Dear Lehman College Colleagues:
The most consequential news for Lehman College in February was the announcement of the appointment of Dr. Fernando Delgado as the new Lehman College President, effective July 1. Dr. Delgado will join us from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He has 20 years of experience in academic administration. I hope you will join me in warmly welcoming him as he prepares to come to New York. In the next four months, we have much work to do, completing the Spring term, holding spring events and planning for the Fall term. We want a smooth hand-off of the baton without a break in stride for the college.
You may have seen my latest In Depth newsletter, which details our current budget and funding situation. If you have not had an opportunity to read it, I encourage you to. It explains the connection between our recently completed Strategic Plan, Lehman 2025, the MacKenzie Scott gift and other funding mechanisms, as well as their roles in programmatic sustainability, growth and innovation at the college. I also met with Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz in February to discuss the state of our budget and other matters, including our capital request for the next fiscal year.
This past weekend, the New York State Association of Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Legislators had its annual meeting--virtually this year. The theme of the conference was, Living our Legacy, Celebrating 50 Years of “Good Trouble.” As part of the Tomorrow’s Leaders Youth Conference portion of the meeting there was a CUNY Power Hour featuring a number of CUNY-educated legislators. Did you know that 35 state legislators are CUNY grads, four of whom are from Lehman?
March 2, 2020 was the last time I had a meeting in the Schuster Hall conference room and that day the topic was responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last in-person Senate session was a year ago this week. It is hard to believe that we are approaching the anniversary of our transition to remote working, learning and teaching during the early days of the pandemic.
We are not out of the woods with regards to the coronavirus and its new variants even though vaccination offers major hope. The latter was discussed as part of a recent virtual education session featuring Dr. Catherine Alicia Georges, Dr. Elgloria Harrison, Dr. Maria Isabel Roldos-Prosser, Sandra Lindsay, the first person in the U.S. to receive a non-trial vaccine. In the Vaccination Town Hall virtual education session, we discussed the false information surrounding vaccination and why it is so critically important that everyone get the vaccine as soon as they are eligible.
As Provost Nwosu and I discussed at the General Faculty meeting last week, we are planning for a safe return to campus at approximately 50 percent capacity in Fall 2021. We still don’t know how the pandemic will be playing out by the fall, and though we are hopeful for a "normal" summer, we know that another fall surge is a distinct possibility. Or, perhaps vaccination will be so extensive and successful that we can have a more in-person fall term than currently envisioned. We have to be prepared for either scenario. I will share more about that soon, as well as the Campus Climate Task Force recommendations.
I was a panelist on February 9th with other three other college presidents in an AASCU webinar on Fostering University Climate Actions and Environmental Justice, encouraging them to view climate/environmental justice as a core part of our missions and reinforcing the idea that academia must take the lead in this important effort. I gave a number of examples of how Lehman is leading the way on sustainable practices in CUNY.
Speaking of that, dozens of stakeholders have been hard at work on the Bronx Environmental Summit, to be held virtually, March 22nd and March 23rd. We received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for this groundbreaking conference.
I am pleased also to mention that I will be in conversation with New York State Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James ‘82 to commemorate the 51st Annual Herbert H. Lehman Memorial Lecture virtually, on March 25th at 6:30 p.m. You can register here, but space is limited. In case you missed it, Bloomberg News wrote a wonderful profile of our Attorney General and I look forward to discussing all the great things in which she has been involved. There is no shortage of timely topics.
Celebrating Excellence
A Lehman College laboratory led by Assoc. Chemistry Prof. Prabodhika Mallikaratchy has received a $1.76 million award from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences to further its cutting-edge research on DNA nanotechnology.
Shared Governance
March 3 Lehman College Senate
March 4 Cabinet
March 11 Cabinet
March 17 Cabinet
March 23 Faculty, Personnel & Budget
March 24 President’s Advisory Board
Daniel Lemons
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