President's Cabinet Meeting Minutes - April 11, 2022

DRAFT

 

City College

President’s Cabinet Meeting Minutes

 April 11, 2022

Limited In-Person and Via Zoom Meeting

 

Attendees 

Anthony Achille, Executive Director,  Division of Government, Community & Cultural Affairs

Doris Cintron, Senior Associate Provost

Alex Couzis, Interim Dean, Grove School of Engineering

Diana Cuozzo, Chief Diversity Officer and Title IX Coordinator

Teresa Flemming, Executive Associate to the President

Carmen Green, Dean of the CUNY School of Medicine

Marta Gutman, Interim Dean, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture

Ken Ihrer, Vice President of Operations and Coronavirus Coordinator

David Jeruzalmi, Chairman of The Faculty Senate

Lucas Koehler, CFO and Senior Finance Director, Foundations for City College

Felix Lam, Vice President, Finance and Administration

Edwin Lamboy, Dean, School of Education

Tony Liss, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Celia Lloyd, Vice President of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management

Juan Carlos Mercado, Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at CWE & Professional Continuing Studies

Renata Miller, Interim Dean, Division of Humanities and the Arts

Pat Morena, Executive Director of Public Safety

Dee Dee Mozeleski, Senior Advisor to the President and VP, Office of Institutional Advancement and Communications

Paul Occhiogrosso, Executive Counsel to the President

Susan Perkins, Dean, Division of Science

Andrew Rich, Dean, The Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership

Sherri Rings, Director of SEEK

David Robinson, Assistant Vice President, Office of Facilities Management

Teresa Scala, Special Projects Administrator – Office of the Provost

Ruth Stark, Chair of the Faculty Senate Committee on Personnel Matters

Mary Ruth Strzeszewski, Associate Provost and Chair, CCNY Graduate Constituent Council

Johanna Urena, Project Manager, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management

Rose Marie Wesson, Associate Provost for Research

Nikisha Williams, Executive Director, Office of Institutional Research

Andrew L. Wooten, Senior Director of Innovation Management and Business Development

Absent

Lon Mendelsohn, Interim Chief Librarian

President Boudreau opened the meeting at 10:00 AM and called the meeting to order.

Announcements:  President Boudreau informed the Cabinet that Columbia University has reinstituted their mask mandate due to the number of Covid cases increasing, although low, but trending upwards.  He stated the college would be watching the trend.

President Boudreau stated this is the time of year where there will be a lot of activity from now until the end of the semester and asked everyone to be careful in large gatherings and set an example, although there is not a mask mandate.

President Boudreau spoke about Caucus Weekend, which is a time when colleges go to Albany and lobby to policymakers for a better budget share.  He stated, It is also a moment where we celebrate the students who are up there doing internships with the legislature in the Senate.  President Boudreau stated that the budget was finally ratified and hours before the CUNY luncheon.

President Boudreau stated the governor’s budget was the best budget we’ve seen in years.  He stated it included some additional things that are really important.  In addition, part-time students, formerly incarcerated people and those in certificate programs will now be eligible for TAP.  He also stated there is additional capital money for critical maintenance and also funds for reconstruction of some offices and the hiring of new positions.

President Boudreau also announced that after many years, we now have a new Bursar.  President Boudreau also announced that he will initiate a search process for a Chief Operating Officer. 

Lastly, President Boudreau announced the upcoming Rangel Center event taking place on Thursday, April 14^th in the Great Hall where City and State and local elected officials will be in attendance to celebrate the launch of the Rangel Center program and celebrate the life of Congressman Charles B. Rangel.

President Boudreau begin the conversation around the PMP Planning and OKR process and architecture; not the School of Architecture, but the architecture of the PMP and our OKR process.

President Boudreau stated it is getting perilously close to the point where he is going to have to assess our PMP accomplishments against the goals we initial sort.  He stated some progress was made in areas, but that means we have to start thinking about what the goals are going to be for next year.  He stated, that he thinks about the PMP goals against a promise of this OKR process and how this should be able to work to allow us to track and focused on the goals that are most important.

President Boudreau asked VP Ihrer to set up a demo of what an Excel organizational chart for the college might look like.

President Boudreau reminded everyone of the big goals that were set for the campus last year:

1. Raising revenue
2. Student success
3. Research
4. Innovation
5. Diversity and inclusion
6. Community engagement

President Boudreau stated instead of requesting OKR’s from the entire campus, he will identify places in the organization that have primary responsibility for these goals and request OKR’s from that population.  He also stated, as we start to do the planning, the planning can also be the goals that will be set for the campus.

President Boudreau stated, between now and the next meeting, he will go through the PMP and see where he thinks we hit our marks and where we haven’t. 

President Boudreau went on to talk about space allocation and master planning processes. President Boudreau asked Provost Liss to speak about it.  Provost Liss stated that pre-pandemic, a space committee was started to do a survey.  AVP David Robinson was doing a building by building, room by room survey on space usage.  The space committee will reconvene to identify what free space we have on campus.

President Boudreau stated that the master planning process is a process where the college will be using an upgraded system that keeps track of space that should allow us to map out floors of the campus and embed them into the map of rooms that will tell us what’s going on.  He stated that this will lead to a master plan process that we’re going to initiate in the fall.  President Boudreau believes, this plans for the college’s development over the long haul and it associates the allocation of space and the planning for the allocation of space with the development and growth of programmatic needs.

President Boudreau believes this is an opportunity to look at, where as a college we think our strengths lie.  Where are we going to invest? Where are we going to grow? Where do we think we have problems that may be too big and need to be shrunk or maybe are no longer relevant and then be closed down?

President Boudreau believes if we figure out where we focus our energy in ways that will contribute to the allocation of physical resources, the allocation of human resources and the  allocation of material resources, that this all goes into a longer-term master plan process.

President Boudreau asked VP Ihrer to give an update on the implementation process of the SysAid system.  VP Ihrer stated that all seventy licenses that were ordered have been distributed and assigned. More licenses will be purchased because of how widespread the system is going to be utilized.  He also stated that he’s working with the primary groups on subscribing to various requests and his team is meeting frequently. Their goal is to have the system active before the fall semester.

President Boudreau moved on to begin the conversation regarding Freshman and Transfer Student Orientation and the need to make it better.  He stated he would like for the academic units to be more involved in the orientation and to be more available to talk to students about academic trajectories.  He asked the Cabinet, in concert with Student Affairs to start thinking  about what orientation looks like and what kinds of resources are needed. 

President Boudreau opened up the conversation and asked the Cabinet for their thoughts on What should student orientation look like? What are we missing?

(Comments from Cabinet)

Dean Mercado:

•  Explain very clearly to the students the organizational chart of the college.

Andy Rich:

• Do a better job to help students form an identification and connection to the college from the moment they are admitted.

• Giving students T-shirts, hats, etc to help them realize they are a part of the college.

• Engaging parents and families; they don’t really know much about this experience.

• Most challenges students face are with offices that are under resourced and that can be prone to being unresponsive or difficult to reach. This presents a significant challenge for students.

• The goal should be by the time a student starts school they made three friends by doing a series of orientation events that gets them in rooms together and have them sharing and fellowship with each other.

Dean Miller:

• We should consider running a very traditional in person freshman week or three – four days where students walk through. I think it’s a useful developmental period for students to transition into life on campus. During that time, they can be oriented to how they order books, where the bookstore is located and learn the geography of the campus, learn how to find the library.

Dean Perkins:

• Recommend a Discord server (used a lot like Slack). Students in science are on it all the time asking each other questions. We have student leaders, and staff members in my office answering questions.  It gives near real-time response rate and takes minimal effort.  Other students chime in giving answers to questions to other students.  Students are getting instant information and as long as there are folks that are watching it to make sure that its accurate, it works incredibly well.  If we had something like this campus-wide, it would really help our students.

Associate Provost Cintron:

• Community engagement; the community is very diverse and how we speak and what language do we use to make ourselves really visible? What language do we use to tell them why they should come here? What are we offering besides the historical narrative that we have?  We need to get the message out.

• We need to get people out who speak the language of this populations and the  communities. This is a huge investment; I can use several of the languages that they speak that engages this community to me and they actually feel that they are visible to me and I do understand that maybe they don’t get everything that is put in a brochure.

VP Ihrer:

• IT has developed video’s on just about every single topic you can think of, they will be launched for this upcoming fall semester. If students need to know about passwords, they’ll be a video that they can click on.  This is something we can put on our intranet.

Dean Gutman:

• Agreed with Doris about in person contact for students to meet with people who can speak to them in the way and chat with them in ways that make sense to students.  Should also include faculty as well as other students. 

• Want to underscore Susan’s point about meeting the students where they are about using the technology, they’re using that they’re using not what we’re using.  We need to meet them in their own place.

VP Lloyd

• Financial Literacy is very critical.  We often talk about financial aid and financial gauges for standard use of everything.  In terms of quality, we’re looking at financial literacy.

Dean Green:

• Suggest asking students, particularly students who are commuters and maybe some of their parents on how we can best do this to engage.  This may fix some of the enrollment issues; if you feel like you’re part of a community, if you feel like you’re part of a neighborhood, that’s what’s going to seal the deal for people.

• Faculty and staff, particularly those who focus on wellness and advising need to be around as contributors.

• Some of the information that we can provide in regards to financial aid and housing can be put in a booklet that can be taken home.

President Boudreau stated that he would like to set up a planning committee.  He would like the committee to not only include Cabinet members, but would like the Cabinet to volunteer the services of someone who is responsible in their area for their workplan. 

The starting committee members will be:

VP Celia Lloyd (Convener)

Associate Provost Doris Cintron

Dean Susan Perkins

Dean Andy Rich

Dean Alex Couzis

Dean Renata Miller

President Boudreau would also like to have 2-3 members from the Student Government and also student leaders who are not in student government are welcome to join the committee.

President Boudreau would like the committee to provide him with a preliminary report at the May Cabinet meeting.

President Boudreau spoke about Gala Protocols for the President’s Gala on May 5, 2022.  He stated, this is where we’re launching the big campaign.

Peer Introductions

Doris Cintron, Senior Associate Provost, shared something about herself.

David Jeruzalmi, Chairman of The Faculty Senate, shared something about himself.

The next meeting will take place on Monday, May 16, 2022. 

The presenters will be Lucas Koehler, CFO and Senior Finance Director, Foundations for City College and Marta Gutman, Interim Dean, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture.

Meeting adjourned at 12:03 pm.