Provost’s Newsletter: News and Updates from the Division of Academic Affairs for October 5, 2023

October 5, 2023

Dear Baruch College Community:

The past 11 days have been a testament to the Baruch community’s ongoing resilience as we responded to and continue to recover from a campus-wide systems outage. Although the outage has been disruptive, the Baruch community is a strong one, and I appreciate your commitment and fortitude each day. The work of the Division of Academic Affairs continues. Following are this week’s updates about other matters.

Best wishes,

Dr. Linda Essig
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Campus Updates

Artificial Intelligence “Think Tank” Kicks Off Next Week
Baruch College is launching an Artificial Intelligence “Think Tank.” The first meeting will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 11. If you are interested in being part of the AI Think Tank, please answer the questions here.

October Coffee Chat Is Next Week; September Coffee Chat Postponed
The inaugural Coffee Chat/Tea Talk originally scheduled for September 26 has been postponed until November. However, we are excited to kick off with our October Coffee Chat/Tea Talk on Thursday, Oct. 12, from 9-10:30 am in Room 415 of the Information and Technology Building. This event will be hosted by Interim Chief Librarian Michael Waldman. All faculty and staff working on campus that day are invited to this event in recognition of LGBTQIA+ History Month.

Faculty Affairs

Director of Faculty Affairs Initiatives and Support for Faculty
Inaugural Director of Faculty Affairs Norene Leddy joined Baruch College on August 24. This new position supports both full-time and adjunct faculty across the College, providing them with resources and professional development opportunities outside of teaching. Director Leddy is in the initial stages of developing a College-wide faculty mentorship program for full-time faculty, communicating with faculty about CUNY and Baruch development opportunities, and partnering with the Schwartz Communication Institute and with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) to offer two book discussion sessions for new full-time faculty on the Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. She is also working with the Writing Center to develop workshops to support faculty in writing tenure and promotion statements. For part-time faculty, she has reached out to new and continuing adjunct faculty and continues to maintain the Blackboard organization site with resources for adjunct faculty. Additionally, Ms. Leddy will host faculty affairs open office hours, online via Zoom. Offered biweekly starting Friday, Oct. 20. Faculty can join anytime from 12 noon-1 pm. Contact Norene Leddy for more information.

Student Success

Annual Majors/Minors Fair
The Office of Undergraduate Advisement and Orientation is hosting the annual Majors/Minors Fair on Thursday, Oct. 26, from 12:30-2 pm in the Newman Vertical Campus (NVC) Simon Conference Room, Room 14-220. This event aims to familiarize first-semester undergraduate students with the various majors/minors available at Baruch. Faculty representatives from all academic departments are invited to participate and provide information to help students make informed decisions when choosing their major or minor. Please encourage your students to attend this event. Last year over 600 students attended the Majors/Minors Fair.

National Transfer Student Week
Join the Office of New Student & Family Programs (NSFP) and the Office of Academic Advisement in celebrating National Transfer Student Week from Monday, Oct. 16, to Friday, Oct. 20. It’s a week dedicated to honoring the journey of transfer students and the dedicated professionals who support them. The theme throughout the week is Full Steam Ahead! NSFP will have a lineup of programs specifically for transfer students. If you yourself were a transfer student, you can show your transfer student pride by wearing a “I Was a Transfer Student” button, available for pickup the week of October 16 at the table outside of the Student Life suite on the 2nd floor of the NVC.

Graduate Fellowships for STEM Diversity
Applications for the Graduate Fellowship for STEM Diversity (GFSD) are now open. GFSD is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization offering fellowships to American citizens pursuing graduate degrees in science and engineering. Their aim is to improve representation of female and underrepresented minority graduate students in PhD programs. The program seeks first- and second-year graduate students in broad areas of STEM fields, including mathematics, computer science, and data science. They also accept applications from seniors in undergraduate programs who plan to pursue a graduate degree next year. If you have students in these fields who might be interested, please inform them about the program. To learn more, click here.

Teaching and Learning

Apply to Be a Brightspace Learning Management System Faculty Ambassador
Brightspace will replace Blackboard as Baruch’s learning management system (LMS). Implementation will begin in Spring 2024, and all instruction will be in Brightspace in Fall 2024. The LMS Transition Committee is seeking six faculty to serve as LMS Faculty Ambassadors to support the adoption of Brightspace. To learn more about the ambassador role and indicate your interest, please complete this form. Faculty Ambassadors will receive a $2,500 research award from the Office of the Provost.

The LMS Transition Committee will be hosting an initial open Q&A about the LMS transition on Friday, Oct. 13, from 12 noon–1 pm via Zoom. Faculty and staff can register here to attend. If you are unable to attend, we plan to offer an additional Q&A opportunity in November. Faculty committee members will also be presenting at faculty meetings to ensure we keep the Baruch community informed about the transition process.

Research

Marc Edelman, Professor of Law, Is Inaugural Speaker
The Academy of Legal Studies in Business Centennial Speakers Series commenced last week, featuring Marc Edelman, Professor of Law, as its inaugural speaker. Edelman’s presentation, titled “NIL in Student Athletics,” was delivered alongside Kaitlin Ray, an attorney and former Division I tennis player at the University of California, Los Angeles. The event was co-sponsored by the Zicklin Center for Governance & Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. View the video replay here.

Want to share your recent publications, awards, or achievements? Faculty can click here. Staff can click here. Be sure to put “For the newsletter” in the subject line of your email.

Focus on Funding

Summer Research Team Program for Minority Serving Institutions
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Summer Research Team Program for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) is now accepting applications from faculty at MSIs interested in participating in a summer research team experience. Selected faculty will be invited to submit a team application, including a Research Project Proposal developed in collaboration with a DHS Center of Excellence (COE) researcher and applications from one or two qualified students.

The program seeks to increase and enhance the scientific leadership at MSIs in research areas that support the mission and goals of DHS. This program provides faculty and student research teams with the opportunity to conduct research at the university-based DHS COEs. At the end of the ten-week appointment, faculty collaborate with the center to apply for up to $100,000 in follow-up funding to continue research during the 2024-25 academic year at the faculty member’s home academic institution. For detailed program information and application resources, click here.

In Memoriam

Michael E. Staub (1957-2023)
With a heavy heart, I share news of the passing of Michael E. Staub on October 1. Dr. Staub was Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch since 2005. Recipient of an Outstanding Honors Teaching Award, he was the longtime director of the Feit Interdisciplinary Seminar program in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Staub is the author of four major books: The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and the Bell Curve (U. of North Carolina), Madness Is Civilization: When the Diagnosis Was Social, 1948-1980 (U. of Chicago), Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (Columbia), and Voices of Persuasion: Politics of Representation in 1930s America (Cambridge). He also edited The Jewish 1960s: An American Sourcebook (Brandeis) and co-authored (with Kayla M. Williams) Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army (Norton). His most recent publications include a trilogy of essays on environmental issues in the 1960s and 1970s. The first two of these appeared in the journals Environmental History (2022) and Environmental Humanities (2023); the third, “Farming with Petroleum: The Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry’s Malthusian Bargain,” is forthcoming in Agricultural History.

Stay Connected

President Wu’s Blog
President Wu publishes a 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. If you have an event for the Academic Affairs Events Calendar, published each Thursday, click here.