Announcing Academic Year 2020-21 College Focus Goals

Dear Colleagues,

I want to thank you for your attendance and engagement at the recent College Town Hall on October 29, which I invite you to watch here if you missed it. The Town Hall allowed us to get together and exchange ideas as a community—during a time when we all miss that personal interaction that ties us together.

I shared with you, at the meeting, a set of key priorities for the College for the current academic year. These priorities are built on the foundation of the 2018-23 Strategic Plan and informed by the new realities articulated by the Task Force for the Future and their recommendations. Working with the College leadership team and others across the institution, we have then developed AY2020-21 College Focus Goals that reflect these key priorities.

Members of my Cabinet will work in close collaboration with faculty, staff, and students to achieve the College Focus Goals. Each of the six goals has a group of designated Cabinet members who will be responsible, both collectively and individually, for meeting the goal and facilitating the collaboration across divisions to ensure that the overarching objective is achieved. The goals are as follows:

1. Launch multifaceted institutional transformation to elevate and enhance equity, diversity, and inclusion
2. Complete institutional planning for an Integrated Student Success Center: increase student engagement, academic momentum, degree completion, and post-graduation success
3. Initiate multiyear effort to expand instructional modalities: move judiciously and deliberately toward an efficient infrastructure supporting high-quality online and hybrid instruction
4. Engage and support faculty and staff in the rapidly changing work environment
5. Initiate multiyear effort toward an incentive-based budget model: align institutional priorities and resource allocation; create incentive for collaboration and entrepreneurial program innovation
6. Expand visibility and philanthropy while strengthening and building external partnerships

These goals are critical to the advancement and strengthening of the College, and they rely on your collective input, insights, and innovation to succeed in the current environment and beyond. I spoke of my “70-30 principle” at the Town Hall—spend 70 percent of your energy and effort on your primary responsibilities, but don’t forget to reserve at least 30 percent of your time to help your colleagues to succeed. I believe that collaboration and coordination not only make our institution more efficient, they also make our community stronger and more supportive.

I look forward to sharing specific initiatives under these goals with you in the coming days, but in the meanwhile, you are welcome to provide thoughts and feedback at president@baruch.cuny.edu.

Sincerely,

S. David Wu
President, Baruch College