• Following extensive consultations and discussions with key stakeholders, the Committee on Academic Policy (CAP) of the Academic Council, at its April 14 meeting, approved revisions to the standard University definition of Modes of Instruction for the expanded modalities of in-person, online, and hybrid classes offered at CUNY colleges. The revisions, which will go into effect in spring 2023, are informed by lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and now includes four instructional modalities as follows: In-Person, Online, Hybrid, and HyFlex, which will no longer be considered an attribute. A memo to this effect from the University Registrar, Vivek Upadhay, was sent to College Chief Academic Officers and College Registrars in May and provides information on the coding of these modalities (link).

• The Committee on Academic Policy (CAP) also approved revisions to the existing University Policy on Academic Integrity. The revised policy (link), informed by lessons from the pandemic, will now be presented to the Board of Trustees for approval at the June 2022 meeting. Implementation of the approved revised policy begins in fall 2022.

• Department chair elections for AY 2022 to AY 2025 were completed the week of May 2nd. The new and continuing chairs elected for the triennial period are listed below:

• Sharon Jordan, Associate Professor, Art
• Eleanore Wurtzel, Professor, Biological Sciences
• Thomas O’Hanlon, Associate Professor, JMS
• Oscar Martin, Associate Professor, Languages & Literatures
• Alyshia Galvez, Professor, LA&LS – [Interim Chair –AY 22-23]
• Teresita Levy, Associate Professor, LA&LS - [AY 23-24 and AY 24- 25]. 
• Wesley Pitts, Professor, MHSE
• Eleanor Campbell, Associate Professor, Nursing,
• Elhum Haghighat, Professor, Political Science
• Nikolas Papanikolaou, Associate Professor, Finance, Information Systems, and Economics [ School of Business]
• Rossen Petkov, Associate Professor, Accounting [School of Business]
• Ning Chen, Professor, Management and Business Innovation [School of Business]
• Limor Pinhasi-Vittorio, Associate Professor, CLLSE - [Interim Chair for AY 22-23]

• Terry Towery, Associate Professor, Art
• Haiping Cheng, Professor, Biological Sciences
• Daniel Fernandez, Associate Professor, Languages & Literatures
• Catherine Alicia Georges, Professor, Nursing
• Dene Hurley, Professor, Economics & Business
• Stuart Chen-Hayes, Professor, CLLSE

• I am pleased to report that we have made significant progress on the lecturer hiring initiative. As you recall, Lehman received 14 lines under this initiative, allocated to the following departments: Africana Studies, English, MMTD, Philosophy, CLLSE, Health Sciences, Nursing, Biology, Chemistry, Economics and Business, Psychology, and Sociology. Over the course of two and half weeks, I interviewed 51 candidates for these positions. Many of them have been recommended for these positions, and the process of completing their appointments to the college faculty is now underway. I want to thank our deans, chairs, and search committees from the departments listed above for working round the clock to accelerate this process. When the fall 2022 semester begins, we will be joined by a diverse group of new faculty members committed to our mission of educational attainment in the Bronx and beyond. As you know, these 14 lines from CUNY are to be dedicated to supporting priority areas that include lower-level pathway and gateway courses in pivotal majors with high enrollment and high Drop, Withdrawal, Incomplete, and Failure (DWIF) rates, among other factors. The lines are also designed to significantly increase the number of full-time teaching lines at the College with CUNY adding funds to campus base budgets, with each college supporting this effort by utilizing a portion of the funds currently used for adjunct recruitment.
• Important issues for Lecturer Hires:
• Focus on outcomes for which they were hired
• Ensure diversity of the hires
• Professional development for lecturers from CUNY Office of Academic Affairs planned for Summer 2022
• Promotional path for lecturers—to be addressed as part of the new contract with PSC
• Changes to CUNY policy permitting lecturers to serve as chairs—requires further discussion, BOT resolution, and approval.
• Campuses with unsuccessful searches will have until next year to complete the searches.
• At the April and May meetings of the Academic Council, interim Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost Dan Lemons reaffirmed CUNY’s commitment to hiring an additional 350 lecturer and professorial lines for fall 2023 appointments. This number includes about 200 lecturer lines and about 150 professorial lines, bringing the overall total to 600 full-time lecturer and professorial lines. The state has allocated $53m to CUNY for this purpose. The method for allocation of the new lecturer lines will be the same as was used for the 250 lecturer lines previously allocated (with some modifications), while the professorial lines will use an RFP process with a focus on four key areas that the state legislature has identified as key to the economy. These areas are 1) Health Sciences and Allied Health, 2) Technology and Data, 3) Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies (BRES), and 4) Climate and the Environment. The climate and environment focus area will include the humanities, politics, the arts, etc. The RFP process will require campuses to submit proposals for hires in these focus areas. Hires are expected to be intentional, with a focus on cross-campus collaboration across the University. Roll out of RFPs is expected in the next few weeks. I have discussed CUNY’s plan at our May 19 Provost’s and Deans’ Council (PDC) meeting and requested school deans to begin conversations with their chairs and faculty in ways that will position the College to submit competitive RFPs for these professorial lines.
• In addition to the above, CUNY has set aside $1.9m to support additional RFPs for BRES-focused work in the following nine areas:
• Course and curriculum design and curriculum and syllabus decolonization
• BRES-focused mentored student research
• Creating BRES-focused student internships
• BRES projects to improve college climate
• Existing CUNY BRES centers and institutes
• Departments, programs, and BRES-related initiatives
• Faculty support for BRES publications
• Faculty research grants for community colleges
• Faculty research grant for senior colleges

• I am pleased to report on my meeting on May 10 with Professor Nancy Dubetz, chair of the FP&B Adhoc Committee on Best Practices for Tenure, Promotion, and CCE. We reviewed the committee’s progress on its task and a draft outline of a potential guidebook, and I provided some feedback to the committee. Professor Dubtez will present the draft outline and elements of recommended practice for discussion at the May 24^th FP&B meeting to gather input from department chairs and other FP&B members. During the last two months, the committee has continued its work, meeting bi-weekly, with guidance from Executive Counsel Bridget Barbera, to develop guidelines to streamline the processes for faculty around tenure and promotion. The proposed outline of the guidebook includes an overview of the relationship between tenure/CCE/CLT and promotion across the career span as well as clarification of expectations, processes. and timelines. The ad-hoc committee, established by the College Committee on Faculty Personnel and Budget (FP&B), was charged by me in late January of this year to produce a guidebook of best practices to make transparent the procedures currently guiding Lehman’s tenure, promotion, and CCE processes, and thereby support faculty success and retention. The committee was also charged with providing recommendations to improve the College’s governance structures and address professional development needs related to TPCCE and faculty retention. A key area of concern in the 2019 CUNY COACHE Survey for faculty is department and institutional cultures that do not provide clarity about tenure and promotion standards and procedures. The committee’s work responds to this concern. Committee members are Nancy Dubetz (Early Childhood and Childhood Education), Elhum Haghighat (Political Science), James Mahon (Arts and Humanities), Janet Munch (Library), and Brenda Williams-Gray (Social Work).

• We continue to make progress on the implementation of the new School of Business expected to start on July 1, 2022 officially. Dr. Dene Hurley was named interim dean of the new school on April 14, and three chairs were elected in May for the three departments that make up the new school: Dr. Nikolas Papanikolaou (Finance, Information Systems, and Economics), Dr. Rossen Petkov (Accounting), and Dr. Ning Chen (Management and Business Innovation). A temporary space in Carman Hall to house the new school has been identified. Also, updates in DegreeWorks for courses and programs in the three new departments, as well as changes in discipline codes in CUNYFirst, have been completed by the Registrar. Searches for two new faculty positions in Accounting and Marketing were completed and searches are underway for two lecturer positions (from the CUNY-Lehman Lecturer Hiring Initiative). We expect to host a formal celebration in fall 2022 to launch the new school.

• Ground was broken on the new 52,000 square-foot $75 million Nursing, Education, Research and Practice Center in May 2020. The new building will house the Department of Nursing and is expected to be completed in 2023. The building will combine state-of-the-art technology with classrooms, teaching and research laboratories, faculty offices, and support spaces.

• On Friday, April 1, we hosted a half-day convening of the division of Academic Affairs and Student Success, which brought together the chief librarian, school deans, department chairs, and Enrollment Management and Student Affairs leadership teams to engage in thoughtful discussions of their action plans and strategies for AcMo 2.0 (Academic Momentum) Campaign. AcMo 2.0 Campaign is a three-year CUNY-wide student success initiative to improve recruitment, retention, and completion rates for transfer students from CUNY community colleges to senior colleges. The campaign builds on work that began in 2017 and includes course redesign to improve gateway course completion, developing degree maps, and course rotation plans to provide a guided pathway for students, increasing credit accumulation to accelerate completion and reduce student debt, strengthening curriculum alignment, course evaluation, and equivalencies, improving advising, as well as examining processes, communications, and support systems to create more welcoming environments for incoming transfer students that foster, not impede, momentum. At Lehman, transfer students comprise more than 60% of our student population. The April 1 meeting followed the February 25 Academic Affairs Leadership Retreat formally launching AcMo 2.0. The College’s plan has now been submitted to CUNY, and full implementation of our action plan will commence in fall 2022.

• Participated in the following internal meetings and discussions:
• 1:1 with the President; President’s Cabinet; President’s Extended Cabinet (includes deans, chief librarian, and associate provost for academic programs and educational effectiveness); College Senate; Senate Joint Committee on Budget and Long-range Planning; SGA Spring Festival; SGA President; College Faculty Personnel and Budget Committee (FP&B); Provost’s and Deans’ Council (PDC); School Deans Only Meeting; Academic Affairs Executive Leadership (A2S2) Team; select department chairs; Psychology department faculty; Academic Affairs and Student Success FY 23 Budget meetings (with VP Rotolo and Bethania Ortega; and President’s Briefing
• 1:1 with Deans, Vice Presidents, Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, Associate Provost for Academic Programs and Educational Effectiveness, Vice President for Diversity and Human Resources, Executive Director, Office of International Programs and Community Engagement, Director, Research and Sponsored Programs, and other direct reports
• Participated in the following external meetings and discussions: 
• Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost designee, Wendy Hensel (along with BTAG college provosts); Ambassador Beresford-Hill (with President Delgado and VP Ebersole); CUNY select President’s Student Success Roundtable; The CUNY Leadership Institute (TCLI) as program co-director; CUNY Academic Council (of chief academic officers); CUNY Committee on Academic Policy (CAP); NYC-CUNY-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) in STEM Program as PI; AASCU to participate in the Advisory Board on Academic Innovation and Transformation (AIT) as a member; AASCU convenings on student success (twice in Washington, DC); Association of Chief Academic Officers Board; Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) Board; and the Bronx Transfer Affinity Group (BTAG) Provosts and Chief Enrollment Officers convening

• Continued the search for the Associate Dean, School of Education.
•  Richard Finger, Senior Director of Enrollment Management was named interim Vice President for Enrollment Management.
• Interviewed candidates for tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the following departments:
• Counseling, Leadership, Literacy and Special Education [CLLSE]
• Health Sciences.
• Music, Multimedia, Theatre & Dance [MMT&D], and
• Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences
• Interviewed candidates for Lecturer position in the following departments:
• Africana Studies, English, MMTD, Philosophy, CLLSE, Health Sciences, Nursing, Biology, Chemistry, Economics and Business, Psychology, and Sociology.
• Searches were completed with hires in the following departments:
• Health Sciences [Amy White, Assistant Professor, Cherryle Brown, Lecturer, and Michael Gera, Lecturer]
• Journalism and Media Studies [Ian Sheinheit, Lecturer (Doctoral)]
• Languages and Literatures [Marjolaine Auclair-Davreux, Lecturer]
• MMT&D [Maria Agustina Checa, Assistant Professor and Jennifer Jolley, Assistant Professor]
• Psychology [Marjorine Henriquez-Castillo, Lecturer (Doctoral) and Karyna Pryiomka, Lecturer (Doctoral)].
• Africana and Gender Studies [Henry (Hank) Williams, Lecturer].