Hofstra University - State of the University - Fall 2010

State of the University Fall 2010

Stuart Rabinowitz, President

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October 2010

State of the University I am pleased to have this opportunity to address the faculty and summarize the major accomplishments of this year. Despite continuing economic challenges, this past year was brightened by a number of significant achievements, including the successful accreditation of the new Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine at Hofstra University and the opening of its first home in the newly renovated former Jets facility, as well as the beginning of the yearlong 75th anniversary celebration. The University has received positive rankings and reviews in a number of publications and continues its progress in enhancing its national and international recognition. Although the future will continue to pose challenges, we are confident that Hofstra is well positioned to weather the economic crisis over the long term and that we will emerge stronger than ever. As we reflect on the theme of the 75th anniversary year, Pride and Purpose, we are reminded that the indomitable Hofstra spirit, the determination and motivation to always strive to do better, will serve us well as we move ahead.

School of Medicine The Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine has officially opened in its new home, a completely renovated, state-of-the-art facility, formerly the on-campus home of the New York Jets. The new name of the medical school, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine at Hofstra University, formally recognizes the partnership between these two Long Island institutions, each extraordinary in its field.

For almost two years, hundreds of administrators, Hofstra faculty, and faculty from North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System worked to prepare materials and other information required for the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME, the accrediting committee for medical schools).

Countless hours were also spent in designing an innovative curriculum that enhances the way medical education is delivered. Finally, in March 2010, a team from the LCME and representatives from the New York State Department of Education visited the medical school over a two-and-a-half day period to review the submitted documents, tour the facility and campus and the Health System’s facilities, and meet with Dean Larry Smith, key administrators and faculty. Shortly thereafter, the University received word that the medical school had received preliminary accreditation from the LCME and the necessary state approvals, thus permitting the medical school to begin recruiting its first class.

At the same time, we unveiled the school’s newly renovated building – an extraordinary, high-tech 47,000-square-foot structure that will serve as the first home for the School of Medicine. The complete renovation was funded by a $10.5 million New York state grant. The new facility has beautifully designed lounges, study space and dining facilities. There is a state-of-the-art lecture hall that seats more than 100, to accommodate an entire class once the school is at full capacity, as well as flexible classroom space, small group and conference rooms, and a large anatomy lab. An extended patio with outdoor seating space will be constructed during the next year.

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As the school begins the recruitment for its first class of 40 students, more than 3,000 applications have been received, and interviews have begun, with hundreds of interviews scheduled in the next few months. The applicants are excited by the prospect of attending a new medical school with an exciting curriculum that is innovative and patient-centered from the outset, and the admissions committee is working hard to recruit a well-rounded and highly qualified inaugural class.

With the opening of the new medical school, Hofstra will be enhancing and expanding its undergraduate and graduate science programs. Hofstra has always excelled in the arts and social sciences, communication and business, law, and education, health and human services, but our science departments, while excellent, were small. To continue to enhance our academic reputation, and to take the next step in academic excellence, we are creating more opportunities in the sciences and in research. Even now, our undergraduate programs in biology and chemistry are seeing increased student interest. For example, in biology, enrollment of majors has grown 45 percent, from 214 in 2006, to 310 in 2010. We are about to launch a master’s program in medical physics and our Physician Assistant Studies Program, now a master’s degree program, is thriving. In addition, the medical school is already authorized to grant the Ph.D. in the molecular basis of medicine and expects to eventually admit dual degree M.D./Ph.D. candidates to the medical school. Over the next few years, we will also plan for a school of public health, and continue to explore other health and science programs. We are also planning to expand our excellent engineering program into a school of engineering.

In addition, Hofstra, along with North Shore-LIJ Health System and the Feinstein Institute, was invited to join Stony Brook, Cold Spring Harbor and Brookhaven Laboratories in an endeavor to expand the high-tech industry on Long Island (as in Silicon Valley) through the creation of incubators for startups and other partnerships with new and existing businesses. The addition of the medical school, along with our law and business schools, was critical to our inclusion in this initiative.

Economic Environment and Enrollment We had hoped that the worst of the economic recession would be over by the time that the class entering this fall made enrollment decisions, but that was not to be. Instead Hofstra and other private educational institutions continued to be challenged by the increasing need for financial aid and by the difficulty faced by families in considering the financing of a private college education. We also continued to experience intense competition from elite institutions for the top of our class and from local colleges offering aggressive and significant aid packages for the bottom of our class. And price sensitivity seems to be at an all-time high, with families (even those who are able to afford to do so) nervous about making an investment in undergraduate private higher education. The amount of financial/scholarship aid offered is critical to many students’ decisions, and the discount rate climbed at some competitor schools to more than 50 percent. We enrolled an excellent first-year class, albeit smaller than in prior years. The new class has the highest GPA in our history, 3.46, and an average SAT of 1172. This year’s entering class is also 34 percent students of color, again the largest in our history. Honors College also enrolled a spectacular class, with average SATs of 1325 compared to 1313 for last year. For the first time this year, we distributed pure need-based financial aid as well as 2

merit aid to this entering class. While expensive, the addition of more need-based aid should help in the retention of this class moving forward.

Graduate enrollment came in at slightly below projections, with gains in the Zarb School of Business partially offsetting declines in the School of Education, Health and Human Services. As part of the next five-year plan, we have asked each dean to complete a program-by-program review to identify opportunities for new graduate programs, as well as to consolidate and/or eliminate programs where appropriate.

Every institution of higher education has been affected by this economic climate and Hofstra is no exception. Fundraising has become more difficult in this economy, and our endowment, while recovering somewhat from its 2008 level, is still not where it would have been in the absence of the recession. Increased endowment relates directly to our ability to enhance scholarship and financial aid.

As new labor agreements are negotiated, salary increases have been moderated during the past year and a half. The administrative merit pool for administrative raises this year was set at 2 percent (and it was at 2 1/2 percent last year). These increases are in line with our recently concluded collective bargaining agreements. We have increased the financial aid and scholarship budget and added special economic relief grants, and our tuition increases remain moderate, in the 5 percent range.

We continue to review the appropriate size of entering first-year and transfer classes for the future.

We are also reviewing the use of our current leveraging firm and proposing significant changes to the leveraging model. Moving forward, we will need to manage the smaller classes and increased scholarship and financial aid costs by increasing revenues particularly through graduate enrollment, new programs and other opportunities and through continued control of expenditures.

Athletics and the Elimination of Football In what was certainly the most difficult decision of my administration to date, after a thorough study of the expenses and benefits, I recommended – and the Board of Trustees unanimously approved – the elimination of Hofstra’s intercollegiate football program. This decision was a strategically driven reallocation of resources, permitting the redirection of those resources into need-based financial aid and academic initiatives. At the Football Conference Subdivision level (formerly known as Division I-AA), football could not attain significant national recognition, and it had low student, community and media interest, attendance and financial support. In addition, the football program, the largest of our athletic programs, was by far the most expensive. We worked with the student-athletes and coaches to ease their transition, assisting the players who wished to transfer and honoring the scholarships of those who decided to stay at Hofstra. Although this decision was difficult, I am confident that it was the right decision for Hofstra at this time, permitting us to fund additional need-based aid for students in this very challenging economic time.

The elimination of football has not meant the elimination of homecoming weekend; indeed, attendance at this year’s homecoming/reunion weekend and 75th anniversary celebration far surpassed prior football homecoming weekends. And we expect this tradition to continue with planning for next year’s concert, fireworks, and arena performance for the 2011 homecoming weekend already underway.

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Significant team accomplishments occurred both on and off the field. Softball won the CAA Championship and Softball and Men’s Lacrosse advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The Women’s Lacrosse team received national recognition for having the highest team GPA of all Division I women’s lacrosse programs.

Retention Last year’s retention from the first year to sophomore year was 76 percent, down from a high of 80 percent for the entering class of fall 2007. Although the reasons students leave are multifaceted and often complex, it is clear that many of the students who left did so for economic reasons. This year the first-year retention rate is 77 percent, slightly above last year. If these numbers were adjusted for the first-year football players who left, the first-year retention rate would have been at 78 percent.

This improved retention rate is very promising considering the difficult economic climate, and is well above the 74 percent retention rate of classes that entered in 2002 and 2003.

While graduation rates (which are measured on a six-year basis and which count students who transfer out as non-graduates) have historically been in the 54-56 percent range over the last decade, this year’s graduation rate for the class entering in 2004 is at 60 percent, the highest in recent Hofstra history.

Student satisfaction continues to increase since the 2003-2004 academic year benchmarking, as measured in our annual survey of undergraduate and graduate students. Enhancing student satisfaction and retention continues to be a high priority of my administration. In this economic climate, particularly, retention remains more important than ever. Retaining additional students would enhance Hofstra’s graduation rate and standing in national rankings, and also generate enhanced tuition revenue. It is more cost-effective to retain students than to recruit additional new students, and increased retention numbers would permit us to keep the size of the entering class small or to otherwise invest the revenues generated in new academic endeavors. I have established a Task Force on Retention consisting of key faculty and administrators, chaired by Senior Vice Presidents Pat Adamski and Herman Berliner, to study the retention issues and to work on new retention initiatives designed to give our students a greater sense of belonging.

Five-Year Plan The entire University is now involved in planning for the next five-year plan, which will run from 2012 to 2017. The deans and vice presidents will be reviewing all programs and expenditures to ensure that all funds are being spent prudently, and will identify areas where investment is required in order to maximize future opportunities. We have already announced that we expect to invest in the sciences so as to take advantage of the synergism that will exist in those areas with the development of the new School of Medicine. We will also invest in other new programs that meet clear student demand.

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Academic Initiatives 2009-2010 was another very active year for our academic area, with many significant program accomplishments and vibrant work by our academic centers. In 2009-2010, we registered dual-degree programs in computer science (B.S./M.A. and B.A./M.S.) and physician assistant studies, as well as a dual-degree B.A./sociology and M.A./applied social research and public policy program. We also offer a dual-degree M.A./applied social research and public policy and J.D./law program. Dualdegree offerings will be increasingly important to our continued success in the years ahead. We also now have two new advanced certificate programs, one in elementary mathematics specialist and the other in applied behavior analysis. Further, we have changed the existing M.A. in English and creative writing program to an M.F.A. in creative writing, and we have also developed a B.B.A. in supply chain management. A distance learning format has been added to both the M.S.Ed. in educational leadership and policy studies and to the Certificate of Advanced Study in educational technology.

Our academic centers continue their important work in a variety of areas. For example, the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, directed by Dr. Meena Bose, initiated a program of having two senior presidential fellows visit campus regularly to meet with students, participate in public lectures, and contribute to center activities. The two fellows, Republican strategist Edward Rollins and former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate Howard Dean, participated in lectures and other events and met with students in both introductory and upper-level courses in history and political science, as well as with student clubs and smaller groups of students more informally. Additionally, in spring 2010, Fellow Rollins co-taught with Kalikow Center director Dr. Bose an upper-level political science seminar on presidential leadership of Congress. The Kalikow Center hosted several events featuring the fellows.

On November 4 and 5, 2009, the Kalikow Center, Hofstra School of Law, and the Hofstra Cultural Center hosted the symposium President or King? Evaluating the Expansion of Executive Power From Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush. The papers presented at that symposium will be published in two forthcoming issues of the scholarly journal White House Studies.

The Kalikow Center also participated in several public events to discuss presidential leadership and policymaking, including the Business Development Center’s Distinguished Lecture Series; the New Directions in American Health Care conference; the International Scene Lecture Series; Earth Day; and panels co-sponsored with Vanity Fair and the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations.

Another example of a very active Hofstra center is the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University® (NCSS) directed by Executive Dean Lawrence Levy and Professor Christopher Niedt.

The NCSS continued to build its national reputation by expanding existing initiatives, creating new relationships – inside and outside Hofstra – and supporting new research and community engagements.

NCSS participated actively in a major, multi-departmental effort to create a Sustainability Studies program, taking steps to raise startup funds and recruit a director of Sustainability Studies. In October, under the direction of Academic Director Christopher Niedt, NCSS organized Hofstra’s largest conference ever – The Diverse Suburb: History, Politics, and Prospects. About 400 researchers, students and activists attended 54 sessions over three days. NCSS began work on two volumes from papers presented at the Diverse Suburb conference and continued work, in conjunction with the Sociology Department, on a volume based on a conference the prior year on housing.

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NCSS conducted its third National Suburban poll. Its focus was on minority suburbanites and was well received in the media and academic circles. Working with Hofstra’s Wilbur F. Breslin Center for Real Estate Studies, Cornell University, and the state comptroller’s office, NCSS held the second annual Local Government Leadership Institute to help more than 100 local officials economize for taxpayers. NCSS planned a summit that brought together high-level federal officials and 350 local government leaders to promote smart growth projects. It was the first of its kind in a suburban community.

Our Center for Civic Engagement (CCE), directed by Dr. Cindy Bogard, is dedicated to strengthening democratic values by encouraging students to participate actively as knowledgeable citizens in their campus, local, state, national and global communities. CCE had another very productive year in 2009-2010. Now in its third year, the student intern program enables students to learn community organizing and leadership skills as they plan and run events to promote student civic participation.

During this past year the CCE again held its signature Day of Dialogue event – a one-day, multi-event public issues conference that drew more than 2,000 Hofstra students, faculty and community members to engage with topics such as climate change, hunger, the economy and the status of the Obama presidency.

The CCE is committed to celebrating Hofstra’s diverse community and to that end held our third Multicultural Mixer – a party that draws more than 250 students from communities across campus to share international food, dancing and performances from a variety of cultures. In early October, the center commemorated the UN’s International Day of Peace with a lecture by Zia Mian, a world expert on nuclear weapons reduction, and later in the month CCE co-hosted a visit by Sustainable South Bronx founder Majora Carter. Each February, CCE celebrates college students making a difference by honoring the Woolworth’s lunch counter civil rights protesters. This past year’s event featured accomplished jazz pianist and Hofstra professor David Lalama and colleagues who interspersed jazz with a discussion of how music helped them develop cross-race friendships. The major spring event for the Center is the Earth Day festival, which featured a 21st-century sustainable buffet held outdoors, Native American dancing, green vendors and environmental issue tables, and a lecture and film series. Interns also planned and ran Globalization Day, which featured a variety of Hofstra professors speaking on global economic issues and development. In addition, the CCE sponsored two “civic engagement houses” in the residence halls, and interns worked at an after-school program with middle school students, organized an environmental and civil rights tour of the Bronx and Harlem, hosted an interfaith dinner and an exhibit (with the School of Education, Health and Human Services) about environmental responsibility, co-hosted a panel on low-wage labor, registered students to vote, and participated in many other activities while also building bridges between the curriculum and cocurricular parts of campus. The newest CCE initiative is a student-run community garden in the Netherlands student housing complex.

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The Center for Teaching and Scholarly Excellence (CTSE), directed by Professor Susan Martin, continues its important activities in support of our faculty. A critical part of the Center’s mission is to pair all new faculty with mentors. New faculty and their mentors work together throughout the academic year at special receptions and “learn-and-lunch” sessions organized by the Center. The CTSE also joined with the library faculty to present a series of programs on electronic resources, audiovisual materials and ARTstor, with the purpose of enhancing classroom instruction. The Center also presented a workshop for faculty on the use of technology for formative assessment.

Hofstra’s first major center, the Cultural Center, directed by Natalie Datlof, and co-directed by Athelene Collins, has a national reputation for the scope and diversity of its conferences and has had another successful year with conferences ranging from the future of U.S. health care reform to a two-day interdisciplinary symposium focused on children’s toys, games, dolls and play activities.

Faculty Accomplishments The accomplishments of our faculty continue to be noteworthy. It is not possible to list all the faculty achievements, but what follows is a representative sample of the continuing productivity and increasing prominence of the faculty.

The 2010 Best Paper of the Year Award in the Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics was awarded to Zarb School of Business faculty member Boonghee Yoo (2009) for his work on “Cross-National Invariance of the Effect of Personal Collectivistic Orientation on Brand Loyalty and Equity: The United States versus South Korean Consumers.”

Information Technology and Quantitative Methods faculty member Dr. Elaine Winston was awarded Best Research Paper for the paper “Information Technology Innovation: Implementing an Electronic Medical Record,” presented at the Global Information Technology Management Association World Conference in Washington, D.C. In the School of Communication, Lisa Merrill, professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Rhetoric and Performance Studies, was awarded the Eccles Centre Visiting Professorship in North American Studies at the British Library for 2010-2011 for her research project, “Performing Race and Reading Antebellum American Bodies.”

Bob Papper, professor and chair of the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations once again conducted a highly regarded survey for the Radio Television News Directors Association on the state of the broadcast news industry. He presented his results at the conference of the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication.

In the School of Education, Health and Human Services, Dr. Maureen Murphy was named to two important lists by The Irish Voice – one of the 100 top Irish-American Educators and one of the 100 Most Influential Irish American Women. In addition, the American Irish Historical Society has just launched, in her honor, the Maureen Murphy Research Seminars in Irish and American Irish Studies. Dr. Murphy was also an invited lecturer at two of Brazil’s federal universities in summer 2010: the University at Manaus, where she spoke about ghosts and Roger Casement, and the University at Curitiba where she spoke about the playwright Teresa Deevy.

As a co-author for a landmark research study through Campus Pride titled “Status of Higher Education for LGBT People,” Dr. Genevieve Weber, assistant professor of counselor education in the CRSR Department, testified before Congress on September 24, 2010, as a call to action for stronger legislation to protect LGBT students, faculty and staff on college campuses.

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In Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we are beginning to make important breakthroughs in generating more funded research activities, including important efforts by Assistant Professor of Geology E. Christa Farmer who was awarded $462,429 by the U.S. Department of Energy for the establishment of the Hofstra University Center for Climate Study. Professor of Biology Christopher Sanford was awarded a 2010-2013 National Science Foundation grant of $1,200,000 for a project titled “Renovation of a Multi-User Animal Research Facility,” and Greg Maney, professor of sociology, was awarded $108,825 for a project titled “News Media Coverage and the Dynamics of Contention.”

Joanne Willey, who holds joint appointments in the Department of Biology and the School of Medicine, was awarded an NSF grant for “Exploring Regulation of Morphogenetic Peptide in a Philomencious Bacterium,” in the amount of $185,933.

Associate Professor of Psychology Jin Shin was awarded $142,466 by the NIH for a program that is based in Vietnam titled “Home-based Intervention for Children With Intellectual Disabilities in Vietnam.”

HCLAS faculty also continue to make noteworthy contributions to scholarship. For example, Professor of History Stan Pugliese’s book, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, was nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle award. Dr. Pugliese recently learned that his book was also honored with the Premio Flaiano, an award named after Italian journalist and scriptwriter Ennio Flaiano as well as the American Historical Association’s Helen and Howard R. Marraro Award. And Professor of Music Peter Boonshaft and his associates were awarded “Best in Show” and “Best Tools for School” awards at the 2010 convention of the National Association of Music Merchants.

Additional noteworthy accomplishments include Adjunct Associate Professor of English William McGee, who has been selected to serve on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Future of Aviation Advisory Committee, charged with examining the state of the U.S. airline industry; and Professor of Sociology Margaret Abraham, who also serves as the Provost’s Special Adviser on Diversity, was named to the highly prestigious post of vice-president for research for the International Sociological Association.

In our School of Law, Professor Andrew I. Schepard received the ABA Lawyer as Problem Solver Award. The award is from the American Bar Association’s section of Dispute Resolution. Professor Roy Simon was appointed by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to play a key role in a proposed settlement of lawsuits filed by people who believe they were sickened during rescue and cleanup work at the World Trade Center site. And Professor Norman Silber was named visiting professor of law and senior research scholar at Yale Law School.

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New Deans We concluded two dean searches last year and I was extremely pleased with the strength of the candidate pools and with the deans selected. Evan W. Cornog was appointed the dean of the School of Communication. Dr. Cornog earned both a Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Columbia University.

Before coming to Hofstra this past July, he served as the associate dean at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in the areas of policy and development as well as in planning, where he developed the school’s new Master of Arts degree program in journalism. Early in his career, he was press secretary to New York City Mayor Ed Koch. Patrick J. Socci, who earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Polytechnic Institute, began his term as the dean of the Zarb School of Business on July 1. He has extensive experience in higher education and in business, having served as Fordham University’s associate dean of the College of Business Administration and where he was involved in assessment, accreditation, strategic planning, distance learning, development and corporate relations.

He also taught Information Systems in Fordham’s graduate program. And previously he had served as vice president of management information systems at Merrill Lynch Hubbard, vice president of network operations Support Systems at AT&T and Teleport communications Group, and senior vice president of engineering at ADC Telecommunications.

The impressive academic, administrative and real-world experience of each of the new deans should serve Hofstra well and we welcome them to our academic community.

Diversity Initiatives As a University, we continue to place great emphasis on diversity and have a long-standing, far-reaching commitment to diversity. I am pleased to report that this year’s entering first-year class consisted of 34 percent students of color, which was the highest percentage in our history. We continued to sponsor a variety of important programs and to work though our Task Force on Diversity to encourage diversity initiatives. This past year’s activities included continuing our faculty exchange program with Claflin University. Hofstra’s Professor of Philosophy Anthony Dardis spent the spring 2010 semester teaching at Claflin, while Claflin’s Corrie Claiborne spent the semester with Hofstra’s English Department.

And we also hosted a joint presentation by the previous year’s participants – Dr. Barbara Lekatsas, Hofstra associate professor of comparative literature and languages and Dr. Ronald Neal, Claflin’s assistant professor of religion and philosophy. Both spoke of their experiences while at the other’s home institution.

This year (spring 2011), Lori Ultsch from Romance Languages will be going to Claflin and Millicent Ellison Brown (African-American History) will be visiting Hofstra from Claflin. Dr. Brown is a senior research fellow and associate professor of history in the Department of History and Sociology at Claflin University. She received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the College of Charleston, a Master of Education from The Citadel, and a Ph.D. in 20th century U.S. history from Florida State University. Millicent Brown, et al. v. School District 20 (Charleston, SC, 1963) was the 9

landmark case for school desegregation in the state, and those experiences afforded Professor Brown the perspective of “activist-historian” for her research. She has held positions at North Carolina A&T State University, Guilford College, Bennett College, and the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.

We have also just signed an agreement with Claflin University to begin a student exchange program in spring 2011, which will further enhance our strong relationship with Claflin.

Three Diversity Research Awards were granted for the 2009-2010 academic year, and the topics and recipients included: “The Cultural Competence of Student Teachers,” (School of Education, Health and Human Services faculty Darra Pace and Elfreda Blue); a workshop for editors and reporters of local Latino newspapers on professional development as well as advanced Internet-based skills (School of Communication faculty Carol Fletcher and Peter Goodman); and “Promoting Effective Responses to Hate Crimes in Suffolk County,” (Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty member Gregory Maney).

Joanna Grossman, Hofstra professor of law and the John DeWitt Gregory Research Scholar gave the Provost’s Diversity Lecture last spring. Her presentation was titled “Beyond Open Doors: Integrating Pregnant Women Into the Workplace.” Professor Grossman is an expert on sex discrimination and has written extensively about workplace equality.

We also began our participation in the Zawadi Africa Educational Fund program and have brought two young women from Kenya to campus as Hofstra students who are receiving full tuition, room and board scholarships from Hofstra. The students have had a very successful first year and are now in their sophomore year.

During the Diverse Suburb conference, NCSS hosted the first Celebration of Suburban Diversity.

The 2009 banquet featured Computer Associates founder and developer Charles Wang, Brookings’ Amy Liu, and multicultural performances. It attracted nearly 500 people of different races, religions, ethnicities and other backgrounds, and raised funds for diversity-related internships, research, community grants and scholarships, including the High School Diversity Essay Writing Contest.

The 2010 Diversity banquet was also a widely attended and highly successful event.

Our commitment to languages and cultural studies also demonstrates our commitment to diversity.

Except for NYU and Columbia, we teach far more foreign languages, from every major region of the world, than any other college or university in the New York City region. Hofstra professors teach classes in the 14 spoken modern languages (in addition to Gaelic, Ancient Greek and Latin and, of course, American Sign Language): Arabic, Chinese, German, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Punjabi, Japanese, Russian, Swahili, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. It is quite unique for any school anywhere in the United States to teach two African languages (Swahili and Arabic).

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A comprehensive affirmation action policy is working its way through our governance process – including an expanded equal opportunity statement and more comprehensive tracking of job applicants to the point at which a person is hired. The expanded opportunity statement will also include “gender identity, or expressions.”

Finally, our Medical School Pipeline Program began this summer with high school students from the Uniondale, Westbury and Hempstead School Districts, plus a number of students from schools in Queens, with the goal of helping to increase the number of underrepresented minorities who become doctors. This very successful program, designed to help prepare high school juniors for health care careers, includes hands-on training, rigorous academic classes on a range of medical issues, and mentorship from physicians and other clinicians. We are beginning to explore a medical school pipeline program with Claflin students as well.

Student Affairs Our student body is passionate about making a difference. In the past year students engaged in a variety of service initiatives ranging from providing tutoring services to elementary children, serving meals at local shelters, renovating local playgrounds, to raising thousands of dollars to support the redevelopment of Haiti and fighting chronic diseases. Hofstra students were among the hundreds of student-leaders at the National Black Student Leadership Conference. Furthermore they participated in programs to promote the rights of the LGBTQ community, contributed to efforts to enhance environmental stewardship on and off campus, and were active in a multitude of local, national and international causes.

Students complemented their work in the classroom through internships and other career-related experience in hundreds of different industries. As a result of outreach to business and industry leaders, 57 percent more internship opportunities were made available to students. In addition, almost 200 career development programs, workshops, and seminars assisted in guiding students in all aspects of their career development.

Information Technology The University continued to invest in technology over the past fiscal year. In an ongoing effort to enrich the learning environment, an additional five classrooms were newly outfitted with technology and seven existing technology classrooms have been upgraded and modernized. The success of the University’s distance learning initiative prompted the development of an additional 15 new distance learning courses: 11 undergraduate and four graduate courses. A total of 252 new computers were installed in 20 labs and classrooms in the Weed, Gittleson, Roosevelt, Adams, Berliner, Hauser, The Career Center, McEwen, Hagedorn, Hofstra Dome, Breslin and BDC buildings.

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Mobile computing has clearly emerged as a key future direction of technology for the campus. As such, the University’s first iPhone app was released and is available from the App Store. The application provides mobile access to campus information such as directories, maps and events as well as grade and course information directly from the Hofstra Online Information System upon authentication. Additional applications will be developed for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and other mobile devices. Security over the wireless network has been tightened as well with the creation of the wireless “HUSEC” network.

To ensure the success of the University in the 21st century, it is evident that systematic analytical analysis is imperative to future growth and achievement in attracting and retaining the best and brightest to Hofstra. To that end, in collaboration with the Office of Undergraduate Admission, a CRM system for Enrollment Management was implemented to attract and retain the best students to Hofstra. To improve overall communications, employee e-mail was transitioned to a Microsoft Exchange system in the “cloud.” This new service provides redundant capabilities as well as archiving of e-mail to meet rapidly expanding compliance requirements.

Capital Campaign Despite the challenging financial times, the University continued to be successful in its fund-raising efforts and secured more than $23 million in cash, pledges and financial commitments in 2010, a significant increase over the previous year. Already, significant plans have been developed to initiate a campaign to raise scholarship and capital funds for the new School of Medicine as well as prepare for the next university-wide capital and endowment campaign. Alumni and friends have responded very positively to Hofstra’s great progress and showed their support through their financial investment. In a time when alumni participation is waning nationally, Hofstra maintained a 10 percent participation rate, an increase of 3.5 percent over the past four years.

Also, during the 2009-2010 academic year, Hofstra saw the greatest number of volunteers in recent years. The University’s goal is to engage as many alumni as possible and find a place where they can share their time and talents. This past year more than 800 volunteer leaders lent their support in a multitude of ways and at a number of events, conferences and networking and social gatherings. A new slate of Alumni Organization officers was elected with Frederick E. Davis Jr. ‘85 serving as the new president of the Hofstra University Alumni Organization.

The Office for Development and Alumni Affairs continues to make preparations for a significant capital campaign for the School of Medicine as well as for a capital campaign for the entire University. A feasibility study is being conducted to assess the amount that should be targeted for a University-wide capital campaign.

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Physical Facilities We continue to enhance our campus through investing in our physical facilities. We have renovated biology labs in Gittleson Hall and will continue the renovation of labs throughout the year until all have been completely redone. The Monroe Lecture Center has been renovated both inside the theater and the outside façade of the building. This theater has also been renamed The Helene Fortunoff Theater in honor of her many years of service and many contributions to our University. We have also created updated lower-level study space in the library. And our Honors College will have a new home on the second floor of the library.

Work on the newly renovated and expanded Fitness Center continues with the center set to reopen in January 2011 before the beginning of the second semester. The new Fitness Center will provide new exercise studios, a larger weight room, a new rubberized track on the second floor, a cardio area with an audio entertainment system, and a lounge and computer station.

This year, our dining facilities have undergone significant upgrades to make them more attractive and efficient. All campus dining facilities are now equipped to accept credit cards, the Café Bistro at Bits ‘n’ Bytes facility reopened with a fresh look and new food franchises, the Hofstra Deli was transformed into a new Au Bon Pain franchise, and new coffee kiosks were added at the law school and Breslin Hall.

And our campus buildings are now fully wireless, with many having the latest ‘N’ technology that provides the best wireless range and connection possible.

Hofstra continues efforts to enhance our sustainability initiatives both on campus and within our community. This past year, we hired a full-time campus sustainability officer to lead our efforts to save resources and advance environmental stewardship at Hofstra. Working with our students, we implemented a new recycling program at the Mack Student Center and Netherlands Complex dining facilities. The Plant Department replaced a number of older gasoline trucks with new clean energy-efficient electric vehicles. We continue to engage our students, faculty and staff to identify ways to improve the efficiency of our infrastructure and energy use, as well as promote new greener initiatives on campus.

Safety and Security The safety and security of our students, faculty, and staff remains a top priority and we are fully committed to making our campus as safe as possible. We have made significant investments in recent years to increase the number of public safety personnel, added surveillance cameras, enhanced educational programs, and installed emergency communication systems.

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Although significant security changes and upgrades have been made, we need to always evaluate, review and benchmark our current practices against the security industry’s best practices. Therefore, this past summer, we hired the highly respected security consultant firm of Margolis, Healy & Associates to conduct a comprehensive campus security audit and make recommendations as to possible enhancements to our current campus programs.

This year, after 25 years of superb service to the University, Ed Bracht retired as our director of Public Safety. Under Mr. Bracht’s leadership, our Public Safety Department has earned the highest level of respect and praise from our students, faculty, and staff, as well as the surrounding local police municipalities. We will certainly miss Ed’s leadership and presence on campus.

We were most fortunate in attracting a superb candidate to replace Ed Bracht as our new director of Public Safety – Ms. Karen O’Callaghan. Ms. O’Callaghan is a 27-year veteran of the Nassau County Police Department, and over her career she advanced through the ranks to most recently serve as the chief of the Nassau County Police Department, the highest-ranking woman in the department’s history. She will be the first woman to hold the post of director of Public Safety at Hofstra.

Director O’Callaghan holds a master’s degree from C.W. Post, and is an FBI-certified hostage negotiator, a state-certified police instructor, and a graduate of the senior police management institute co-sponsored by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has an excellent working knowledge of Hofstra University, and mostly recently served as the Nassau County’s person in charge of security during the 2008 presidential debate at Hofstra.

University Relations ­— 75th Anniversary Vice President for University Relations Melissa Connolly, chair of the 75th Anniversary Committee, and the entire committee and subcommittees, supported by the University Relations, Development and Alumni Affairs and Student Affairs staff, did a fabulous job in planning and executing the 75th anniversary celebration. The opening ceremonies were held from September 23 to 25, 2010, and the celebration will continue throughout the 2010-2011 academic year. The opening convocation, in the Adams Playhouse filled to capacity, included speeches from faculty, alumni and student speakers, as well as my “walk though history” slideshow and an address from Ted Koppel, followed by a gigantic birthday cake of the library and unispan designed by Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes television show). The ceremony continued through Friday’s Diamond Anniversary Reception, which introduced the William and Kate Hofstra Honor Roll celebrating the University and the prominent individuals in Hofstra’s history. On Saturday, the parade of floats displayed the elaborate floats commemorating Hofstra history, followed by the Live at 75 Festival showcasing musical groups through the decades beginning with Sha Na Na, featuring Hofstra’s own Professor Robert Leonard, Blue Oyster Cult, Lisa Lisa, Public Enemy, Fountains of Wayne, and Trey Songz, concluding with a Grucci fireworks display. The final event of the night was comedian Jimmy Fallon’s performance in the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex. The weekend of events engaged an unprecedented number of students and parents (on campus for family weekend), as well as alumni, faculty, staff and friends. The Diamond Weekend Celebration garnered more than 300 news hits from across the nation and the globe. The yearlong anniversary celebration will also feature conferences sponsored by each 14

school, an oral history project that can be viewed on the website, and performances, exhibits and lectures throughout the year. More than 100 events have been planned in total for the yearlong celebration, involving every academic discipline, alumni, students and parents.

In addition to the 75th anniversary, University Relations continues to be focused on increasing national recognition for faculty and academic programs, and using technology more efficiently. The digital studio opened in Butler Annex, allowing the posting online and distribution of web video of faculty speaking about current events and their academic expertise. The myhofstra.com PURL (personalized URL and personalized content delivery system) website was added to our admission marketing program, new campus tours in 3-D through Google Earth were introduced, and the process of installing the newest version of the Google search engine began. University Relations worked with individual colleges and schools to market graduate programs, through events, sponsorships, targeted advertising and search engine optimization programs. We also installed a new, University-wide Marketing Calendar product with which all units of the University will coordinate, plan and schedule their marketing programs. The marketing division also tested new marketing and advertising outlets, such as online radio and television, pre-roll video, paid search terms, social media outlets and on-demand cable products.

National Recognition Hofstra was again listed as one of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Best Colleges to Work For” ranking in seven categories, and was among just 39 institutions to make the Honor Roll. Hofstra was also recognized on the President’s Higher Education & Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction. Only 12 New York institutions received this honor.

Hofstra continues to be recognized by U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review, Fiske, and Forbes on each of their Best College lists. The University was ranked in Tier One in U.S. News & World Report, at No. 139. The School of Education, Health and Human Services and Frank G. Zarb School of Business were again ranked as Best Graduate Schools in U.S. News & World Report.

Hofstra School of Law’s Best Graduate School ranking in U.S. News & World Report improved from 100 to 86 in this year. The Frank G. Zarb School of Business was also ranked among the top 75 M.B.A. programs by Forbes magazine and selected as one of The Princeton Review’s “Great Schools for Marketing and Sales.” The undergraduate engineering program was ranked at No. 49 in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of non-doctoral engineering programs. Hofstra was also ranked as one of the top ten most beautiful campus schools by the college admissions essay website.

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Included in the Long Island Press List of the 50 most influential Long Islanders of 2010 at No. 8, the summary noted: “Following the landmark announcement of plans to build a new medical school and Hofstra’s hosting of the final 2008 presidential debate between Sen. John McCain and now-President Barack Obama, the past year has tested both Rabinowitz and Hofstra as an institution. Having weathered numerous PR headaches, including the DWI arrest of the school’s newly hired men’s basketball coach and the discontinuation of its decades-old football program, Rabinowitz—now in his 10th year as president—has persevered as an unwavering beacon of strength and stewardship for not only this venerable university but its legions of students and alumni. He continues to guide Hofstra as one of Long Island’s premier learning institutions and solidify its prominence.”

Hofstra University Relations continued to receive awards for its work, including a Gold Accolade from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE- District II) for Educate ’08, and Vice President Melissa Connolly was named PR Person of the Year (Educational Institution) by PR News. Several members of the division presented at conferences, including the American Marketing Association, CASE and admission marketing webcasts speaking about Hofstra’s innovative approach to educational communications.

We have just concluded the successful hosting of the only New York gubernatorial debate, furthering Hofstra’s reputation as the place to hold significant governmental debates. The debate was widely covered in New York and national media. And we are actively pursuing the opportunity to host the 2012 presidential debate, with formal applications due in early 2011.

The Future With the opening of the new School of Medicine and the successful 75th anniversary celebration, Hofstra has had an exciting and momentous year. Despite the economic challenges, our future remains very bright especially with all of us working together to further the goals of the University. We will continue to enroll and retain the best possible students and faculty, leading to enhanced recognition of Hofstra University as an extraordinary institution of excellence, nationally and internationally.

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