Board of Trustees Releases 4-Year Master Plan

Last week, the CUNY Board of Trustees released the CUNY Master Plan for 2004-2008. It outlines the major goals and initiatives CUNY will seek to achieve over the next four years, and is a continuation of the achievements made from the 2000-2004 plan.

Following a period of heavy criticism for the University, CUNY designed the 2000-2004 Master Plan, which was primarily focused on a "comprehensive strategy of institution renewal." Major focuses of the previous plan were the hiring of more full-time faculty to fill-in thinned ranks, the creation of a system-wide Honors College, and a phasing out of remedial education to give colleges a strictly higher-education focus. Having largely achieved those goals, CUNY is now moving on to bigger and better things, attempting to bring the City's schools up to par with more prestigious institutions.

The three main overlying principles of the new plan are first, to continue to recruit first-rate full-time faculty, second, to make University knowledge available to the outside community through published research and new initiatives, and third, to increase revenue and slash administrative costs. There are also plans to create University centers, through the hiring of multiple professors in a discipline, for photonics, the biosciences, urban environment and U.S. history.

CUNY recently purchased Governors Island, and now official plans are under way to build a campus there. The proposal is for a Governors Island Simulation Center, which will be used by researchers to understand and address major urban issues like traffic and epidemic diseases. It also has the potential to be used by researchers in finance and biotechnology. Four two-week programs for schoolchildren are slated for the summers, when they could improve math and science skills and learn computer-simulation techniques. Honors College students will find a future home there as well, in a planned space that will allow them to interact with artist-teachers from around the world, and these teachers would also create a cultural atmosphere by giving seminars and lectures.

Another notable addition to the campus will be the $198 million CUNY Advanced Science Research Center on the City College campus in Harlem.

The CUNY Honors College, which has been a rousing success, will be expanded to a multi-campus affair, with students able to work and take classes at any college in the system, including the Graduate Center, and new programs are in the works for an Overseas Honors program, upper-division and Honors graduate student services, and the creation of an Honors College Alumni Association.

Baruch itself is scheduled for upgrades and new programs as well. A pre-BBA program is proposed that will permit graduates of CUNY's six community colleges with a requisite G.P.A. to apply to the Zicklin School of Business. Zicklin recently became part of a joint M.D./M.B.A. program with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and will soon offer a joint Nursing/Public Administration master's degree with Hunter College. There is also the possibility of a consolidated real estate program. The small School of Public Affairs will receive a boost with the opening of the Census Bureau Research Data Center, and $2 million in funding is being set aside for the 2008 renovation of the 23rd Street Building.

In preparing the plan, Dr. Louise Mirrer, the University's chief academic officer, met with focus groups composed of faculty and students to make sure that their opinions were taken into account. These meetings took place through last fall and winter, and on April 20th a final draft was presented to all groups. The final was approved at a meeting of the Board on May 3.