Skip to content
    • Bearcat Bookstore
    • Blackboard
    • Blogs@Baruch
    • CUNYfirst
    • Degree Works
    • Epaf
    • Faculty & Staff
      • Email (starting
        May 3, 2022)
      • Email (thru
        May 2, 2022)
      • Office 365
      • Dropbox
    • Interfolio
    • MyInfo
    • SmartEvals
    • Student Email
    • Time and Leave
      • Full Time
      • Part Time
    • Zoom
  • Calendar
  • Directory
  • Library
  • President's Office
  • News Center
  • Technology
  • Index A-Z
Baruch college | Baruch College-logo Baruch College-logo City University of New York CUNY-logo
Menu

About Baruch
Admissions
Academic Affairs
Arts
Athletics
Students
Alumni
  • Provost Home
  • Faculty Handbook
  • Middle States Commission Recommendations (2000)
  • Provost Home
  • Provost Initiatives
    • Online/Hybrid Learning
    • Provost’s Innovation Fellows
    • Faculty Innovation Seed Grants
    • Mental Health Awareness Week
  • Leadership
    • Organization Charts
  • Academic Affairs
    • Teaching and Learning
      • Academic Honesty
      • Support for Students
      • Support for Faculty
    • Academic Administration
      • Reappointment, Tenure, CCE, and Promotion
      • Department Chairs and Faculty Personnel Committees
        • List of Department Chairs
        • Representatives to Faculty Personnel Committees
      • Faculty Workload Reporting and Compliance
      • Faculty Leaves
      • New Faculty
      • Chair Resources
      • Faculty Forms
    • Assessment, Accreditation & Institutional Effectiveness
      • Data-driven Decision Making
      • Program Review
      • Accreditation
      • Assessment
      • Compliance
      • Institutional Effectiveness
    • Research
    • Faculty Convocation
  • Faculty Handbook
  • Communications Archive
    • From the Provost
    • From the Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning
    • From the Associate Provost for Academic Admin. and Research

Middle States Commission Recommendations (2000)

This page last updated on: October 29, 2004

 

Recommendations of the 2000 Middle States Commission

 

A significant part of the PRR will consist of our responses to the following issues raised by the Middle States team that visited us four years ago. As we go forward the second column will list respondents for each concern; a few of these have been provisionally filled in.

General Concerns
[NB: We are instructed by Middle States to respond only to points labeled
“Recommendations.” Although our response in the narrative might
be organized along the lines of these “general concerns,” we are
not asked to respond to these directly.]
    • Decline
      in the number of first-time full-time Latino students warrants careful
      analyses and immediate action lest the College suffers further declines

 

 

    • College’s
      aspiration with respect to quality education and responsiveness will
      be compromised if the College allows the continued decline in the number
      of full-time faculty lines and the concomitant increase in the use of
      adjuncts

 

 

    • Attracting
      and retaining faculty of color continues to be a significant challenge
      for the college. Although not unique to Baruch, the team believes this
      is an issue that requires greater focus, attention, and creativity given
      the College’s stated commitment to diversity of the student body

 

 

    • College’s
      long-term success could be compromised unless the positions of president,
      provost, vice president for college advancement, and treasurer and special
      assistant to the president are filled on a more permanent basis

 

 

    • The
      team perceived a level of miscommunication and distrust between College
      officials on the one hand and CUNY officials on the other. The team
      believes that this gap must be closed if Baruch is to receive the support
      it needs to achieve its aspiration.

 

 

    • Although
      the College has appointed a vice president of student development since
      the last comprehensive visit, there is a great deal of diffusion, fragmentation,
      and duplication in services for students, accompanied by unevenness
      in staffing and funding. The team found that the self-study did not
      fully address issues related to student development.

 

 

    • The
      constraints imposed by CUNY and the current collective bargaining agreement
      will impede the College’s ability to achieve its desired academic aspirations
      unless acknowledged and addressed by trustees and CUNY administration

 

 

 

Organization,
Administration, and Governance

 

    • The trustees should appoint
      a president as soon as possible. The president should fill the provost
      and college advancement positions as soon after her/his appointment
      as possible.

 

DONE

 

The
positions of President, Provost, and VP for College Advancement have been
filled [dates?]

 

Financial
Resources

 

    • The college should develop an
      “all-funds budget” that can be shared with the President’s Council and
      the University Board of Trustees. This would provide the president with
      the information required to effectively and efficiently manage the College
      and to establish a stronger link between planning and budget

 

Budget
& Planning Subcommittee

    • The team strongly encourages
      Baruch to continue its efforts to persuade CUNY to permit the College
      to charge tuition that is closer to the market rate for graduate programs
      in the Zicklin School of Business and the School of Public Affairs.
      Those schools are able to collect significant fees Executive Degree
      participants. There is ample justification for greater increases in
      the full-time MBA programs, even for the part-time students for whom
      a Baruch advanced degree is, at present, a bargain.

 

DONE
for ZSB

 


[dates/amounts?]

    • The team also strongly encourages
      CUNY to modify its tuition policy for certain graduate programs and
      to permit Baruch to retain the resulting increased tuition revenue as
      a supplement to its base budget allocation

 

DONE

 


[dates/amounts?]

 

 

 

    • The new president is encouraged
      to review the organizational structure to determine if the planning
      and budget functions are best served by concentrating the responsibilities
      for fiscal affairs under a single individual

 

DONE

 

Organizational structure is under
review college-wide; one of the five new committees will be looking at
financial issues.

 

 

    • The Baruch College Fund should
      leverage the success already achieved through the campaign and consider
      allocating resources to expand the size of the development operation.

 


Gallagher

    • The College should consider
      modifying its current budget and planning process to ensure that the
      priorities identified in the planning process are accompanied by a realistic
      financial plan and a time-line for achieving the desired results.

 

IN
PROCESS

 

This
is the charge of the new AVP for Planning and Budget.

    • The College should continue
      its efforts to seek a change in the PSC-CUNY collective bargaining agreement
      that would add faculty in business management, information systems,
      public administration, etc. to the disciplines of law and medicine as
      disciplines with salary scales above those for other disciplines

 

DONE

 

We
have gained the ability to pay at 165% of scale.

    • A greater effort needs to be
      made by both the College administration and CUNY administrators to improve
      the flow of information and the level of communication between the College
      and CUNY. The recommendations of the Mayor’s Task Force in this area
      should be strongly considered

 

 Dannenbring

 

Faculty

 

    • Recognizing that diversity of
      faculty is likely to be an issue on other CUNY campuses, the team recommends
      that CUNY make this a special initiative and define a supportive role
      for itself in partnership with Baruch and its sister colleges in their
      recruitment efforts without dictating selections or otherwise unreasonably
      intruding into the recruitment process. On campus, the provost and deans
      should actively participate in the search process to ensure the diversity
      of candidate pools and define diversity as a selection criterion. Finally,
      the administration, with the departments, should establish programs
      (perhaps linked to graduate programs in neighboring universities) designed
      to attract minority faculty to Baruch College. There should be college-wide
      programs not limited to a particular school.

 

Remains
a significant issue. Provost and deans do actively participte. Additional?

 


Dannenbring

    • The appointment of more visiting
      scholars and the use of clinical appointments are also approaches the
      College should utilize in diversifying the faculty.

 

IN
PROCESS

 

Although
the diversity of the faculty remains an issue, the use of visiting and
clinical appointments has made inroads in achieving diversity. Numbers,
info from Dannenbring (Altman?)

    • The team recommends that a faculty
      handbook be produced, kept current, and made available to all faculty
      either in print or on-line.

 

DONE

 

An online faculty handbook has
been in place since fall 2002 and is kept current. The PDF version is
nearly 400 pages.

 

    • The team recommends that the
      College, in cooperation with schools and departments, explore different
      faculty development models, including the centralization of the faculty
      development function. In doing so, the distinction should be made between
      faculty development efforts in teaching and learning, use of technology,
      and research.

 

DONE

 

Independent efforts continue,
but faculty development in each of these areas has been coordinated centrally
since summer 2002. Each of the designated areas (teaching & learning,
technology, and research) receives attention.

    • The College’s new administrative
      team should consult (for the purpose of reaching an agreement for future
      action) with CUNY officials as soon as possible about the shortage of
      faculty lines, especially as it relates to any specialized accreditation
      issues

 

 Cluster
hires?

 

Larwence
& Dannenbring

    • The team recommends that a handbook
      for adjunct faculty be updated providing them with information necessary
      for doing their jobs and for becoming more integrated with the College
      community.

 

DONE

 

An online adjunct handbook has
been in place since December 2003. We now send regular emails with announcements
of interest to adjuncts.

 

Arts
and Sciences

 

    • The College should develop and
      implement a plan that clearly defines the role of Arts and Sciences
      within the College and maps a strategy for increasing the percentage
      of courses that is taught by full-time, tenure-track faculty

 


Chase

 

Student
Support Services

 

    • The College should carefully
      review how it currently provides student support services and ascertain
      how best to organize those services to maximize effectiveness, efficiency,
      and responsiveness. Moreover, a decision should be made about which
      services will be offered in a centralized mode and which should be decentralized.
      At any rate, there should be a standard of service that all students
      can expect to receive. The College should draw heavily on the expertise
      of its staff in student development in establishing objectives, strategies,
      and quality benchmarks

 

 
Johnson and Dannenbring

 

Library

 

    • It will be a challenge to keep
      the library staff proficient as new electronic resources and the new
      library online catalog is implemented. The library administration should
      develop a plan as soon as possible to address technology proficiency
      and training requirements for the entire staff

 

DONE

 

The
library faculty established a training committee to ensure proficiency
in the use of new databases. All library staff were provided with technology
training in preparation for the implementation of the new library system.
Ongoing training is offered via the BCTC.

    • The College should consider
      ways to increase the library’s materials budget to allow for additional
      electronic resources without jeopardizing the development of print collections.

 

DONE

 

The
acquisition of electronic resources is now supported by an annual allocation
of $200,000 from the student technology fee.   The library still
needs to augment its print acquisitions budget through endowment.

 

 

Fulfilling
a Focused Mission in the Context of a multidimensional System

 

    • We recommend that the Presidential
      Commission, or a newly established group, be charged with crafting a
      vision statement for the institution and that in turn this vision statement
      be linked to a strategic plan for the evolution of the institution.
      The strategic plan should spell out underlying assumptions regarding
      enrollments, funding sources, evolution of teaching, support, and physical
      resources, and how the interaction among these factors will move the
      institution along a path consistent with its mission, vision, and objectives.

 

DONE
BY MAY 05?

 

A process that began in spring
2002 that was to lead to a mission statement and strategic plan failed.
The college’s new President has
announced that a strategic plan will be developed in spring 2005.

 

 

Teaching
and Learning

 

    • We recommend at the Joint Curriculum
      Review Committee level a commitment by all constituent units to engage
      in a process of a rolling curriculum review for courses affecting all
      divisions of the College. This generally means those courses in arts
      and sciences that meet the general education requirements and serve
      as the foundation for specialization in business and public administration.

 

Potash

    • Previous visits and the current
      self-study note the gap between FTE students and full-time faculty lines.
      We restate the need for Baruch College to restore the number of full-time
      lines consistent with norms elsewhere with the CUNY senior institutions

 

The
senior college allocation model supports this–to no avail. Dannenbring

 

Responsiveness

 

    • The college should perform a
      careful analysis of the decline in first-time, full-time Hispanic student
      enrollment and take the appropriate action to not only halt the decline
      but to increase Hispanic enrollment

 


Analysis by Choonoo

    • Institutionalize faculty development
      in curriculum redesign and the use of technology

 


Downing

    • Institutionalize technology
      renewal budgets

 


Downing

    • Maintain a student to computer
      ratio as close to 10 to 1 as possible

 


Downing

    • Investigate and implement a
      means of making computers available to students. They may take the form
      of discount programs, leasing, loans, or other means.

 


Downing

    • Investigate and implement a
      means of making laptop computers available to faculty as they undertake
      to develop and use technology in teaching

 


Downing

    • Implement the CUNY Transfer
      and Information Program and Planning System (TIPS) as quickly as possible,
      and use preliminary transfer transcript evaluations prior to students’
      first enrollment at the College

 

Replaced
by DegreeWorks

 

Potash?

 

    • Conduct surveys of both undergraduate
      and graduate students’ interests and needs to assure that services are
      matching those needs

 

CUNY
satisfaction survey & NSSE also card swipe system 

 


Choonoo & Potash

    • Implement web-based services
      for students, including course registration, as quickly as possible

 

Downing

 

 

back
to Baruch College’s main PRR site

 

 

 

 

 


  • Contact Us
  • About Our Site
  • Privacy
  • Site Map
  • Text Only
Baruch College | One Bernard Baruch Way
55 Lexington Avenue (at 24th Street) | New York, NY 10010
646-312-1000
CUNY logo
CUNY logo