Academic Years 2012–2020
Approved by the Hunter College Senate on April 27, 2011
Approved by the Hunter College Senate on April 27, 2011
Hunter College occupies a distinctive place in American higher education. We remain devoted to a particular and uncommon social mission—giving students from diverse backgrounds and modest means the opportunity to complete curricula defined by high intellectual expectations. Our graduates embody the too-rare promise of renewing democratic leadership in American society. To this Hunter has added a greater focus on scholarship, research and creative activity. Hunter also plays an increasingly important role within New York City as a training ground for critical professions that meet essential human needs. In this strategic plan, we reaffirm our commitment to the goals of student success, significant scholarship and service to our city. Success rests on the willingness of all to share ownership of these goals and help translate them into practice. The Hunter of tomorrow must continue to embody the best of Hunter past and present.
Circumstances encourage the ambitious reimagining of who we are. Hunter College has been the beneficiary of exceptional favorable publicity in recent years. Popular college guides have ranked us among the best-value schools in public higher education in the United States. They note our location, in the heart of one of the world‘s most exciting cities, as an enormous advantage. The City University of New York now recognizes Hunter as the leading liberal arts college in the system and as one that should expand its focus on research. We have become the first-choice school for more applicants from within the city than any other CUNY campus; our honors programs attract large numbers of intellectually talented and ambitious students. The new CUNY School of Public Health will operate under our auspices. In a key move toward full university status, Hunter now offers its own doctoral programs in certain sciences. Faculty personnel policies that offer reassigned time for research to untenured faculty and better terms for sabbaticals have facilitated the recruitment of research-minded scholars. Finally, with the renovation and reopening of Roosevelt House as a center for public policy research, teaching and public programs, we have an extraordinary facility for elevating our role and visibility in selected public policy arenas.
Other conditions, though, will test our capacity to achieve our goals. The years ahead promise to be lean ones for the state budget, and we cannot depend on tax-levy funds to meet our needs. Finding additional resources becomes a community challenge and a collective responsibility, and we will need to be creative and entrepreneurial in tapping new sources of support. Important resource policy questions—such as whether individual campuses within the state higher education system will be granted autonomy to set their own tuition rates—remain unresolved. We also operate within the CUNY system and must respond to various mandates while we strive to sustain the uniqueness of a Hunter education and assure the quality of the degrees we award. Finally, notwithstanding personnel policies that have given faculty more time for research, countervailing pressures arise from the heavy teaching load that reflects CUNY labor-management agreements and CUNY administration calls to increase the percentage of courses taught by full-time faculty.
We can state clearly what we aspire to be when we have realized the plan—a research-oriented, student-centered university. If we succeed, we will become CUNY‘s version of an elite public university, the one that others identify as the system‘s flagship. Certain benchmarks distinguish great public universities. At their core, they feature outstanding liberal arts programs across the humanities, the sciences and the social sciences. They cultivate productive and accomplished faculty, who in turn insist that students meet high expectations in the classroom and become partners in the scholarly enterprise. They also boast of outstanding graduate and professional schools and programs, with particular strengths that set them above their peers. Yet Hunter will stand out among top public universities through its ongoing commitment to a profound democratic purpose—educating people from diverse backgrounds and meeting the needs of our city.
Several themes, grounded in recent initiatives, inform the strategic plan:
The strategic plan consists of several elements. It begins with a new mission statement for the College, a critical document because it informs everything that follows and because we must expect to be held accountable for demonstrating that we are fulfilling the mission we identify. Next, we offer a vision statement that expresses, in aspirational language, where we hope Hunter College will be ten years from now. We have also included a statement of the core institutional values that find expression in the mission statement and in our strategic goals. These introductory sections lead into the body of the plan, which lays out five major strategic objectives, each with subsidiary goals. In the brief conclusion, we outline next steps in the institutional planning process.
Hunter College of the City University of New York, a distinguished public university, values learning in the liberal arts and sciences as a cornerstone of individual development and a vital foundation for a more just and inclusive society. Continuing our long tradition of expanding opportunity, we seek students from all backgrounds to engage in a rigorous educational experience that prepares them to become leaders and innovators in their communities and in the world. Hunter also contributes to intellectual discourse by supporting excellent scholarship and creative activity by its accomplished faculty.
Hunter undergraduate, graduate and professional curricula challenge students to think critically—to approach problems from multiple perspectives, distinguish the questions each raises and recognize the kinds of evidence each values. The College‘s academic programs stress the significance of human diversity, emphasize research and artistic creation, and invite students to extend their education beyond campus. We cultivate the qualities our graduates need to thrive in their chosen careers and make a difference as active citizens.
We embrace our setting at the heart of New York City—we seek to draw on its energy, capitalize on its remarkable resources, weave it into the fabric of our teaching, research and creative expression, and give back to it through our service and citizenship.
By 2020 Hunter College will have made significant progress toward an ambitious goal—becoming a research-oriented, student-centered university. With its rising reputation for innovative scholarship, Hunter will begin to be mentioned in the same breath as some of the great American public research universities. Yet the College will also be renowned as an institution devoted to student success that invites students to participate in a rich and challenging learning experience.
Our faculty will produce important and influential scholarship across both established disciplines and emerging interdisciplinary fields. With improved laboratory and research facilities, Hunter will claim a higher profile in the sciences, and will attract outstanding graduate students to its newly established doctoral programs. Faculty in our illustrious professional schools will forge stronger partnerships with agencies and non-profit organizations that serve the people of New York City. Roosevelt House will swiftly gain a reputation as one of the city‘s go-to places for programs of broad interest on public policy issues.
Unlike some universities that sacrifice teaching to build their research credentials, Hunter College will achieve the unusual by becoming still more celebrated as a center of teaching excellence. New faculty will be introduced to successful teaching strategies. Excellence and achievement in the classroom will be recognized. Staff of the several academic learning centers will be encouraged and supported to develop new and innovative models to facilitate student learning. We will find new ways to use the city around us to enhance students‘ educational experience, from internships in public and nonprofit agencies to placements in medical school laboratories to opportunities in the many cultural institutions and media organizations located within a few blocks of our main campus.
Students will find themselves challenged to broaden their horizons—to recognize that as future leaders, they need to study other languages and cultures, learn to examine problems from multiple perspectives, master information technology, communicate well in both writing and speaking and meet higher expectations than they may have thought possible of themselves.
As a community of faculty and staff, we will be more attentive to our responsibilities to our students. They will receive better advising about course selection, career opportunities, and degree programs appropriate to their interests. Improved course scheduling will make it easier for students to get seats in the classes they need to graduate on time. Through assessment, an active teaching and learning center and the sharing of best classroom practices, faculty will target their classroom efforts to improve students ability to learn. We will enhance the quality of student life, including more cultural events, student activities and leadership development opportunities.
Students will enjoy the time they spend on a campus that hums with the energy of the city. Nestled among the classrooms will be areas designated for extracurricular activity, intra-curricular support and relaxation. The Library will be a multifaceted learning engagement and research center.
Hunter College will be a vibrant physical presence in the Upper East Side, thriving on our three major campuses: the main Lexington Avenue site at 68th Street, the 119th Street Samuel and Lois Silberman School of Social Work, and the new science center. Weekend programs, lectures, art exhibitions and more will draw our neighbors to Hunter as never before.
Hunter will be what it has always been: a center of educational excellence. But it will rise to embrace its destiny as a nationally renowned institution worthy of being a model for the public university of the 21st century.
As an academic community, we embrace core values and commitments:
Over the next ten years, Hunter College will achieve the following goals.
We seek to enhance Hunter College's academic identity as a research-oriented university that continues to offer a rigorous curriculum and place a high value on teaching. We will extend our efforts to promote significant scholarship, research and creative activity. Our undergraduate curriculum, with an emphasis on research and creative activity, critical thinking, understanding diversity, foreign languages and cultures, clear expression and quantitative reasoning, will challenge students to expand their limits. Graduate and professional education will become more fully engaged in the organizational fabric of the city. Reflecting the principle of one Hunter, we aim to integrate more effectively the various parts of the College, capitalizing on the synergies that exist when we make intellectual boundaries more permeable. We will support and value effective teaching by both full-time and adjunct faculty and encourage the use of classroom technology to improve the learning experience.
1. Promote Excellence in Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity
Encourage and support faculty scholarship, research and creative activity.
Raise Hunter‘s profile as a major scientific research center.
Pursue a research focus in the professional schools that recognizes their important connections to New York City.
Use Roosevelt House to encourage faculty collaboration on research on social issues and connect Hunter scholars to the broader New York City intellectual community.
Increase opportunities for student research and creative projects in the arts.
2. Strengthen the Curriculum at All Levels
Reinforce the elements of undergraduate liberal arts and sciences that distinguish Hunter College within CUNY and promote academic rigor and innovation.
Strengthen and promote the professional schools and graduate/professional programs within Hunter and CUNY.
Promote the development of skills that students will need as citizens and members of the workforce in the 21st century.
3. Encourage Effective Teaching
Increase support for excellent, innovative pedagogy.
Expand mentoring efforts to improve the classroom performance of both full-time and adjunct faculty.
Recognize and reward excellent teaching.
Promote the use of technology in the classroom and modernize instructional space to capitalize on new instructional technology.
Hunter College will marshal its resources to promote student learning, retention and timely graduation. Success in higher education depends significantly on the energy students invest in learning. With that in mind, we will seek to instill in undergraduates an appreciation of the value of a liberal arts education and engage them in their education as active, collaborative participants. Improved advising at all levels will help students clarify their academic and career goals and pursue focused academic plans. Expanded co-curricular offerings will result in a richer college life including cultural events, internships, student activities and leadership opportunities. A carefully designed enrollment strategy will attract appropriate applicants for our academic programs, and ensure that we offer needed courses. To meet the distinct needs of graduate students, who make up one-quarter of the student body, we will upgrade administrative, advising and financial support.
1. Promote among Students a Strong Sense of Intellectual, Academic and Career Purpose
Develop orientation programs, guidance and tools to help students early in their academic careers to connect their interests and abilities to possible majors and career options.
Communicate the value of a liberal arts education to students‘ career and life goals.
Establish accurate expectations of Hunter College academic time demands and standards among first-time college and transfer students.
2. Enhance Student Engagement and Retention
Expand transition services and activities for new transfer students.
Engage academic programs/departments in helping students make progress toward their degrees and generating among them a stronger sense of engagement in the learning enterprise.
Promote extracurricular, cultural, athletic, and recreational activities to increase interaction with other students and encourage faculty and staff involvement.
Recognize the specific needs of graduate students, ranging from housing to career services, and coordinate planning across schools and programs to meet those needs.
3. Improve Student Advisement across the College
Recognize the distinct curriculum and career advising needs of entering transfer and first-time students and provide tailored guidance to them.
Enhance academic advising through increased use of technology, faculty and staff training, and the provision of appropriate advisement at all ability levels.
Improve advising at all levels (pre-professional and pre-major, departmental, graduate and professional, and career advising), with special attention to the points where students transition into majors and programs or, as graduate and professional
students, prepare for careers.
Identify students at high risk of attrition, address their needs before they face serious academic difficulty, and continue to assist them throughout their time at Hunter.
4. Develop a Clear and Comprehensive Enrollment Plan and Present It to the College Community
Recruit, support and retain an intellectually ambitious and racially, ethnically, culturally and socio-economically diverse student body.
Coordinate recruitment efforts and admissions practices with program availability and course offerings so that students‘ expectations are aligned with what is available.
Improve dedicated funding and support for graduate students, including placement services.
To make certain we deliver on our promise of a high-quality education, we need to expand our assessment efforts, taking care to respect faculty autonomy and to offer ongoing administrative support of faculty-driven assessment. Assessment should extend to the many support services that contribute to student success. The College relies heavily on others besides full-time faculty members, and we recommend expanded efforts to engage staff and adjunct faculty more fully in the community. Given the fragmented character of campus life in a large urban university, we should also invest in improved means of communication to assure that everyone has the fullest information about all things Hunter.
1. Broaden Assessment Efforts Across the College
Support systematic, ongoing assessment of learning outcomes at the department and
program level.
Engage in regular assessment of administrative offices and practices, especially those that influence student outcomes and/or involve cooperation between academic, advising and administrative units.
2. Involve All Hunter Constituencies More Deeply in the College as a Learning Community
Foster the development of faculty leadership at the department level and in College administration.
Broaden opportunities for adjuncts to engage with the College and participate in activities on campus.
Develop and implement a comprehensive alumni relations plan to engage Hunter alumni in diverse and ongoing relationships with the College and its current students.
3. Make Hunter “User Friendly” Through More Effective Communications
Redesign the College web site to make it the "go-to" source of information about Hunter for both current and prospective members of the campus community and, ideally, a forum for the lively exchange of information and ideas.
Use communications and technology, oriented around user needs and preferences, to integrate faculty, adjuncts, and staff more effectively into the Hunter community.
Develop a transparent comprehensive calendar for all administrative and planning processes and events/deadlines.
Promote effective and creative informal/alternative channels of communication among Hunter constituencies that address ad hoc communication needs and support and build on individual media preferences.
As Hunter‘s enrollment, research level and breadth of campus activities have grown, the College is increasingly constrained by the limitations of its physical facilities: lack of space now threatens Hunter‘s ability to sustain the recognition and quality it has achieved. We will add space to increase seats in high demand courses, expand laboratory capacity, facilitate increased collaboration across disciplines, schools and programs, and create a stronger sense of Hunter community and affiliation with the College among students, faculty and staff.
1. Evaluate Our Current Facilities Usage and Plan for Future Needs
Perform a comprehensive campus-wide study of physical space utilization to establish a baseline of room use, and update it regularly thereafter.
Develop a comprehensive campus facilities master plan that identifies Hunter‘s space needs, prioritizes them, and delineates short- and long-term options to address them.
As part of the master planning effort, identify external space that might meet College needs, and work with CUNY and local community boards to determine the steps Hunter should take to secure the space.
2. Make More Productive Use of Existing Space and Undertake a Focused Program of New Construction
Seek creative means to optimize Hunter‘s existing space.
Provide new dedicated space for the sciences, identifying space that can become available quickly while continuing to work toward breaking ground on a new science facility.
3. Upgrade the College’s Technology Infrastructure
Develop and implement a strategic technology plan.
Renovate the Wexler Library at 68th Street to incorporate current modes of information management and encourage student interaction and collaboration.
In an era of diminishing state support Hunter College will need to become more creative about attracting the resources the institution needs to achieve its objectives. We will seek to make ourselves more visible and build upon our identity as a public university that captures the great energy of the city around it. Moving forward, everyone at Hunter will need to participate in increasing our resources. The College must tap both traditional and new funding sources more aggressively than ever before, in ways consistent with Hunter‘s mission.
1. Elevate the Visibility of Hunter College and Communicate Its Importance to the City
Create an identity (or—brand) for Hunter that clearly conveys its distinctive attributes, and use this brand consistently in communication with constituencies within and outside of the College.
Increase the profile of Hunter public programs, both scholarly and artistic, to elevate the College‘s presence in and contribution to the city.
Increase the public profile of Roosevelt House as a Hunter College landmark.
2. Engage the Entire Hunter Community in Fundraising
Expand the role of faculty, staff, and students in targeted fundraising and donor cultivation.
Define short- and long-term funding requirements and develop budgets and plans to meet various specific targets, including but not limited to programmatic, student services and capital funding needs.
Continue to increase Annual Fund yield in order to generate fungible resources in addition to the more dedicated/restricted fundraising of other development areas (e.g., bequests, major gifts, corporate donations etc.).
Prepare and execute a comprehensive corporate and foundation relations strategy.
3. Increase Sponsored Research Funding and External Partnerships
Strengthen and reorganize Hunter‘s research infrastructure to facilitate sponsored faculty research.
Reevaluate research funding processes to achieve greater efficiencies and encourage greater faculty entrepreneurship in seeking external funds.
Identify and tap new and non-traditional research funding opportunities, including granting agencies, corporations, and foundations.
Develop and expand partnerships with area organizations and institutions that will bring new human resources to Hunter, provide facilities, increase the College‘s course offerings and/or potentially reduce costs through economies of scale.
4. Identify New, Creative Sources of Revenue
Aggressively increase the College‘s non-tax-levy revenues through its Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation.
In cooperation with relevant faculty and governance structures, explore the potential of high-margin executive-education programs that target demand in the New York City region and are suited to Hunter‘s academic strengths.
Evaluate the potential of non-degree academic and co-curricular programs targeted toward members of the College‘s surrounding community.
Hunter College‘s strategic planning process does not end with formal adoption of a plan. No plan can resolve all of the challenges and tensions that we face as we pursue several very worthy goals. The model we have chosen to embrace—the university that defines itself in terms of student success at a high level, important scholarship and creative activity, and dedicated public service—sets Hunter College apart. At the same time, to realize this model we must continue to engage in identifying possibilities, testing and evaluating them and examining the interplay of complex, interwoven elements.
To facilitate prompt implementation of the plan, we have appended the four task force reports that include numerous possible actions the Hunter community may wish to consider. As part of the follow-up process, various assessment measures should be designed promptly so we will be able to evaluate progress toward meeting our strategic goals. Progress reports, including assessment outcomes, should be presented to the Hunter College Senate periodically over the life of the plan. Further, this is a plan for the entire institution, and our component schools and units should also engage in planning processes appropriate to their particular roles and missions.