Draft: Subject to Senate Approval

THE TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-NINTH PLENARY SESSION

OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

October 22, 2002

The meeting was called to order at 6:30 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Sixty-four voting members were present:

Baruch: Present – Hill; Absent – Freedman, Giannikos, Majete, Melnik, Onochie, Pollard, and Wiley. BMCC: Present – Friedman, Neis, Price, Vozick, White; and Alternate Leslie. Absent – Aymer. Bronx CC: Present – Gonsher, and Lopez-Marron. Absent – Skinner, and Tanaka-Kuwashima. Vacancies – 1. Brooklyn: Present – Bell, Jacobson, Romer, Shapiro, Sheridan, Tobey, and Alternates Bloomfield. Absent – Antoniello, London and Moriber. Vacancies – 1. CCNY: Present – Benenson, Connorton, Crain, Manassah, Sank, and Sohmer; Absent – Broderick, and Buffenstein; Vacancies – 2. CSI: Present – Cooper, Klibaner, Levine, and Petratos. Absent – Foleno and Yousef. CUNY Law School: Present – McArdle; Absent – Andrews (on leave). Graduate School: Present – Baumrin. Absent – Katz-Rothman (on leave), Khuri, Kulkarni (on leave), Nair and Ofuatey-Kodjoe. Hostos CC: Present – Italia, and Alternate Vasillov; Absent – Canate (on leave) and Rivera. Vacancies – 1. Hunter: Present – Krishnamachari, Matthews, and Wimberly. Absent – Friedman, Hampton, Kurzman, Sherrill, and Wallach; Vacancies – 2. John Jay: Present – Bohigian, Holder, Kaplowitz, and Alternate Cochran; Absent – Mandery, Richardson, and Wylie-Marques. Kingsborough CC: Present – Barnhart, Farrell, Galvin, Goodkin, and O’Malley. LaGuardia CC: Present – Beaky, Gallagher, Lerman, Mettler, and Reitano. Lehman: Present – Heching, Hosay, and Mineka. Absent – Philipp and Tananbaum. Vacancies – 1. Medgar Evers: Present – Barker, Donohue, Harris-Hastick, and Alternate Patwary. Absent – Bennett. NYCCT: Present – Cermele, Dreyer, Horelick, Hounion, and Walter. Absent – Richardson. Queens: Present – Moore and Savage. Absent – Erickson, Speidel, and Sukhu; Vacancies – 5. Queensborough CC: Present – Dahbany-Miraglia, ,and Alternate Tully; Absent – Barbanel, Pecorino, and Weiss. Vacancies – 1. York: Present – Frank, Lewis, and Moss; Absent – Cooper.

Governance Leaders present: Baumrin (GSUC), Friedheim (BMCC), Kaplowitz (John Jay), Levine (CSI), Mettler (LaG), Rodriguez (Hunter), Savage (Queens), Sohmer (CCNY), and Tobey (Brooklyn). Faculty guest, Professor Ranald. Trustees Beal and Morales attended. Chancellor Goldstein, Vice Chancellor Schaffer and Barbara Cura (staff) attended. Executive Director Phipps, Administrative Assistant Pasela, and Secretary Blanchard were present. 

I. Approval of the Agenda: The agenda was adopted as proposed.

II. Approval of the Minutes: The Minutes were approved as distributed.

III. Reports:

A. Chair (recorded in Reports & Deliberations)

B. Representatives to Board Committees (written)

C. The Chancellor (recorded in Reports & Deliberations)

IV. Invited Guests – New Trustees Valerie L. Beal and Hugo M. Morales, M.D.: (recorded in Reports & Deliberations)

V. New Business: The following resolution on the 1999 Master Plan was passed without dissent.

RESOLUTION ON IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 1999 MASTER PLAN AMENDMENT ENDING REMEDIATION IN THE SENIOR COLLEGES

The University Faculty Senate endorses the following recommendations and urges the State Board of Regents to adopt the following measures that would modify implementation of the 1999 Master Plan Amendment:

1. Students who have failed one test, either reading, writing, or mathematics, should be allowed to register provisionally in a baccalaureate program in a four year college at the University with up to one year to pass the additional exam.

Students who pass two out of three tests have demonstrated through previous studies of students’ success conducted at the University their ability to succeed at the senior colleges at rates that are about the same as those students who have passed all three exams. University experience shows we have developed successful strategies to help these students gain the required competencies and they should not be barred from the senior colleges. This would serve the same students as Prelude to Success without the additional administrative complications and allow students to really matriculate at the campus of their choice.

                                2. SAT exemptions should require a writing sample.

Students should not be exempted from a writing assessment test on the basis of a multiple-choice instrument. Some writing samples like the optional one now being offered on the SAT (which could be forwarded to the University) is a better option.

3. The CUNY admissions (basic skills) test policies should be examined. It should be determined whether the ACT tests in reading and writing have reliability and validity for CUNY students. In addition, exemptions from these assessments on the basis of the New York State Regents examination in English and mathematics should be re-examined.

The Regents in their November 19, 1999 approval of the CUNY Master Plan required that it be demonstrated that the ACT would be reliable and valid for CUNY students. It is of particular concern that the population taking this exam is a small portion of the entering freshman class (those who get a 75 or higher on the Regents or a 480 on the verbal SAT are exempt) and, therefore, an analysis of these results may misrepresent the reading and writing competencies of CUNY students. It is important that CUNY make the data from the tests and their analyses available for CUNY researchers to review.

                                4. ESL students should continue to be allowed ESL courses.

ESL students who are exempt from passing the CUNY assessment test in reading and writing (though they must pass in math) should be allowed to take ESL courses even though these courses are developmental in nature and in structure.

5. SEEK students who may enter the senior colleges even if they have not passed the assessment tests should be allowed developmental or compensatory courses in the SEEK departments or programs.

SEEK students who are allowed to enter the University without passing the assessment tests should not be limited to supplemental instruction. SEEK departments should offer compensatory and/or developmental courses by the SEEK departments in order to give them the best possible start in college using proven successful strategies. They should be allowed, as are ESL students, to have appropriate classroom instruction, not just supplemental instruction.

6. Students who have passed the MSAT should be allowed non-credit math courses above the level of the required Parts 1 and 2 of MSAT (arithmetic and elementary algebra), but below the level of pre-calculus.

Mathematics Departments in CUNY who do not wish to give credit for intermediate algebra or trigonometry cannot offer these classes. Therefore, students who have not completed Sequential 2 or 3 math in high school but who have passed the assessment test are faced with a two-year gap between their MSAT level skills (elementary algebra) and the appropriate college level mathematics courses in which they must enroll. Instruction in non-credit courses should be allowed for students needing these college level math courses for their majors but who do not have the requisite algebra and trigonometry skills necessary to enroll or succeed in credit-bearing courses.

7. Students’ success within their first two semesters should be monitored with the following variables:

ACT writing scores 6, 7, 8, or higher

ACT reading scores above and below 65 (14 raw score)

Regents exemptions

SAT scores – verbal

SAT scores – math

H.S. average

H.S. grades in English

H.S. grades in math

Gender, age, race

The Regents should examine the success of students after 1, 2, 3, and 4 years who have entered CUNY with various ACT scores, Regents scores, or SAT exemptions. They should look at their high school averages, gender, age, and race along with their success rates.

8. Students who were not accepted to a baccalaureate program at a senior college should be tracked to see where they enrolled for their freshman year of college.

Students whose first choice is a senior college but who were offered enrollment in a community college should be surveyed to see if they accepted their assignment to a community college or if they enrolled at another institution outside of CUNY.

9. The success of transfers exempted from the assessment tests should be monitored and compared to "home grown" students.

Students who have completed 45 credits at non-CUNY schools are exempted from the assessment tests. It is important to understand if these students will succeed as well as students who transfer from within CUNY and must pass the assessment tests before transferring.

10. The Regents should continue to monitor the impact of the end of remediation for three more years (for a total of five years).

It is important that the Regents be able to monitor the impact of the end of remediation at the senior colleges for a period of years that will allow two classes who entered the University under this ruling a chance to begin to graduate. Only after a longitudinal study long enough to allow two cohorts of students to graduate can we begin to see the impact of this policy.

______

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:15 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Phipps
Executive Director

III. Reports:

A. Chair: I want to just very quickly go through my report, which will take about three minutes, and then we have the SED Resolution that we want to think about trying to get through before everyone disappears. I just want to say I put you all on a Listserv.. I hope that was OK; we’ve had some good discussions. I think it’s very important that we’re connected because the spring is not going to look pretty with tuition increases and all kinds of things. I’ve been pleased so far with the discussions. I also put out on the SED - these are the Regents’ policy conference focus questions - and I put those out in case any of you have anything you want to say and some people did have things they wanted to say. I would appreciate anything you have to say on these questions, and Martha Bell from Brooklyn College and I are going to try to shape answers to these question. Next, intellectual property - We had a hearing and it went quite well. I just want to say where the policy is now. Vice Chancellor Schaffer is incorporating some more of our things and then he will show it to us but he seems suddenly not in any rush to get this through the Board of Trustees, which is fine with me. He says: "Oh, January would be OK." It’s a better policy.

We’re having a conference November 1, Pleasures of the Mind - New Scholars at CUNY. I hope some of you come. I couldn’t get all the colleges but we have a whole lot of new faculty speaking and I think it could be wonderful. They’re speaking on cutting edge questions in their disciplines and about their research. City College on November 1, please come!

Committee Night was a wonderful event. I thought it was very successful. We would like a few more people in Academic Policy Committee. I think George Shapiro would like a few more people. It tends to be the most exciting committee; at least that has been its history. So, if anybody is not in a committee and would like to join up and be on academic policy under the leadership of George Shapiro… Two more things. The next plenary – Bill Barry who is head of security for CUNY will speak. He is finishing doing a report on security at CUNY. Also Larry Hanley of City College, the editor of Academe, will also speak. Finally, CUNY on the Concourse – I have to say a few things about that. I went this morning; in many ways this is wonderful, in many ways it scares me. It’s wonderful because obviously it’s bringing needed services to the community. It’s a wonderful facility. It’s making health service careers available to the community and that’s wonderful. What scares me? You know what scares me: who’s running it. There are a lot of credit courses and as far as I can see it’s going to be run by Continuing Ed. I went to pick up a lot of the brochures, so I do have a good bit of information. It’s interesting that the RN program is going to be run by BMCC, not Hostos. I don’t know why but I think it’s something that we should keep careful tabs on because it seems to me both wonderful and then, once again, an erosion of faculty determining curriculum, personnel staffing. They’re not going to grant degrees, they are only going to do something like 38 credits of a beginning program; but it’s something we have to watch because to me it’s further erosion.

Professor Baumrin ( Philosophy, Graduate School) – I don’t understand, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m behind the curve here. How can this be accredited as a program for nurses on even the sub-Baccalaureate level without an appropriate level of faculty instruction? I’m sort of flabbergasted. I asked for information from Professor Sohmer and he said something like: "What do I expect?" But I sort of expect better. Without a faculty, if we can’t get accreditation at some of our colleges because there is an inadequate number of faculty in the nursing program, how could they get accreditation for these programs as degree courses if they have no faculty? / Chair O’Malley – I do not know. I only went this morning and picked up the literature. I was pretty appalled that something like 38 credits would then be given their credit. It’s one thing when they give GED training and pre-nursing and preparations for the exam. That’s acceptable. But when you have 38 credits that you can then transfer…I will find out and let you know. / Professor Baumrin – Presumably transfer to Hostos, or Lehman, or BMCC? / Chair O’Malley – Yes. / Professor Baumrin – Well, let’s not run out of control. / Chair O’Malley – I think this may be a first, I don’t know. / Professor Baumrin – You don’t think everywhere they would have…even Queens?

C: The Chancellor: It’s good to be here. Just two things very quickly. First, I’d like to compliment this body for the very good work that you’re doing with the administration as we start to fashion our budget message for the next year and a whole variety of other things. You’ve been a very responsive body and I really appreciate it. Good thinking, good cooperation and I personally appreciate it very much and I think it just helps the University. Secondly, because I imagine many of you have things on your mind and I am unfortunately a little strapped for time, I thought I would put aside whatever remarks I have and just respond to questions that any of you have. I have changed the way in which the Chancellor’s report. It is done at the Board meetings. As many of you know, it’s a very comprehensive report, more so than we’ve seen in the past. Those are the most substantive things that are on my mind that I think the Board needs to know and the public needs to know. It just seems to me redundant to have to repeat all of that again since you have all of that information, and if you have any questions on that or any other matter I’d be very happy to respond in the time that we have this evening. I’m ready to take questions.

Professor Cooper (History, College of Staten Island) – Could you tell us please if there is any news on Silvio Berlusconi’s honorary degree. / Chancellor Goldstein – We have had conversations with the Council General and the Ambassador and there is still great interest in acknowledging him and we’re just working out the process of what it would be, whether it would be an honorary degree. There were recommendations made by representatives of this body that it might be the Chancellor’s Medal, it might be some opportunity to recognize him and we’re still working through that in terms of timing. So it’s moving along. It has not been sidetracked by any means, and I’ll let you know as we come to some conclusion.

Professor Farrell (Behavioral Science &Human Services, Kingsborough Community College) – There has been some discussion at the community college caucus about CPI requirements. We’ve inquired from administration, from Vice Chancellor Mirrer, about whether these requirements are still in effect or not. And in some cases, in some situations we’re told they’ve been done away with, in other cases we’ve been told they’ve been phased out or are being phased out, but it’s not clear if they are still in effect or not and does it require some kind of movement from the Board of Trustees to deal with this policy if it is being phased out. / Chancellor Goldstein – I don’t believe that the College Preparatory Initiative courses as they were have been phased out. I believe there was a certain timetable for all of them to be implemented at our campuses of both the two-year institutions and four-year institutions and I’m not aware of any decision, from the central administration at least, advising the Board on any change in that at all. I haven’t certainly been briefed. Louise Mirrer is not with us tonight. She would have much more intimate knowledge of that, but I believe what I’ve said is accurate.

Professor Crain (Psychology, City College) – I wanted to ask you about the master plan amendment, and I know that the Central Office is promoting its data successfully, that diversity has not really changed since the new admissions requirements. I know the data that we’ve obtained from the Office of Civil Rights indicates that those students who would have gotten in the Bachelor’s degree programs and are getting turned away are disproportionately students of color, so that the data conflict. What I want to ask you – it’s not the greatest suggestion in my point of view but it’s something I could live with – is why not let students who have only one remedial need in one area and don’t have a great deficiency, why not just provide that much flexibility? Say, if a student has a remedial need in one area, it’s not great, they could get in. That would help enormously. We wouldn’t have to fight very much anymore. It seems so sensible too. /

Chancellor Goldstein – Bill, let me respond in the following way by saying first that I understand your passion for the issue and your sincerity for the issue and your indefatigableness, and I admire that and I think I’d like to see more of that kind of passion from some sectors of the University. The facts are as follows: our enrollment has been very strong indeed as you know and I have always said - and I’ve said this to Commissioner Mills, I’ve said it to legislators, I’ve said it to the Regents - that if you want to audit the data our books are open for anybody to audit the data. When you have the data they are what they are. And our data, the University’s data, the official data of the University, show a very strong enrollment increase across the University, and all ethnic and racial groups have been increasing. The data suggest that the racial and ethnic balance is fairly constant. There are some variations, yes, and there are variations from year to year across the University over a very long period of time. So, at least empirically, the data show unequivocally that the policy has not had a disparate impact on any particular group. And indeed the critics of the policy – and I wasn’t here when the policy was debated, but I’ve read the transcripts – the critics concerned with policy were saying that the University was going to implode, that half the students were going to be gone. Well, the facts are just the reverse. The University has ratcheted up admission standards; I think the reputation of the University is stronger, I would submit, than it was a few years ago. And all students are coming from every racial group in larger number than they did before the policy. I think in part the reason for that is that, as I’ve said before, I believe in efficient markets, I think the market for colleges and universities is an efficient market, everybody has access to the same information, and they are making their decisions. And they are coming to the City University of New York in record numbers I believe in part because people believe this is the place to get a valued degree and it is a place that is price competitive. I think those are the two major components in how people are making decisions. So that to me is the result coming from the facts. With respect to your specific issue, Bill, about why don’t we allow certain things to happen, the policy is the policy, and the Chancellor doesn’t have the authority unless the Chancellor goes to the Board and says "let’s change the policy." I believe the policy is sound. I believed that before it was made policy because I did this at Baruch, and people could say Baruch is different, but it worked at Baruch and it certainly seems to be working in the University. So that’s my own view and we’re going through the process now with the Regents. The Regents will be heard on this matter and whatever it is we’re going to live with. /

Professor Crain – The data the way you described it is not the unequivocal data. First of all, the State Education Department has about 1,400 students who, as a result of this policy…who would have been in a Bachelor’s degree program, are nowhere, did not enroll anywhere, they were lost. / Chancellor Goldstein – It happened long before the policy. / Professor Crain – Ok, that data we don’t have. What we do have is the data for 2001 that indicated that, of those students who met the general requirements for a Bachelor’s degree program, 21% of the white students did not get in because of the new tests in this policy, 42% of the African-American students did not get in because of the new tests, 42% of the Latino students did not get in because of the new tests, and 27% of the Asian students. This is after some immersion and after Prelude to Success. The data indicate that this policy is disproportionately hurting students of color. I could say the facts are the facts. That data is clear. / Chancellor Goldstein – Bill, I respectfully disagree. As a statistician I look at the data and I see very different things.

Professor Friedheim (Borough of Manhattan Community College) – As you undoubtedly know better than anyone else in this room, one of the things that distinguishes our community colleges from other community colleges in the United States is that we’re part of the University system and community college faculty is expected to do research and to publish as well as teach to be considered for a promotion. I’m not going to ask you a question about the teaching load of community colleges, although I am concerned about that, vis-à-vis senior colleges, which makes it more difficult for community college faculty to find time to do research, but I am going to ask you a question about this: What can the University do to support the research that all faculty do at community colleges? And let me put the question in a context, that at the Borough of Manhattan Community College when people apply for sabbaticals, at least for the last seven or eight years, for the most part they have not gotten them. Sabbaticals are a rare commodity and there is clearly a relationship between sabbaticals and research. And also when people bring grant money into the college, for example $150 thousand National Science Foundation Grant, people are very frequently told, as was the case with one colleague in my department, that they will not get release time to support their research. It seems to me that this kind of policy is counterproductive if you want faculty at community colleges to do research and to publish. I’d just like you to comment on that./

Chancellor Goldstein – With respect to the last point about bringing in a grant from National Science Foundation that presumably you’ve written in release time for… / Professor Friedheim – Yes, well, the faculty member I think is going to turn it down because he’s not going to get the release time. / Chancellor Goldstein – I don’t understand why the release time would not be granted. I think this is common practice at community colleges and four-year colleges and I have no answer for it. It seems to me that if somebody has been rewarded by a group of their peers, and a National Science Foundation Grant is a prestigious grant, that we should reward a faculty member by giving them an opportunity to continue to do their research. If I were a president I would be very supportive of giving release time in that situation, unless there were mitigating circumstances, and there are sometimes circumstances. For example, if a program is under accreditation review, and part of the review requires that x% of the classes be taught by full-time faculty and releasing full-time faculty compromises those data, that to me would be a circumstance where you would pause and say: "look, at least for the next year or so, the next semester, we won’t be able to do it for that particular reason." Outside of a reason as compelling as that I’d be hard pressed to see why one would not be given release time. With respect to the broader issue, I think fundamentally the problem is this is a poorly funded university. Whether it’s community colleges or four-year institutions, we don’t have, unfortunately, the luxury of supporting the good work that our faculty do at both of these types of institutions at the level that we would like to see that, and we will continue to have to fight hard to get those resources. Absent that, and I’ll be happy to talk about the budget climate as I see it, which I think could be described as grim, I think we have to take some actions unilaterally as an institution to say this is important to do and we’re going to place some of our resources to support faculty research. In the latest contract with the Professional Staff Congress I think we’ve made a good movement in that direction. The union and the administration both agreed that, certainly for faculty new to the professoriate that are on their way to achieving tenural promotions, that opportunity should be given to faculty that are starting out, and I’m very supportive of that. The degree to which we can push that envelope is something that I would very strongly support. But we’re a long way from doing that in a ubiquitous way because our full-time faculty ranks are as small as they are relative to where they should be, and it would be hard to open the flood gates up like this and diminish the amount of full-time faculty in our classrooms. So the bottom line is funding, and there is no other policy reason beyond that./

Professor Friedheim – I understand the funding problem. Can I just have a follow-up? We’re also talking about money that is already there for sabbaticals, money that is already there for a National Science Foundation Grant, and routinely sabbaticals are not given at my college and people are not given release time to do research. Period. / Chancellor Goldstein – It’s about money. / Professor Friedheim – No, it’s not about money. / Chancellor Goldstein – If it’s not about money and it’s not about impeding the progress of getting programs or divisions or schools accredited I don’t understand why it’s not done. I’ll take the next question.

Professor Matthews (Math, Hunter College) – I believe that we should have efficient operations and I believe that people should make informed decisions. My parents hadn’t gone to college, and so it was hard for them to get the information to make informed decisions. My concern is that politicians in Albany don’t always realize that we have a large immigrant population. And I have found in teaching calculus and other Math courses that many of those immigrants are way above the other students in terms of mathematical and science training, even though it may not seem that it’s at a college level, and it seems to me that this is having two negative impacts: one is that the immigrant students are put into lower level courses than they belong in; they’ll get terrific grades, but they’ll get discouraged because they’re doing stuff that’s below their level; and the other students in the class for whom the class is appropriate are intimidated because the high grades are already taken up by these immigrant students. So the effect is that we have both such populations getting out of Math and Science related areas when we should be encouraging that. At Hunter we started rather recently trying to match our recruitment to the programs that we have so that we bring in students that have a chance of completing those programs. They’re not coming in thinking they’re having data processing as though they’re not ready for a post-calculus kind of computer science major. We have to spend time and effort and money and get into place programs that can effectively evaluate so students in their first semester are in the right courses. This has always been a problem with transfer students from any place and we try to deal with that, particularly within CUNY, but with the immigrant students I don’t know that the University is so aware, and certainly the politicians in Albany aren’t aware, that this is a concern where we could increase efficiency. /

Chancellor Goldstein – I think you’re putting your finger on a difficult and vexing problem. The status of Math education in secondary level and below is really appalling in the United States. This is not just a problem in New York City, if you look at national data, this is a ubiquitous problem. I think the real issue here is how universities like this university can be working with the schools to get Mathematics at a level so when they do come to university life they are ready to do real university Mathematics. That is not the case abroad. If you look in East Asia, Asia, in Europe, throughout Europe, Scandinavian countries, the students that we get from these countries are much better prepared, they are far more advanced because their localities are taking the subjects of Science and Mathematics much more seriously, they have better teachers in the classrooms, the students are better motivated, and they are learning. So, unless we as a country embrace the notion that scientific literacy, mathematical literacy in a sine qua non for a healthy population, we’re just not going to make the kinds of progresses that you’re pointing to. /

Professor Matthews – But I still think that CUNY should, and I hope it does, look into how we can evaluate these immigrant students and place them properly. I teach in the graduate Math Ed program and many of my students are in that TOPS program, which is fantastic. So we’re doing our best. It’s on a small scale and it’s a wonderful program to train teachers who are going to teach in the New York City public schools and really bring that up. But I think we have to work on two fronts and deal with the immigrant issue. / Chancellor Goldstein – I agree, we could do a much better job than we’re doing in that.

Professor Beaky (English, LaGuardia Community College) – I just wanted to follow up with, I’m not sure if it’s a statement or a question, about CPI, the College Preparatory Initiative. I realize that Louise Mirrer is really the person to ask, but CPI is now ten years, twelve years old. Since then we have the 60 credit limit at community colleges and even more recently we have the problem with TAP certification, where TAP will not certify financial aid for courses in excess of program requirements. So you have three policies, two of which are working against the third, against CPI. This is a problem of real urgency and immediacy for the way that we advise our students in what they should be taking, so it would really help the community colleges in particular if we had some sort of guidance. What should we tell students? / Chancellor Goldstein – I would suggest that either in your Executive Committee when Louise comes to bring this up and see where we are, and it may be time just for a fresh assessment of whether CPI has outlived it’s usefulness, if it needs tweaking, if it needs to be reformed. It might be a good and appropriate time to look at it. I just have not been involved in any of those discussions, so I can’t really answer you with any authority or great knowledge. / Professor Beaky – During the semester students are advised to take this course or that course, so even now the problems are existing. Thank you.

Chancellor Goldstein – Let me just get right at the heart of your question. I have always believed that the flagship environment around academic disciplines would be dominated at the senior colleges but, where appropriate, the community colleges would apply as well. I do not think there would be equality in terms of one to one match for the senior college and the two-year institution. The point of the cluster hire is to bring the institution in the aggregate into another space, if you will, of high distinction and academic programs, which would largely be dominated by the ability to do substantial research and graduate level of work and advanced level of work in those disciplines. That’s how disciplines really get their reputation. There are faculty sprinkled around the community colleges in some of those disciplines that I think certainly should be participating and, where appropriate, I think they ought to be engaged and brought into this process. With respect to that long list of other disciplines that you gave, as far as I know they are not listed as disciplines for cluster hires. We have started with those four that you mentioned: teacher education, photonics, foreign languages, and new media. I think we’ve added one or two, and at the last meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee I thought we had agreed that the Senate would convene a committee to work with the administration to advise on other areas for cluster hires. But that’s the whole point. When I was first asked to consider being the Chancellor, there were a number of Board members that said to me: " We ought to establish one or two flagship campuses;" and I said: "I am totally opposed to that, I think that would be dysfunctional to the University, and I think at the end of the day it would hurt institutions rather than to expand institutions." I said: "A better way to do this is to pick a few areas that the University feels they can invest in, and do it in a real way as major universities invest in disciplines. When they want to build up great departments they invest by hiring great faculty, they support the establishment of laboratories, start-up costs, graduate assistance; they’re doing all of the things great universities do to build up programs. And if we can find strength from a cluster of institutions around City University that will all inform and participate in that particular discipline, it seems to me that we would generate sort of a rising of the entire University." And I think that is still the most sensible approach, given the fiscal constraints. But this is going to be more dominated by senior colleges, graduate level disciplines, than it is going to be at community colleges, except if we find a couple of disciplines that would be dominated by community colleges, and I would be very receptive to look at that and consider it. I think there are programs that certainly should be assessed to see their worthiness for this kind of an approach and I would hope that the Senate would advise on some of that and I look forward to those deliberations. /

Professor Friedman – Quick follow-up. With all due respect, I didn’t ask about a one to one equation. The community colleges make up one third of the colleges in this University. Our students make up one third of the population, our students feed into the seniors, and if we know from the outset, or if we know more clearly now that this area of cluster and flagship is not going to be our bailiwick, then I think we would like to find out, those of us who represent the community college faculty. Where are we going to shine? Where is the money going to go to highlight what we do so well? And frankly, that we’re not involved in teacher education clusters to me is a shock. / Chancellor Goldstein – I think you should be, and that’s something that we could look at. I had thought that there were some faculty that were hired, that were situated at the community colleges with teachers, and if they weren’t that’s something that we ought to address.

Professor Benenson (Mechanical Engineering, City College) – I heard your answer to Bill Crain’s question and I share your respect for data and also appreciate the constraints of policy, so I have a question about both data and policy. Does your data indicate any change in the enrollment of ESL students over the last five years since the remediation decision was made? / Chancellor Goldstein – I think we have seen a diminution of ESL students starting around 1995. That’s when we really started to see a decrease and I think it is independent, totally independent of this remediation policy. I think the ESL issue is a difficult one to get one’s arms around. We did take some action that I asked Louise to inform the Board about, and that is to give students an opportunity to ready themselves in a longer period of time to become more proficient in English and to give other opportunities to show through surrogates of courses that they were English proficient, other than writing an essay or the usual things that we’re doing. What we are finding is that a lot of students that were classified as ESL students were really students who were here in this country for a very long period of time and that they really should not be classified as ESL students in the way that the policy or the term was first enacted. So this is something we’re still going to have to work our way through, but I don’t see this relating at all with the policy on ridding remedial courses from the inventory of senior colleges. This is an issue that has gone back about seven or eight years now, well before this was enacted as policy. / Professor Benenson – You should know that there’s a strong perception, particularly within the senior colleges, that it appears to many people to be the effect of policy of CUNY to phase out ESL. And that’s kind of what we see. We see reductions 75-80% in the number of sections of ESL. / Chancellor Goldstein – I think it is about students declaring what they are comfortable in, which is really what is driving the data. And, for those students who through assessments we believe that really do not have the readiness to deal with English appropriately for the kind of work that we want at our colleges, we are giving them a greater opportunity. We doubled the time from a year to two years now for students to show readiness. So we are looking at this, but I think you need to separate the ESL issue of ESL courses that have been diminished over the last eight years from the policy. I just don’t think that they are correlated or have anything to do with one another.

Professor Vozick (Science, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – I want to start by saying that I’m sort of on the same page as you about scientific education, scientific literacy. That’s my work, and I think it is essential for the survival of our culture that the ordinary people be educated in science, and I want to toss an idea your direction just to be thought about that one area for community college excellence might be the area of environmental and ecological literacy. I’m not talking flagship environments. I’m talking really physical environments that I think that we could develop community college programs that help New Yorkers become more conscious of the environment because city life deprives them of that awareness. What I really wanted to do is to open a window for you to tell us a little bit about the grim economics of the coming budget, particularly since I have to represent adjuncts in this body, to give us a sense of what you think that means in terms of full-time lines, which is our constant mantra, how you think the environment for full-time lines is going to be in the coming period. And lastly, so we can add on a smile, I’d like to hear a little bit about CUNY on the Concourse and about Governor’s Island, just updates on what’s happening there. /

Chancellor Goldstein – Let me say that I think that we are facing probably the biggest financial challenge that this city and state has seen in several decades. We have what some people are referring to as the perfect storm, with both the city and the state having deficits that some people believe perhaps are even larger than the media has reported. Whatever it is, they are substantial and they are going to cause serious problems in this city and in this state, and it has a very different texture than it had in the 1970’s when you had a state that was in a very strong position relative to the city. The state, as you know, is having problems as well. We will know when the Governor, whoever the Governor is, makes their budget message sometimes in third week in January. I think it’s going to be a very difficult speech about the budget and I think we have to be prepared in this University to work together. As I have told the presidents, and I’m going to tell it to you as well, and I think it’s very important that we all abide by this, this is a time when we all have to work together. It’s very easy for people to jump off a train and start making accusations "you hired more in this area, and you hired more in this college, and this discipline is better than this discipline." That kind of approach I think is dysfunctional and it’s going to hurt the University rather than help the University. We will get through this. This city and this state have had difficult times and these will be difficult times but we’re going to get through it. With respect to faculty, I do not believe that we should stop the hiring of full-time faculty, even though we are embarking on a very difficult and turbulent financial time. This University cannot prosper unless it has a full-time faculty that is much larger than the full-time faculty that we have today. And I have made the commitment, to the degree that I can keep that commitment – and you know every commitment is based upon a certain set of foundational principles that we think we can stand on, and I hope that we will be able to stand on these foundational principles – to not allow the full-time faculty ranks to decrease from their numbers now and if anything to increase those ranks, even during difficult times. Allocating a budget, at the end of the day, is about what you believe in and what you value, and I think that what we have to value in this University is to put the best minds and the best teachers we can in our classrooms to assist our students in fully realizing their dreams for a better life. I think that’s what we are here for to do, and that’s what my commitment is to the degree that I can see this through. We have an opportunity now with the Early Retirement Initiative. I don’t know how many members of the full-time faculty are going to decide to go to Provence or wherever it is that they go, but whatever it is, I told the Governor’s people, and they were not happy with this, that for every faculty member that left we are going to hire a faculty member, if not more than one faculty member because presumably we are going to bring people in at lower ranks and lower salaries and we might be able to do it. On the flip side however, there are going to be many people who manage the University; they don’t teach classes, and I think here we are going to have to be a little more vigilant and careful about whether we replace those that leave and see if we can truly use the notion of the integrated university to manage the affairs in the University in ways different than we did before. That’s going to require that we have a cooperative spirit between and among campuses that will be participating. This is very much a hallmark of this administration, it’s very much a hallmark of our efficiencies that we are creating, and we’re going to push this as far as we can, to the degree that we can. I hope that answers your question. CUNY on the Concourse – we opened it officially today. I was there with the Governor and Dennis Rivera. We have about 740 students, our business plan calls for in about a year to have 3,000 students. It’s a wonderful, beautiful facility and I was very delighted to be part of it because I believe bringing the University to where students want to study is something that we should do. There is a beautiful child care facility there that was wonderful to see, little babies up through toddlers and a little older in that facility while their parents are studying, so I’m delighted. Governors Island – you’re going to need to have me come back and I’m going to need a couple of hours about Governors Island.

Professor Romer (Brooklyn College) – That was a wonderful answer, and I am now going to ask a question that is much more particular and less central to CUNY, but it’s still one that I would like answered. Maybe because I just read what was on the Senate Forum and got a one sided view, but could you shed some light on what the basis of an honor to Berlusconi is about. What’s the basis on giving him an honor from CUNY? / Chancellor Goldstein – I know there are a lot of people in this audience that find that to be an unsavory thing to do, but there are many people who say, rightly so, that he is the leader of a democratic country elected by the people of Italy, a very close ally of the United States, and a very strong Italian-American community that has dealt with me would like to see him acknowledged. Is he a scholar? No, we understand that, but we honor people in lots of different ways. My job is that if we move forward with something like this to do it in a way that he would feel engaged with the University, that he might show his largesse to the University, and not do something that would compromise very basic principles; and we’re working it through. / Professor Romer – Good, I’m glad to hear that the question of degree seems to be off the table. / Chancellor Goldstein – Well, I didn’t say it was off the table. / Professor Romer – We’re hoping that it will be off the table. / Chancellor Goldstein – That’s why I’ve been doing this very methodically. I’ve been talking with the Senate, there are a number here in this room that I’ve talked to individually, and there are people with very strong feelings on both sides of this and we’ll see where it goes. / Professor Romer – We’d like trust in your creativity. / Chancellor Goldstein – Thank you.

IV. Invited Guests – New Trustees Valerie L. Beal and Hugo M. Morales M.D.:

Chair O’Malley – Trustee Valerie Lancaster Beal has been sitting very patiently in the front. I think what we should do is move to hear a few remarks from her and then a few questions, just so you get to know one of our newest Trustees. Valerie Lancaster Beal was appointed by Governor Pataki last June. She holds degrees from Georgetown, where she is currently on the Board of Regents, and she also has an MBA from Wharton School of Business. She’s an investment banker with WMR Beal & Co. and this year she has been working with Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem in the area of financial management. I think we have her bio in the back, but two things I just picked out: One was she restructured the capital budget for the District of Columbia, which I thought was an amazing feat, and also she has a special relationship with Bronx Community College and has worked with their (COPE) Program. I feel a special affinity with her because she sits next to me in the Board of Trustees. I’m in the corner and she sits next to me. Anyway, Valerie Lancaster Beal, Trustee Beal.

Trustee Beal – First of all, I’d like to thank you for inviting me here this evening. As you know, I am a very recent member of the Board of Trustees to the University as of this June, and I must tell you that, while I have been on a number of boards throughout my career, this has been probably one of the most exciting opportunities that I’ve had to date. I am an investment banker and I have been one for 25 years now. I started as a mere child! My area of expertise is in public finance and in particular in capital budgeting and, ironically, as I heard the Chancellor talk about crisis management, I happened to be the investment banker and financial adviser to the District of Columbia as it went in and out of the financial control process. I actually served under four mayors, so for me I think that that’s a miracle in and of itself, and that each administration somehow for better or for worse I kept getting hired is in that process. I didn’t know and I truly had no idea that I would wind up doing education. I started out in education boards because I have two children, so in my free time I decided that I had to combine civic activity with things that would also enable me to work with and for my children. I’ve worked on a number of boards, I’ve been very active in parent associations, and then from that I went back on the Georgetown Board. President Carolyn Williams knows me from a service organization we belong to and she said: " I need you on campus." Their director Barbara Martin, I don’t know if you know her, she’s director of their COPE program, and she said: "You need to be up there talking to my students." So I began, I don’t know how many years ago, coming up and meeting the students at COPE project at Bronx Community College and the relationship has just grown immensely. I work with the college’s foundation and I still continue to do seminars with the COPE program. Those parents, while we often come from very different programs, but we sit there and we talk about raising our children, we talk about getting them through their educational process as they themselves go through their education, and I am so in awe of those parents. I heard you talking - and I will tell you I know absolutely nothing about educational policy at CUNY, so when the question and answer period starts, I know nothing about it thus far; I’m very new – but I have listened to the parents tell me about their struggle with having to get through the college courses and I am floored by the fact that they can’t take certain courses that will present them ready for the next degree. I’m only telling what I hear from them, but yet they continue on in their process, at the same time having to pick up trash on the other side of town and getting to college at the same time. They had become my passion and they are the reason that my interest in CUNY has started. I was sitting in my office one day and I got a call from the Governor’s office and they said: "I want you in Albany and we’re going to submit your name for the Board of Trustees for CUNY," and I was just absolutely delighted. So it’s not something that I thought about five years ago as I was sitting there doing the District’s budget that I would some day have the real opportunity and honor to be able to be here with you tonight; and it truly is an honor, so much an honor that I am an executive on leave right now. I am not doing investment banking for the next year of two, I’m on leave to my church, which you’ve heard is Abyssinian Baptist Church, and I am on leave to bring in some of my management skills, fundraising. Church budgets also have to grow and therefore their financial management has to grow. And so I have just thoroughly immersed myself into that. I happen to be fortunate enough in that I am co-owner of my own firm, so I can take a leave of absence for a while. That also has given me the opportunity when the Chancellor called, and you know if you get a call from the Chancellor asking you to go out to lunch you’re in deep trouble, ‘cause I’d only been there for four weeks and he said: "I want to take you to lunch," and I thought: "That’s wonderful." He took me to lunch and he said: "We’re in the process of trying to find a new president for York College. Would you be interested in working with us?" And I thought "this is interesting," ‘cause I was on the Georgetown search and I’ve been on a number of searches for my children’s schools, headmasters and different deans, and I said: "yes, I’ll work with you." He said: "Great, then you can be the new Chair." So I am now the Chair of York College’s presidential search. I had the wonderful opportunity of spending last Wednesday from 8:30 am until 6:30 pm hearing from the constituents of your college and I’ll tell you what I told them, that no one can help us write what it is we’re looking for because that is sort of big, macro; but what the constituents could help me do that day was to tell me "if you see this quality this is definitely the person you don’t want." What we did is we listened and we heard what I call my cheat sheet, and it tells me what those different constituents at your college – which is a college that has been as many of you know through a number of administrative changes – what it is that they need as they go through this next evolution in their history. I am excited about that search. We have been working diligently with the search committee to put together a definition of who we are looking for and more importantly who we’re not looking for. That process is going forward and I’m learning something new every day. I guess I feel the one that has benefited from this. This has been an enormously enriching experience for me and I only hope that, as I have been very blessed in my life to have been the beneficiary of a wonderful education and afforded a number of opportunities, that I now have the opportunity to give back to my community in many ways. I thank you for having me here this evening and I look forward to learning from you because you all are the experts on education, and I look forward to working with you in the future. If you have any questions I would love to entertain them.

Professor Lewis (English, York College) – I run the Journalism program there and the newspaper, so the first thing I want to do is invite you to be interviewed by the newspaper about how the search will run and what are those guidelines going to be. Also, I’d like to invite to a meeting of the faculty, which I think should be arranged through the Union or through the Faculty Senate there, and I’ll have to talk to some people to see about that, because I think if you are getting input at this point about what your guidelines should be and who you’re going to look for, who you’re not going to look for, I think faculty – and the faculty at York tends to be senior heavy; there are a lot of people in the faculty who had been there for quite a long period of time, more than 15 or 20 years, and have seen these changes over a period of time and have come to recognize which qualities in different leaders work and which qualities in other leaders did not work and why – I think it would be very important, number one, to get the backing of the faculty and what input from the faculty is going to be and to make sure that historically it works from our perspective as well. /

Trustee Beal – Thank you. Let me just say, we had the opportunity of meeting with representatives from the Faculty Senate, and we had the opportunity of meeting with a number of faculty heads. In fact, I think the majority of the department heads were invited to attend. I understand you’re in the process of electing faculty members who will be part of the Search Committee, and their vote and their part of that will be as active as any other body. In terms of the qualifications, that is known. I think it was published – it wasn’t published in the New York Times, this Sunday it will be published in New York Times in the Chronicle of Higher Education – but that document will tell you the broad parameters. The very specific parameters are the information that we will have gathered from talking to the people who we have spoken with. I can just generally tell you what I said at the Search Committee meeting last week, that the person who will come to York College will have to be energetic, energetic, energetic, energetic. It is a college that has been through a number of administrations. There is obvious tension through different factions at the college and it will have to be someone who understands that. It will have to be someone who understands the CUNY system, but not necessarily from the CUNY system, although I must say that I was told that it not only has to be someone from New York, from CUNY, it had to be from New York, CUNY, and Queens. / Professor Lewis – That might be a little too restrictive I think. / Trustee Beal – Clearly, we heard a lot of different opinions and to be honest it’s easier to have a piece of paper that will tell me who isn’t correct than it is to tell me who is correct. The one thing I learned when I was there that day is that I couldn’t write down on a piece of paper who this person is. All I know is that it’s going to have to be an enormously dedicated person, someone who is willing to commit to the college for an extended period of time, who understands all of the variables, something as small as 53% of the students at York went to high school outside of the United States. That is a statistic which we asked them to re-write the discussion because the official breakdown was in terms of African-American, Asian, Hispanic American. And I said: "But I saw people who were walking around this campus who were clearly different ethnically." So we’re asking them to go back and more clearly define those kinds of statistics. My theory is that you tell the candidates upfront what you’re looking at so that there is less surprise as they come in, and therefore someone understands what the campus looks like if 53% of the students have been educated outside of the United States, when the majority of the students are having to work full-time. One of the administrators used the comment "children." If any campus is not made up of children it’s York. The majority of the people are working parents, I mean working individuals. So I can’t tell you right now what it is we’re looking for, but I know what I’m not looking for. And I hope over time, I’m sure over time that the faculty, the administrators and others will have the opportunity to help me find out what it is we are looking for. Thank you very much.

Professor Matthews (Math, Hunter College) – I had mentioned earlier the fact that so many of our students are immigrant students and we have to deal with this, and particularly I was mentioning how in my calculus classes sometimes they are over prepared and they’ve been put in lower level courses and demoralized other students. I’m just so glad to have you on board. Also, I’m so aware of the networking and the importance of family. At Hunter we have some Nobel Prize winners, Gertrude Elion and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, and a professor in Mathematics, Marian Boykan Pourel, and when I was talking to Mildred Dresselhaus, MIT Engineering Dean, she was saying that when they were undergraduates they wouldn’t teach elementary school because that’s what their non-college background families and friends thought was the thing you did and you went to Hunter, which started as a female normal school. But they were in Physics classes, and they were supported, and they would network together, and sometimes it takes generations before they come through with that. There’s this beyond the classroom experience that our students don’t realize is so crucial. The programs that you’re involved with at Bronx Community College - and I grew up in the Bronx - are so important and I hope we can keep developing those and maybe having more churches and other organizations work to support those students because they do need so much help. /

Trustee Beal – I think one of the richest experiences I had as a college student was getting out beyond the walls of Georgetown, and so I’m a real strong believer in getting out beyond the walls. That seems to be, especially at a city college where there are no walls necessarily, almost ironic that we have to discuss getting out beyond the walls. As I said, I’m just learning the process, but clearly I have a son who’s a freshman in college this year and I have strongly encouraged him to get out beyond the walls. With him I don’t have to worry about that. With him it’s telling him to come back inside the walls, but that’s another story.

Professor Romer (Brooklyn College) – I wanted to thank you for your comment about reaching outside the college walls because I head up a service learning program that does exactly that, brings the curriculum to life by training our students outside the walls of the University, and also providing real service for New Yorkers who need it; but that’s not my question. My question is to ask you if you know about the New York City Access to Training and Education Bill. It’s a new City Council bill that would allow our students who are on public assistance to use their " work fare time" as student time, and that is their enrollment in any college that’s now just vocational training. This bill would allow the work fare time slot, the 35 hour week, to apply to work at two-year and four-year colleges. It would make an enormous difference in the very women that you are championing and I do think it would be wonderful if you could, as a Board member, try to get the Board involved in this because I think it would show a commitment of CUNY to these students who have been so marginalized and vilified and given so little. I don’t know if you’re aware of this. / Trustee Beal – I’m not aware of the law and I will look at it and take it into advisement. Thank you very much. / Professor Romer – Thank you.

Professor Gallagher (English, LaGuardia Community College) – Since you honestly told us you don’t know much yet about City University I won’t ask you a question about the University, but I will ask you a question that relates to business, since that’s your field. Many of our students major in business and virtually all our students are going to grow up in a world dominated by American business. How would you answer students who ask if there is honesty, any ethics to be seen in business today, when the President slashed the budget of the SEC, as he did, by one quarter a few days ago, where there seems to be absolutely no effort to catch corporate criminals and punish them. Can one honestly go into the world of business and expect to maintain any sort of ethical stand? /

Trustee Beal – Absolutely. I don’t see the conflict at all. I am who I am, I’m an ethical person, and you are who you are. You bring into your workplace the values that you possess. I might say, and I may get defensive on that, if we think about the number of business transactions that go on in the United States of America every year and we think about the number of unethical behavior that we have seen in the papers, I might suggest to you that it’s almost like hearing about how New York is so terrible; you don’t ever hear about the good people. I have been an investment banker for 25 years. I have never done inside trading and I can tell you that the majority of the people I know are equally as honest and hard working and prudent. I think that there are people who, in any industry, will tell you about what isn’t going to happen. I’m from Wharton and Wharton has now introduced an ethics class. My personal belief is that I learned my ethics from my parents, I learned my ethics from my home, and I learned my values from those environments, and if we all continue with that our country will be a better place. You’re always going to have aberrations, and I think our process is to make sure that we have good human beings going forward that they can determine when those aberrations are occurring. / Professor Gallagher – If I could just follow up briefly on that. Your answer is really mathematical and perhaps, without knowing the numbers, you’re quite correct, but I think what disturbs our students, what disturbs me certainly, is the fact that the corporate criminals seem to go unpunished. In a sense our students are faced with two choices ethically: either to be saps and to serve these people or to be like these people themselves. / Trustee Beal – Or they can come work for good people like me.

Professor Donohue (English, Medgar Evers College) – I just wondered, I know you’re just getting familiar with CUNY, but how do you see the elimination of remediation? / Trustee Beal – I am here learning about the process and as such I don’t know what it was like before, I don’t know what it’s like now, and to make a statement on that I’m not prepared to do so at this time.

Chair O’Malley – Trustee Hugo M. Morales was appointed by Pataki last June. He received his medical degree from the University of Santo Domingo, where he trained in psychiatry. He has been medical director of the Bronx Mental Health Center, which he established in 1965 and directed until 1999. He was Chairman of the Dominican Board of the Governor’s Office for Hispanic affairs from 1984 to 1992. He is on the Advisory Board of Hostos Community College and today he was at CUNY on the Concourse, which I also was at, and perhaps he has something to say about that. Trustee Morales.

Trustee Morales – Thank you for inviting me. When Susan asked me to come and talk to you I said: "Susan, what am I supposed to say. I don’t know." She said: "Say something about you and how you see CUNY." I’m going to be very brief. I’m also very new, so I don’t really know a great deal about CUNY. As far as myself is concerned, I came to this country from the Dominican Republic in 1956. I came with a medical diploma only and I trained as a psychiatrist. After 5 years of training I completed all the examinations required and I became diplomat on the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, which is the highest degree you can obtain in that field. Soon after I was experiencing a very interesting phenomenon in the state of New York, and that was that I was being called by many Hispanic families to come to the hospitals and get their people out of the hospital, sometimes the father, the mother and the daughter. And I said: "why is this happening?" What was happening was that many of these individuals, even though they might be suffering from some kind of depression, were also talking about spiritual things, and immediately a good psychiatrist diagnosed them as suffering from schizophrenia and well-intentionally would send them to the hospital. When I came to the hospital they were not schizophrenics and I signed them out. So I said to myself: "I better do something about this;" and in 1964 I created the Bronx Mental Health Center mainly for the minorities Black and Hispanic, and at one time it was the largest outpatient psychiatric clinic in the city and the state of New York. I used to supervise 30 psychiatrists working there. My field has always been the medical field, especially the mental health field. I was appointed by Governor Carey to the Mental Health Committee and then by Mario Cuomo and also by Governor Pataki. And then about two months ago assemblyman Adriano Espaillat said: "Doctor Morales, your name made it to the Governor for a possible appointment to the Board of Trustees at CUNY." I said: "Well, my field is medicine, but they need someone Hispanic there, Dominican, who has a good background and is a solid citizen. I think I have that." So I said OK. I went to the Senate and I was confirmed. I remember saying when the senator asked me "Why do you want to be Trustee of CUNY?:" "Well, I did a little research, and I’ve always said that I perceive CUNY as the heart of the city of New York. CUNY is present in every borough, in every community. CUNY is related to labor, management, arts everywhere, and I want to be part of that." Education for me has always been very strong. I’m always saying that to be successful in life you have to be educated and I want to be part of CUNY educating our youth for what I call "to be part of the American Dream;" and that’s why I’m here. I also feel that we are going to have an explosion of Hispanics coming to CUNY. Right now only Dominicans we have close to 22,000 students, and in the next 5 to 10 years we are going to double that. I don’t know if CUNY is prepared to handle that. I talked to the Chancellor about this and I hope that initiatives and programs will be developed in CUNY to address that problem in the future. As Susan said, this morning I was very delighted to see that CUNY is developing programs in nursing. You all know that there are more than 130 thousand nurses short here in the city of New York and Hispanics only make up 1% of the practicing nurses, so I feel very strongly that this is the kind of initiative that we need to really better New York City. I wanted to finish saying to you that I don’t know much about CUNY, I want to learn, I want to be with you, and if in the future I can be of any help to you please come to me and you’ll have my support. Thank you.

Professor Ranald (English, Hostos Community College) – My question is about Hostos Community College, Doctor. I’m Professor Ralph Ranald. I’ve been on the Senate twice representing Hostos, I’m now on the Legal Affairs Committee of the Faculty Senate, and as I said my question concerns the very future of Hostos Community College at which I have been for 33 years this year as full professor of English. I’m possibly going to take the early retirement, so this may or may not even affect me personally. Up on the Grand Concourse there is CUNY on the Concourse. We hear today from the Chancellor they are starting out with 700 students and in a year they may have 3,000 students. I assume, since it’s sponsored by health science authorities in part, there will be students of color, Hispanic people, going for careers in health science, where there still is a market. There are real jobs and there will be in the future. Hostos was founded in ’68-’69 and I helped to found it and I’m the only survivor of those days at the senior level. It was founded primarily to promote the health science careers of unionized students. We started with 631 students, now we have about 3,000. You may at the moment not have sufficient information to make an answer to what I’m going to ask you but, as CUNY on the Concourse gets well founded and a new building, what is this going to do to us? Does Hostos have any future at all in your view? /

Trustee Morales – I was talking to the Chancellor about this and he said that it will be a combination and that many of the students there will continue their education also at Lehman college, and Hostos too, for nursing. So I think that Hostos has a good future, I don’t believe that it’s going to be dismantled in any way; and I tell you one thing, I was also at the very beginning when and I tell you I’ll do my best and I really am going to fight very hard for Hostos. I have lived in the Bronx all my life since I came from the Dominican Republic in 1956 and I identify with the Bronx and I identify with Hostos very much, and if I do have any power in the Board of Trustees I will use it to really help Hostos. / Professor Ranald – Thank you very much, Doctor.

Professor Vozick (Science, Borough of Manhattan Community College) – The question I’m going to ask you is a very big question that may not have an answer tonight but may be more for thought for the future – a different kind of question. New York City is made up of over 150 different nationalities, different languages, from all around the world, different ethnic groups we call them, and CUNY is very intimately involved with these ethnic groups because they send their children to CUNY as you pointed out. I wonder whether in your early days as a person on the Board of Trustees you had heard any discussion or any thought about making more organic connections, natural connections, between the different 150 ethnic communities and the University through the Board of Trustees. The Dominicans for example are one of the most important communities; you would have a role there with the Dominicans, but I’m talking with all the ethnic communities, whether we can make a different model for how CUNY relates to the city by working through the ethnic communities. / Trustee Morales – I think that’s an excellent point and I think that the Board of Trustees will have to take it up in the future because, as I said before, CUNY is an evolving, a very dynamic institution, and they have to be adjusted to whatever community we are. As a matter of fact, one of the things that I’m trying to do very much now is to try to open a satellite or at least an office in the upper Manhattan to be more directly in contact with the community there, with the Hispanics and all the minorities there. I think it’s essential that we come more directly into the community, and that will happen in every community in the city of New York. This is one thing that we have to work very hard on and I’ll make sure that we are going to do it. / Professor Vozick – Thank you very much.