2014-2015
Educational Policies & Faculty/Student Relations
acts as the T-Faculty Senators Council counterpart to the Academic Affairs Committee of the University Senate; interacts with the NYU Center for Teaching Excellence; proposes, develops, and implements new programs to enhance faculty participation in campus and student life
Co-Chairs: Maurizio Porfiri & Angela Kamer
Members: Sinan Antoon, Todd Disotell, Benard Dreyer, Jo Labanyi (spring), David Pearce (fall), Nancy Van Devanter
N/C-FSC Representative: Joseph Borowiec, Ben Stewart
Report from the Committee Co-Chairs: January 2015
To fulfill its mission and maintain its top ranking, New York University must attract, educate and retain quality students. Therefore, our Committee’s charge for the 2014-2015 academic years was to improve faculty’s knowledge and understanding of undergraduate admission, which is a centralized process conducted for the whole University.
Toward this goal, the discussions with the NYU admission representatives commenced in November 2014. Obviously, we are just at the beginning of our task and more meetings and discussions are planned.
Here are the important points learned so far:
- approximately 10 years ago, admissions were decentralized, whereby each School within the University was independent in the admission process. This resulted in a perceived lack of cohesiveness across the University;
- within a “partnership program”, admissions to undergraduate programs become centralized;
- regional specific admission offices are responsible for outreach and initial screening of applications and
- admission committees are ultimately responsible for final admissions, with significant input from each School.
An additional task that our Committee undertook was to learn more about “the box” in the Common Application. A meeting with Cory Greene, a representative of “The Incarceration to Education Coalition” and proponent of abolishing “the box” took place in December 2014. This issue is planned to be discussed further.