Provost’s Newsletter: News and Updates from the Division of Academic Affairs for June 12, 2024
June 12, 2024
Dear Baruch College Community:
Welcome to Summer Session! Although Summer Session operates at a more relaxed pace than the rest of the academic year, the College still offers approximately 500 course sections. It’s also the time of the year when we devote a lot of energy and enthusiasm to welcoming our newest students at first-year and new transfer undergraduate orientations as well as welcome events held by the academic schools later in the summer for graduate students. The College also offers a math immersion program for students who need a quantitative reasoning boost before the start of the fall semester, and future Bearcats may be on campus enrolled in College Now or the STEP Academy, which brings talented high school STEM students to campus to study in our labs. So . . . even in the summer, Baruch is still a busy place!
Each month, I have the honor—and responsibility—to represent Baruch College at the CUNY Board of Trustees Education Policy Committee when the College has items on the agenda. This month’s agenda was a long one—it went to item triple-i—and included many important items for Baruch: a new EdD in Higher Education Administration in the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs and the recertification of four of our centers, including the Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship, the Weissman Center for International Business (home to the College’s Office of Study Abroad), the Steven L. Newman Real Estate Institute, and the Center for Nonprofit Strategy and Management. I’m happy to report that all of these items were approved unanimously by the committee and now await final approval by the full Board on Monday, June 24.
I’ll be taking some time off (“annual leave”) this summer and so will this newsletter. The next issue should hit your inbox on Wednesday, July 10. The Office of the Provost, of course, remains open for business as usual.
Best wishes,
Dr. Linda Essig
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Campus Updates
Congratulations to Maria Burgos, Director of Academic Administration
Please join me in congratulating Maria Burgos, who has been appointed Director of Academic Administration, a position in which she has served on an interim basis. Ms. Burgos is a Baruch alumna, having earned her MSEd in Higher Education Administration from the Marxe School. In her new role, she is responsible for the development and implementation of operating policies and procedures regarding academic personnel administration, workload management, and compliance. In addition, Ms. Burgos is the administrator of all College-wide Personnel & Budget (P&B) Committee actions and oversees technology systems necessary to execute personnel actions, including faculty information systems, and more. As the senior administrator in the area, she also serves as deputy to the Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs, Research, and Innovation. Congratulations, Maria!
Refresh Your Cybersecurity Knowledge
As our community knows all too well, increased awareness about online risks is CUNY’s best defense when it comes to protecting against cyber threats. All faculty and staff are strongly encouraged to complete this 40-minute interactive course to gain a comprehensive understanding of cybersecurity risks, along with some best practices for safeguarding data.
Faculty Affairs
New Faculty Mentoring Network to Launch This Fall
After significant research and conversations with faculty at all levels, we are excited to announce the launch of a College-wide Faculty Mentoring Network to support both professorial title faculty and lecturers at all career stages. Faculty will be able opt in via a Mentoring Network online portal (under development) and be connected with a pool of mentors to address specific issues. In addition to connecting faculty via the online portal, we will be holding in-person Mentoring Network Faculty Gatherings in the fall and spring semesters immediately following the Faculty Research Showcases (formerly Cross-College Faculty Research Symposium). A pilot version of the network will launch mid-semester of Fall 2024. If you would like more information on the Faculty Mentoring Network, please contact Norene Leddy, Director of Faculty Affairs.
Faculty Affairs: Adjunct Services
Online Asynchronous Adjunct Faculty Orientation
An online asynchronous orientation for new adjunct faculty is available now via this link. Please feel free to share this link with new adjunct faculty and course coordinators. There will be a soft launch this summer with another round of updates in late July based on feedback. In addition to the online orientation, two College-wide Adjunct Social events will be held next year, one per semester, to give adjunct faculty the opportunity to meet and socialize in person. Please contact Norene Leddy or Adjunct Services with any questions.
Adjunct Faculty Community Space in Brightspace
A new Adjunct Community Space in Brightspace has been built to continuously support all adjunct faculty at the College. This space will function similarly to the Adjunct Orientation organization in Blackboard and will provide resources as well as announce events, training, and other critical information for adjuncts. All adjunct faculty with summer teaching assignments have already been added to the new Community Space. Additional adjunct faculty will be enrolled later in July. If you are an adjunct faculty member who is not teaching this summer but would like to be added now, please contact Adjunct Services.
Teaching and Learning
Save the Date: Research and Creative Inquiry Expo 2025
The next Research and Creative Inquiry Expo, produced by the new ExCEL Office, will be held on Tuesday, May 6, 2025. Mark your calendars now, as it’s not too early to start thinking about how you can integrate an original research or creative project into your courses to give undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in the high-impact practice of undergraduate research.
Research
Announcing the Eugene M. Lang Junior Faculty Fellowship Recipients for AY 24-25
The Joint Committee on Research evaluated 22 proposals and selected eight faculty members to receive the Eugene M. Lang Junior Faculty Research Fellowship for AY 24-25. The eight awardees and their supported projects are:
- Carolyn Abott (Department of Political Science) – Analyzing the Impact of Community Boards on Local Governance in New York City
- Chengxin Cao (Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics) – Generative AI, Change in Jobs, and Downstream Productivity Impacts Productivity
- Chaoqun Deng (Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics) – Live Streaming
- Theodore Gordon (Department of Fine and Performing Arts) – The Composer’s Black Box: Cybernetics and Instrumentality in American Experimental Music
- Youngdeok Hwang (Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics) – A Statistics-Hybrid Framework for Air Pollution Modeling and Monitoring Sensor Placement
- Anna Pun (Department of Mathematics) – Stable Tamari Posets
- Viviana Rivera-Burgos (Department of Political Science) – Puerto Rico Public Opinion Laboratory (“Laboratorio Puertorriqueño de Opinión Pública”)
- Sarah Saddler (Department of Fine and Performing Arts) – From Protest to “Progress”: Industrial Theatre’s Influence on South Africa’s Global Corporate Evolution
Congratulations to the awardees!
Faculty Achievements
Dr. Sabrina Kizzie, Doctoral Lecturer within the Department of Communication Studies, was recently inducted into the American Marketing Association’s (AMA) Marketing Hall of Fame and was honored with the prestigious AMA NYC Choice Award. This recognition represents the pinnacle of achievement in the marketing profession, celebrating extraordinary accomplishments. Her colleagues Communication Studies Chair Eric M. Gander and Lecturer Marie Della Thomas and Baruch students Keithlum Collins Moss, Rita Lin, Christy Lee, and Zuri Durkins attended the induction ceremony. Congratulations, Sabrina!
Do you want to share something you published, exhibited, performed, or presented with the Baruch community? Submit your information here.
Assessment, Accreditation, Institutional Effectiveness
Middle States Standards Refresher
With our next Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) review just three years away, it is not too early to refresh your knowledge of the MSCHE criteria for accreditation. This is especially important as the College will be reviewed under a revised set of standards relative to the last review. The MSCHE Standards make for excellent summer reading!
Provost Reading Corner
Speaking of reading, my fiction reading pace noticeably slackened during the height of the semester, but since my last update, I was able to read another of Ann Patchett’s recent books, The Dutch House, which I enjoyed even more than Tom Lake. My “small c” catholic taste in nonfiction (which I usually “read” as audiobooks) led me to six diverse volumes. Marie Arana’s LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority is a must-read given Baruch’s Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) status. Up Home: One Girl’s Journey by Ruth J. Simmons, the first Black president of an Ivy League university, is an engaging tale of her girlhood, and although I expected an academic leadership book, I was not at all disappointed. When I read them years ago, I loved former Harman Writer-in-Residence Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, but his more recent book, The Core of an Onion: Peeling the Rarest Common Food, left me feeling disappointed and hungry for more. One of novelist Ann Patchett’s favorite writers is Marilynne Robinson, so I picked up her recent deep read of the Bible, Reading Genesis. To balance the religious with the scientific, I just recently finished Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, which is really making me reconsider . . . stuff. Finally, to feed my ceramics hobby, The Anatomy of a Good Pot by Ryan Coppage provided me with some good advice on rims and feet but is definitely not for the general reader.
Do you have a reading recommendation to share? You can submit yours here.
Stay Connected
Share Your Research and Creative Activity
Keep the College up to date with your research and creative activity by emailing facultynews@baruch.cuny.edu with the what, where, and when of your publication, presentation, exhibition, award, and so on.
President Wu’s Blog
Join the conversation at President Wu’s blog. Read and comment here.
Newsletter Items?
If you have an item you would like considered for inclusion in the biweekly Provost’s Newsletter, please click here to send an email to the Provost mailbox. On hiatus over the summer, the Academic Affairs Events Calendar will return in August.