STATEMENT FOR EXTERNAL REVIEWERS FROM SCIENCE EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

 

February 23, 2006

 

The Report of the Advisory Panel on the Structure of the CUNY Graduate Center (APR) made many useful recommendations including the one which brought you here “.. that the University engage high-level scientific consultants to evaluate science education on the campuses and offer a more rational basis for science education.”

 

To prepare for your visit President Kelly asked his special assistant, Dr. Richard Pizer, someone who has deep knowledge of science at CUNY, to prepare a report which describes doctoral education in the sciences at CUNY. Dr. Pizer formerly served as the Executive Officer of the Chemistry Program, Dean of Graduate Studies at Brooklyn College, a member of the CUNY Committee for Doctoral Education in the Sciences,  and Provost of Hunter College.  Dr. Pizer met with the Executive Officers assembled here, many members of the faculty, and the Provosts and Deans of the six colleges that participate most in doctoral education and research in the sciences: Brooklyn, City, Hunter, Lehman, Queens and Staten Island. The intent of the report was to “present an informed perspective on doctoral education not to present a consensus of the above sources.” We regret that this report was not distributed to all the parties involved in its preparation and to you. We hope you will ask President Kelly for a copy of this report.

 

Recommendation 2 in the APR (p. 13) calls for reducing the number of consortia models (ARP, p. 6) for doctoral education from 4 to 2: leaving only “programs that are graduate  based [Model 1]  and programs that are campus [college] based [Model 3]. Programs that are campus based would follow a lead institution model. The lead institution(s) would be responsible for providing overall leadership. They would be expected to collaborate with other colleges that have relevant faculty and other resources to offer and with the Graduate Center to ensure program review, quality control and a commitment to the Second Generation Consortium concept. No program at CUNY should be allowed to become a closed stand alone.” The Engineering program follows the lead institution model.

 

The programs in Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry and Physics follow Model 2 (APR, p. 6) : “Doctoral students in the sciences are based at the colleges (for example Biology is at City, Hunter, Brooklyn, Queens, [Staten Island,]and Lehman) and do all their research in the laboratories on their “home” campus; non laboratory courses are taught at the Graduate Center.”; however, they are graduate-based in the sense that their administration is based at the Graduate Center.

 

We recommend that our programs continue to be graduate-based as described in Model 2. Although moving the programs’administrative functions to colleges designated as lead institution(s) would provide formal recognition (ownership) for those so designated nothing else would be gained and damage would be done to colleges that are not distinguished in this way. What incentive would  lead institutions have to facilitate research at other colleges? Given CUNY’s limited resources concentration of science research at one or two colleges would diminish science research at the others. Junior and even some senior faculty would leave CUNY. We would not be able to recruit faculty of high quality to come here because they would be unable to pursue doctoral research.  Administrative functions that were seen as strengths of the present structure in the APR would have to be implemented at the lead institutions while some functions, for example the external review of programs, would presumably remain at the Graduate Center. We need to make things simpler at CUNY, not more complicated.

 

We recommend that it is better instead to develop leading colleges in carefully chosen research areas that build on strengths at these colleges and show promise of achieving national and international prominence.  The cluster hiring initiative is a good example of this. The Pizer report names the areas that we identified as promising.

 

We recommend that cluster hiring be continued and be informed by advice from the Executive Committees of our programs. Executive Committees should be consulted by  the Central Administration about the choice of cluster areas that could strengthen research across the campuses.

 

The Advisory Panel on Structure recommended “.. that the University look carefully at creating joint degrees.”

 

We recommend that joint degrees be granted by the Graduate Center and all colleges that support doctoral education and research. This would provide graduate students with recognition for their college based research and teaching experience. We recommend that the important contributions that most students make as teachers at the colleges be recognized by the full remission of tuition, health coverage, adequate additional financial support, and the access undergraduates have to college facilities. We also recommend that the efforts of the colleges in the support of research be recognized by including it in the performance evaluation of college presidents.

 

Many faculty believe that the Chancellery plans to concentrate science research at City College because the Structural Biology Center is there and capital funds in a  5 year plan will be available to construct the Advanced Science Research Center (Phase 1), a  new City College Science Building (Phases 1 and 2), and begin renovating the Marshak Science Building. We have also heard that funds will be requested in the next 5-year capital budget to construct Phase 2 of the ASRC at an even greater cost than Phase 1. We have a great deal to lose if science is concentrated  on a single campus,  for both educational and financial reasons.

 

Please see the charts that follow this statement which show the distribution of research and doctoral education productivity across the campuses that participate in the chemistry program. The first chart shows the distribution of publications in refereed journals, as listed in the 2003 and 2005 editions of the Directory of Graduate Research of the American Chemical Society. The second chart  shows the distribution of PhDs in Chemistry, 518 of them to date,  across the colleges.

 

A list of the top 50 schools based on Federal support for chemical research and development in 2003 was published in the October 31, 2005 issue of Chemical and Engineering News. CUNY was not on this list; however, the total amount of support for Brooklyn, City, Hunter, Queens and Staten Island was $11.4 M in 2003. This should have placed CUNY at number 16 on the list, in between  Northwestern University and the University of Michigan; however, because our colleges were evaluated separately, no college made the list. We can gain reputational strength by seeking recognition for  the CUNY consortia in the sciences and not individual colleges. Can the Chancellery be sure that possible gains achieved at one or two leading colleges in terms of both research grants and reputation exceed the loses at colleges where science research is weakened?

 

Nothing causes more concern among faculty about weakening science research at all but one or two colleges than  its effect on science education. A letter prepared by faculty to express their concerns about the possible impact of the Advanced Science Research Center, concentration of research at City College, and jeopardizing NSF funding for research by weakening  the NSF goals of integration of research and education states:

 

 “CUNY currently has world-class science faculty who carry out research at the campuses.  We, as faculty, have it as our ultimate goal to build a research university that is second to none – we are the public university of New York City, and New York City is synonymous with the best of everything.   It is our considered opinion that a plan which does not properly account for how university science teaching and research are intimately tied to college campuses will set CUNY back, not drive it forward. 

 

Science programs at CUNY place it close to the definition of the National Science Foundation for predominantly undergraduate institutions.  Nevertheless, CUNY’s science doctoral programs allow us to recruit first-rate research scientists, and provide access for our undergraduate students to exciting research labs, where they can and do learn from and interact with Ph.D. students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty mentors.

 

A principal goal of the National Science Foundation is that its programs foster the integration of research and education.  It requires that all proposals include information on how the award of a grant will enhance teaching and learning, and how it will broaden the participation of underrepresented groups.  This goal now plays into a strength of CUNY”.

 

We have been told by a member of the University Faculty Senate that the Chancellor believes that concentration of science at certain campuses would not harm undergraduate instruction in science at the others, that many colleges elsewhere succeed without doctoral research programs. We do not share his conviction. Our colleges have trained many students who won top national  and international awards  in the sciences and acceptance by prestigious institutions for doctoral and professional studies because the consortia model has enabled them to do research  with CUNY’s accomplished science faculty. Some undergraduate colleges do excel in science education but they are usually institutions like Amherst with large endowments that make it possible for them to provide well-equipped laboratories and faculty who teach one course per semester.

 

A member of the University Faculty Senate advised us that because of scarce funds the Chancellor wants to reduce the number of doctoral students and offer larger financial aid packages  so as to recruit stronger students. We were told that he wants to reduce the number of students by 50 percent. This would reduce the number of students below the number required to offer the courses they need to obtain specialized training and make timely progress with required courses. The chemistry program expects to graduate ca. 16-20 students per year during the years ahead. This is a respectable number for a small PhD program, but 8-10 is only enough to be visible; and 4 -5 graduates at each of two lead institutions is not enough to be visible. We need more students not less.

 

Because of CUNY’s determination to increase the number of highly qualified full-time faculty and  make cluster hires in promising  areas of research,  many outstanding new faculty have been hired during the last several years. Every one of the faculty who joined our programs recently has a good chance to win their first research grant and have an outstanding and productive career at CUNY. Please see the chart which shows the distribution of untenured faculty across the colleges in our programs. These faculty have been given the time to do research that they need but they also need doctoral students working in their laboratories to help them establish the record of accomplishment required to win grants. This is the time for us to make an investment in their future that will pay great dividends to the University.

 

You were sent a chart by the Central Administration that shows the distribution of grant funds across the colleges. City and Hunter have more grant funds for research than others for  two reasons: large grants were obtained from NIH and NSF because they submitted strong applications for support as minority institutions and because their college administrations recognize the importance of lower teaching loads for research active faculty. Brooklyn also qualifies as a minority institution and stands a good chance of receiving a  SCORE grant in the near future. Concentration of science research on one or two campuses would make it harder for the other colleges to compete successfully for grants of this type.

 

The Pizer report describes three separate administrative units that play an important role in doctoral education in the sciences: the Graduate Center, the Central Administration, and the college campuses. The Graduate Center includes an Executive Committee for each doctoral program, chaired by an Executive Officer, which includes Department Chairs or Deputy Executive Officers for each college and other members of the program’s doctoral faculty. The Executive Committee for chemistry includes Sub-discipline Chairs for its areas of specialization.  The Committees of the Biochemistry, Biology and Physics programs are similar in composition.

 

We recommend the creation of a  Doctoral Education in the Sciences Committee composed of the University Dean of Research, a representative from each  of the colleges mentioned earlier appointed by its President (for example a Provost or  Science Dean), Executive Officers, and the Dean of Science at the Graduate Center. The latter position needs to be established by the President of the Graduate Center. Before the recent appointment of Richard Pizer as special advisor to the President, the Graduate Center has never had a scientist/administrator in the President’s cabinet who is responsible for the sciences.

 

We recommend that this committee meet to improve the structure of the science consortia by establishing connections between these separate units to: (1) strengthen the weaknesses in the consortia identified by the Advisory Panel on Structure and (2) implement the many good recommendations made in their report.

 

These recommendations include: (1) “There needs to be greater collaboration when the Graduate Center and the colleges are considering new hires that could impact the doctoral program.” (2) “The present system of compensating colleges for their contributions to doctoral education with faculty lines should be modified. We suggest that the colleges receive dollars ($84K is the present amount per line) instead of faculty lines. This would give the colleges  far more flexibility in meeting their needs. Adopting this approach would open up new ways for more creative resource sharing between the Graduate Center and the colleges. For example, among the possibilities is the prospect of using this flexibility to further enhance student support and employment. Further we believe that some portion of these allocations should be returned to the unit that has lost a faculty member or members due to doctoral assignments.”; (3) A direct awards system is needed for those faculty and academic units who are effective in securing grants and contracts. The best way to do this is to give a good share (20-30%) of the indirect cost earnings to the principal investigator.”;  and (4) The CUNY Research Foundation should commit, as much as possible, those earnings not necessary for administration for strengthening research programs. We understand that over 1.5 million is now used for this purpose. The more the better.” Please see the final chart which shows the amount of indirect costs for sponsored research over the period  1997 through 2004.

 

Charts

 

Publications - Final.xls

 

Ph D Disrtibution by College - Final.xls

 

Untenured Faculty - Final.xls

 

Indirect Costs - Final.xls