Meeting Minutes 7/16/2020

Task Force for the Future of Baruch
Thursday, July 16, 2020
1:00 PM
ZOOM Video Conference

Meeting Convened: 1:02 PM

1. The President’s Cabinet has reviewed the Preliminary Report. As mentioned in our last meeting, Cabinet Level Champions have been identified for each subcommittee:

• Subcommittee 1 (Fall 2020/ ‘How do we start?’): Provost McCarthy
• Subcommittee 2 (Faculty Support): Provost McCarthy
• Subcommittee 3 (Technical Support): Arthur Downing
• Subcommittee 4 (Student Support): Mary Gorman & Art King
• Subcommittee 5 (Staff Support):
  • Kenya Lee
  • Kathy Cobb
  • Olga Dais

The biggest structural change that the Task Force faces in moving from phase one to phase two is the addition of the fifth subcommittee regarding staff support. With the addition of the fifth subcommittee, members of the Task Force can volunteer to serve on the fifth subcommittee. Those who volunteer can retain their work on their other subcommittee or just focus on one subcommittee.

Moving into phase two, the subcommittee must begin focusing on the longer term and they must also focus on settling priorities. This applies to all subcommittee groups. The focus of the next part of the Task Force’s work is ranking and prioritizing recommendations and estimating the costs and benefits of their recommendations. This is the Task Force’s next charge. The consultants can help the Task Force accomplish this.

It’s important for the members of the Task Force to begin thinking about how they can move the priorities of their recommendations forward and come up with a finite list. or a rank-ordered list, of what they think must be done first. Members of the Task Force should also identify the resources that may be required to do this and begin thinking about how the College can reallocate resources to accomplish their goals.

It’s important to acknowledge that the number of Fall 2020 applicants to the MS programs in the Zicklin School of Business have increased. This may be due to online course offerings because students may currently be working from home. Not having to physically go to campus to attend a class may appeal to a new market of individuals who wish to work full-time and still earn their degree.

As we prepare for the Fall, it’s important to ask faculty, students, and staff to identify what went right and what went wrong during the Summer. Their feedback can help us prepare for the Fall semester.

2. Next Steps: 

• If you would like to volunteer to serve on the staff subcommittee, please let Provost McCarthy & Erika Stauffer know.
• If any of the subcommittees has a set weekly or bi-weekly meeting time, let Provost McCarthy know what that time/day is. He will assist in coordinating the next meeting so that your Cabinet Champion(s) can attend. If you don’t have a set weekly/bi-weekly meeting time and day, please identify a time within the next week in which you can set-up a meeting with your subcommittee. Once you have identified a time, please let Provost McCarthy know so that he can coordinate having your Cabinet Champion(s) attend.
• The faculty members on the Task Force are responsible for sending the Provost (via email) an estimate/record of how much time they have spent on this project from the beginning up until the present.

  Meeting Ended: 1:53 PM