I hope this email finds you well (and staying warm!) as I write with updates and information concerning recent activities. I trust that the recent Valentine’s Day and President’s Day holidays allowed you some time to recharge your individual and collective batteries.
Since I last wrote, I have been very busy with events and meetings, both on campus and off. Last week, I hosted a visit from Dean Dara Byrne of the Macaulay Honors College, where we discussed opportunities (and challenges!) for our honors programs. We brainstormed ideas about how to showcase the talented students and tap into the local economy to provide meaningful experiential learning opportunities for them. The campus will be hosting the annual “Macaulay Olympics” next month, allowing our students to demonstrate their accomplishments while showing off our beautiful campus. Speaking of meaningful opportunities for our students, the next day I hosted a pair of high-ranking officials from the FDNY, where we discussed their need for students to serve as interns, and how we can partner on a number of important initiatives, including prep work for the Emergency Medical Services/Emergency Medical Technician exams. As municipal employment continues to be an attractive option and as the various city agencies are, collectively, the largest employers of CUNY graduates, it makes sense to leverage this relationship to the betterment of our students.
I also had follow-up meetings with the Department of Transportation to continue our discussions regarding bike safety on campus and across the Island. We will be partnering with that agency on a bike donation campaign and are awaiting the results of a feasibility study regarding dedicated bike paths on campus. I also met with the College Council Executive Committee in our first consultation of the semester, where we discussed issues such as guidelines from the new federal administration, impacts on research, scholarship, and creative activity, and our forthcoming Strategic Plan. That meeting prevented my attendance at our Center for Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development (CTLPD) workshop on “Building Common Ground: Using Dialogue to Work Across Our Differences and Disagreements” with Dr. Antonia Dardar. I briefly met Dr. Dardar and was impressed with her approach to fostering courageous conversation, and appreciate the work that CTLPD Director Wilma Jones and Associate Provost Laxmi Ramasubramanian put into designing the agenda. This workshop builds on the training that several members of our campus received through the Constructive Dialogue Institute and supports faculty, staff, and others in having difficult discussions with students, peers, and others. The CTLPD will also be providing training for faculty and students (“Know Your Rights” and “What to Do if…”), in collaboration with Student Affairs, during the Spring term. These trainings are at the suggestion of our governance leaders and I am proud to support them in their desire to provide professional growth and development to our colleagues. My busy week also included a meeting with the CSI Foundation’s Finance and Investment Committee, and concluded with another trip to Albany, where I attended the 54th Annual Black, Latino, and Asian caucus, and worked with other CUNY leaders to secure more robust funding for our system.
This week, I attended the first Board of Trustees meeting of the term, as well as the monthly Council of President’s meeting, where we discussed—among other things—challenges to CUNY’s access and opportunity programs, the rollout of CUNY Accommodate, system staffing vacancies (and I have been tabbed to serve on the search committee for the next Vice Chancellor for Human Resources), the state of the budget, and ongoing lobbying activities. We also focused on the upcoming Staten Island Borough Hearing (registration information can be found online), which provides an opportunity to “show up and show off” the many fantastic things we are doing here at CSI and across CUNY. The week also brought with it a meeting with the President of the NCAA, the first College Council and Faculty Senate meetings of the term, a reception to commemorate the opening of a new Art Gallery installation, a meeting with the Ambassador from Morocco where we discussed how to deepen and broaden relationships with educational institutions in that country, and the third iteration of an annual celebration of Black History Month as told from the perspective of a fascinating North African explorer. It has been a busy month, indeed!
Until next time,
Timothy G. Lynch, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
