New York City College of Technology (City Tech) presents this 2017 Self-Study in support of decennial reaccreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Using the lens of the seven Middle States Standards of Excellence, the Middle States team has engaged in an iterative two-year process in which a cross-section of faculty, administrators, staff, and students have come together to consider how and how well the college fulfills its mission. Under the leadership of President Russell K. Hotzler, the college has made remarkable strides over the past decade in its transformation to a baccalaureate institution. City Tech’s future is deeply intertwined with that of New York City; it is a microcosm of the city’s diversity, breadth of enterprise, creative energy, and innovative spirit. The value of a City Tech degree to graduates in potential for upward economic mobility and professional success has been proven. This potential lends urgency to our goal of increasing retention and accelerating time-to-degree for more students.
Summaries of each standard are below; for the full text, please click the links to the right.
STANDARD I: MISSION AND GOALS
City Tech’s essential mission has not changed since its founding in 1946 as a new model of higher education—a two-year institution designed to prepare returning WWII veterans for participation in the burgeoning post-war economy. A reformulation of the Mission Statement, approved by the College Council in 2017, contains contemporary emphases: cutting edge professional and technological education undergirded by a strong general education foundation, a signature focus on experiential learning, an explicit commitment to inclusion, and responsiveness to the needs of the community we serve.
City Tech’s distinctive emphasis on applied skills…based upon a vibrant general education foundation…equips students with the problem-solving skills that make its graduates competitive…As a community City Tech nurtures an atmosphere of inclusion, respect, and open-mindedness in which all members can flourish.
The college operates within a matrix of interrelated goals: CUNY system-wide goals address broad measures of institutional effectiveness; Strategic Planning goals address campus-level priorities; Program Goals formulated at the department level define outcomes for specific degree programs; and achieving General Education Student Learning Outcomes is expected of every degree-seeking student. Goals at each level have a corresponding set of outcome measures. The goals articulated in Standard I are operationalized and assessed as described throughout the Self-Study in Standards II through VI.
As with any institution offering a broad array of programs to diverse constituencies, our burden is not so much mission definition—we know who we are and what we are here to accomplish—as it is to help diverse constituents understand that it is by serving them that City Tech realizes its mission. They are the college’s raison d’etre. City Tech will strive to communicate its mission more effectively to produce greater engagement and a stronger sense of belonging among its diverse constituents, most importantly students. Moreover, in fulfillment of its public mission, City Tech has an obligation to proactively seek new ways to serve our community. Increased internal communication on how mission and goals drive the work of individual units, how decision-making takes into consideration the impact on students, and new ways to solicit and receive feedback to encourage engagement among all constituencies have been identified as areas needing attention.
STANDARD II: ETHICS AND INTEGRITY
City Tech, as a public institution, operates within a framework of federal, New York State, New York City, and CUNY laws and regulations that guarantee protection of academic freedom, freedom of expression, and intellectual property rights. Academic integrity is an absolute expectation in all courses, scholarship, and research activity. CUNY’s HRPP program provides oversight and training to ensure that all research conducted by CUNY faculty and students complies with federal and state regulations and meets the highest ethical standards. The protection of human subjects is certified through a centralized CUNY IRB review process.
Respect for diversity is affirmed in the Mission Statement and integral to all we do. The Office of Student Life and Development makes diversity education a central goal of all its activities and learning outcomes assessment for co-curricular activities address intercultural competence, the ability to work in teams, and the development of leadership skills. The college strives to maintain a social climate that reflects shared norms of inclusion, community, and equity. Ethical awareness is an explicit General Education goal and ethical reasoning is taught across the curriculum.
The Office of Human Resources ensures full compliance with the letter and spirit of the law in all personnel matters. The promotion and tenure process for faculty entails extensive vetting of candidates’ qualifications and multiple levels of review. Standards are widely communicated through professional development workshops and multiple information channels. The appeals process is also clearly articulated. The majority of candidates for promotion do ultimately advance through the ranks.
The Standard II Working Group concluded that the college needs to do more to help students know their rights and understand how to communicate grievances effectively for appropriate and timely resolution. Students surveyed about the process for making service complaints and equity-related grievances known revealed widespread lack of understanding of the process. The “customer service” issue speaks to managerial effectiveness in offices that provide direct academic and non-academic services to students and suggests a strong need for staff training. As a public institution, appropriate policy and protections exist in abundance in all realms of institutional life. However, the institution should work to ensure that complaint and grievance process is made clear and transparent to all constituencies. A targeted communications strategy through which this information is presented consistently, authoritatively, and transparently, and is easily available to all in multiple media formats is needed.
STANDARD III: DESIGN AND DELIVERY OF THE STUDENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Standard III and Standard V are the chapters of the Self-Study that most dramatically reveal institutional transformation. Program-level goals reflect industry standards of professional practice and ensure the quality and relevance of professional curricula, while an ambitious redesign of general education that is aligned with CUNY Pathways ensures universal transferability of credits among CUNY institutions. The widespread adoption of high impact pedagogies and interdisciplinary perspectives has been supported by the implementation of a comprehensive program of General Education learning outcomes assessment that provides the building blocks for continuous academic improvement.
City Tech enrolls more STEM majors than any other CUNY college. The National Science Foundation ranks City Tech sixth nationally in the production of Black STEM associate degree recipients, 18th in Asian associate degree recipients, and 20th in male associate degree recipients. These rankings demonstrate the college’s effectiveness in fostering STEM success, particularly among underrepresented minority students. A rich array of scholarly, scientific, and pedagogical resources is available to advance faculty research and scholarship, a focus that has intensified as the college becomes a baccalaureate institution. Technology infrastructure includes specialized laboratories and equipment; faculty professional development on assessment, sponsored programs, and a wide range of pedagogical subjects is provided through the Faculty Commons.
The college plans to continue the strategic expansion of degree programs in response to business and industry needs. Changing professional contexts will require new curriculum directions such as inter-professional education in health and human services fields. Faculty scholarship, scientific research, and creative work must be supported through CUNY and external funding from public and private sources.
STANDARD IV: SUPPORT OF THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE
As an institution with an open admission policy at the associate level, City Tech faces continuing challenges to retention and graduation. CUNY’s new Momentum Campaign focuses on accelerating student progress toward their degrees. Programs that incorporate a “completion agenda,” such as ASAP and Early College High Schools, provide services that typically go beyond financial aid and provide more cohesive advisement, academic support, articulation and transfer guidance, and internship placements. Every effort is also made to minimize mathematics remediation, long a barrier to STEM success, through comprehensive redesign of the mathematics curriculum. The college strives to support students at critical junctures including college entry, entry to upper division programs, and graduation through such programs as the First Year Experience, academic advising, and the Professional Development Center. Prompt credit evaluation, transfer assistance, CUNY Pathways, and articulation agreements between community colleges and City Tech’s baccalaureate programs enhance the likelihood of success for incoming transfers. The Office of Student Life and Development develops and manages a rich program of student activities that are designed to complement the curriculum and to achieve specific learning outcomes. Students typically deal with the Offices of Admissions and Financial Aid, the Registrar, the New Student Center through the college entry process. These interactions are governed by CUNY policies concerning privacy of student records. A major focus on orientation for all entering students supports the goal of increasing retention, as students are supported in making appropriate choices of programs of study.
STANDARD V: EDUCATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS ASSESSMENT
Assessment of learning is an institutional function that has undergone a major transformation over the past decade, evolving in parallel with academic program improvements. Today, the college implements a comprehensive system of educational effectiveness assessment at institutional, program, and course levels. General Education was redesigned around desired Student Learning Outcomes, which are measured on a three-year cycle. A continuous improvement model ensures that assessment outcomes are fed back into academic program design and delivery to improve their effectiveness; courses and programs of study are modified to improve learning. An extensive array of student support programs and interventions also undergo systematic assessment. Assessment is led by faculty. Responsibility for conducting assessment is distributed across schools and departments and centrally managed by the Office of Assessment and Institutional Research (AIR) through a College Assessment Committee. An important goal is to expand Committee membership to include greater representation of the Office of Enrollment and Student Affairs and the Office of Finance and Administration. Communication of assessment and institutional research findings occurs regularly through a variety of media to a wide range of constituents, including an effective AIR website.
STANDARD VI: PLANNING, RESOURCES, AND INSTITUTIONAL IMPROVEMENT
All institutional planning, fiscal management, and resource allocation is performed to advance the college’s academic mission. Over the past decade these functions have served three primary institutional goals: (1) To increase the number, quality, and diversity of faculty; (2) To strengthen physical and technological infrastructure by addressing deferred maintenance and institutional growth; and (3) To ensure that academic resources are adequate to baccalaureate program requirements in new and rapidly evolving fields. Planning, finance, and resource allocation performance is benchmarked annually in the CUNY Performance Management Process (PMP), itself an outcomes-based continuous improvement system that measures institutional effectiveness in three domains: academic quality, student success, and fiscal and managerial effectiveness. As City Tech integrates non-academic units into the college’s increasingly comprehensive system of assessment, the congruence of PMP and City Tech assessment models will facilitate the incorporation of planning, fiscal management, and resource allocation under the college’s assessment umbrella. Infrastructure investment includes the construction of a new flagship academic building that will house science and health science departments and raise the profile of City Tech within the Brooklyn Tech Triangle. A major focus on addressing deferred maintenance has modernized learning environments, increased handicapped accessibility, and improved laboratory facilities. Human resources and technology infrastructure management have seen significant growth and are adequate to serve the needs of the academic program.
STANDARD VII: GOVERNANCE, LEADERSHIP, AND ADMINISTRATION
The college has an effective administrative leadership and governance structure that enables the college to advance its mission in a rapidly changing environment. As a constituent institution of The City University of New York, authority is vested in the president and derives from the CUNY Board of Trustees. As a public institution, City Tech observes the letter and spirit of federal, state, city, and CUNY laws, regulations, and policies. The college enjoys autonomy in developing its own governance structure, through which authority is vested in the College Council and its range of subcommittees. The work of Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Finance and Administration is systematically vetted through the College Council. The president and his cabinet deliberate regularly on high level administrative matters. The college’s three schools are represented there through their deans who are appointed by the president.
Over the period covered by this self-study, City Tech has fully addressed concerns raised in the last review. A broad segment of the faculty designed and implemented a general education plan that integrates the liberal arts into our career-focused programs. A similarly broad-based assessment of student learning supports both general education and the majors and is well integrated into decision-making. Taken together with its location in the Brooklyn Tech Triangle, as well as dramatic expansion of the faculty, curriculum, and physical plant, City Tech is situated to take full advantage of its potential as CUNY’s college of technology.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Implement a comprehensive, cross-institutional plan for student retention and success. (Standard IV)
- Build on the academic continuous improvement model to strengthen overall institutional assessment and effectiveness (Standard V)
- Improve scope, documentation, and transparency in the complaint resolution process (Standard II)
- Refine our facilities and technology master plans to take advantage of new opportunities. (Standard VI and III)
- Nurture a shared sense of mission and identity that fosters pride in City Tech’s unique program offerings and that emphasizes ambition for excellence. (Standards I and VII)
There may be a delay of no more than one business day before the appearance of your comment due to moderation, in compliance with the Open Lab terms of use.
Questions about the report or review process? Contact Kim Cardascia at KCardascia@citytech.cuny.edu
Questions about the OpenLab? Email the OpenLab team at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu.
Fourth sentence, I suggest adding the word “cultural” so the phrase reads “is a microcosm of the city’s cultural diversity, …”.
BTW, note to editor, be mindful in using the phrase “microcosm of.” Ever since Sarah Palin described Alaska as “a microcosm of America,” the phrase, in my mind at least, is likely to be followed by word or words that render the statement untrue.
Under EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, expanded section under STANDARD II, last paragraph: the sentence “Students surveyed about the process for making service complaints and equity-related grievances known revealed widespread lack of understanding of the process.” is difficult to follow.
Suggested rewrite: Students surveyed about the process for registering service complaints and equity-related grievances indicated widespread lack of understanding of the process.
I am uncertain of the meaning of “equity-related grievances.” Will it be clear to MSCHE readers?
I believe the following sentence could be made a little easier to process:
The value of a City Tech degree to graduates in potential for upward economic mobility and professional success has been proven.
A possible alternative:
The potential for upward economic mobility and professional success that a City Tech degree provides to graduates is well attested.
There are probably a few other rewrites that might be more effective, of course.
Standard IV: Support of the Student Experience
Since City Tech is committed to inclusion, experiential learning and responsiveness to the needs of the community we serve, perhaps we can also mention the Center for Student Accessibility for its great work in supporting students with disabilities and the CUNY Service Corps for engaging students in year long service projects in the community while providing them with important professional development experiences.
With regard to the point about upward economic mobility, I think it would be good to cite a quote or at least point readers to the research study that was done and highlighted in the New York Times in articles such as https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opinion/sunday/americas-great-working-class-colleges.html or https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html. Since a visual is always effective, the chart from the second article linked above that puts CityTech at number 9 among colleges nationwide that successfully move graduates from the bottom 40 percent to the top 40 percent would effectively support the “has been proven” in the summary.
The final sentence in Standard I is in passive voice and a little hard to follow. Maybe it could be broken into 2 sentences and then the active voice could be used. “The college recognizes it needs to increase awareness of its mission and goals through better internal communications. CityTech also must find new ways of increasing the engagement of its constituencies and consider more carefully the impact administrative(?) decisions have on students. ”
The above two sentence structure may not quite capture what the intent was on the earlier sentence. But in trying to rewrite it, I wasn’t quite sure of the authors’s intent. For example, is it administrative or curriculum decisions being discussed or both?
re: executive summary end statement, we seem to limit our scope. Consider removing the word more and replacing it with all.
“This potential lends urgency to our goal of increasing retention and accelerating time-to-degree for more students.”
Our mission is not limited to more students; it is our goal for all students. We believe in the potential of our students to succeed.
What is different since the last middle states is that we are working intentionally in multiple ways to engage all students, with support of faculty and staff, in their persistence through graduation (ASAP, FYP, Honors, UGR, CUNY Service Corp, PDC, SLSD, SEEK, SGA, ‘pipeline’ conferences, competitions to graduate studies, etc.) via curricular and co-/extra curricular opportunities w/stated goals. Faculty and staff participate in focused professional development through grants and fellowships, college wide committee activities –gen ed, assessment, shared governance, orientations– actions that strengthen the student experience from recruitment through graduation.
It’s not clear to me in “STANDARD I: MISSION AND GOALS” why the excerpt of the mission statement is edited/abbreviated? “City Tech’s distinctive emphasis on applied skills…”
John
It’s not clear to me in “STANDARD I: MISSION AND GOALS” why the excerpt of the mission statement is edited/abbreviated? “City Tech’s distinctive emphasis on applied skills…”
John
In STANDARD II: ETHICS AND INTEGRITY
What is the “The Office of Human Resources”? I googled it and I can’t find it and don’t see one here: http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/faculty-staff/ Do you mean the Office of Faculty and Staff Relations?
What is “The Standard II Working Group”?
John
RECOMMENDATIONS
It seems to me that every single problem we have at Citytech is caused or exacerbated by endless austerity and constant under funding. Clearly, we can’t print money, but shouldn’t one of our goals as an institution be to help lobby for things like a reasonable, ongoing budget stream?
Thanks to everyone involved for their hard work on this document.
John
Please consider expanding on this sentence by providing source of ratings:
“The value of a City Tech degree to graduates in potential for upward economic mobility and professional success has been proven.”
Consider adding something in the form of source of rankings, awards, etc.
Students make the school.
City Tech will not get the Brooklyn Tech nor Bronx Science studnets; most likely the B or below studnets some of whom are in this segment because that is their level, and the rest because of the language.
The goal is to make sure they are able to find jobs.
The strategy is:
*each class must have getting student a job as its focus, nothing else, be it English, language, or math
*quality of graduate must be high; this will make employers come back for more
*the why is not that important, the how is; graudates must be able to start as soon as hired
*focus on a limited number of majors where there is high demand, and put all your money in it
*set high graduation GPA for those selected majors; students who do not cut it must not be allow to carry that major so that graduate quality is assured
*the above requires that students be monitored early on, and career advise matching a student’s strength be given; if one fails Discrete Math two times, computer track may not be well suited for one.
*do not let them start college level classes until they are ready. set up free or cheap catch up classes for a longer period; you cannot master English in 2 semesters, but maybe 2 years. It is okay to graduate in 6 years.
When employers can find desirable employees from City Tech, they will come back.
This will draw better quality students to City Tech.
Better students mean better graduates
Better graduates will draw more employers.
1. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. There should be a more cohesive and intensive relation with the high schools to smooth the process of acquiring better prepared students for college.
2. A committee f on each department can devise more effective examples and problems for faculty to include in their courses
3. Another committee can devise more practical and hands on project to trigger the interest of the students as we learn most from what we do and keep them on campus longer to keep them from being distracted by useless activities outside the campus
Greater focus on retention and graduation.
Teach UP to the students. Hold them accountable to their proper education.
Professors must be proficient in teaching ability not just content mastery.
Professors must be much more technology savvy. Black Board, a great resource in which citytech/cuny invested funds is seriously underutilized by most faculty.
Advise students in the use of academic tools like Degree works from their inception here. Do group advisement in majors.
Raise personal and student expectation.
Leave bias and bigotry on the side walk.
Greater outreach to students using all technology. More than half of the students are under 25. They are very much exposed to FB, Twitter, snap chat … Instructors must use these tools to operate in student’s zone of proximal development. Putting plans on paper is fine but the true test of whether you reached students in in the retention and graduation numbers.
A proper education is a partnership – Students – Faculty – Staff, any weakness in this equation negatively impacts all the well written outcomes.
Promote four years to graduation as viable. General Education classes help give students clarity re interests and ability.
Willingness to use an online option when life happens – Professors ill, students ill or overwhelmed with personal issues like getting to school.
Less reliance on student evaluation to monitor Professor effectiveness. Many students will not truthfully rate professors because they don’t believe that colleges impose sanctions. As long as they get an A no problem. Students see the same ineffective professors semester after semester when everyone knows the deal.
Much more in the area of grants should be a focus of the college. The grants that are available should be advertised more aggressively. I am enrolled in two grant programs and the last 10 students I told about these programs had never heard of them. In the mean time they are stressed trying to work for $10 an hour to pay for school and living. If students don’t have to work they will more likely appreciate the “all you can eat notion.” We pay the same amount for 15, 18 credits that we pay for 12.