NYU FRAMEWORK 2031, Schemes and Mind Maps of History

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• NYU FRAMEWORK
  • June 24,

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Summary 2

**I. The Foundation 3 II. Major Challenges 5

1. NYU, Along With All in American Higher Education, Will Face Serious Domestic Challenges
2. NYU, Along With All in American Higher Education, Will Face Serious Challenges From Abroad
3. NYU Will Not Have the Financial Resources to Do All It Will Wish To Do
4. NYU Will Not Have Sufficient Space to Do All It Will Wish To Do III. NYU’s Distinctive Assets 8
5. NYU’s Locational Endowment
6. NYU’s Attitudinal Endowment IV. The Task Ahead 11 Guiding Principles and Criteria for New Strategic Initiatives 14 V. Illustrative Examples 15
7. Establishing The Partners’ Plan and Building Science
8. Fostering the Arts
9. Creating A Global Network University
10. Building a Distinctive NYU Undergraduate Experience
11. Building NYU’s Medical Center
12. Creating the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World**

Conclusion 23

Appendices 25

A) Developing the Framework Document B) List of Campus Meetings on NYU Framework 2031 C) Overview of Comments Submitted by Members of the NYU Community See separate document entitled “Appendices C1-C5” for full set of comments C1) Faculty Part I: A-L C2) Faculty Part II: M-Z, Anonymous, & Faculty Groups C3) Students C4) Administrators, Staff, & Alumni C5) Special Review Committees

It is very important to acknowledge what this document will not do. NYU is not yet devising a strategic plan or a specific set of academic priorities. Some, with good reason, will argue for more immediate and precise priorities, and undoubtedly, future discussions will have to confront specificity in choices and directions. But at this stage the goal is to create guiding principles and processes, broad enough to allow for the flexibility and agility that leaves room for the NYU entrepreneurial spirit, and yet focused enough to provide genuine direction for choices ahead. The distillation of these principles and criteria is found on page 14.

I. THE FOUNDATION

NYU today is a confident, reflective community of scholars, artists, and learners that is mindful of its founding values, animated by its mission as a major urban research university with global reach, and committed to ambitious yet thoughtful planning. Over the most recent 25 years of its history, NYU’s ascendancy has been nothing short of stunning – moving it from near bankruptcy in 1975 (when it was largely a regional institution with several strong professional schools and institutes) to a position of prominence among the great universities of the world.

Much of the University’s success from 1981 to 2001 was driven by aggressive entrepreneurship – opportunities identified and seized. The judgments made about investments during this period – recruiting research faculty, erecting student residence halls, initiating a small set of study sites in Europe, investing in several innovative programs – were for the most part well considered. Today, NYU faculty are recognized as leaders in their fields, as is evidenced by their research breadth and depth, the number of distinguished awards they have received, and the intensifying efforts of other institutions to attract them. The growing research reputation of many schools and departments has drawn to the University’s Ph.D. and MA programs outstanding graduate students from all over the world. Not surprisingly, therefore, the NYU graduate student placement record, both to academic and professional institutions, has markedly improved. Similarly, NYU’s professional schools all have made impressive advances in the past seven years. And the quality of undergraduate students is higher than ever before, as evidenced by rising standardized test scores and GPAs, ever more impressive records of leadership, an increased number of applications, and greater selectivity. Today, an increasing number of NYU’s schools, departments, and programs are among the very best in the world.

Over the twenty years from 1981 to 2001, to generate the resources necessary to fund its transformation, the University employed a number of techniques: increasing the size of the overall student body by 25% from 1991 to 2001; raising tuition; borrowing; restraining the relative growth of the faculty, physical plant, and administrative support; and deferring maintenance. As the new century began, however, it became very clear that these techniques could not be sustained indefinitely. For instance, the

rapid growth in the size of the student body of the 1990s has been slowed – and is projected to continue at a more modest rate over the next 20 years in order to maintain an appropriate student/faculty ratio and class enrollment size and diminish congestion. Thus, a new approach to generating and managing resources was necessary to maintain academic quality (let alone to enhance it) over the longer term. This included a twin focus on building community within the student population and reconnecting to NYU alumni, who had largely been neglected.

By 2002, the situation was even more complex, as the University experienced two seismic shocks that threatened its previous gains. First, the University discovered, through an analysis of the budget for the University’s operations outside the Medical Center, a significant structural deficit even as it realized that increased investment in faculty growth (to rebalance faculty student ratios) and in infrastructure (to increase academic space and to redress deferred maintenance) was necessary. Second, the University’s Medical Center was suffering financially, due principally to the hospital’s aging physical plant, changes in the economics of health care, and complications arising from an earlier merger with the Mount Sinai Medical Center. While many universities suffered in the national recession which followed 9/11, NYU faced a set of unique and substantial challenges – and had no choice but to take painful steps to stabilize its finances.

Fortunately, the University took the necessary action. By 2003, it had addressed the structural deficit by freezing administrative hiring and all compensation, applying stringent cost controls, and establishing greater contingency funds -- and it had begun the (now successful) effort to extricate itself from the Mount Sinai merger. At the same time, the University leadership instituted deliberative processes designed to develop standards for resource allocation decisions, with careful attention to long term strategic goals. Today, the University’s financial position (regarding budgetary balance, current cash position, and the like) is stable and strong.

In turn, the fact that the University had responded successfully to these daunting challenges inspired confidence among key stakeholders. Thus, in 2002, the Board of Trustees launched the ambitious and unprecedented $2.5 billion “Campaign for NYU,” which required the University to raise over $1 million per day, every day for six years. Of special note: six trustees provided the funding for the “Partners’ Plan,” a signature initiative to increase substantially the size of the faculty in the University’s arts and science core with a commitment to build on existing quality to attract more of the very best faculty in the world.

The Partners’ Initiative also has underwritten significant capital investments in academic facilities and in faculty housing improvements to facilitate both recruitment and retention efforts and enlarge the University’s research capacity. Other benefactors have provided funding enabling increased investment in

reduced funding to support research and creativity, especially the kind of basic scientific research and research in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts that is the heart and soul of the research university; a failure to appreciate the complexities of higher education finance (especially in research universities), manifested frequently in simplistic talk of the relationship of costs and tuition and in poorly conceived attempts to legislate “price controls” for tuition; regulation of higher education, ranging from various “output” studies (often driven by extremely narrow visions of the purpose of a higher education) to unfunded mandates (ranging from detailed data compilation to homeland security measures); and calls for accountability (without accompanying understanding of its meaning in the educational context).

Demographic challenges also exist: future enrollments will be affected by the declining rate of growth of only 5% in high school graduates from 2004 to 2017, down from the 24% increase observed during the previous 12 years.

Finally, universities will face intensified external requests for greater efficiencies, including an expectation to exploit technology to lower or contain the cost of providing higher education.

2) NYU, Along With All in American Higher Education, Will Face Serious Challenges From Abroad

Until 10 years ago, a great river of faculty and student talent flowed from around the world to America’s great research universities. Then, both Europe (which created an educational common zone) and Australia/New Zealand aggressively began to recruit foreign students (with Europe seeking parity with the United States in this regard). China is now building up to ten research universities each year, and India also has begun intensive efforts to retain its faculty and students. After 9/11, the United States began to impose restrictions on faculty and students from abroad, ranging from visa screens to export rules. Thus, even if the number of foreign faculty and students coming to U.S. colleges and universities is relatively stable, the nation’s share of the very best is diminishing. The flow of intellectual brainpower worldwide is far more complex than it was a decade ago, and NYU, along with all research universities, will be forced to deal with this change.

3) NYU Will Not Have the Financial Resources to Do All It Will Wish To Do

NYU’s history, to a large extent, has defined its financial position and its resource constraints. With a long history as a regional school serving the working class, NYU did not enjoy decades – and generations

• of support from wealthy alumni. Its financial condition was at times tenuous, even critical, so it was not able to build resources from within. While NYU’s stature and standing have risen since 1981, this was

accomplished largely through its entrepreneurial academic initiatives. It is only in the last decade that NYU has been able to capitalize on its transition to a residential campus and its growing reputation to develop a fundraising base.

Today, NYU is better off than it was, but not wealthy. It has been successful, but is not comfortable. It is the largest private university in the country in terms of enrollment, but has only the 32nd largest endowment among all universities, including the public universities (21st^ among private universities). Furthermore, of the 22 private universities with endowments over $2 billion, NYU has the lowest endowment per FTE student, at $62,000. Moreover, the gap between NYU and its peer institutions is even larger than these numbers suggest Of those 22 private universities, the 21 st^ and 20th^ ranked institutions have endowments per FTE student that are two to three times larger, respectively, than that of NYU. The 19 other institutions all have endowments per FTE student of at least $275,000. Overall, NYU does not just compare poorly against the wealthiest institutions: among private universities with the 100 largest endowments, it ranks 91st^ in endowment per FTE student.

These unavoidable facts have important consequences. Even the best endowed of NYU’s peer schools feels constrained to make choices among attractive academic options, with the result that certain opportunities must be passed; this reality presses itself upon NYU a fortiori. Mounting a first class research university program is enormously expensive, and the operative element which drives the expense

• research – cannot be compromised without sacrificing the excellence of undergraduate education, the quality of student life, the extent of financial aid, or the maintenance of facilities. This is the world in which NYU lives.

The ramifications are clear. Absent the kind of endowment support others enjoy, tuition revenue drives the University’s capacity to pursue initiatives from faculty growth to financial aid, from program support to facilities. With further growth in the size of NYU in New York City both very costly and very limited, increases in tuition revenue in the years ahead will be modest. The Higher Education Price Index, which measures the cost of providing a steady state higher education, rises more rapidly than inflation because it is highly sensitive to rapidly rising prices in areas like construction and the latest technology; therefore, whatever increases do occur are unlikely to generate funds for enormous investment in new initiatives. Clearly, this presents a university like NYU, which is largely tuition dependent, with a major challenge as it seeks to expand its program and personnel (especially faculty) and remain competitive.

Nowhere is this challenge more compelling than in the domain of financial aid, particularly as a growing number of the nation’s wealthiest universities have recently introduced aggressively generous financial aid programs targeted at middle income students. While NYU already devotes a substantial

III. NYU’S DISTINCTIVE ASSETS

NYU is not without considerable assets to address both the external and internal challenges just described. These assets not only provide a foundation on which to build capacity to meet the challenges, but also signal opportunities available uniquely to NYU.

1) NYU’s Locational Endowment

In recent years, the University has become increasingly aware of the great value of its location. In the wake of 9/11, NYU decided to affirm aggressively its connection to New York. Founder Albert Gallatin’s vision of NYU as an institution “in and of the City” – has become part of the University’s collective story and strategic thinking. And the University has lived these themes: NYU was the first New York institution to break ground for a new building after 9/11 (the Law School’s Furman Hall, on 9/20/2001) and the first New York institution to lease space downtown after 9/11 (SCPS in the Woolworth Building, early in 2002). NYU is a major public citizen and employer in New York – and has assumed a leadership role in promoting sustainability and public service.

Of equal importance, the University consciously has begun to integrate the special qualities of New York into the presentation and development of its programs, especially for undergraduates. Both the “New York experience” and the “internship experience” the City provides long have been attractive hallmarks of an NYU education. More recently, the University has begun to emphasize its ecosystematic relationship with the City (no gates or quadrangles separate NYU from the City’s streets) as well as the relationship between the complexity of New York City as a community (as not only a world city but also a literal miniaturization of the world – the first city to combine the global and local) and the complexity of NYU as a community. NYU is striking: it is a place where students learn the techniques of building a community out of microcommunities – balancing interests and avoiding the ill effects from seeking either the comforts of homogeneity or the isolation of subcommunities that thwart interaction with others. By explicitly incorporating each of these special qualities, the University has transformed potential weaknesses (lack of a traditional campus, size, and complexity of the community) into strengths. And by presenting a more accurate picture of NYU in admissions materials, the University has attracted students more likely to be happy and thrive here.

In addition to these broad thematic connections to New York, the University has seized upon other, more concrete advantages associated with its location – such as resources and opportunities in Performing Arts, Entertainment, Fine Art, Law, Business and Finance, Mathematics, Education, Media, Communications, and Public Service, among others – all of which are powerful draws in the recruitment

and retention of the world’s top faculty and students. For example, the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology expands NYU’s science base by capitalizing on its locational endowment, building connections to NYU Medical and Dental Schools and to sister NYC institutions, including the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, and Cold Spring Harbor Labs. New York’s rich cultural environment and its numerous major arts institutions, as well as a longstanding independent intellectual and literary culture, appeal to and support the work of faculty and students in the humanities disciplines. Similarly, the unique intensity and density of Washington Square and New York City can be tapped to promote greater interdisciplinary and inter-school collaborations and partnerships, as well as foster associations with other academic institutions.

NYU’s expanding global presence is another manifestation of its geographical preeminence. The society of this century is increasingly global. Created and shaped by the transportation, information, and communication revolutions and by unprecedented migration patterns during the last century, this global society will grapple with worldwide problems in health, environment, population, poverty, economy, education, politics, and the complex relationships among cultures. The welfare and even the very existence of the world’s inhabitants will depend upon the solutions found to these transnational, global problems.

Higher education must provide the next generations with the knowledge, information, and intellectual tools to address successfully these immensely important global issues. Great research universities, through the research and scholarship of their faculties, are well-equipped to step into this role as the principal incubators and engines to produce new ideas that will transform society. However, tying universities to a single location may limit their capacity to capitalize fully on highly fluid knowledge and talent markets. The leading research universities of this new century will feature global academic programs and may need to take bold organizational steps – indeed, bold transformational steps – to establish the requisite educational and academic infrastructure to meet the challenges ahead. One of these challenges is how, as the University extends its locational endowment to sites across the world, to be in and of the place, while being in and of the whole - the Global Research University. Thoughtful deployment and use of technology will be among the means employed to link people and communities with one another and with the resources they need throughout the world.

NYU, located in one of the world’s key intellectual, cultural, and educational capitals, is positioned, perhaps uniquely well, to lead this transformation. It is fortunate in that over time, it has developed a rich lineup of global study and research sites, specifically tailored programs, and institutional international relations that engage the community in New York and also attract international faculty and students. Given its valued and time-proven entrepreneurial spirit and tradition of offering higher education within an

make room explicitly for the unimagined. It has done this in the past to good result. Thus, NYU must continue to recognize the need for periodic reassessment and reexamination.

IV. THE TASK AHEAD

Faced with these challenges, the University will have to maximize every advantage it has, and in particular, to seize the advantages flowing from its special assets. It will be necessary to choose among deserving proposals and initiatives; inevitably, some within the community will be disappointed. Therefore, every decision must be made in a manner so that all involved understand the reasons.

As decisions are made, the task at hand must be kept in view. Over the past 25 years, NYU has transformed itself into a leading research university. It has built a solid platform, evidenced by its strong research profile, distinguished faculty, outstanding student body, and innovative programs. The University must give the highest priority to sustaining and developing this core of academic excellence and research. By 2031, financial and competitive pressures may well narrow the number of truly great research universities in the world; NYU’s paramount goal must be to secure its place among those top-ranked research institutions, not by imitating what others are doing, but by capitalizing on its own unique strengths, assets, character, and ambitions.

How should NYU determine its special place in the world of higher education, maintain its focus on its core research mission, and continue to advance? In accomplishing the tasks ahead, NYU must emphasize building as many broadly beneficial, truly excellent elements of the University as possible. Selective investment must be driven by considerations of genuine academic merit and promise. Schools, departments, and programs already operating at the highest level of distinction will deserve investment to continue that excellence and to connect them to other units of the University – as will units that advance the strategic goals and mission of the University and units that are particularly important to the quality of undergraduate education.

Some units with excellent plans for improving their own programs will have to be patient as the University gives priority to such selective investments. All units, however, will be free to generate the resources for their dreams from philanthropy and other external sources. Subject to consultation with the Provost’s office to assure quality standards are met, the University will encourage and assist in that process. Indeed, NYU has the potential for leading even among the very top tier of universities because it possesses unique locational and attitudinal endowments discussed above that have produced a characteristic openness, adventurous spirit, and global connectedness. This privileged position yields a second task: even as NYU seeks to maintain and nurture its place among the truly great universities,

measured by traditional norms, it must seize the advantages flowing from its distinctive position (its “edge”) to develop new paradigms for measuring what a great university is and does. The University’s willingness to do so likely will determine its capacity to maintain and advance its position as measured in traditional ways. In short, its locational and attitudinal endowments can be deployed to compensate for and perhaps overcome the relative paucity of dollars and space it suffers.

It is worth emphasizing that this Framework is not a strategic planning document that prescribes specific academic directions and objectives, but rather is a blueprint providing formal guidelines for assessing proposals for investment in new initiatives and programs. Not every proposal will meet all of these criteria, but all should fulfill some. As decision-makers weigh the merits of competing proposals, they may ask for data or other evidence in support of claims. Category 1 consists of foundational principles of the highest order – matters that require the first attention of the University before expenditures on new programs are approved. Category 2 describes the criteria for evaluating new proposals, and Category 3 identifies leveraging points, or plus-factors, which are additional considerations in assessing future initiatives. Category 4 outlines the decision-making process.

V. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

The following examples, chosen from among the program initiatives recently undertaken by the University, are meant to illustrate and make more concrete the application of the Guiding Principles and Criteria in a wide variety of contexts, academic and curricular. Underlined portions refer back to the principles or criteria stated on page 14, above.

1) Establishing The Partners’ Plan and Building Science

The Partners’ Plan is an important example of the “first principles” on the previous page, especially in terms of protecting existing strengths and nurturing the arts and science core. Partners established a fund to increase the size of the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS), Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and the Institute of Fine Arts faculty from 625 to 750, or approximately 20%. When normal replacement hiring is added to this increase, the total number of new faculty hires will be approximately 250, which means that one-third of core arts and science faculty will have been hired under the program. The primary goals of the Partners’ Plan are both to ensure that departments that already are outstanding remain so and to identify another set of departments that are poised to become among the best. In selecting units for investment, emphasis was placed on those where advancing the particular unit also would advance other units or schools, where there was significant student interest, and where there was a deep connection between the department’s research mission and undergraduate education. To date, 163 faculty members have been hired. One-fourth of the new faculty are senior, about one-fourth are mid-career, and about one- half are junior.

A key priority of Partners has been enhancement of the Square’s core science programs. Given the importance of science in modern society and given that all leading research universities need to have strong science programs, success in science is imperative for NYU. Yet, building science is expensive, significant investment in every aspect of every discipline is impossible, and the fruits of investment can be lost to better-endowed competitors if the areas chosen do not interconnect naturally and deeply with other areas of strength at NYU. To bolster science, NYU’s strategy has been to continue to support already strong units like mathematics and neural science and to make highly focused additional investments in important and rapidly growing subfields where NYU has the potential to attain and sustain excellence.

An important strategic tool for the development of science has been cluster hiring. As an example, in building Soft Condensed Matter Physics, Partners’ Plan funds were used to recruit simultaneously three of the most renowned researchers in the field (from Princeton University, the University of California Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago), who were attracted by the opportunity to work together and build

a program in a new Center for Soft Matter Research. Their presence at NYU, in turn, inspired a leading researcher in Chemistry, who saw the synergies with his own work, to bring his lab from Minnesota and establish the Molecular Design Institute. And, consistent with the overall strategy of the Partners’ Plan, the addition of these senior scholars laid the groundwork for attracting some of the most promising junior and mid-career scholars available.

In support of hiring efforts, the Partners’ Initiative has also funded major capital expenditures in science. For instance, NYU has renovated laboratories in all Washington Square science departments, built the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (a dynamic cross-divisional program constituting the single largest University investment in science over the past six years), Center for Brain Imaging, Center for Soft Matter Research, and Molecular Design Institute.

An important next step in building science is to bring back to NYU a major engineering presence. The continued discussions of an affiliation with Polytechnic University in Brooklyn hold the promise of creating the opportunity for productive synergies not only with the arts and science core, but also with other units and schools (such as Medicine, Dentistry, Tisch, and Steinhardt). NYU can be a key engine of economic development for the local, regional, national, and global economies through promoting its capacity for invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

2) Fostering the Arts

An institutionally-supported presence in the arts is a mark of a leading university. NYU’s New York location in the nation’s arts center, with its myriad of opportunities for collaborations and partnerships, has helped propel it to the top ranks in visual and performing arts. Various NYU schools have forged relationships with some of the finest and most innovative arts institutions in the nation, all located in New York City, such as Lincoln Center, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Broadway, Carnegie Hall, Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, The Museo del Barrio, Joyce Theater, Film Forum, and the Paley Center for Media. The Tisch School of the Arts, established in 1965, has attained extraordinary distinction in film and theater. It has trained a great many pre-eminent film makers and actors who have profoundly influenced and transformed cinema and acting throughout the world. Similarly, the Institute of Fine Arts, with its celebrated graduate art history and art conservation programs, has long enjoyed a close and beneficial relationship with its neighbor, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In short, NYU must preserve its strengths in the arts and ensure that it continues to lead in creativity, breadth, and excellence.

For instance, the Tisch School of the Arts offers its undergraduates a global education through an innovative network of partnerships with some of the world’s best institutions. After their first two foundational years in their major, Tisch students are eligible to apply for advanced study at over 20 worldwide sites in a wide range of disciplines. The Stern “World Studies” programs for undergraduates have already been mentioned. At other NYU sites, such as Prague or Florence, students can study with some of Europe’s best musicians in classrooms and individualized tutorials; others may take seminars with leading experts on emerging democracies or the economics of the developing world in Ghana.

Two new models for graduate and professional education have expanded the University’s international reach. The first saw the creation in 2007 of graduate programs in Singapore. The Law School launched the NYU@NUS dual degree program with the National University of Singapore, enabling students to obtain an NYU and NUS LL.M. in Singapore, and TSOA established a new Master of Fine Arts in film there, with degree programs in Animation and Dramatic Writing to follow in coming years. A second model establishes new NYU graduate programs through formal collaboration with other leading international research universities, such as the one the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) is undertaking with Beijing University in the humanities and sciences.

These developments are important – and both illustrate and advance elements of the core graduate program in New York, even as NYU builds the global network. It is graduate education that distinguishes the research university from a college, and it promises to be increasingly desirable in the coming decades. In a sense, the MA is the new BA, and accordingly, NYU has begun to develop a special approach to graduate education. NYU, more than most research universities, features interdisciplinary graduate education that cuts across programs and schools, with its Law and Society program, for example, or with its Graduate Forums outside the formal classroom. The GSAS Master’s College is a national innovation and, of course, there is the internationalism of NYU’s Master’s Programs, with one prime example being the five-school Global Masters of Public Health degree. Moreover, GSAS in New York already is on average 40% international in the composition of its student body.

Complementing these models is the creation in New York of other novel forms of faculty deployment, such as the Hauser Global Law School Program, which for the past 13 years has brought top law professors and judges from around the world to the School of Law for recurring visits. FAS recently initiated a similarly-inspired Global Distinguished Professor Program, to date designating 20 leading scholars from all parts of the globe, making them a part of the NYU faculty, and greatly enriching the classroom experience. Both programs benefit not only from NYU’s academic excellence in the disciplines of the visitors, but also the appeal of New York as a preferred destination. Other schools have followed suit, appointing faculty who have duties jointly at a global campus and split their time between New York and abroad.

Today, in this first decade of the new century, the University can achieve a transformation that is no less than a paradigm shift: the University has partnered with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi to open a regional campus in the Middle East (NYU Abu Dhabi) where students from around the world can earn an NYU degree. This transformation has many daunting challenges and risks, as well as opportunities. Among other attributes, it gives the University the ability to expand selectively without straining the resources in New York and thus stay competitive in spite of fiscal and spatial disadvantages vis à vis peer institutions. Moreover, this campus can become the regional center for NYU’s expanding activities and presence in the Gulf region. It can only be accomplished with a concentrated, deliberate level of planning, beginning with the faculty assessing and charting the University’s long-term global vision and strategy – organizationally and academically. It will require the development of new modalities and technical platforms for teaching and learning both within and beyond the classroom. The challenge is to instill NYU standards of academic excellence and freedom of inquiry in widely varying instructional settings; accommodate differences in culture, background, expectations, and communication in other countries; ensure quality by involving faculty in all phases of development of study abroad programs and regional campuses; and establish advanced academic, technological, and administrative systems to achieve seamless communications and mobility by faculty and students throughout the global network.

4) Building a Distinctive NYU Undergraduate Program

The 2004 Middle States re-accreditation team noted that there has been “an unambiguous transformation” in terms of NYU’s undergraduate program’s size, the quality of its students (as measured by SAT gains of over 150 points, similar GPA increases, and strikingly better records of demonstrated leadership and service), and its residential nature (a major shift since the 1980s from its largely commuter character). However, serious challenges followed this transformation, including the need to strengthen coordination among the schools in advising, cross-school registration, and curricular planning. Creating a distinctive NYU undergraduate program by combining the special strengths of NYU’s eight undergraduate schools, with their liberal arts and professional foci, its location in New York, and its robust network of study abroad sites is a key University priority.

There already has been significant movement toward this goal, which is in alignment with the above stated “first principle” on page 14 concerning the enhancement of the undergraduate experience, the criterion regarding student interest, and the additional synergistic and locational considerations. NYU schools are actively reviewing and developing curricular offerings, especially in the area of general education. In the College of Arts and Science (CAS), one response to the growth of the student population will be to grant a larger proportion of students’ access to special, “ signature ” courses – courses that are in high demand and taught by renowned lecturers and scholars. Undergraduate opportunities to earn dual degrees have increased substantially, and students can also take advantage of interschool majors and