Dear Colleagues-

Welcome to the Spring 2023 Semester! I trust you had a restful break and are now recharged to begin another new year with hope and optimism.



Enrollment

Yesterday, I welcomed more than 200 new students at our New Student Orientation held at the APEX Athletics facility. These students, who took the most important step to make Lehman their home, are part of the 11,416 undergraduate and graduate students continuing their education at the College this semester. This is about 90.42% of our spring 2023 enrollment target! While classes officially begin today, we know that many students are still working with various campus offices and academic units to complete their registration. Our Enrollment Management office is leading this effort. I ask that each of you continue to work closely with the office and to do what is necessary during the next week or so to increase enrollment and to facilitate the registration of students for classes this term.

Instructional Modality

I know that the Registrar’s Office has worked with our deans and department chairs to schedule classes in ways that better support the instructional needs of our students. Of the 2,668 course sections planned for this semester, 50% are in-person. Another 35% consists of online Asynchronous, Online Mix, and Online Synchronous, while the remaining 15% consists of Hybrid Asynchronous, Hybrid Synchronous, Hyfield, and Hyflex, all reflecting the diversity of instructional modalities for student learning that are informed by lessons we have learned from the pandemic. Our Office of Online Education will continue to provide professional development opportunities this semester to further enhance faculty members’ ability to teach in these instructional spaces and for students to equally learn in them. 

Online Strategy

CUNY is investing significant resources to expand the University’s online footprint in the region and beyond through the offering of fully online degrees that would advance CUNY’s access and opportunity mission. The plan is to develop and launch through its colleges more than 100 online programs between AY2022-2023 to AY2024-2025. Resource support includes gap analysis, research on market demand, instructional design, academic support, and faculty development, among others. As you, Lehman has been a leader in the online space within CUNY, along with the School of Professional Studies. We are working very closely with school deans and department chairs to leverage the opportunity provided by CUNY’s investment to further our online footprint in support of our strong mission of increasing educational attainment in the Bronx and beyond. We now have 24 degree programs that are at various stages of our College approval processes to become fully online.

Advising

We have re-imagined our advising structure to provide a better experience to our students and are now finalizing the process for online students. The new advising structure creates opportunities to improve the student experience through three key areas: transition, persistence, and graduation. Under the new structure, each Lehman College undergraduate student will have a designated advisor; faculty professional development will be enhanced; and technology platforms such as Navigate will be utilized to improve advising and reporting through an advising note system. The new advising model will be rolled out in early spring 2023.

Transfer Initiative

Last year, we launched the Academic Momentum 2.0, a system-wide initiative to improve the seamless transfer of students from community colleges to Lehman. Under new Executive Chancellor and University Provost Wendy Hensel, the initiative has been refined to focus on three key areas: Policy and Practice, Curriculum Alignment, and Communications. Working Groups on Policy and Practice and Curriculum Alignment and Resourcing have been established to guide this work. Lehman is actively engaged in this work through our school deans and department chairs who developed and are implementing their action plans. In addition, Lehman is working with our Bronx Transfer Affinity Group (B-TAG), a partnership between Lehman, BCC, BMCC, Hostos, and Gutman Colleges on curriculum alignment and articulation. Lehman is also leading the development of the CUNY Transfer Explorer (T-Rex) both on campus and systemwide. T-Rex enables students and advisers to know how credits earned at a previous college are treated and how those earned credits count towards degree requirements when these students transfer between CUNY colleges.

CUNY Inclusive Economy

We continue to make progress on our strategic plan goal to make experiential learning a signature component of a Lehman Education. Last semester, Lehman received funding from a CUNY Inclusive Economy (CIE) Request for Proposal (RFP), a public-private partnership, to boost student career success and advance the city’s economic potential through the expansion of campus-industry engagement and career advising. Funding allows the College to support and improve career outcomes for students in four areas: Healthcare, Climate Resilience, Technology, and Liberal Arts. Four academic departments: Health Equity, Administration and Technology(HEAT), Chemistry, Computer Science, and English will serve as homes to these areas, with the Office of Career Development Services providing technical support. CIE consists of three pillars: building an industry-campus backbone that allows the College to build talent pipelines directly with the City’s employers through dedicated industry specialists; boosting career capacity through dedicated hybrid career and academic advisors who will prepare students for the opportunities generated by the industry-campus backbone; and connecting students to internships through CUNY Career Launch internship program. CUNY, through its Office of Careers and Industry Partnerships, will provide critical technical support to accelerate tangible progress on this major initiative. Of the 9 colleges that received funding for the CIE Initiative, Lehman is the only college whose four interdisciplinary areas of focus were approved for funding. 

Classroom Technology Support Services

We have made significant progress on technology upgrades in our classroom to support effective pedagogy and student learning. Through an institution-wide collaboration and based on proof of concepts, Lehman College developed classroom technology standards and guiding principles for enhancing teaching and learning spaces with contemporary equipment and software. With lessons learned from the pandemic, HyFlex capabilities were added to the final design. This project included the upgrade of 172 standard classrooms and 4 lecture rooms, all networked and connected to an audio-visual management system. For training and more information, please visit Classroom Technology Support Services.

Call for Student Technology Fee Funding Proposals: AY 2023-2024

We are excited to announce that this year’s theme, Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC), will expand on Lehman’s digital equity initiative. We are seeking proposals that demonstrate innovative ways to incorporate technology into the curriculum to support student learning, including across modalities (in-person/online) initiatives. Special consideration will be given to proposals focusing on digital skills relevant to the disciplines within the respective schools and aim at providing students with an edge in the labor market upon graduation. Please refer to the “The call for proposal” email dated January 5, 2023. Deadline is February 27, 2023.

Faculty Recruitment

We have 34 full-time faculty searches underway, searches that began in fall 2022. These include 13 full-time lecturers and 7 professorial lines received from CUNY as part of the system-wide faculty hiring initiative funded by the state legislature, and 14 replacement lines approved in our FY 23 budget. A separate process for allocation of new and/or replacement lines is now in place and is codified in the newly developed Lehman College Guidelines for Allocation of Faculty Lines. Please note that a faculty line vacated through retirement, resignation, disability, or death, automatically returns to the faculty budget pool in the Division of Academic Affairs and Student Success. Replacement for a line vacated through retirement, resignation, disability, or death does not occur automatically. In the event of a vacated line through retirement, resignation, disability, or death, the dean may request a substitute lecturer or adjunct faculty for the department/program for no more than one academic year (fall and spring only). Approval to hire a substitute lecturer is not an approval for a replacement for the vacated position. A request to fill a full-time faculty position that has been vacated due to retirement, resignation, disability, or death or a request for a new faculty line due to strategic departmental/programmatic needs requires a separate process described in the Lehman College Guidelines for Allocation of Faculty Lines. We have also created the Justification for Replacement and/or New Position Lines Template to be used for submission of all requests, along with a Faculty Request Coversheet specifying anticipated position and salary. All requests should be submitted to the Office of Academic Personnel.

Finally, we have a busy semester ahead of us, and you have my very best wishes as we continue our work together to advance our mission of transforming lives and igniting new possibilities. As always, remain well.

-P

Peter O. Nwosu, Ph.D.

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Student Success

Lehman College

The City University of New York