment but rather how we assess our work. That, we get to decide for ourselves. Appropriate and effective assessment procedures will benefit us immensely as we conduct the daily business of the College and plan its future.
The second task force will help us find better ways to manage campus information. We generate endless data -- in different offices, for different purposes, at different times. We need to know what we have, where it is stored, and how we can access it. We need to know in order to make good decisions, to track our progress, and to respond to external inquiries. The task force will tell us.
We are already at work on fall admissions. In a new process called "multiple admissions," Brooklyn College must now compete with other CUNY colleges to capture a freshman class. We were fast off the mark. We have reworked all admissions materials, developed a sequence both of letters and of events on and off campus intended to attract and hold a freshman class, and involved faculty as well as students in enrolling the most promising applicants. Initial allocations -- first, second, and third choices -- look good.
We are in the early stages of a new effort to make Brooklyn College particularly attractive to honors students. Our Honors Academy, for which the College is envied and admired, will profit from a University initiative to attract high school graduates at the top of their class. For the undertaking we expect additional funding, both from the University and from the Brooklyn College Foundation.
Finally, bricks and mortar. In 1994-95, the College devised a plan (subsequently approved by the University) for rehabilitation and new construction that takes account of our future growth, teaching and research requirements, and support services. The first step was complete renovation and expansion of the college library, which will double our capacity and give us the leading digital library in the University. The second step is the West Quad: we will demolish Plaza Building and the overpass and extend the quadrangle across Bedford Avenue; restore the newly revealed facades of Roosevelt and James; and, at the far end of the quad, construct a building facing LaGuardia. Effectively, we will complete the campus according to the original design of the 1930s. The purpose of the new building at the west end of the quad is to provide suitable modern space for physical education and athletics and for student services. How exactly we do this is something we will decide in the coming year. Committees of faculty and administrators will explore various configurations with the architects. The College community will get to see what's being planned, to ask questions, and offer comment. We are preparing a Web demonstration, which we expect to post shortly.
I started with bad news: no lunch. I end with good news: honors bestowed on members of the staff and the faculty. Starting this month and each month throughout the academic year, we will recognize a member of the staff who excels and whose performance, dedication, and diligence contribute significantly to the quality of life at the College. I am pleased to announce this month's choice, nominated by his department: Carl Paparella, senior college laboratory technician in Chemistry, responsible for preparing advanced organic and physical chemistry labs, maintaining the storeroom and equipment, and known widely for his helpfulness to undergraduates, graduate students, and research faculty. Mr. Paparella, please stand up so that we can applaud you.
And the best news: four new Broeklundian Professors, for a total of 12, funded at my urging by the Brooklyn College Foundation. Twenty candidates were nominated and I thank you -- nominees, nominators, those who prepared the papers, and those who read them and chose the finalists -- for your faith in and commitment to the high academic quality of Brooklyn College. Would the four new Broeklundian Professors please stand as you hear your name. Let us withhold our applause until all four are standing and we can congratulate them all. Bonnie Anderson, Professor of History; Edwin Burrows, Professor of History; Samuel Leiter, Professor of Theater; and Viraht Sahni, Professor of Physics.
Are there questions or comments? If not, I adjourn the Stated Meeting of the Faculty.
