Academic Year 2006-07

This has been a year of major strides for the NYU community. Though our University’s achievements over the last two decades have been heralded (and rightly so) as one of the great success stories in higher education, I believe that this year will come to be seen as a crucial point, marking an acceleration in that progress.

The Faculty Engine

The indisputable engine of a university’s success is its faculty. In this we are already fortunate: our advancement to this point has been the result of our excellent faculty, devoted to scholarship and committed to teaching. We have many examples of distinction from which we could choose. I offer just two as illustrations:

• One is Peter Lax: not only a faculty colleague and former Courant director but also an alumnus of our University, he has spent his entire scholarly career here – some six decades, in all – as student, researcher, teacher, and advocate for improvement in math education. When he was named this year’s recipient of the Abel Prize – the “Nobel Prize of mathematics” – the world recognized what we have long known about him.
• Another is Dalton Conley: professor of sociology at NYU since 2000, he is this year’s recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Waterman Award, which recognizes the best young scientist in the nation. He is only the second behavioral scientist to win the award.

We congratulate Peter and Dalton, noting that they are exemplars of the increasingly pervasive excellence throughout the ranks of our faculty.

While ours is a faculty that others envy, we have come to see that in the key area for a university, the arts and sciences core, we must do more if we are to sustain – and, indeed, accelerate – NYU’s momentum. Specifically, we have embraced the notion that we must expand our arts and science faculty. I am delighted that our trustees and benefactors have ratified this notion enthusiastically. In higher education, opportunities for dramatic faculty expansion are not common; usually, expansion is incremental, with relatively modest programmatic efforts here and there. That is why “The Partners Initiative,” announced this past fall (www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/291), is so distinctive. It is a broad and major expansion, increasing arts and science faculty by some 20 percent; it is being done in a compact period of time, over the course of five years; and it is aimed at building departments of great intellectual distinction across a range of disciplines, from the sciences to the social sciences to the humanities, and building them in a way that simultaneously generates progress in schools outside FAS.

The initiative in soft condensed matter physics is just one example of what can be accomplished by the kind of dramatic hiring that defines the Partners Initiative. The Department of Physics simultaneously recruited top people in the field from UC-Santa Barbara, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University to come to NYU, attracted by the prospect of working and building a program together in laboratory space we are renovating in Meyer Hall. Multiple hiring initiatives in anthropology, economics, English, history, philosophy, and politics have produced similar impressive hires.

The Partners effort is being accompanied by the kind of infrastructure planning necessary for systematic department building. The faculty we are recruiting will need office space, laboratory space, and building assignments and designs that promote intellectual exchange. And, like the Partners Program itself, as we address these needs, we also will be able to improve general conditions for existing faculty and students. Thus, planning is underway for a new life sciences building on Waverly Place – the first new science structure in more than 30 years – as well as new academic homes for the Department of Sociology in the Puck Building, the Department of Economics and Department of Politics at 269 Mercer, the Department of Philosophy at 3-5 Washington Place, the Department of Journalism at 20 Cooper Square, and the Creative Writing Program in the Lillian Vernon House on 10th Street.

The Partners Plan also has combined with a longstanding university effort to increase our capacity to address the chronic shortage and increased cost of faculty housing. This is a vexing problem, and one that calls for creative solutions. This semester has seen some significant progress both in the renovation of existing housing and the development of new options for faculty. These important initiatives, soon to be announced in detail, are just beginning, but their ultimate impact will be enormous.

Our Locational Endowment: Hosting the World’s Dialogue

New York, it is often said, is the “world’s second home.” That may be, but I think of it as the world’s first destination, the place everyone wants to come to, the place where everyone wants to be. That is an enormous asset for us... our locational endowment.

Here on our Greenwich Village campus, we see that in very concrete terms. We again attracted nearly 34,000 applicants for freshman admission, and the number of young men and women applying for “early decision” – those most committed to NYU – was up by 13%, while such applications were down overall nationally.

We continue to attract faculty from all over the world. Our Global Law Program, which has brought some of the most distinguished jurists and legal thinkers from around the world to NYU, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, while Arts and Science, following the lead of the Law School, has created a special category of professorship, Global Distinguished Professors, designed to bring leading international scholars for annual visits to NYU, thus making them part of our extended faculty. Fourteen such professors have already been named, with additional appointments planned. Similarly, we attract students from all over the world; we host one of the largest groups of international students, and we also send more students abroad than any other American college or university.

Leaders from around the world see New York City as a venue for serious discussion of the most important and pressing issues of the day; NYU is a beneficiary of that phenomenon, and a forum for that debate, one committed to civil, respectful, but probing dialogue. We have, in recent months, hosted the president of the Dominican Republic, the head of the World Bank, the former presidents of Brazil and Mexico, three U.S. Supreme Court justices, and a former president of the United States. Two of the most prominent and important speeches on U.S. foreign policy and the war in Iraq were made on our campus in 2004. A Spanish magistrate, who is a leader in Europe in fighting terrorism, is on our campus now. The 10th anniversary of the Beijing Women’s Conference was celebrated here, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as a keynote speaker. During the Republican National Convention, held in New York last August, NYU Wagner was chosen as the site for PBS’ “Washington Week” convention coverage, and the school also hosted a discussion by The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute on the presidential elections.

In and of the City

Our future is indivisible from that of the city. It has always been so. This institution has never sought to hide its connection to the city. Just the reverse: we extol it. We have an abiding faith in New York’s greatness, and are not latecomers to recognizing and proclaiming New York’s power and allure.

We are the sixth largest employer in New York City. One can observe the city’s best characteristics – energy, savvy, determination – in our own staff and administrators. Their devotion to this institution and its students and faculty is a key element in our advancement.

Our commitment to our city takes many shapes. To name but a very few: we have the largest America Reads/America Counts program in the country, with 900 tutors in 96 city schools; we have some 3,000 other students participating in community service each year; we have researchers whose scholarship – such as that done by Robert Berne, Leanna Stiefel, and Amy Ellen Schwartz on school financing that was central in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s winning court case on behalf of city schools – has enormous impacts on the well-being of the city; we have members of the faculty who advise at the highest level of local government, and alumni/ae who hold important posts; we have faculty in Courant who advocate for better math education in the school system and mentor high- schoolers; we have social work faculty and students who help the most vulnerable; we have faculty and students from Steinhardt out in our schools every day conducting research to improve student achievement; we have a partnership between our Institute of Fine Arts and our museums that ensures that great works of art endure; and at the grass-roots, we have generous employees whose philanthropy allowed us to make 72 grants to local community organizations last year through the NYU Community Fund. We make our home in Greenwich Village, and we are one of many neighbors in an urban ecosystem. We must act with care and responsibility, even while improving our University and confronting significant challenges, such as space. For that reason, we have appointed our first-ever Vice President for Campus Planning and Real Estate, Sharon Greenberger, a widely-admired figure who comes to us from city government and who will provide guidance as we develop new spaces.

And, in recognition of the importance of Washington Square Park – which has served as home to our Commencement for some 30 years – to our neighborhood and our own community, NYU has pledged $300,000 towards an endowment fund for the Arch, and $1 million to a park-wide renovation effort, and turned to the Tisch family, generous and long-time benefactors of both NYU and open spaces in New York City, who have agreed to donate an additional $2.5 million towards the renovation of the fountain.

Improving the Undergraduate Experience

As a residential university, we are still young. As recently as 15 years ago, we housed only one-third of the students we do today. Our growth has been rapid but deliberate, providing us with an opportunity to think carefully about what an undergraduate experience at NYU should be like.

The undergraduate experience has been and will remain a major focus, as demonstrated most recently by our choice of undergraduate education as the topic for our report for the Middle States Association accreditation process. And we have made some important strides here, too.

We know some of the things we want for our undergraduates: we want the excellence in scholarship and creativity that is our principal face to the world to be the principal characteristic of every student’s experience. We want students to have a strong sense of community, and a strong sense of responsibility. We want them to be intellectually adventurous, and we want them to be joyful in their learning, healthy, and well.

This year we studied carefully our students’ introduction to the University community, and significantly enhanced the former University orientation to create “Welcome Week.” We established the Wellness Exchange: its message – that we are here to listen, and that we have a simple mechanism for connecting students with difficulties to appropriate, caring resources – has been widely absorbed and highly praised by students. We have also established the Student Resource Center on the second floor of the Kimmel Center to help connect students to University services. We have expanded the theme floors in our residence halls (the Explorations program), enhanced training for RAs, increased the number of peer educators, and increased our faculty-in-residence program. We have created a superb new – and much-needed – lecture space at 269 Mercer Street. We are moving the Office of Career Services to a new, much larger, state-of-the-art space, and we will expand its hours. And we have begun talking with students about new ideas for the housing system.

I consider it one of the great joys of my position that I am able to interact with so many students – especially undergraduates – in the courses I teach, through my town halls, dinners, and lunches, through the University Senate, and through informal meetings around campus. Our students generate much of the vibrancy and intellectual energy of NYU. Serving them, in turn, must remain a high priority for us all.

Health Affairs

Health care has moved center stage in our national consciousness, and with good reason. As individuals live longer, we confront more infirmity and illness and greater medical costs. As travel becomes more accessible, communicable diseases pose new threats. As the world economy grows, disparities in health care become a more pointed matter of justice.

In these matters, our University plays an important role. Through our health programs, we educate healthcare professionals, we conduct research to advance knowledge in the health disciplines, and we deliver care.

This year saw NYU embrace two innovative academic health initiatives. First, we are developing a new master's in public health (MPH) program, the first University (as opposed to school-based) degree, one that will involve the faculty from five of our professional schools. Second, we are combining our nursing and dental programs, providing the opportunity to explore a wide range of new scholarly, educational, and clinical collaborations.

In addition to our academic work, our University provides a very significant part of the health care in our city. On this front, there is also much to report. The new NYU Clinical Cancer Center has had a successful opening, and it is providing high-quality, life-saving care with 188,000 visits expected in 2005. NYU Tisch Hospital has been honored with a Magnet Award, which recognizes healthcare organizations that provide outstanding nursing care; it is a distinction conferred on only two percent of American hospitals, and it is consistent with lower mortality rates, shorter stays, increased patient satisfaction, and excellence in nursing. The dental college’s ambitious capital program continues to advance, most recently with faculty offices, clinical support space, and pre-doctoral clinics.

And, of course, we are a leading center of medical research. We are proud of the impending opening of the Smilow Research Building at the School of Medicine. As we recruit scholars to advance biomedical knowledge in its laboratories in areas such as stem cell research, neuroscience, and infectious disease, NYU will make contributions that ultimately hold the promise of advancing science and healing millions. We are also proud that our dental college has been chosen by the National Institute of Dental and Cranio-facial Research to be the recipient of a $27 million grant, the largest-ever NIH grant to NYU, to establish a practice-based research network, which will bring scientific rigor to the examination of day-to-day treatment options in dental offices and put the NYU College of Dentistry at the forefront of American healthcare research. The Center for Biomedical Imaging at the Medical Center is now operational, and it houses a very powerful 7-tesla MRI, one of only four such machines in the United States. NYU’s leadership in imaging enhances our research, clinical, and teaching missions.

The Campaign for NYU

Our greatest dreams – the Partners Initiative, the development of much-needed academic space, the improvement of the undergraduate experience, to name but three – rely, in no small measure, on our ability to fund them. This year, we announced the Campaign for NYU, a $2.5 billion, seven-year campaign, the largest in NYU history. In doing so, we committed ourselves to fundraising at a rate of $1 million per day through the end of 2008, emphasizing faculty development, expanded financial aid resources for students, and capital improvements to our campus as three of our most important goals.

At the heart of such an extraordinary effort is finding men and women who recognize all that NYU does in advancing human knowledge and educating young people, and who share a vision for an even better future for the University. We have been fortunate in this regard, and we are deeply appreciative of the faith that our donors and friends have shown us. I am pleased to announce we are already half way to our goal with three years left until completion. Some of the gifts we have received in recent months that are helping to change the face of our campus include:

• $50 million from the Tisch Foundation
• $22 million from the Yalincak Family Foundation
• $10 million from the Kimmel Foundation to create a center in stem cell biology at the Medical School

One area in which our University lags our peers by a wide margin is in alumni/ae support. Among all the AAU universities – the nation’s top research universities – NYU is last in this category. I am pleased to be able to say we are making some significant strides in this area, too. With a renewed focus on alumni/ae – through the creation of the NYU Alumni Magazine, the establishment of a well-planned Alumni Reunion Weekend, and extensive outreach to alumni/ae throughout the country (I personally visit 20 cities each year, and the deans have similar schedules) – we have seen alumni/ae giving increase by 24% over the last two years.

The 2005-06 Academic Year: Campus Priorities and the Budget

Since I became president, many of my weekends have been spent in the company of faculty colleagues who volunteer to meet with me in Saturday sessions to share their concerns and hopes for NYU. I have been deeply impressed by their devotion to our institution, and their support of our strategic goals. This is also true of our administrators, with whom I interact daily: they are dedicated to the mission of the University, and its advancement. Almost all of these wonderful colleagues understand our need to advance the arts and sciences, improve the undergraduate experience, and maintain budgetary stability.

Our fundraising and the performance of our endowment – with an annualized return over the past three calendar years of 8.9 percent – have been good. These achievements are important to us: they provide a strong base of support, and aid us as we seek to advance and achieve our priorities.

Nonetheless, we must recognize that compared to many of our peer schools, we are at a disadvantage financially. We compensate for that by virtue of our location, our willingness to innovate, and our ability to achieve so much more with what we have than most other institutions. Still, we are and will be a university heavily dependent on tuition for the foreseeable future. That injects a particular responsibility on us as we do financial planning and make budget decisions that weigh strategic advancement, savings, and revenues. In particular, we must remain keenly aware of how tuition can burden the families of those young people whose dream it is to attend NYU.

Our current planning proposes that undergraduate tuition and fees will increase by 5.3 percent. When combined with student housing and dining rates, the increase for the 2005-06 academic year will be 4.8 percent. Undergraduate financial aid is increasing by 5.5 percent.

Combining the resources we generate will permit us to recognize – though never sufficiently – the contributions of those who toil to make the University what it is. For the coming year, the merit-based AMI pool for faculty, staff, and administrators not covered by contract will be 3 percent, with an additional pool reserved for promotion.

Conclusion

Nothing is more personally or professionally satisfying than being part of something great. We all feel it at NYU– the opportunity to shape a great institution, the thrill of looking into a greater future, the prospect of leaving behind something better than what we found. Others feel it, too: whether they be applicants for admission or candidates for faculty recruitment, donors or public figures, one can sense the widespread and deep desire that exists outside our community to be part of what we do and to interact with this community of scholars.

We are living in a profoundly exciting time for this University. I thank you for the privilege of serving this institution with all of you. The beginning of a new academic year offers a moment for reflection and anticipation. This year it is a joy to do that.