Dear College Community,
February might be the shortest month of the year, but it is not short on our mission-centered efforts such as expanding resources, increasing enrollment, enhancing institutional effectiveness, advancing student success, and improving facilities. These by no means disparate efforts, but instead they are intricately intertwined.
Funding Requests and Advocacy
In late February, I provided testimony at the annual Queens Borough Hearing and made a request to Borough President Richards for
- $2.5 million dollars for the renovation of the Academic Core Union Hall Plaza and landscaping. The project would renovate the York College Union Hall Plaza and will include new walkway pavers, seating, softscape, lighting, and sculptural elements that are artistic in type. Upon completion, the Union Hall Plaza will provide an outdoor place of wellness and gathering area for students, faculty, staff, and guests; and for
- $2 million dollars for the renovation of Lecture Hall 1M06. The lecture hall has a seating capacity of 138 chairs with tiered seating original to the building’s construction. The newly renovated lecture hall will have state-of-the-art audio video capabilities that provide users with access to the latest advances in multimedia presentation platforms. Features will include, but not be limited to, the ability to support streaming media, large room size displays for all to share and mirror content, distance learning, and ergonomic seating with outlets for charging and USB connectivity. In addition, renovation updates will comply with the latest governing regulatory requirement that include ADA accessibility.
Yesterday, I provided testimony to the Queens City Council Delegation: Requests were made for:
- The purchase of Common-Area Seating and Furniture for Students and Landscape Upgrades and Outdoor Seating ($340,000) to provide students, faculty and staff with additional areas to relax, study, and connect with classmates and colleagues throughout the day.
- Operational support to open the York College Track and Field to the public ($50,000)
- Funds to Preserving Cultural Treasures: An Initiative to Conserve York College's Iconic African American Art Collection - Restoration $30,000. Currently, the Academic Core houses an essential collection of 11 public artworks, including six pieces by celebrated African American artists—Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Houston Conwill, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt, and Martin Puryear—and a painting by Sicilian American artist Frank Stella.
This month I also attended the ACE on the Hill which provided me the opportunity to meet with Congressman Meeks to amplify York’s voice in advocating for resources and thank him for his support. I also had the opportunity to attend the NYS Association of Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislators Conference alongside 16 York College students, who represented us exceedingly well. They volunteered at Registration, attended workshops bringing their voice to the conversation and networking and they were hard to miss in their Cardinal-Red blazers.
Career Development/Internships
Career Development and Student Transfer are two important Chancellor initiatives. Earlier this month, Provost Brazill, Dean Becker, Nyisha Howell, interim Chief of Staff, and I met with representatives from the CUNY Central Office. The meeting was the first step in being considered to participate in the CUNY College Model for Career Success Initiative. The Central Office team wanted to share more about the model and gain a deeper understanding of our career success environment. While every campus will take part in the initiative, the first wave of this work will kick off this summer. This meeting will help them to determine which campus will most benefit from being a part of the first wave. Campuses will find out their status in late March.
Meanwhile last semester at York, while in the process of the Marketing and Communications department trying to identify students who were completing internships as part of a Linked-In marketing campaign, they discovered that there was no central repository of internship information. To this end, Greg Vega, CIO, and his team developed a data base that will collect data on internship activity, number of students, hours, paid/unpaid status and site locations. More information will be forthcoming.
Scholarship Management
We are making improvements in the administration of our Scholarships and have submitted a request to hire a full-time Scholarship Manager which is currently pending CUNY approval. The Scholarship Manager will be a student-facing role and will be responsible for submissions, website management and marketing of scholarships.
The Scholarship Manager will work in concert with Janine Scott, director of Individual Giving, Donor & Foundation Relations to ensure effective scholarship management. In this capacity, Ms. Scott will have oversight of donor stewardship, prepare reports and ensure that scholarship audit requirements are met. She will work to continually evaluate the scholarship program to identify opportunities for growth, while improving the student recipient and donor experience. She will also serve as the lead of the newly established Scholarship Committee which will include the Scholarship Manager, and representatives from Institutional Advancement, Financial Aid, Bursars Office, and Business Office. In addition, the scholarship website will be updated to reflect current scholarships available and instructions on how to navigate the portal (NexGen) to apply. More updates will be shared once the Manager is hired. Please know that Institutional Advancement is in the process of reviewing all current foundation scholarships and funding sources.
Enrollment
With regards to enrollment, there’s not so good news and great news. We fell short of increasing TOTAL enrollment over Spring 2024, but our first-time full time semester retention rate is roughly 5 percentage points higher than the 2023 cohort, that is 82.4% in Fall 2023 cohort and 86.8% for the Fall 2024 as of Form A last week. Not only did we exceed our overall enrollment target, but we exceeded our Continuing Undergraduate, Freshman, Readmit, Continuing graduate students and High School non-degree targets. It is also important to note that this Spring, Graduate student and first-time freshmen enrollment are the highest they have been since Spring 2021; and Continuing Student enrollment exceeds that of Spring 2024. I want to give a special thank you everyone, because we all play a role in enrollment efforts, but especially want to thank VP Karen Williams and the Enrollment Management team and all faculty and staff advisors for your unmatched efforts in mentoring, supporting, coaching and advising students. At caucus I had the pleasure of having breakfast with our contingent of students. When asked why they chose York, many indicated that it was close to home and some even indicated that they had planned to transfer after the first year. But now that they are here they couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. York is their home. It is important that we will continue to add value to the place they and we all call our academic and professional home. Hence the requests to made to both borough president and the Queens delegation for seating in common areas in all of our buildings, outdoor furniture and landscaping on 160th and the Union Hall Plaza, reestablishment of a game room and identifying lounge space for faculty and staff.
Not only do we need more spaces to congregate in, but we need improvements in how we schedule events and meetings. This week, College Senate, Advisorfest and Salute to Seniors were all held at the same time. As a result there were students, faculty and staff missing out on either on one or more of these important events. There is a critical need to address scheduling challenges we often encounter. As you know I convened a committee to provide me with recommendations regarding improving events management. I will be taking into account, their feedback and in March I will have an update for the campus regarding improvement to these two very important processes.
Marketing & Communications
On the recruitment side, Marketing and Communications is working to ensure that recruiters and the college have the right tools in our tool box to attract and recruit students. We typically market the college as a whole, or focus on certain programs, but we need to ensure that we market all programs (by departments/schools/ as a collective/ or individually) as well as market to each student cohort. The reality is that what we want to impart to freshmen, will be different from what we impart to transfers, that’s different from how we attract graduate students, and how we ensure that our continuing students are retained. The Marketing and Communications team is hard at work creating materials for recruitment season.
Budget (Process)
I am not sure how long it took us to get into a deficit, but it will probably take us an equal amount of time to get out of it. It is also especially difficult with enrollment challenges, as well as inadequate staffing levels. VP Eduardo Rios will provide a more cogent update on all things budget tomorrow – Friday, February 28, 2025 at 10:00 AM via Zoom. Log in information is as follows:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82957249114?pwd=9dJAoXkAzz7usQNZ98BJJEP78DMN5a.1
Meeting ID: 829 5724 9114 Passcode: 083978
I do want to take this opportunity to provide you with an important update on our budget process. I’ve been at York for slightly over a year, and Ed, for 10 months, it has been quite the learning experience. In November as we approached the end of another year, I do what I typically do, that is, reflect on challenges and opportunities. I also thought about our future as we were in the midst of finalizing our Middle State Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) committees. In the spirit of my own personal assessment and reflection I shared with Ed and then with cabinet at our January retreat, the need to be more in line with our Charter and University Bylaws, that is, sharing not only information, but sharing responsibility in the development of our budget.
As such, effective this spring we will institute a process that will include the following new elements:
- Budget calls for each division -- respective VPs will work with their units in their divisions.
- Once divisions have been completed their draft budgets and submitted them to the Budget Office, the Budget Office will disseminate to the Resource Committee and the Personnel & Budget for review, input and recommendations for consideration prior to me submitting the final budget to the Central Office.
A Culture of Assessment
Having started my career in higher education administration in the area of Assessment, one can say that I am always in an assessment head space. Like now, I am thinking about our visit in 2027 and how important it is for us to develop a deeper culture of assessment. Assessment is not just for the faculty and staff serving on assessment-related committees, it is for all of us. Having served on a number of MSCHE teams, as well as chairing one, I can say sharing findings that an institution does not meet standards is painful, so I can only imagine how it feels to have been on the receiving end in 2018 when the college was put on warning. It is not a place we need to or will return to in 2027. We are off to a good start; let’s keep up the momentum.
Thank you to all those who are serving on MSCHE Committees and other assessment-related committees, those of you engaging in assessment in your respective areas, those of you using data to drive improvements in your teaching and work, thank you for documenting and sharing your efforts within your departments, offices and classrooms. And I thank you in advance for attending to VP Hoeffner’s emails and for your planned participation in her Office’s new series: Let’s Talk Data! Each month, a new topic will be discussed. The first LTD where the topic will be Retention and Graduation Rates will be held on March 4 from 12:30-1:30 via Zoom.
Staff Updates
Friday, February 21 marked Arlene Petersen’s last day as our Interim Chief Diversity Officer (CDO). I am grateful we had the opportunity for her exemplary leadership and service to York College as Interim CDO and a member of my cabinet. She leaves big shoes to fill at a critical time. Thank you to the Search Committee for their efforts in identifying someone to fill them. To this end, please welcome Dr. Danielle Holmes as York’s new Chief Diversity Officer. Dr. Holmes has held key leadership roles across higher education and secondary institutions, including as Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Academy of the Holy Angels. She has extensive experience in change management, conflict resolution, program development, Title IX compliance, equitable hiring, and DEI assessment. Throughout her career, she has worked with student affairs, legal teams, faculty hiring committees, and executive leadership to drive policies that promote inclusive hiring, equity-based programming, and institutional accountability. She is a sought-after speaker and facilitator, having led seminars on anti-racism, diversity and inclusion, student engagement, equity filter utilization, and culturally responsive teaching.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Business Administration, a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership from Rider University, and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Saint Peter’s University. Dr. Holmes will be an incredible asset to York College and our work in advancing our mission of student and institutional success. For the next few weeks, Arlene will be working part -time to effectively transition Dr. Holmes.
She can be reached at dholmes@PROTECTED/ 718 262 2141/ Ext 2137. Also please be reminded that you may utilize the University-wideHR Discrimination and Retaliation Report Portalon the CUNY website to report incidences of discrimination and retaliation.
As many of you may know, Dr. Earl Simons was offered and decided to pursue a wonderful opportunity at Medgar Evers College. For 19 years, Earl served with distinction in various roles at York, and most recently as the Executive Director of Government Relations and Strategic Initiatives. In this capacity, he worked closely with local, state, and federal government entities and representatives, coordination advocacy and funding efforts consistent with York’s mission and priorities and managing constituent relations. Dr. Simons also maintained executive oversight of the Small Business Development Center, the Queens Educational Opportunity Center and the York College Adult Learning Center, and Start-Up NY. These areas will report to me for the remainder of the Spring and summer semesters. Continuing Education which also reported to Dr. Simon, will be managed by VP Ed Rios due to the resignation of Alexis Greene who served as the Director. Please direct all inquiries regarding Continuing Education to VP Rios. While I am sad to see Earl go, I am grateful to have both had the opportunity to work with him and that he will remain as part of the CUNY family.
Earl leaves big shoes to fill, and York is fortunate to have Stephannia Cleaton to fill them. Stephannia currently serves as York's Communications & Marketing Director. She has more than 20 years as a media professional, nearly 10 years working as a communications director for two NYC council members, and 4.5 years as the college government relations manager at Kingsborough Community College. In this role, Stephannia was the primary college representative to elected officials, advocating for the college on the federal, state, and local levels of government and working to address issues and requests elected officials make to the college. Also, she served as a liaison between the college and external community stakeholders, including attending the local community board meetings, the Chamber of Commerce, and various local civic groups to develop, support, and sustain relationships and collaborations with constituencies that add value to the mission and strategic goals of Kingsborough Community College. During that time, examples of her efforts include securing over $7M in capital funds from elected officials. Given her experience and knowledge of governmental relations as well as processes and procedures at CUNY she will hit the ground running at York College as our Director of External Affairs and Communications.
Stephannia is no stranger to New York government relations; before joining Kingsborough, she was the communications director for NYC Council Members Debi Rose, Staten Island, and Andy King, Bronx. Additional experience in college government relations includes coordinating community events with neighborhood stakeholders. Her contact information remains the same via email scleaton@PROTECTED and by phone: 718.262.2305/cell 929-342-8802.
Welcome to Mario Acosta, York’s new Chief Administrative Superintendent of Buildings & Grounds.Mario comes to us from Lehman College where he served as Administrative Superintendent for over 5 years. He also served as the Custodial Supervisor at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, as well as the Commercial Superintendent/ Building Manager for Industrial Building Corp/ Taconic Investment Partners. He has a reservoir of expertise in facilities management including custodial, plumbing, electrical systems, locksmithing, HVAC,cooling towers, chillers, and boilers; construction budgeting; planning and design execution; resource allocation and contingencies; and an understanding of construction equipment, including safe operating practices and signs of maintenance issues, as well as local, state and federal building and construction regulations.
I am pleased to share that York College will be participating in the University’s Constructive Dialogue initiative. As part of the CDI, we were asked to identify one member of the college community who has been trained as a facilitator to work with members of our college community on resolving conflicts and using constructive dialogue as a tool to combat hate. Thank you to Dr. Rachael Walton, accepting the invitation to serve as the York CDI facilitator.
This morning I had the pleasure of bestowing the honor of Employee of the Month to Alex Rodriguez an invaluable asset to our campus community. As the Administrative Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds -3, his unwavering dedication to supporting all campus events and addressing any needs, big or small, sets him apart and makes his nomination anything but a surprise.
Immigration Protocol and Resources
Finally, as a reminder should any law enforcement agency, including federal immigration authorities, request to conduct enforcement activities on campus, the immediate points of contact are Chief Assmann, Russell Platzek and I. Public Safety will also consult with University and College legal counsel to ensure all legal requirements are met at every stage. Additionally, our Student Affairs team continue to be available to provide needed support.
Public Safety continues to follow already established protocols and are proactively preparing for potential scenarios. We are enhancing officer training and continuing to work closely with the Administration to address unforeseen situations should they arise. Furthermore, the College will continue to provide timely guidance and share resources to support our community during this time.
Resources can be found at the circulation desk in the library and the following additional resources are available:
Federal policies continue to change almost daily, but we will continue to work in tandem with the University in responding to these changes. As always, it is our foremost priority is to ensure a safe and secure environment for all members of our campus community.
A Bridge Over Troubled Waters
A final note, I often say we are in unchartered waters, but the reality is that we are in the most turbulent of seas which leaves many of us feeling vulnerable and powerless. But we are not powerless, we have a purpose, this is what we signed up for to ensure that the students who enter our doors, the ones in your classes, and offices, leave with not only a college degree, but with the knowledge, skills and disposition to be successful and to be the best human beings possible. We are the bridge here to take students-- through the excellent teaching, outstanding mentorship, comprehensive support-- to the other side. Our students have a purpose too, because what is waiting for them as graduates of York College is a world of opportunity to make a difference in their respective professional fields. Let us not give into the many distractions that divert us from our mission. Instead let’s do all within out power to make our mission, possible.
Happy Black History Month and Welcome to Women’s History Month!
Claudia Schrader, EdD
Interim President
York College of The City University of New York
94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd
Jamaica, NY 11451
(718) 262 2350
cschrader@PROTECTED
IG: Yorkcunyprez