Thursday, May 10, 2018

Dear Colleagues,

I’m writing to share an end of year update on some of the priorities I set when I became provost.

Faculty Matters

Work Life

The Office of Work Life is closing out its first year with two announcements of important steps that are especially good news for colleagues early in their careers.

Childcare

I am all too familiar with the stress of trying to manage work, family, and finances while building a successful career. To help, beginning in 2019 we are putting in place new, far more generous childcare subsidies for New York-based full-time tenure-track, continuing contract, and tenured faculty.

Faculty with families at picnic

Those who have an annual base salary of less than $120,000 will receive an annual childcare subsidy of $3,500 per child for children under the age of four. Those with an annual base salary of $120,000 and more will receive an annual childcare subsidy of $2,000 per child under the age of four. (These subsidies are tax-free for the first child; in accordance with IRS regulations, some portions of the subsidies become taxable with two or more children).

Over the coming months, the Office of Work Life and the Benefits Office will contact eligible faculty with further specifics. (Full-time professional researchers and full-time administrators will continue to be eligible for the existing Childcare Scholarship program.)

Tenure Clock

Working with school deans and the TFSC, we are revising the rules for tenure clock stoppage to better fit the lives of faculty. Faculty who are "primary caregivers" may now request to stop the tenure clock for up to two separate events, such as a newborn child, newly adopted child, new foster care or guardianship placement, or newly-established legal custodial care, for a maximum of four academic semesters.

Two other Work Life items:

Round-the-clock emails and blurred boundaries about work and non-work hours are extremely stress-inducing. Email, in particular, is a major potential invasion into one’s personal life. At my request, The Office of Work Life is going to undertake an effort to develop some guidelines for more appropriate and measured use of email in our NYU work lives.


In an effort to bring NYU family practice physicians – on whom many faculty rely – closer to campus and to our faculty housing, we are examining available spaces and prioritizing them for this use.

Diversity

This year, all schools began taking increased steps to ensure more diversity in their recruitment pools for faculty positions. In addition, the recent climate assessment provides guidance on a number of priorities for next year:

  • We not only need to do more to encourage underrepresented faculty and students to join our community, we also need to do more to make them feel supported and welcome when they are here.
  • We need to develop more substantial mentoring programs.
  • We need to focus on a better experience for our graduate students.

Emeritus/a status

Working with the school deans, the CFSC, and TFSC, the Office of the Provost is amending the Faculty Handbook to permit the granting of emeritus/emerita status to eligible full-time continuing contract faculty as well as tenured faculty.

Research and Academics

Research Funding

Over the past few years, research funding at NYU has increased significantly, both in overall funding amounts as well as in relation to our peer institutions.

Line Chart: Total expenditures for externally funded programs at Washington Square, Tandon, Abu Dhabi, and School of Medicine combined has grown from $322 million in 2009 to $669 million in 2017

Line Chart: National Science Foundation Ranking has improved from #57 in 2004 to #23 in 2016

Since 2012, the Provost’s Office has offered support to faculty submitting highly competitive, multi-investigator-based mega-grant proposals. Between FY2013 and FY2017, the number of mega-grants for which NYU faculty applied increased 764%, from 11 to 95.

Bar chart: the number of mega-grants for which NYU faculty applied increased 764%, from 11 proposals to 95 proposals between 2013 and 2017 respectively

The quality of our faculty scholarship is clearly demonstrated by the sustained growth in awards for large complex grants: between 2015 and 2017, large grants to faculty increased from $78,521,277 to $120,800,025.

Faculty who would like to learn more about mega grants, or who might be interested in applying for a mega grant, should contact Farooq Niazi or Trinh Eng.

Sustainability

After a year’s work, the Provost’s Sustainability Working Group (PDF) offered recommendations for improving our approaches to sustainability from an academic standpoint. The group’s work will continue for another year as they assist in implementing many of the ideas they proposed. Faculty who wish to be involved in the work of the Sustainability Working Group should contact Yanoula Athanassakis.

New Center

At the request of a group of faculty, the Provost’s Office will provide support for a new center for the study of Africa and the African Diaspora, to be led by Michael Gomez, Silver Professor and Professor of History in FAS, and a globally-recognized expert in the field.

Academic Space Updates

  • CUSP has moved into 370 Jay St, the building's first occupants. Other units – including Tandon departments, MAGNET, and Tisch’s ITP and Clive Davis programs – will move in by 2019-20.
  • 708 Broadway/404 Lafayette will be home to the College of Global Public Health. Renovations are expected to be completed by spring 2020.
  • The new Bonomi Admissions Center opened on West 4th, providing twice as much access for tours and information sessions than we had in the past.
  • The Physics Department cut the ribbon on their new departmental and laboratory space in 726 Broadway, allowing for renovations in Meyer Hall for the expansion of the Center for Neural Science and the Psychology Department over the next two years.
  • Tandon’s Rogers Hall is undergoing renovations, including a major infrastructure upgrade that will increase the building's capacity for housing more labs.

Global

Greater numbers of students continue to participate in our Global programs. In the past two years, participation among undergraduates in semester-long Study Away program has grown from 40% to 45%.

New Leadership

NYU has recently named

  • Raghu Sundaram as Dean of the Stern School of Business
  • Jelena Kovačević as Dean of the Tandon School of Engineering
  • H. Austin Booth as Dean of Libraries
  • Julia Kempe as Director of the Center for Data Science

Student Matters

More students are applying to NYU campuses around the world, and more students are choosing to attend NYU, than ever before. Our class of 2022 is the most selective we’ve admitted in NYU history.

NYU's admission rate was 19% in 2018, with 75037 total applicants and 45% yield rate

New Policies

To reduce incidents of sexual misconduct on campus, the University has put in place a new Policy on Consensual Intimate Relationships and a requirement that all faculty familiarize themselves with that policy and other sexual misconduct policies through an online exercise in NYU Home.

Wishing you a great summer,

Katherine Fleming
Provost