Education
CUNY bracing for
budget cuts
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
CUNY full-time faculty, adjunct faculty
and staffers were dealt another
blow this year after the city’s public
university system quietly decided to defer a
promised 2% annual salary increase.
Last year, leadership from the faculty
union, the Professional Staff Congress, and
CUNY settled on a fi ve-year-long contract
that would increase adjunct pay by up to
71% through three different means; an
hourly pay rate increase by 2%, securing
paid offi ce hours and increased hourly rate
CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos-Rodriguez FILE PHOTO
based on a single-pay rate scheduled to
start in 2022. PSC represents over 30,000
full-time and part-time adjunct faculty and
staff at CUNY and the CUNY Research
Foundation.
As part of the agreement, full-time
faculty, adjuncts and staff should receive
their 2% salary increase retroactively for
the fi rst two years of the contract–2018
and 2019–and until the contract’s end in
2022. This year, the 2% salary increase
was scheduled to start on November 15.
But the increase never came for faculty and
staff and worked out to be a pay cut already
struggling adjuncts.
Union leadership has taken steps to
begin the grievance process outlined in
their contract with CUNY in order to stop
the delay and is “exploring and open to all
legal action” to stop the delay, said Bowen.
“At a time when there is tremendous
economic stress, not having income that
you expect is very serious,” PSC President
Barbara Bowen told amNewYork Metro.
“There are members who are counting on
that increase to pay their bills.”
The delay comes at a time when teachers
are facing unprecedented challenges caused
by the shuttering of classrooms and shift to
fully online classes. Although Bowen could
not give an exact number on the extra hours
PSC members are working on average, she
said many have reported working at least
50% harder to make classes work during
the school year amid a pandemic.
For many instructors, going remote
meant completely reimagining their courses
from syllabi to grading scale to attendance
policy.
Youngmin Seo, an anthropology and urban
studies adjunct at LaGuardia Community
College in Long Island City, Queens,
said he had to start from scratch when it
came to planning his fall semester classes.
Normally, the bulk of the work for his
urban studies class requires that his students
spend hours out in the fi eld observing
New Yorkers inside of restaurants, businesses
or on public transit. But that work
has been off the table for months since
businesses still have caps on the number
of people are allowed inside and reopened
restaurants have since been shuttered.
Although reimagining classwork was
challenging, a bigger and more constant
challenge for Seo is trying to properly
evaluate students even as they experience
personal disruptions due to the pandemic
that make it harder to log into lectures on
time or turn in assignments.
“I’ve had three students this semester
contract COVID and more than 10 students
with a family member who had COVID,”
said Seo. “They are dealing with hardship,
depression and other mental blockages.”
HIGHER ED TODAY
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Back in early April, as the coronavirus was
tightening its grip on New York, Gov. Cuomo
issued an executive order allowing the state’s
fourth-year medical students to graduate
early so they could help in the battle against
COVID-19. One week later, members of the inaugural
class of the CUNY School of Medicine
received their degrees and began joining the
front lines as volunteers in city hospitals.
To me, it was a moment that symbolized
so much about CUNY. Most of those first-ever
CUNY MD’s are from racial and ethnic groups
that have been both traditionally underrepresented
in medicine and disproportionately affected
by COVID-19. In the kind of virtual commencement
that would later become the norm,
I told them how proud I was of their willingness
to put themselves on the line.
What a year 2020 has been: It was a year
that constantly tested us, and frequently broke
our hearts. All of it demanded — and inspired
— great fortitude and resourcefulness from
the more than 300,000 students, faculty, staff
and leaders who make up the University, and
a great deal of sacrifice for the common good.
It’s important to recall the challenges and triumphs,
and to celebrate the fact that CUNY’s
year is ending on a high note. Let’s take a look
back.
The coronavirus was largely a remote concern
when the year began, but it soon gained a
foothold in New York that forced CUNY to all
but shut down its 25 campuses and quickly pivot
to distance education. When classes resumed
after a week-long academic recess, 95 percent
of the University’s 50,000 course sections had
transitioned to online instruction. We quickly
realized that thousands of students lacked the
tools to participate in distance learning. With
support from Gov. Cuomo, we purchased 33,000
laptops and tablets and made sure they were
safely loaned to students in need. It was just one
part of our broad efforts during the year to help
our students weather the academic, economic
and emotional challenges they faced.
Early in the crisis, we established the
Chancellor’s Emergency Relief Fund with $1
million each from the Carroll and Milton Petrie
Foundation and the James and Judith K. Dimon
Foundation. By the fall, support from additional
donors grew the fund to more than $8
million and allowed us to distribute emergency
grants to more than 10,000 students. CUNY colleges
and schools raised another $8.6 million
on their own.
Meanwhile, CUNY joined the city’s battle
against the coronavirus on many fronts. Campuses
used 3D printers to produce personal
protective equipment. Experts at the School
of Public Health and Health Policy produced
a weekly tracking survey of New Yorkers’ attitudes
and behaviors around the pandemic.
CUNY scientists repurposed their work to take
on coronavirus-related research. And so many
students rallied to help their fellow New Yorkers
even as they faced unthinkable pressures
and loss.
The perseverance and accomplishment
came amid a backdrop of widespread grief. Every
CUNY campus has mourned faculty, staff,
students, alumni and retirees lost to COVID-19.
Among them were Allen Lew, CUNY’s senior
vice chancellor of the Office for Facilities,
Planning and Construction Management. The
University’s website now includes an In Memoriam
page to pay tribute to those we’ve lost.
Through it all, we hunkered down and
pressed on. This year CUNY conferred 56,527
degrees — the second highest total in our history
and just shy of the record high awarded
last year.
Looking ahead to life after COVID, we redoubled
our efforts to help students find sustainable
career paths and play an active part in
the city’s economic recovery. Among the most
important developments were a plan to expand
mental health services and a new partnership,
the New York Jobs CEO Council, which will
create a pipeline to job opportunities for 25,000
CUNY students. We also focused our professional
development training to help 3,400 faculty
become better online teachers, part of a
larger, longer-range initiative to improve pedagogy
at CUNY.
CUNY has many reasons to be optimistic
about the future. The long-awaited coronavirus
vaccine became available for public distribution
earlier this month, and it was a CUNY
nursing alumna, Sandra Lindsay, who was the
first person in the U.S. to receive it. The same
week, we received word of $60 million in gifts
to two CUNY colleges, Lehman and Borough of
Manhattan Community College, by author and
philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. A gift of this
size as we turn the page on such a challenging
year brings us renewed hope for the opportunities
it will create in the coming year and beyond
.O
n that hopeful note, we look forward to a
productive and fulfilling 2021 that helps us heal
the wounds of 2020, and allows us to fully reopen
the campuses of CUNY and of all universities
across the country.
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10 December 24, 2020 Schneps Media