A summary of some new news related to CUNY's and CSI's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. See https://csi-covid19.github.io for the archive.
To add/suggest news, please email John Verzani
Research re-opening meeting
Topic: Research re-opening meeting Time: Aug 5, 2020 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
We have therefore scheduled a Zoom meeting for affected faculty this Wednesday, August 5, at 7 pm, to discuss re-opening plans and share ideas and best practices (Zoom details are below). Of course, such a meeting would be most useful with participation of members of the Administration who were involved in crafting of the submitted College plan and will be coordinating the approval and implementation of individual investigators’ re-opening plans.
Timeline: 7/8 Research plan presented to college administration; 7/17 plan forwarded to CUNY after review; 7/30 sent back to college for revision; 7/31 revision sent in; 8/3 Sent to EVC Cruz for approval
I am also reaching out to let everyone know we’ll hold our next chapter meeting this Thursday, August 6 at 2:30.
The Executive Council voted unanimously to support the ten demands that follow and to put all options on the table for union action if our demands are not satisfactorily addressed by the start of the academic year. Enough mismanagement and stonewalling by the CUNY administration! Lives are at stake.
MEDGER EVERS in the news (for other reasons too):
Medger Evers has dramatically increased cap size for its fall offerings:
Q: confirm or refute the PSC info going around that MEC has increased its course cap to 50?
A: Yes, they increased the class size to 50 and after some pushback, the deans of each school decreased it to 42 and some at 40. I am in the process of sending them the governance document that capped class sizes at 30.
We have almost completed the allocation of the $118 million CARES Act funds in direct aid to students. Because we moved promptly upon receiving the funds, we were one of the first Universities in the nation to distribute the funds starting on May 22. Regarding the $132 million of CARES Act funding that is to be allocated directly to the campuses, we submitted a plan to the State that prioritized student support and mental health services, reimbursements to campuses for COVID 19-related costs such as refunds, and investments in online infrastructure and training. We are optimistic that this student-centered approach will promote maintenance of our overall enrollment levels and sustain our students’ academic momentum. That plan has been approved by the State, but we have decided to postpone the use of these funds until we conclude our budget process, in case adjustments are required. In light of the financial uncertainties we face, this is the most prudent way to proceed.
Those increases, however, are offset by an additional $25.3 million in efficiency targets above those announced for FY 2020. This means that CUNY’s total savings target from the City for FY 2021 is $46.3 million, about 9% of the community colleges’ total operating budget.
8/3 Reimagining Higher Education Through Socially Engaged Art (Thanks Hugo Fernandez)
The answer to what happens next for City University of New York (CUNY) post-pandemic will depend on expanding the ideals of low-cost, high-quality liberal studies in which culture, self-reflection, and interdisciplinary learning enrich democratic values.
As a City University of New York professor at Queens College, I and my colleagues have struggled since 2016 not only with worsening financial austerity, but with falling foreign enrollment as we scrambled to prevent currently enrolled students from Iran and other so-called Muslim countries from being deported. Now, with our ongoing crisis triple header of viral contagion, financial contraction, and top-down political subversion even thinking about a better educational future seems impossible. Still, as a character in John Mandel’s prophetic, post-plague-apocalypse novel Station Eleven insists, “survival is not enough.”