A Fall 2020 Update on Accomplishments and Progress
Dear Brooklyn College colleagues,
I hope your semester is off to a good start. At the top of the fall, I want to share with you the news that, despite the pandemic’s serious impact on our spring and summer, Brooklyn College made substantial progress on our goals in the prior academic cycle. The following paragraphs detail some of our accomplishments last year.
We established a college-wide Strategic Enrollment Group. As a result of its work, we enjoyed a 29% increase in winter enrollment and a 48% increase in summer enrollment. These increases enhanced our already-enrolled students’ momentum toward graduation. (Although it is still early in the fall, and despite a drop in college enrollments across the country, it looks as if we may have bucked that trend by maintaining our overall enrollment numbers.)
We increased our four-year graduation rate and increased the percentage of students earning 30+ credits in their first year. Both of these metrics are key indicia of our students’ ability to graduate within the eight-semester timeframe allowed under the NYS Tuition Assistance Program.
We did excellent work for our transfer students, who are disproportionately students of color. We increased transfer credits accepted at the College by 27%, and decreased overall credit loss for new transfer students by 60%. We reduced the average time for transfer credit evaluation from 4-6 months to 3-9 days. Finally, we increased the four-year graduation rate for our transfer students by more than four percentage points.
We strongly enhanced diversity training on campus. We completed implicit bias training for more than 1,500 faculty and staff. We also piloted a new training focused on harassment and bullying, which was a great success. We increased the percentage of people of color in our senior leadership team on campus from 38% to 45%. Although we were only allowed to benefit from a small number of new faculty hires, 40% of them were faculty of color.
We enhanced professional development for faculty and staff. We offered excellent programming through the Center for Teaching and Learning and we launched a monthly mentoring group for mid-career faculty of color interested in moving into academic leadership. We also launched a staff leadership academy aimed at developing a cadre of diverse senior managers with strong supervision, leadership, and communication skills.
Last year, the Brooklyn College faculty was both excellent and resilient. We increased faculty research award funding by more than 53% to $7,672,907. As the pandemic moved the College fully online in March, faculty worked hard to transition their classes to a remote format. They also took advantage of strong training in remote classes from the Center for Teaching and Learning.
We also moved academic support and student services online. We streamlined financial aid workflow and offered students better service. We raised more than $300,000 in emergency grants for students in need as a result of the pandemic, and distributed $280,000 in completion grants for students to re-enroll and finish their degrees. To close out the spring, the campus-wide Commencement Team oversaw the development of a beautiful virtual graduation ceremony for the Class of 2020, which had more than 52,000 views online.
Over the summer, in response to the brutal police killing of George Floyd and the nationwide uprisings for racial justice that it sparked, we announced an Anti-Racist Agenda for the College. We reported progress on that agenda over the summer, and we are excited to advance it substantially this fall. Chief Diversity Officer Anthony Brown and Vice President for Student Affairs Ron Jackson will be updating you on the agenda and how you can participate in formulating and implementing it as we proceed.
Finally, I am pleased to announce that we recently received a major grant from the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation to assist our transfer students. This two-year grant of $300,000 will enable us to enhance advisement to help transfer students navigate Brooklyn College and complete their degrees. This gift is on top of a prior one this year from Petrie to support our Food Insecurity Fund for students. We are grateful to the Petrie Foundation for its deep commitment to the mission of Brooklyn College.
Thank you to everyone for your collective efforts toward meeting last year’s goals. In a few weeks, I will send a message about this year’s goals and the road ahead. We have so much more to do, and I am excited to tackle the work with all of you!
Yours sincerely,
Michelle J. Anderson
President, Brooklyn College
