TO:  NYU Faculty
FROM:  The Special Committee of the NYU Board of Trustees
DATE:  September 24, 2013
RE:  Proceeding with the Creation of the Joint Committee of NYU Stakeholders


Several weeks ago this Committee of the NYU Board distributed a memo outlining new mechanisms for constituent voices at NYU to be heard. Among the initiatives was a plan to create a Joint Committee of Board Trustees and NYU stakeholders. The memo stated:

As a starting point, it is vital that we establish mechanisms through which the Board and the constituencies at NYU can communicate with each other. The Board will benefit from the added viewpoints as it considers policy options; the stakeholders will benefit from understanding the deliberations of the Board. With this in mind, we propose to establish a Joint Committee of the Board with membership to be filled by board members and representatives of the key constituencies in the NYU community. The committee will meet several times each year and will report regularly to the Board on its discussions, with particular focus on the community’s viewpoints and concerns regarding the University’s policies and directions. We will be asking the schools, through their individual, established representative bodies, to choose faculty representatives who will sit on the Joint Committee. [1]

We are now asking that the academic units at NYU – through their established representative bodies - begin the process of choosing representatives (to serve for this academic year) so that the first meeting of the new Joint Committee can be convened on November 1st of this year. We will ask that the deans contact the leadership of the appropriate representative body in each school that can move the process along. (It is up to the schools how to constitute their local representative bodies – and how to choose the members of the new Joint Committee - but this Board Committee has made clear its view that all full-time faculty should be included in governance and representation.)

In constituting the Committee, we have sought to balance the desire to be representative with the need to hold the Committee - which also will include representatives of the Student Senators Council, the Administrative Management Council and the Faculty Senators Council - to a size that would permit fruitful discussion among the members. As a forum for communication between the Board and the NYU community, the Joint Committee is meant to surface the wide range of issues that are ripe for discussion at NYU. Faculty representation has been set at levels roughly proportionate to faculty size, as the attached chart shows. As noted previously, this Committee will be a pilot that can be reassessed in the coming years.

Thank you for your attention to this process and we are certain the resulting dialogue will be an important step forward for the NYU community.

Sincerely,

The members of the Special Committee:

Phyllis Putter Barasch

William R. Berkley

Heather L. Cannady

Sharon Chang

Laurence D. Fink

Kenneth G. Langone

Martin Lipton

Kelly Kennedy Mack

Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon

Daniel R. Tisch

Anthony Welters

Leonard A. Wilf

Fred Wilson

 

School
Representatives
FAS
6
CIMS 1
IFA 1
ISAW 1
Liberal Studies 1
Dental 2
Nursing 1
Gallatin 1
Law 1
Libraries 1
Medicine 7
NYU Abu Dhabi 1
NYU Poly 1
NYU Shanghai 1
SCPS 1
SSSW 1
Steinhardt 2
Stern 2
Tisch 2
Wagner 1
Total 35

[1] We recognize that in some of the smaller schools, the faculty meets in plenary session rather than electing representatives.