DRAFT The New School A Five Year Academic Plan

DRAFT The New School 2010 A Five Year Academic Plan Office of the Provost December 2, 2005 1 DRAFT Contents Page The New School 2010 Context Academic Plan – Major Academic Initiatives Faculty: The Foundation for All Progress Strengthening the Academic Environment Creating Centers of Study Enabling Growth Evaluation Administrative Choices Financial Implications Conclusion 2 6 8 8 10 13 15 19 22 23 25 1 DRAFT The New School 2010 Within five years, The New School and the Schools that comprise it will be measurably better, bigger, and more influential than they are today. This Academic Plan lays out a strategy that connects those goals with a commitment to sustain and sharpen the uniqueness of the University. We propose both a vision for the future – for the University and for its distinctive Schools – and a program to achieve that vision. The University By 2010, The New School will be a premier urban university. Its students, teachers, and researchers will be recognized around the world for addressing those problems that matter most to humankind: health, energy, democracy, environment, peace. Their approaches will be distinguished by a unique blend of design, analysis, creativity, and ethical principles. Our students will come to The New School to develop the skills, values, and multiple literacies required to build solutions in a world of global economic traffic, fast-changing technologies, emerging sciences, and new convergences of data, images, and arguments. Our faculty will have a common dedication to the most rigorous pedagogical methods, the best curricula and programs, and the right combination of theory and practice. They will link rapid changes in the educational landscape to the best traditions of critical thinking and the creative imagination. The Schools By 2010, our academic schools will all benefit from our strength as one university, while they serve the variety of students we teach. By its scale, reputation and world-wide standing, Parsons will anchor a transformed curriculum whose core is to design solutions to problems – such as transportation, housing, safe water, energy management, and health – that affect the future of the world. Parsons will continue to be a leader in areas such as fashion, style, and retail consumption, but it will also make its mark by infusing the entire University with a broad grasp of design, information management, communication, and advanced imaging. At the graduate level, The New School will produce scholars at the M.A. and Ph.D. levels who work at the intersections of design, social science, and public policy. Parsons is one anchor for this vision of graduate education. Eugene Lang College will be the liberal arts college of choice for young people who wish to make democracy work by learning its skills, by mastering its challenges, and by recognizing that hard analytic skills – in statistics, the life sciences, data management, and communication – are as vital as knowledge in the social sciences. The College will have laid the groundwork for a new framework for the liberal arts by internationalizing its curriculum, fortifying its primary commitment to the social sciences, and solidifying – with environmental studies as a vehicle – a commitment to natural sciences and technology. 2 DRAFT The New School for General Studies, our founding unit, will still be our premier innovator and incubator. It will continue to be a laboratory where new ideas, programs, curricula, and student constituencies are identified and nurtured. Its graduate and undergraduate programs will respond quickly, creatively and flexibly to new pressures and opportunities. The New School for Social Research will remain the leader in our advanced scholarship in the social sciences; a primary source of our reputation as a place for path-breaking research and Ph.D. programs; and the locus for smaller but more profitable M.A. programs. The NSSR will drive the social science curriculum across the university. To renewing its commitment to interdisciplinary work and to push into new areas of inquiry – such as the anthropology of medicine, global finance, and trade, migration, and population studies – it may require new collaborations between its traditional departments. Milano will remain the main tool through which we realize our commitments to worldclass urban research, to policy-relevant public programming, and to the managerial marketplace in New York City. Milano’s agenda may require fresh alliances with urban specialists across the university and with research programs currently spread across multiple units. The performing arts schools (Mannes, Jazz and Drama) will help all of our students to become attuned to using their imaginations, their creativity and their living links to the art worlds of New York City. These conservatory schools will be organized to maintain our reputation for disciplined creativity and artistic experimentation. The arts are a primary feature of a great liberal arts education and we plan to find the best ways to maintain our reputation for being a part of New York’s best performance traditions. At the same time we hope to find new links between the performing arts, writing, media and design, that could help us remain in the avant garde of arts education. The special needs and missions of the conservatory schools make it advisable to maintain them at their current scale. The Plan This Academic Plan is built around four major initiatives: • We will continue to improve the faculty, both in numbers and in quality, as a foundation for all other progress. • We will strengthen and enrich the academic environment. We will continue our push for improvements in the curriculum, in the underlying academic standards, and in public programming. We will develop an innovative, meaningful General Education curriculum. At the same time, we will build the undergraduate experience around cross-disciplinary Unifying Themes that let students integrate their knowledge in a way that strengthens their future capacity to be flexible, add meaning to their education and enhances their options at The New School and beyond. • We will establish Centers of Study, created to address vital, multidisciplinary international issues whose demands match our unique strengths. These Centers of Study will enrich the university academically, while enhancing our reputation and dramatically increasing our impact on questions that matter to the world. 3 DRAFT • We will enable growth by increasing the number and variety of degree and certificate programs. By increasing our online presence, we will promote growth with efficiency and open a doorway to national and international students, while improving the academic experience for classroom students as well. The larger purpose of these initiatives and of all of the aspects of the Plan is to address the issues that matter most to The New School. The Tradition of the New This Plan reaffirms The New School’s core progressive values – innovation, justice, debate and creative dissent – in a way that is reframed for a world of migration, markets, mass media, and democracy without borders. The New School has a unique combination of outlooks, disciplines, and experiences that enables it to serve as a primary locus for innovation in education and thought in this new world. The Academic Plan will mobilize and enlarge these academic assets, while creating new programs and initiatives to enhance and extend our ability to serve this mission. The Students We Produce: Solution Builders This Plan is focused squarely on the academic experience. By 2010, The New School will be a first-rate undergraduate institution offering students, teachers and scholars a multidimensional educational experience in an environment of uncompromising academic standards. We will constantly, measurably improve the educational experience at Parsons, at the performing arts schools and at all of the university’s undergraduate, graduate and adult education programs. We intend to make Eugene Lang College one of the very best urban liberal arts colleges in the United States. Our faculty is at the heart of this effort. With our faculty and our approach, we are building an educational experience that ensures that our students understand and exemplify the links between creative talent, analytic skill, and cross-referenced knowledge. We will integrate our students’ education through programs such as Democracy, Design and Development. We will link new fields, such as image-based mapping, global finance, web-based design and urban environmental studies, to a new project-based model of education in which studios, labs and internships connect our pedagogy, our public programming and our research. The result will be a body of students, teachers and graduates who are true “solution builders.” The Scale to Match our Aspirations By 2010, The New School will be much larger: not just in size, but especially in impact and influence. We will increase enrollment – not for the sake of growth alone, but because larger scale will enable us to afford the programs and initiatives that characterize a great university. Larger scale will enable us to have a larger impact on the world. This Plan supports growth to more than 15,000 degree students, including 10,000 undergraduates, by 2010. 4 DRAFT Table 1: Projected Enrollment Goals 2005 Undergraduate Graduate Online Total 8457 5292 3165 2006 5852 3287 354 2007 6382 3619 750 2008 7012 4099 1350 12,461 2009 7762 4487 1700 13,949 2010 8 517 4796 2115 15,428 9493 10 ,751 Increased scale will allow those students wider course offerings, a more multidimensional experience and fuller exposure to world issues – at an institution whose larger international reputation allows it to fulfill its mission to define world-changing discoveries and debates. A more important international reputation will in turn attract more high quality students from around the world. And all of the advantages of scale will allow us to compete more effectively for top students and faculty in our expensive metropolitan area. One University By 2010, The New School will be one university in spirit and in structure. We will have removed barriers that prevent our students, teachers and scholars from benefiting from each other’s diverse, but related, contributions. Our purpose is to achieve ambitions that could never be undertaken by any single School. Using our greatest strengths – in democracy, design, media, the arts and urban studies – we will create a new set of crossuniversity curricular offerings that, along with major new programs and Centers of Study, will change the nature of undergraduate education within and beyond our campus. Financial Implications Most major expense categories needed to support this plan can be managed to move in proportion with, or more slowly than, projected increases in enrollment, so as to realize new economies of scale. The expansion of The New School Online promises especially significant revenues and savings. Establishing the Centers of Study and other initiatives will be expensive. Properly conceived, however, each one of these initiatives by itself has the potential to anchor a development effort. Improving the academic experience while enlarging our footprint in the world will fit well with the university’s new, more sophisticated abilities in managing enrollment, development, facilities and communications. 5 DRAFT 2. Context: Beyond “Laying the Groundwork” Over the past several years, President Kerrey has clearly and insistently articulated the responsibilities the university must meet to shape its destiny. Major academic changes – both in thinking and in policy – have been necessary to fulfill these responsibilities. The changes that have been put in place over the past two years have created a solid footing from which we can now take dramatic new steps. One University Not Eight Schools The New School is a university, not a holding company. The reasons for us to be together are a direct reflection of the values that we hold. We are here to solve the difficult problems of the real world – which by definition are always multidisciplinary. We believe that exposure to a multi-dimensional education makes our students, teachers and scholars better suited to live in and help our world. Already, we have moved decisively to break down the barriers between the separate schools in a way that enriches the academic environment. The full benefits of this approach will become even more apparent in years to come. We have spurred crossfertilization of experiences and ideas through joint faculty appointments, dual degrees and programs, improved access for all students to diverse resources and many other efforts. Practical moves, such as easier cross-registration and a common university curriculum, have also unlocked efficiencies and eliminated redundancies. We have begun to use the scale of the entire University to address opportunities that would have been too ambitious for any one School. The many new programs and initiatives that are defined later in this Plan represent undertakings that require contributions from multiple disciplines and centers of expertise. Changes in Policy: A Cohesive Approach Not only were the Schools less connected in the past, but their policies, even their ideas about education, were inconsistent. The hard work of the recent past has been to provide both the leadership and the implementation policy to single-mindedly focus the university’s academic resources on improving the academic experience in an atmosphere of ever-higher standards. We have been determined to do so while creating the conditions that enable our teachers and scholars to maximize their contributions in an environment of long term stability and productivity. On a policy level, significant changes have now been achieved. Attention to the primacy of the academic environment has guided us in providing a structure that makes sure that all of our students and teachers in all of our schools benefit from our policies. To provide both the leadership and the implementation to marshal the benefits of a single university, policies that had been disparate and ad hoc have been gathered and systematized in the Office of the Provost. Above all, we have concentrated on enhancing the contributions that our faculty can make. In part, this effort means improving the faculty by means such as creating more full-time positions – and 85 full-time positions have been filled in the past two years alone. Across the board, we are attracting and retaining better full-time and part-time teachers and scholars and reviewing them using more rigorous standards. 6 DRAFT At a deeper level, we have worked to build a new relationship with the faculty: one that is durable, predictable and mutually rewarding. Consistent rules have been promulgated as to rank, title and review, such that clear expectations can lead to fair judgments about clear outcomes. Vehicles such as the Full-time Faculty Handbook and the Faculty Senate have been created. The recent Collective Bargaining Agreement, which formalizes issues important to both the faculty and the university without compromising the university’ s ability to set academic standards, represents the culmination of our efforts to create a long-term framework within which all of us can benefit going forward. Although the major decisions have now been taken, the full benefits of these new policies will be revealed only over a period of many years. And their greatest benefit will prove to be this: with the groundwork laid, we can set our goals high, choose the risks we will take, and manage them with confidence. 7 DRAFT 3. Academic Plan: Major Academic Initiatives As represented schematically in the drawing below, we view the faculty as the vital foundation upon which all other programs must be grounded and built. Strong Academic Environment with Unifying Themes to provide a unique, enriched undergraduate experience Centers of Study solving the world’s problems, building our reputation as a multidisciplinary powerhouse Enablers of Growth Online access, new degrees and certificates to support the scale that greatness requires Evaluation Faculty (The foundation for all progress) Each of our major initiatives is summarized in the sections immediately following. 3.1 Faculty: the Foundation for all Progress A top-flight faculty is an absolute precondition for substantive growth in the university’s size, reputation and quality. The university is fully committed to building a relationship with the faculty that can provide a lasting framework for mutual reward. Recruitment of New Full-time Faculty We plan to add approximately 175 new full-time faculty between now and 2010. Given that enrollment is projected to double between now and 2010, we will be maintaining, not improving, the ratio of full-time faculty to degree students. However, increasing the absolute number of full-time faculty will provide a critical mass of full-time faculty sufficient to accomplish the following aims: • Provide a richer, more coherent educational experience for students and teachers. Full-time professors have a larger stake in a consistent program of learning. And a larger network of faculty who are fully committed to the institution enriches the environment for all of the university’s students and teachers. • Enlarge the university’s impact on the world, while enhancing its reputation. Fulltime positions allow us to recruit the scholars and teachers whose voices are heard in the important debates of our time. Their full-time affiliation allows their achievements to be strongly associated with The New School. 8 DRAFT • Provide leadership for the ground-breaking, cross-disciplinary initiatives that we plan. New full-time positions allow us to compete for the world-class scholars and thinkers who can galvanize these initiatives. These new faculty members will be distributed strategically so as to have the greatest effect on the university’s opportunities. • Whether or not they are joint appointments, many will be in positions where they can serve students from more than one school. • They will be overrepresented in the university’s new Centers of Study, where they will provide leadership and commitment for new work. By fulfilling their roles as teachers as well as leaders and scholars, they will make sure that the intellectual benefits of the Centers of Study are well-distributed throughout the university. • We will place an emphasis on hiring junior scholars and teachers, since their progress can be reviewed before the university makes long term commitments to them. Part-time Faculty Even with the addition of 175 new full-time faculty members, the University will continue to depend on part-time faculty to do the lion’s share of the teaching. The New School’s part-time faculty is one of the unique advantages that the university offers its students. In many departments, students benefit from instruction from practitioners who are prominent in their disciplines because they spend time practicing as well as teaching – and more of these teachers are available in New York City than anywhere in the world. We need to recruit carefully and then retain and respect this resource as the valuable asset that it is – and be sure that it is stable and productive. Now and over the next several years, the Office of the Provost will pay special attention to this unique asset, continuing the work that has begun with undertakings such as the Faculty Senate and the Faculty Handbook and building on the achievements of the recent Collective Bargaining Agreement. It is neither advisable nor necessary to increase the size of an already very large part-time faculty over the coming five years, to match our predicted doubling of enrollment, nor would doing so be conducive to maximizing the relationships we are building with our teachers. Apart from management issues, there are good reasons for careful implementation of changes in the way we meet our teaching obligations for an expanded student body. This will occur as we strengthen the academic environment. 9 DRAFT 3.2 Strengthening the Academic Environment Constant improvement to the curricular environment is the first “pillar” of the Plan Strong Academic Environment, with Unifying Themes Centers of Study Enablers of Growth Faculty If a great faculty is the foundation of The New School Academic Plan, a stronger curriculum is the first academic “pillar” that will be built on that foundation. In the future, undergraduates will take a variety of courses with other students from different schools who are pursuing very different ultimate courses of study. We expect that the students will gain from taking these courses in a much more diverse setting – as long as these “intersecting” courses are chosen carefully, they will accelerate our push to cross-pollinate among disciplines and experiences. To the degree that enrollment in these courses and some others can be significantly larger than The New School has usually offered, we expect that the faculty will gain productivity and the university will realize significant economies. At the same time, we will continue to offer all of our students many smaller classes, with close student-teacher relationships. The overall teaching load will be distributed in a way that allows our full-time and core part-time faculty to maximize their contributions and productivity, while encouraging administrative efficiencies. Initiatives Already Underway Strengthening the academic environment has been a primary academic focus over the past two years. We continue to work toward “conventional” improvements, including: Practical but powerful improvements, such as the ability of students to cross-register at different schools, to access technology and digital resources, to receive appropriate advising, and to take advantage of the full range of New School assets. Emphasis on upgrading standards, including but not limited to, improvements to curricula, promotion of knowledge of a foreign language, of design literacy (a basic understanding of the built environment), scientific, quantitative and information research literacy. 10 DRAFT General Education* We are in the early stages of a plan to offer an innovative General Education Curriculum that will provide integrity, breadth and complex analytical skills to all our undergraduates. This plan builds on President Kerrey’s university required curriculum initiative introduced in 2004-05 and is strengthened by the detailed draft agreement between Eugene Lang College and the New School for Social Research and the theme of Design, Democracy and Development. The curriculum will bring together the social sciences, design, global issues and great books and ideas in an original way and will be mapped to specific Unifying Themes described in the next section, among others: • It will be built around key debates and thinkers in the social sciences and it will bring the humanities and arts into these debates. By reversing the standard relationship between the humanities and the social sciences in general education, we hope to encourage students to organize their basic literacy around problems of social life, social policy and community. Such an approach could span both Aristotle and Emile Durkheim, while focusing on the grand questions of community and society. • It will begin, not end, with the great issues of the contemporary world: mass migration, new media, emerging democracies, embattled cities and global disease management. These problems will show students how and why the great thinkers of the past are still relevant to the building of analytic solutions to today’s major challenges. • It will be fully international, building a sense of today’s global world into all topics and discussions and drawing on the best information-mapping technologies to give students a vivid sense of how lives and stories unfold in regions and countries far from our own. Combined with stronger language training, the curriculum will help make our undergraduate curricula global in their depth and not just in their rhetoric. • It will break from previous models by dissolving the gap between analysis and intervention, between theory and practice. The General Education curriculum will also orient students towards formulating a required lab or studio project which they will take back to their concentrations, leading to a major real-world “design” capstone in the senior year. Unifying Themes We intend to weave into every New School education a set of Unifying Themes that integrate the many subjects that make up our students’ courses of study. The Unifying Themes are intended to inform curricular and pedagogical change. They are designed not to take the place of our conventional improvements, but rather to amplify them by investing our students with the capacity to be flexible and the ability to develop lateral conceptual vision. It is our expectation that the set of Unifying Themes we have selected * General Education is a term of art in many colleges and universities, and is the recognized designation for a foundational set of courses that cross disciplines, methods and skills for undergraduates. It should not be confused with the term “General Studies” which, as in the case of the New School for General Studies, refers to educational efforts directed at non-conventional student populations by offering multiple pathways for obtaining credits, diplomas and degrees 11 DRAFT will guide us for the next five years. In 2010-11, we will institute a review which could continue some of these Themes, modify others, and perhaps bring in new ones. The Unifying Themes will all have these qualities in common: • They will prepare our students to understand our multidimensional, interconnected world, in a value-driven way, with an international perspective. • They will be multi-disciplinary – to deliver an education that can be taken as a unified whole and to produce graduates who are multidimensional. • They will span the university’s strengths in the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, media and design. • They will be distinct from curricula at other universities. • These Unifying Themes will be structured and introduced over the next eighteen months, such that they will all be part of the journey towards The New School of 2010. Democracy, Design and Development is the first theme that will be introduced. Its conception and implementation will also serve as a general map as we introduce the other themes. Democracy, Design and Development will combine one of the university’s primary strengths, design – in its largest sense – with an insistence on thinking that constructively addresses the world’s problems. Our students will consider whether the world can be designed for democracy and whether it can be designed to use development in a democratic way, for the benefit of the world’s citizens who are currently left behind. We are aware of no other institution even considering this sort of integrative approach. Other themes that have been identified are as follows: Arts, Media and Culture will use the university’s strengths in the creative arts, public policy, social science and international studies and weave them together with technology and economic analysis. Our strengths in media studies, information mapping, communication and product design can be brought together with our online plans and our performing arts strengths to create new synergies among content, story-telling, geographical orientation, data analysis, design and course delivery. Designing this theme is a field-shaping opportunity. Environment, Health and Geography will show students the local, regional and international relationships among environmental factors and human health, while emphasizing the relevance of the university’s insistence on improved scientific and quantitative literacy. Urban Studies will utilize our location in the heart of a spectacular urban laboratory and will link design, planning and policy in relation to global issues of migration and urban population growth. In addition to tying together the undergraduate academic experience, the Unifying Themes will also further our goal of making The New School a single, integrated university. Bringing together our diverse academic assets is a purpose that will be played out in many other ways. For example, we intend to create much stronger links among our 12 DRAFT mapping resources and technologies, our pedagogic content and our web-based media technology and content. Ph.D. Programs We intend to better concentrate the resources we devote to our Ph.D. programs. These programs should address the critical issues of the contemporary world, doing so in ways that are increasingly interdisciplinary and synergistic with the university’s distinctive strengths (e.g. NSSR and Parsons) By 2010, these programs will enroll fewer students, but will support them better. Our intention is to raise the quality of the students, improve the quality of the programs and hence magnify the effect that top level graduate students can have on our students, teachers, scholars and reputation. The introduction of a serious and rigorous General Education Curriculum that includes lecture courses will enable us to better support outstanding graduate students, providing them with Teaching Assistantships. 3.3. Creating New Centers of Study New Centers of Study represent a second “pillar” of the Plan Strong Academic Environment Centers of Study Enablers of Growth Faculty In contrast to the Unifying Themes which will give cross-divisional coherence to the curriculum, the Centers of Study will be dominated by research and project activity, conceptual innovation, public programming and heightened visibility. These centers will sit apart from the University’s Schools, but they will work with the Schools and with each other, so that their resources and products will enrich all of the university’s students and teachers. The Centers will also have responsibility for teaching, scholarship and public programming. They will be outward-facing, so we expect and will demand that they dramatically enhance the university’s reputation and its impact on the world. The Centers will have these common attributes: • They will be focused on questions and solutions in unsettled areas of inquiry that are vital to the world’s future. • They will require a multi-disciplinary, internationalist approach. • They will be staffed by world-class scholars and be home to world-class teachers and students. 13 DRAFT • They will draw on the distinctive strengths of The New School, to enlarge our unique academic assets and to create new ones. One of these Centers is already functioning; others have been conceived and specified to varying degrees and will commence operations before 2010. Plans for others may be developed over the coming years. The India China Institute has been operating for over a year. Based on a generous grant from the Starr Foundation, the Institute has developed a series of research and public policy exchanges between The New School and key institutions and constituencies in India and China. By focusing on major problems shared by the United States, India and China (such as trade, environment, migration, and urbanization), the Institute will enable The New School’s special interest in issues of democracy, equality, and planned change to be part of a global exchange of ideas. The Media Center will bring together practitioners, scholars and students to study both traditional and new media. The Media Center will capitalize on The New School’s location in the heart of the media world; on the university’s many full-and part-time experts and scholars; and on the university’s strengths in the arts, social sciences and humanities. In addition, the Media Center will be our engine for linking the arts, media and our information mapping capacities (PIIM) in new and imaginative ways. One example of this synergy is the area of game design. This is an opportunity to take an area of current strength and innovation and use it to capture the nationwide recognition that new technologies for information, communication and leisure are increasingly convergent and are changing the relationship between work, play and education. The Global Urban Initiative will have the mission of studying and discovering solutions to urban problems and opportunities. The worldwide migration from rural areas and small towns to urban centers, both within and between nations, may be the most important force changing life around the world. The Global Urban Initiative will draw on The New School’s tradition of internationalism; its location in a great urban laboratory; its determination to bring the interests of peoples of all social classes into the field of discourse; and its wealth of scholarship in the many social scientific and other disciplines that are required to address this field. The Global Urban Initiative will have close ties with The India China Institute. The Mexico Transnational Program will address the issues raised by the movement of Mexicans to and from the United States, with a special focus on New York. The Center will place Mexico in a broader Latin American framework, but at the same time it will connect to the work of The India China Institute, to address issues relating to globalization, such as urbanization, migration and economic growth. The Mexican Transnational Studies program will be our first experiment in teaching “public history” to undergraduates especially at Lang College. Writing and Democracy will address the creative process of writing as it supports the democratic, pluralistic values that New School holds dear. It will make use of The New School’s large contingent of writers; of the position of New York City as a historical 14 DRAFT nexus of creative writing; of the university’s internationalist orientation; and of the social sciences, humanities and other disciplines in which the school is strong. Writing and Democracy and the Media Center will benefit from each other’s presence. Tishman Environment and Design Center. This newly created center will allow us to bring together the study of urgent issues in urban ecology and design with the world-wide impact of climate change, ageing infrastructure, urban security and environmental literacy. It will help us to seek major federal grants and private support and be a fulcrum for bringing the natural sciences into the undergraduate curriculum. 3.4. Enabling Growth The last major component of the Academic Plan is focused on enabling the University to grow Strong Academic Environment Centers of Study Enablers of Growth Faculty The university must grow to realize its ambitions; not to have more heads to count, but rather to serve the mission. Only with larger scale can the university dramatically increase its participation and influence in the world’s discourse. And only by spreading costs across a larger institution can The New School afford to put in place the programs that will make it a great university. We plan two specific undertakings to enable faster growth: (1) increase the number of degree and certificate programs; and (2) expand New School Online. Expanding our Programs We are committed to an aggressive approach to developing new programs that will allow us to improve the applicant pool as we seek to find more and better students. We are working to find more dynamic ways to encourage new ideas and translate them into new programs. Programs under active development include: Environmental Studies; Creative Democracy; Global Finance; Media Studies; Fashion Studies and Culinary Studies. Others are in more embryonic planning stages. In most cases, these programs and degrees will involve more than one school and will expand our research reputations and our new student markets. Many will take the form of joint B.A.-M.A. degrees. Many will also be enhanced through the capacities of our Centers of Study as described in this Plan. Wherever possible, as we develop these new programs, we will link them to our new strategies for online education so that on-site programs and online programs support and stimulate one another. These programs will also benefit from our current discussions with new institutional partners such as 15 DRAFT Polytechnic University and Cornell in the United States, and Chinese Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. New programs meet multiple needs in our academic vision: they force us to stay close to evolving trends and demands in the educational marketplace; they are a constant test of the flexibility and currency of our faculty strengths; they make it imperative for us to recognize our needs for partnerships in key areas; they help us to target major priorities for fund-raising; and they are the front-end of our reputation for being innovators and risk-takers. Collaborations Given our wish to expand our range of offerings and move forcefully into new areas, it is important for us to seek and develop key collaborations. We have a history of formal and informal interactions with a large variety of institutions. Examples include our consortial links with NYU, Columbia and other major New York universities for the free exchange of graduate students; our arrangements with NYU for the use of Bobst Library; our links to Cooper Union for the natural sciences; and our many existing links to institutions throughout the world. We are building on this tradition and are now pursuing focused efforts involving new programs with Brooklyn’s Polytechnic University in the area of urban technology, emergency management planning; with Cornell University in the areas of design, culinary studies and global political economy; and with a variety of institutions in India, China and Mexico for new linkages involving Parsons, Lang, NSSR and NSGS. These new collaborations will extend our capacity to enter into fields in the natural sciences, technology, design and various areas of professional training. The Chinese Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai are each interested in formal agreements that will allow us to deepen and globalize our teaching and research in design, habitat and urban studies issues. These are premier institutions in these two countries, which will also help us open our capacity to recruit top-notch students in these two countries. In India, we are in the first stages of a partnership between the TISS and the Indian Institute of Technology, both based in Mumbai, to establish a globally oriented Habitat School in Mumbai in collaboration with The New School. This School will be entirely funded by Indian donors and volunteers and will present us with a unique opportunity to expand our academic imprint and to recruit more potential students from India. New Program Development Process To create new degree or certificate programs takes 18 to 24 months from conception to enrollment, as depicted below. Staff must be designated to lead and design a program before accreditation can be attempted. Programs can be marketed after the proposal has been sent to the New York State Department of Education for approval, but otherwise there is little that can be done in parallel to truncate this process. 16 DRAFT New Program Development Process Approve Conceive Develop and Design Market Enroll Because of this lead time, we are now in the process of creating programs that will be populated with new students for the first time in the fall of 2007. New School Online The New School has had online programs for many years, but only in the past year has a process been put in place to reposition and reinvigorate this resource. We see New School Online as an engine for growth – and it offers benefits in other dimensions as well. Our detailed Business Plan for New School Online envisages an approach which is fundamentally different from the principles of the DIAL program with which we entered into online education more than a decade ago. In the period since then, our on-campus students have begun to make greater use of online courses, the technologies for these courses have become increasingly interactive and student-friendly, and the technical platforms for developing and delivering courses have become easier to understand and use. These changes are part of a clear trend among students towards sophisticated uses of technology in their everyday lives. In our University, especially with the capacities of our current programs in media, computing, imaging and design, we are well-situated to combine the best of these new technologies with the best of our traditional commitments to student-teacher interactions. We have also premised our plans on the best available current knowledge about matters of student integrity, faculty accountability and quality control of teaching and learning, all of which require different forms of training and management in an online environment. Most important, we recognize that many students now operate in a world of hybrid possibilities. Just as on-campus students increasingly demand online courses, so students from other parts of the country or the world are increasingly interested in distance education which could be combined with low-residency options which would allow them to participate in the conventional campus experience. Specific benefits which we anticipate from a new approach to online education include the following: • Online courses will enable us to recruit local students who, because of work or other life commitments, cannot attend some or all of their classes in person. • Online courses will help The New School reach students from outside of New York City, including many more international students. Increasing our geographical reach 17 DRAFT not only fosters growth in enrollment but also widens our exposure to the world and expands our impact around the world. • New School Online has the potential to enhance the experience of every student and teacher by making rich media material available for courses that meet in the classroom. Whether we realize it yet or not, access to rich media is already simply expected by students. New School Online enables us to be a better school, by making available the depth of material that students and teachers value. • To some degree, online classes allow us to substitute technology for physical assets, thus permitting the university to realize important efficiencies as it grows. A separate Business Plan has been approved for New School Online. The plan forecasts modest growth while the online organization upgrades its platform, reaches out to students and teachers, builds and protects our intellectual property and systematizes the many tasks that must be performed to ensure that online classes adhere to the same standards of academic excellence that we demand of conventional classes. By 2010, New School Online will have a major impact on the university. Enrollment projections are as shown below in Table 2 . Table 2: Projected New School Online Degree Students 2006-07 Online Degree Students* *MA TESOL students counted in NSGS 2007-08 750 2008-09 1350 2009-10 1700 2010-1 2115 354 18 DRAFT 4. Evaluation Purpose of Evaluation The purpose of evaluation is both prescriptive and retrospective. By being clear about expectations, we drive action to accomplish our aims. After events take place, we must face the outcomes realistically and objectively if we are to learn from them and improve. Levels of Evaluation Our evaluation efforts will take place on at least four levels: Individual We have committed ourselves to providing objective, fair and clear expectations and evaluations to the individuals who contribute to The New School, adhering scrupulously to due process. Principal Academic Initiatives This Academic Plan is based on four major Academic Initiatives: improving the faculty, improving the academic environment, building Centers of Study and implementing enablers to growth. We will evaluate each of these primary undertakings with multiple types of reviews, as described below. School and Program We have structured a rigorous, systematic process for evaluation at the School and Program level. University We use multiple feedback mechanisms to gauge our progress as a university. In addition to other efforts, The Office of Institutional Research has specific responsibility to provide a breadth and depth of both qualitative and quantitative reporting on an objective, structured, systematic basis, as well as to perform targeted, ad hoc research on matters of particular interest. Evaluating the Principal Academic Initiatives of this Academic Plan Faculty Development We now have a comprehensive, objective and systematic evaluation plan in use for the faculty. We concentrate on evaluating the things that matter most to our long term success: incoming credentials and promise; teaching; scholarship where appropriate; and productivity. Faculty evaluation accounts for the contributions of individuals, but it is not sufficient to measure our progress against the larger goal of a faculty that is stronger in its entirety. To do that job, we will use multiple indicators. We can and do measure our success at recruiting, retaining and making productive the number and caliber of faculty that we need. And because the faculty is so important to overall success, our evaluations at the school, program and university level are strong indicators of progress at the faculty level. 19 DRAFT Improving the Academic Environment We have a defined, well-structured process that evaluates each School on a rotating basis. This process makes use of both rigorous internal mechanisms and outside expertise. Among other things, the process concentrates on those factors that are key to the long term academic environment: the quality of the academic experience, the output of the teachers and scholars and the standards to which we adhere. In addition to this highly structured process, The Office of Institutional Research has the explicit responsibility to continue to contribute to our understanding of the degree to which we satisfy our responsibilities to our students, as well as to provide information as to how we are perceived. Among other activities, the Office of Institutional Research conducts a variety of student surveys, such as the CIRP Freshman Survey in collaboration with the office of the Senior Vice President for Student Services and the National Survey of Student Engagement aimed at measuring and improving the student experience. In addition, our academic environment is subject to a market test, whether we like it or not. If we are successful at building a better environment and a more meaningful academic experience, then over the long haul, we will attract, retain and graduate more and better students. It would be a mistake to overreact to apparent variations in these measures in the short term, especially since they are always clouded by necessary management tradeoffs among such factors as selectivity and growth. But over the long term, these market signals represent important information to which we need to listen. Building the Centers of Study Although the Centers of Study will stand apart from the Schools, the leaders, teachers and students at the Centers will be evaluated according to the same principles as every other member of The New School community. In addition, because the Centers are outwardfacing, many other signals will be available to us about their success. If the Centers do not have an effect on public discourse, if they are not serving the public interest in some fashion, then they are not succeeding. We will devise both quantitative and qualitative methods to measure these contributions. Aside from these formal tests, the Centers of Study will face a market test from the very beginning. To establish the Centers at all, we will need to make our case in the marketplace of ideas: that we have defined vitally important international issues and approaches that can command the commitment of financial supporters, leaders, teachers and learners. Enablers of Growth We expect New School Online to be a primary enabler of our growth strategy. New School Online is already working to an approved Business Plan, with well-defined quantitative and qualitative targets. Safeguards are in place to be sure there is no compromise to academic standards or quality. We are also working to make available more degree and certificate programs – again with no compromise to academic standards or to other higher goals. Measuring our ability to create new programs and then observing their ability to attract and serve enrollees is straightforward. All of the programs will be followed for quality and satisfaction. 20 DRAFT External Rankings We will not be focused on external rankings for their own sake – but by concentrating on the things that we believe are important indicators of real success, we expect and will insist that higher rankings follow. To a degree, external rankings matter when our applicants and supporters think they matter. Imprecise, incomplete and arbitrary as they may be, external rankings have an effect on our ability to achieve our objectives. If we turn a deaf ear to these rankings, then we are ignoring an important source of information. However, if we simply manage to external rankings, then we have let the rankers choose our mission, our goals and our means of implementation – instead of making those most critical choices ourselves. Our external rankings will improve, not because we will manage to the rankings – we won’t – but because we have a plan to improve in several of the subcategories that we know are meaningful. We would dedicate ourselves to these ends without the impetus of external rankings: • We intend to create the academic environment and reputation that – other things being equal – give Enrollment Management the best possible chance to increase applications and upgrade the level of incoming students (consistent, of course, with choices that must always be made about selectivity, growth and financial reality). • Our focus on the primacy of the academic experience will improve student satisfaction, retention and graduation rates. Our focus on the academic environment will improve our faculty. • Our efforts to enlarge our footprint in the world will enlarge and improve our overall reputation among our peers. • The rankings will be a good measure of our progress in targeted areas and, we expect, we will improve our standing in the overall ratings. 21 DRAFT 5. Administrative Choices To achieve the vision laid out in this document will require us to rethink some fundamental aspects of our administrative structure. To be one university, we must be structured, governed, and administered as one university. We need to be organized by our strengths, our synergies and our aspirations, rather than by the accidents of our institutional history. Our commitment to being one university has not been fully reflected to date in our administrative and governance structures, or in our management systems. Our current administrative costs are to a significant extent the product of the way in which we became a university, with eight independent schools. To match our organization to the university’s highest, longest term objectives, we need to consider and debate choices such as the following: • In fields in which we are particularly strong, can we do a better job of enriching our students and teachers, catalyzing our research, and enhancing our reputation by gathering faculty together from separate schools to create focused programs? Where are the connections and interactions between our currently separate schools so strong that our students and teachers might benefit from combining some of their programs? • Are there particular centers of study that have grown up in one of our schools or divisions but might more appropriately be housed in another? • Does the cross-disciplinary nature of some important contemporary fields of inquiry mean that the strengths of two or more of our schools should no longer be separated? On the graduate or undergraduate level, might we better enable our students and teachers to take advantage of the full range of opportunities in their fields of interest by combining whole pieces of schools with other divisions – while reducing administrative inefficiencies at the same time? • Would teaching, learning, and administrative efficiency be served by reducing the number of departments in some of our schools? If so, how rapidly can we move to realize these advantages? • What is the optimal way to organize and govern our performing arts schools, such that we maximize our students’ experiences while realizing the efficiencies that let us direct more resources to education? Answering these sorts of questions, and implementing the solutions they suggest, will mean change. But this Plan commits us, once again, to acting as a single university. Without facing these questions, and formulating the answers as actionable plans, we will never be one institution. The sooner we begin to address them, the sooner we can move forward. 22 DRAFT 6. Financial Implications Relation to Enrollment Growth For quality to be maintained and continually improved, inputs to the Academic Plan must generally grow to support enrollment growth – but for fiscal discipline to be maintained, continuing expenses may not grow out of proportion to enrollment. So overall rates of planned expense growth to planned enrollment growth provide a quick “sanity test” as to whether any Academic Plan is aligned with reality. Of course, when considering enrollment issues the university must constantly take into account its ability to command increases in tuition to match rising costs, its choices around supporting the financial needs of undergraduates and graduates, its tradeoffs between selectivity and growth and many other factors. Important Cost Factors The primary cost factors of supporting this Plan are summarized immediately below. Faculty and Administrative Costs This Plan assumes that the full-time faculty will grow roughly in step with increases in enrollment. Most of our faculty will still be part-time. The use of online technology and the introduction of large lectures to complement seminar classes will result in a more efficient and economical delivery of educational services. We have realized significant efficiencies and eliminated many redundancies over the past two years and we will address additional opportunities. We expect that some new efficiencies will be realized by changes in overall structure, as we make sure that all the schools avoid being top-heavy, but as the university grows, the significance of the returns from administrative rationalization will diminish in comparison to the scale of the university’s economics. More students will inevitably require more administrators, more advisors and more and better services – no matter in how many schools they are housed. In other words, we will demand that administrative costs grow a little more slowly than enrollment, but we will not be able to achieve administrative savings on a level that by itself drives overall five year affordability. Facilities Two factors are important as we predict demands on facilities. First, not all of the schools require facilities in the same proportion to the number of students they serve. And second, departing from traditional classroom instruction has the potential to fundamentally change the demand for physical space. A first level analysis of projected enrollment growth shows that, on balance, growth is not projected to come at Schools that make disproportionate claims on physical facilities. We are now investigating at the next level of detail, to be sure that the specific programs targeted for growth within each of the Schools are not ones which will create outsized demands for physical resources. While meeting our goal of becoming a much bigger institution, we will manage this issue vigilantly. 23 DRAFT The initiative with the largest economic potential is New School Online. By 2010, the equivalent of over 2000 full-time students will be taking classes on line, out of the classroom. Online education is not cost-free. It imposes its own set of costs, in terms of technology, physical infrastructure, user support, and business and academic administration. And many of our classroom students will demand new technology in addition to the physical assets we use to serve them. But, the New School Online Business Plan correctly predicts that online education is fundamentally more affordable than acquiring and maintaining classrooms in New York City. Over time, a migration to online instruction has the potential to save the university tens of millions of dollars in construction and operating costs. We expect that over the long term, New School Online will help us build an impressive reservoir of savings that can be used for multiple university purposes. However, while we need to be efficient and economical with our uses of our existing spaces, we urgently need to build the signature academic building at 65 Fifth Avenue and further optimize our first-rate spaces at 79 Fifth Avenue (Union Square). We also need to add to our residential capacities in our campus area and be in a position to demonstrate that our classroom library, athletic and cross-classroom spaces are commensurate with a great and growing university in one of the most exciting neighborhoods in the world’s most expensive city. As we compete for the best students, faculty and the most visionary donors, we cannot pretend that our campus is as coherent, competitive and visually dominant as we need it to be. Upfront Costs, to Establish Centers of Learning and Unifying Themes We expect these new undertakings to be expensive. At the same time, however, their existence as high profile, “marquee” projects makes each of them an ideal fund-raising vehicle in its own right. We expect that several of them will anchor major development campaigns. If we are right about the need for them, if we conceive of them properly and if we can communicate what we have in mind, then these campaigns should be successful. Long term financial impact of the Academic Plan on Development Certainly by the later years, if we deliver on the commitments of the Academic Plan, then fund-raising should be easier throughout the university. The New School has a much more capable, more disciplined development effort than ever before. This Academic Plan anticipates a university with a much bigger footprint in the world – one whose reputation will be dramatically enhanced by the initiatives we put in place and the work we do. An enlarged reputation and a more capable development function should be a good match. 24 DRAFT Conclusion The New School has a glorious history, characterized by unorthodox ideas, unconventional students and austere economic foundations. This Academic Plan is a map for a future that combines innovation and dissent with large aspirations, planning and fiscal foresight. With urban competitors like NYU, Columbia, FIT, CUNY and many other fine universities and colleges, we cannot assume that our distinctions will always keep us special. We need and want to take new risks, chart new paths and define new priorities. The willingness to make history rather than to repeat it is at the heart of our great tradition – the Tradition of the New. This plan builds on deliberations conducted and initiatives undertaken since January 2004. It is, therefore, already an outgrowth of organic internal processes. In addition, there will be multiple opportunities over the coming months for the University community to help us refine and realize this Plan. These include meetings of the Deans and the faculty of the Schools; the deliberations of the Faculty Senate; regular meetings of the Deans and Officers; and the meetings of the key committees of the Board of Trustees and the Boards of Governors of the Schools with the Provost and the President. We know what we want for The New School: an institution that will uphold the tradition of the new; that is focused on educating the students our world needs; at a scale that matters; in a single university. We have defined a set of major initiatives to take us there, in steps we can realistically afford and with provisions to measure our progress at every step of the way. 25