Timeline for Realizing Our Academic Vision for The New School
A Message from Dr. Renée T. White, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Dear Faculty and Staff,
As a follow up to my message of September 19, as well as recent communications you have received from your Executive Dean, I am writing to share more details about our ongoing work to better align The New School’s academic offerings. As a reminder, last spring the Executive Deans presented a proposal to me, Interim President Shalala, and the Board of Trustees that outlined a new forward-thinking academic structure for The New School to strengthen our academic core.
The overarching goals of this project are to:
• Improve our students’ educational experience;
• Support the critical work of our faculty;
• Amplify the interdisciplinary learning for which we are known;
• Enhance ease of movement across our programs and colleges; and
• Allow us to build a more accessible, integrated, and compelling learning environment that supports student enrollment, retention, and degree completion.
The key opportunity emerging from this process is to deepen our commitment to who we are as a progressive university, align our academic offerings to meet our students’ needs today, and enable The New School to continue to evolve in the future to meet the challenges of the times. As we undertake this work and our structure changes, we also strive to ensure that the long-standing strengths that have come from the Schools of Public Engagement endure, and seek to infuse SPE’s spirit and legacy throughout The New School, enhancing and enriching the programs of our other colleges. This includes our abiding commitment to adult learners. As we prepare our students to be able to engage with a complex world and rapid transformation, we must protect our core values and ethos while also embracing needed change and evolution with a generosity of spirit and a centering of experimentation that has always defined what The New School is. In short, we must preserve these crucial elements of who we are as part of who we will become.
The proposal by the Executive Deans was developed in close consultation with me, and also reflects the insights and feedback gathered from extensive and constructive conversations with our faculty and staff. It provides a series of concrete recommendations that we are now moving to actualize, and I encourage you to read through the proposal in detail, if you have not yet had a chance to do so. One outstanding question from the initial proposal was regarding the homing of the SPE undergraduate and graduate Media programs, which has now been addressed. Going forward, the SPE undergraduate major and course offerings in Media Studies will continue to support non-traditional students and will migrate to Eugene Lang College. The graduate programs in Media Studies and Media Management, as well as our professional certificates, will be housed within Parsons School of Design. With this development, I have now asked the Executive Deans to synthesize the work conducted this fall in support of the new academic structure for review by President Towers and me. We will share our feedback with the campus with the understanding that remaining work will advance as described below.
Next Steps & General Timeline
We have developed a clear framework and timeline for this work that will unfold in three distinct phases over the next three years. This timeline takes into account the different considerations for our students (both prospective and continuing), our faculty, and our staff, and seeks to implement the recommendations outlined in the proposal. It also addresses issues that were not resolved during the initial ideation period, all with an eye towards ensuring a vibrant and sustainable future for The New School.
• Planning Phase Continues: Fall 2024 – Spring 2025
As we have done throughout the fall semester, the Executive Deans will continue to convene cross-program discussions with faculty and staff to work through the questions, implications, and various next steps needed to enact the planned transitions. As part of this planning, appropriate administrative units will be involved in mapping out next steps and several working groups will be formed in the early spring to advance the operational implementation of this work.
Planning for Staff and Faculty Transitions
As noted in the initial proposal, there are several guiding principles for this work that must be central to our planning, notably a commitment to supporting the well-being of all, and ensuring equity for faculty and staff throughout this process.
For Faculty: The Executive Deans have committed to honoring the reappointment and promotion standards under which each transitioning faculty member was hired, including definitions of research, scholarship, and creative practice. Further, a committee composed of key SPE Academic Leaders, along with Associate Deans of Faculty Affairs from all relevant colleges, will review and provide feedback on proposed processes for equitable review structures for FTF currently homed at SPE for the coming years. We have also charged three working groups (originating in the Provost’s Office Full-time Faculty Affairs Committee but broadening in membership moving forward) on leave, compensation, and workload equity to lead conversations and generate concrete proposals regarding equity.
For Staff: Over the course of the fall semester, I initiated a series of individual conversations with administrative staff to inform them of the next steps of our staff transition planning. Over the course of the next several months, we will continue to work with the Executive Deans and Human Resources to design and evolve positions for staff in our new structures using the principles we have outlined. We will continue to partner with HR to offer professional development and other internal job opportunities within the university for our existing staff.
Program Alignment
By Fall 2025, the majority of our academic programs will have transitioned to their new college homes.
• Transition Phase: Summer 2025 – Spring 2026
Throughout the 2025-2026 academic year, we will transition administrative systems and staff to operationalize the new academic structure, as well as continuing conversations around further curricular evolution that is prompted by these changes. This work will be carefully coordinated across many university departments, evolving our colleges through new synergies and alignments that will best serve our students, faculty, and staff. It is during this period that affected staff will begin to work in their new position configurations, which, for most, will be effective by July 1, 2025.
• July 2026 and Beyond
The transition of programs, systems, faculty, and staff will be complete for this first phase of work. Our students, faculty, staff, prospective students, and alumni will experience the university through this new structure and pathways for teaching, learning, and creative practice. Ongoing assessment and examination of the effects of these changes—both positive and negative—will occur as we gauge the appropriate metrics for success and recalibrate as needed.
The Provost’s Office and all of the Executive Deans are committed to facilitating a smooth transition during this multi-stage process, and to supporting our students, faculty, and staff as we move forward together. It’s clear how much our community values the connectivity that currently exists among our colleges, as evidenced by the feedback gathered in the spring, which coalesced around general themes concerning legibility and collaboration: stronger connections between undergraduate and graduate programs across colleges, easier faculty and student movement across the university, and the creation of more visible and robust collaborations among faculty and staff working in areas spread out across The New School.
All of this work is geared towards The New School’s future as a university that embraces flexible pathways through cross-disciplinary movement and transdisciplinary collaboration and lifelong learning. As President Towers expressed in his December 11 campus message, “[T]o offer new ways to navigate the challenges of our time and develop the capacities to succeed amidst complexity, we will also need to change. We will have to recommit ourselves to the creation of communities of practice where the intellectual and creative production so desperately needed in the world today can thrive.” Indeed, it is our legacy as an institution to recognize new needs that meet both this moment and the future. Rather than being constrained by historical ways and structures, we are readying the institution to best serve our students and the world for the moment we are in now, as we simultaneously continue to evolve for the futures we can anticipate and imagine ahead of us.
We will continue to keep you apprised as this academic realignment work progresses and appreciate your insights and involvement in this important process. Your input is valued, as the success of this endeavor rests on our community’s active participation and partnership.