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Letter to the University Senate from
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October 27, 2000
Dear Paul:
I write to inform the members of the University Senate of the major activities in which my office will be involved in the 2000-01 academic year. As always, we will have a very busy agenda, compounded this year by the need to complete several searches for senior academic administrators. In my letter of last year, I indicated that I was optimistic about the future of the University but that there was still more that we could do to enhance our standing relative to our peers. Little has happened since then to change that assessment. We have strengthened the quality of our faculty and students, embarked upon new programmatic initiatives, added to our financial strength and improved our administrative services. In the coming year, we will need to build upon that progress and address further academic, financial and administrative needs to remain competitive with the best universities in the world. In this letter, I will briefly outline the most important projects that will occupy the attention of my office. The list is necessarily limited since much of our time will be occupied with more routine activities of limited interest to the Senate. It also reflects my current perception of what we should undertake. If other significant issues emerge during the year, members of my office will inform the relevant committees of the Senate.
Searches
This will be a busy year for recruiting deans and other senior academic administrators. We are now in the advanced stages of a search, which I am co-chairing with Dr. Timothy Pedley of Neurology, for Herb Pardes' replacement as the Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. By the end of the academic year, we will also need to find a new dean for Social Work and a new Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian. We have selected search committees for both and started to organize their work. I will chair the first; Professor Richard Bushman of History will direct the second. Vice Provost Stephen Rittenberg and his office will staff both. In the Health Sciences, Allan Formicola has announced that he will step down next June after 22 years as Dean of Dental and Oral Surgery. While the Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences is running the search for his successor, I will be involved in evaluating potential candidates and making the final decision on the School's new dean. Finally, we continue this year to search for a new Vice Provost to lead the Earth Institute.
Academic Programs
I have already sent the Senate a proposal from the Arts and Sciences to turn the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation into a new Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology. I also expect to forward a request to turn the divisions of the School of Public Health into academic departments, a step that was envisioned at the time we reorganized the Health Sciences into five Faculties. The faculty in the School of Dental and Oral Surgery are engaged in discussions that may also lead to a proposal to create departments within the School. I do not anticipate any further requests for new departments but will be forwarding several to establish new institutes, such as the ones I have already sent the Education Committee for the Reid Hall Institute, discussed below, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy.
We are coming to the end of the current cycle of reviews for the University's major academic units. This year, we have already brought in an external visiting committee for the School of Public Health and have another group scheduled to take a look at the School of Dental and Oral Surgery next month. We have started to organize an external review for the School of Nursing which I would like to take place in the spring and are working on two additional reviews, for the University Seminars and the Office of the University Chaplain/Earl Hall Center. The latter two will take a somewhat different form from the reviews we have conducted for the Schools. In addition to bringing in external visiting teams, we will establish internal committees of faculty to ensure that we have a University perspective on the future of both units. We used this approach successfully last spring with Miller Theatre. Based on the recommendations of the two committees that reviewed the Theatre, I will work with George Steel, its Director, Dean Bruce Ferguson of the School of the Arts, Vice President David Cohen and others to plan for the Theatre's future.
In last year's letter, I indicated that we were working on a research center at Reid Hall in Paris, France. I am pleased to report, as I have already written to the faculty, that the center will open in January. It will provide a select group of fellows with the opportunity to engage in their own projects while interacting with scholars from French and other European institutes and universities. The center will open with a limited number of fellows, most of whom will be Columbia faculty. Stephen Rittenberg will be working with a faculty committee chaired by Professor Volker Berghahn of History to design a competitive process for the selection of future fellows who will be chosen from scholars around the world.
After a lengthy international search last year, we appointed David Freedberg as the new Director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America. This year, my staff and I will assist with his plans to enhance the Academy's programs and international reputation as a center of intellectual activity on Italian culture and history. The tasks Professor Freedberg will undertake include creating a strong, competitive fellowship program for scholars who will spend up to a year in residence at the Academy, conducting a comprehensive review of its other programs, integrating the activities of the Academy, and especially its fellows, into the academic life of the University, and strengthening the Academy's relationships with Italian institutions.
He is also restructuring its administrative operations and staff, rethinking how its space is used and updating its Web site, brochures and others forms of publicity.
In its short lifetime since its inception in 1997-98, the Academic Quality Fund has become an important source of discretionary resources for new initiatives that improve the quality of academic programs on the Morningside campus. Last year, we committed approximately $1.3 million from the Fund in support of nine separate projects. In the coming year, we will distribute another $2 million through a competitive process with the help of a faculty review committee. Within three years, its funding will increase to approximately $7 million a year. Initially, we used the Fund exclusively to seed new initiatives. While we will continue to devote a portion of the Fund for that purpose, this year we also plan to make block grants to schools to augment allocations from their budgets for on-going operations or as bridging funds for new activities until they can adjust their base budgets to cover their full costs.
We continue to work with the undergraduate schools to strengthen even further their applicant pools and to increase their competitiveness for those students. One element of that effort is particularly worth noting. As part of their strategy for reaching college-bound students, the undergraduate schools are relying heavily upon electronic technologies, and the Internet in particular, to market the University and to permit the on-line submission of applications.
Through our successful APassport to New York@ Program we will continue to expand the opportunities our students enjoy as a result of the rich concentration of museums, other cultural and educational institutions and non-profit and international agencies in our City. Last year, almost 19,000 students were admitted free to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Students are similarly taking increasing advantage of the arrangements we have made to provide them with free admission, internships and the chance to hold work study positions at other institutions participating in the program.
While we have made the enhancement of undergraduate education one of our top strategic priorities in recent years, we have not lost sight of our graduate programs. Graduate students represent the future of the academic profession; they are part of what attracts faculty of the highest rank; and, as part of their own education and training, they make critically important contributions to the education of our undergraduates. We must, therefore, remain fully competitive for the best graduate students, a task that has been complicated in recent years by the high cost of living in New York and the scarcity of affordable housing. We are making substantial investments to expand the supply of University apartments for graduate students, as I will discuss later in this letter, working with the Arts and Sciences to increase the financial aid they receive and actively exploring options for improving their health coverage while controlling its costs. To better understand their needs, we are participating in a multi-university survey on graduate student life and are also working with the Graduate Student Advisory Council, Dean Macagno, Dean Galil and Emily Lloyd to identify how we can improve the quality of their experience at Columbia.
Associate Provost Marian Pagano and her staff continue to conduct a variety of surveys that provide us with a wealth of information about the perceptions of students and faculty about our academic programs and administrative services. In addition to the graduate student survey, in the coming year, her office will complete the seventh in a series of surveys of graduating seniors and the fifth of a representative sampling of undergraduates of all other years. It will also conduct a survey of faculty and staff to help a committee I have established to review our policies and programs on child care.
Faculty
As always, building the best possible faculty will remain one of my highest priorities. We made important additions last year in diverse departments and schools while fending off most attempts by other universities to raid our own faculty. While we did not succeed with every recruitment and lost some individuals we would have liked to retain, on balance, we once again have started a new academic year with a faculty that is stronger than in the last. I expect to continue to work closely with Vice President David Cohen and with the deans of the professional schools on individual recruitments and, in particular, will try to facilitate new appointments with the potential for building faculty linkages that cross the internal organizational boundaries of the University.
In particular, I would note that the rebuilding of the Social Sciences, a long-term project in which I will continue to be involved, is on course. Our History Department is already one of the five best in the country; the recent appointments in Anthropology have vaulted it into the top ranks; and both Economics and Sociology are making enormous gains. With the explosion of knowledge in the sciences, we are also taking a longer term view of what will be required for Columbia to become preeminent in those disciplines. Vice President Cohen has appointed a faculty committee to explore this issue.
1999-2000 was a busy year for tenure reviews. We held 51 reviews, the second largest number for any year since the ad hoc system began and could easily have exceeded the record since we also worked on another 18, including many that we will complete this year. Later in the fall, I will send the faculty the third in a series of annual reports on the ad hoc system that will discuss last year's activity in greater detail. Preliminary indications suggest that this will be another busy year, in large part because of the unusual number of cases deferred from last year.
I continue to look for ways to improve the quality and rigor of ad hoc reviews. We are not considering any dramatic changes this year. However, I am planning to experiment with one change that is worth mentioning. In addition to having an ad hoc committee give me a straight up-or-down vote on the nomination it is reviewing, I will ask its members to rate the strength of several dimensions of the nomination on a scale of 1-to-5 or 1-to-10. This will give me more detailed information on the views of the members and, I hope, facilitate their deliberations.
In addition to sending a report on the ad hoc system to the entire faculty, I am planning on holding public meetings to discuss how we conduct tenure reviews. These will be designed primarily to inform junior faculty of the process by which decisions on their futures at Columbia will be made. They will, however, be open to anyone who wishes to attend.
Last year, I reconstituted the Morningside Salary Equity Committee, with Professor Irv Garfinkel of Social Work as its chair. The Committee's mandate is to update the analysis of faculty and librarian salaries outside of the Health Sciences and develop a methodology for evaluating the salaries of officers of research. It will also extend the study conducted by its predecessor of promotions to tenure on the Morningside campus. I expect its report on faculty and librarian salaries this fall and the results of its other analyses in the spring. Stephen Rittenberg and his research analyst, Rebecca Hirade, are working with the Committee. Rebecca is also assisting the Health Sciences Salary Equity Committee which should complete its study of faculty salaries uptown this fall.
Last spring, we adopted a new copyright policy that was developed by a committee of faculty and administrators, reviewed extensively with the members of the University community and unanimously endorsed by the Senate before being adopted by the Trustees. Having achieved a widespread consensus on the new policy, we must now work to ensure its successful implementation. The new policy calls for a standing committee to oversee its operation and adjudicate disputes when they arise. The committee will be chaired by Ira Katznelson of Political Science and Jane Ginsburg of Law who co-chaired the committee that created the new policy, and will include 15 members, a large majority of whom are faculty. It will also include one student. In addition to working with that committee, we will need develop the necessary mechanisms for faculty and others to disclose works which should be copyrighted in Columbia's name, evaluate their commercial value, license them to the private sector and share any revenues we may realize among their creators and units of the University. The newly established Columbia Media Enterprises will play a role in handling copyrightable materials of commercial value similar to that of Columbia Innovation Enterprises (CIE) with respect to patentable innovations coming out of research by Columbia faculty and research.
This month, Stephen Rittenberg and his staff published a new Faculty Handbook. We have sent printed copies to full-time faculty and officers of research, senior administrative officers, and other selected administrators. We have also put the Handbook on the Web and have equipped it with a search engine to make it easier for individuals to find the information they require. The URL for the new Handbook is http://www.columbia.edu/cu/vpaa/fhb/. We plan to update the Web version of the Handbook every year and will date each section to help people identify which sections have changed. As we will reissue the printed version less frequently, I would encourage individuals to rely on the Web Handbook after this year.
Quality of Life
We will be working this year on a variety of projects to improve the quality of life for our faculty and students. These include on-going efforts to deal with the shortage of affordable housing, create an independent primary school, and improve services.
The University is making substantial new investments to expand its stock of apartments. Through a combination of purchases, leases and other means, we added a substantial number of units last year, most of which will be used for graduate students and post-docs. Currently, we have a new building under construction in Washington Heights, have a purchase pending for a second in Morningside Heights and are negotiating to acquire a third. We are also in the design and development phase for two further projects near the main campus -- the construction of a new building at 110th Street and Broadway to house faculty and a gut rehabilitation of a building for graduate students. At a more preliminary stage, we are exploring the possibility of purchasing or renovating further buildings near both campuses and continue to look aggressively for other opportunities. Not all of our efforts will concentrate on expanding the existing supply of University apartments. I also anticipate that we will experiment this year with a plan to offer cash incentives to tenants to vacate their apartments or to swap them for smaller ones when they no longer need as much space as they currently occupy.
Taken together, these projects have the potential to relieve substantially the housing crisis the University faces and provide our faculty, graduate students and post-docs with affordable, quality housing in close proximity to our campuses. They will, however, take time to complete and, in the meantime, we will be unable to accommodate all of the requests for housing we receive. In an effort to give faculty and others a better sense of their prospects of obtaining University apartments, I recently sent all officers who meet the eligibility requirements for housing a letter that describes the principles by which decisions on housing are made.
We are also facing a growing imbalance in the supply and demand for both commuter and overnight parking in University garages. The problems will become particularly serious this year with the elimination of the lot on 113th Street to make room for a new building for the School of Social Work and the recent closure of an inexpensive commercial lot in the neighborhood to which the Parking Office used to refer parkers. Vice President for Support Services Ken Knuckles oversees the University's program. While he and other senior members of Emily Lloyd's staff will take the lead in addressing the parking needs of our faculty and staff, members of my office will assist in their review of our current practices and their efforts to expand the supply of available parking.
In the last two annual letters to the Senate I have spoken about our plans to create a new primary school covering grades K through 8 to help faculty and other officers obtain affordable, high-quality education for their children. I have also sent several special letters to the faculty on the subject. Located in a new building we will construct on the southeast corner of Broadway and 110th Street, the school will have space for approximately 700 students. About 50 percent of its slots will be reserved for children of University faculty and staff. We will charge tuition, but the amount will be substantially less than at any other independent school in New York City. With a projected opening date of September 2003, there is still a great deal to be accomplished in a relatively short period of time: planning the facility with architects, developing a curriculum and organization for the school, refining its business plan, seeking external funding to supplement the University's commitment, and gathering an outstanding faculty and staff to serve this unique new institution. Assistant Provost Gardner Dunnan will continue to direct the very considerable effort needed to complete these tasks.
As our goal is to draw upon the extraordinary intellectual resources of the University to create a school that will quickly be recognized as one of the best in the City, we will actively involve faculty in the planning process. We will create a Faculty Advisory Committee this year that will have a substantive role in refining the educational plans for the school. We will obtain further advice from an External Advisory Committee which we will also establish this year. We anticipate holding one or more town meetings to explain our emerging plans and will continue to communicate with the University community about the school by letters, publications and Columbia's Web site. It is our ambition to create a school that will make a meaningful contribution to education by the public school system of New York as well as meet the needs of our faculty and staff. We are, therefore, also meeting with leaders of the local school boards and with officials at all levels of government in an effort to develop ways in which we can become partners with the public schools and make them better. We will, of course, keep the Senate informed as the plans for the school approach important milestones and will welcome its comments on how they might be improved.
Recognizing that faculty and staff with school-age children cannot wait until we complete our planning, we initiated a School Search Service last year to assist University employees in finding the best alternatives among existing independent schools. In its first year, this proved to be a popular service, helping over 80 families with results that were generally quite positive. We expect at least a similar level of activity, if not more, and, therefore, have assigned an additional member of the staff to help Gardner provide the service.
In a related effort, I established a Task Force on Child Care last February, with Gardner Dunnan as its chair. The Task Force has been charged with making policy and programmatic recommendations for how we can improve the assistance the University provides to faculty and staff in caring for very young children. I have asked for its report by the end of the December and anticipate that we will begin to implement its recommendations next academic year. The Task Force is also creating a Web site with information about its work and day care in the area which will be launched next month. Once completed, it may be found through the AInitiatives@ section of my home page.
Associate Provost Marian Pagano continues to staff the work of the Faculty Services Committee established by President Rupp to advise us on improvements in the services we make available to our faculty. She will be assisting the Committee this year as it follows up on a pilot study of desktop computer support and continues with its evaluation of custodial services in classroom and office buildings. At the suggestion of the Committee, we are now designing a new Web page for faculty that will provide better information and provide a more extensive list of links to pages describing specific faculty services. In addition, the new Web page will allow faculty to e-mail key administrative officers with questions about University policies and services that they cannot answer from the information available over the Internet or in published documents. Finally, the Committee has recommended that the University create a single office to provide assistance and services to all members of the Columbia community with disabilities. While this office will be administratively located within the Office of Student Services, members of my staff are participating in its design and will work closely with it as it seeks to meet the needs of the members of our academic staff with disabilities.
Research
Executive Vice Provost Michael Crow and the offices reporting to him continue to pursue an ambitious agenda to expand our programs of research, enhance our competitiveness for external research support, and, more generally, strengthen our standing as one of the nation's premier research universities.
Thanks to the creativity of our faculty and the work of Columbia Innovation Enterprises (CIE) in realizing the commercial potential of their discoveries, Columbia now ranks first among universities by a significant margin in revenues from patentable innovations. Last year, our income from licenses and research agreements rose by 46 percent to $166.3 million, bringing the total revenues from these sources since the start of our technology transfer program in 1982 to almost $640 million. For further information on last year's results of the program, readers may consult CIE's annual report for 1999-2000 at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cie/ar9900.html.
As I have warned in my recent annual letters, several lucrative patents have now run out. In the near future, therefore, our revenues are likely to drop sharply. However, CIE, under the new leadership of Michael Cleare who joined the University in September, is introducing a business plan to grow patent and research revenues at a significant pace over the next few years to replace the lost income. While the biomedical sciences continue to generate most of our licensing revenues, the physical sciences and engineering are becoming an increasingly important contributors. For example, we are now licensing technologies to companies that improve electronic displays, digital cameras and medical imaging and still others for the next generation of telecommunications networking protocols. We expect our recent success in the physical sciences and engineering to continue, with the result that our revenues from those sources could grow by a factor of three or four in the coming year. Overall, our technology transfer program has been so successful that one of the tasks Michael will undertake this year is to reorganize CIE to manage its rapidly expanding range of activities.
Since 1993, we have used the University's portion of the income from our technology transfer program as seed money to launch a wide range of multi-disciplinary programs. Known as the Strategic Initiatives, these programs have now grown to the point where the ad hoc arrangements of the past need to be replaced by a more formal, institutional structure. Last year, Mike Crow established the Office of Strategic Initiatives for that purpose. In the coming year, the new Office will formalize its operations while continuing to help faculty identify and organize themselves to respond to new funding opportunities. It will also focus on how we can move the large number of existing projects toward financial self-sufficiency, thereby freeing up the income from the technology transfer program to seed further new initiatives. While the primary emphasis of the Office will be on consolidation rather than expansion, we do plan to support some new initiatives in such fields as nano-science and engineering, the integration of computing and genomics, urban science and cultural policy.
One of the more ambitious programs launched through the Strategic Initiatives has been the Earth Institute, a multi-disciplinary endeavor to study Earth systems and how they are changing. Founded in 1996, the Institute has now built a strong organizational structure that will be enhanced by the addition this December of Professor John Mutter as Associate Vice Provost and its academic director. We are also looking this year for a new Vice Provost to provide the Institute with overall leadership. That search should be completed shortly.
While the search continues, the units within the Institute continue to build their individual programs. The International Research Institute for Climate Prediction is reaching out to different parts of the University to start additional joint projects, including new initiatives in Africa, South America and Asia, and is creating a new administrative structure that will strengthen its international partnerships. Recently, it successfully obtained $42 million in additional funding from the federal government to support its work worldwide to understand and help minimize the impact of major climate fluctuations like El Niño and drought. Biosphere 2 is expanding its programs in new directions under new leadership. As I have already mentioned, the research and teaching programs of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) have now grown to the point that I have forwarded a proposal to turn it into a new academic department. In December, we will welcome Dr. G. Michael Purdy as the new Director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and will be working with him to impart new direction to its programs. This fall, the Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy at the School of International and Public Affairs opened as a new affiliated unit of the Earth Institute, with funding from Exxon-Mobil and the Onassis Foundation.
Work continues on RASCAL, the Web-based system of research administration being developed by the Office of Projects and Grants (OPG) in cooperation with its counterparts in the Health Sciences. Two of RASCAL's five modules are now fully operational. One assists faculty and other members of the University in finding funding for proposed sponsored projects while the other facilitates the electronic routing and tracking of funding proposals. The next module to go live will be one that will enable investigators to comply electronically with federal and state requirements governing specialized aspects of externally funded research, such as the use of human subjects, vertebrate animals, recombinant DNA and hazardous materials.
The use of human subjects in research has become an area of increasing concern for federal authorities. In response to the growing number of regulations, we will conduct a review of our practices in this area in the coming year and set up a new office to ensure our compliance with federal requirements as they evolve. OPG and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action will also be working with Emily Lloyd, John Masten, Purchasing and the Controller's Office to implement new procedures to meet the requirements of the Small Business Administration to expand business opportunities at the University for small firms and those owned by women and minorities.
New Media
Last year, I reported that we had launched Morningside Ventures to promote the development and delivery of educational materials using the new information technologies. We have now split Morningside Ventures into two distinct organizations. Fathom, which is developing an interactive educational portal of the highest quality, has been spun off as a separate corporate entity and now includes a growing number of other educational, research and cultural institutions besides Columbia. I will serve as the chair of the academic council which will serve as the gatekeeper responsible for ensuring the high quality of the content on Fathom's Web site.
Columbia Media Enterprises (CME), which is now led by Todd Hardy, has taken over the remaining parts of Morningside Ventures' original agenda. In particular, it will work closely with faculty and departments to identify and license new media innovations of commercial value and to evaluate the many proposals the schools and departments are receiving from commercial enterprises for joint ventures that use the electronic medium for educational purposes. As the year progresses, it will also pursue projects designed to develop on-line courses, begin to license content and e-learning technologies, and work on the creation of start-up ventures that will utilize the University's educational assets. CME will also be integrally involved with Columbia On-line, a project to develop digital content of interest to our faculty.
The Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CNMTL) continues to expand its efforts to support the use of new media and digital technologies in our educational programs. Since its inception in 1998, it has worked with over 600 faculty and others on educational projects that range from the very simple to the very complex. Due to the heavy demand for its assistance, the CNMTL will open a satellite office this fall on the Health Sciences campus and is in early discussions to create another office in the Morningside Heights area to meet the growing faculty interest in its services.
Space
Last year, I wrote that the University's future, both in the short and long term, depends upon our finding an adequate solution to the problems of space we now confront. Simply put, Columbia has, by far, the smallest, most intensely developed acreage among the major research universities. Given the high cost of buying or renting homes and apartments in New York, moreover, our faculty and students have become much more reliant on us for housing. We are in much better shape academically and financially than at any point in recent decades, but if we do not find more room to grow, it is doubtful that we can maintain our current standing, let alone enhance it. This is especially true in the sciences, engineering, and empirically based social sciences where the ability to deliver space in a timely manner is a critical ingredient in recruiting packages. The situation is not much better for the professional schools and for units like Intercollegiate Athletics.
As serious as these problems are, they are not insurmountable. I expect to devote a considerable amount of time, along with others in the University's senior leadership, to planning for the space needs of the University. In an earlier section of this letter, I have already discussed the steps we are taking to expand the housing pool for faculty, students and post-docs. In addition to meeting their needs for living space, we have also identified a location for the new Columbia school, which will address another great impediment to attracting new faculty --affordable education for their children. Most immediately on the academic side, we are planning for a new science center on the largest remaining space on the Morningside campus, the area between Pupin and Chandler. I expect to receive a report from a faculty committee I established last year to advise us on what should be our highest space priorities in the sciences in the next decade and how the new building can best be used. A little further down the road, we will look at potential sites we own or might purchase in the surrounding neighborhood. In Washington Heights, three additional buildings are being planning for the Audubon site, and other new construction and renovations are under consideration that could add substantially to the Health Sciences usable space.
Libraries and Academic Information Services (AcIS)
At the top of my list of priorities for the Libraries and AcIS this year will be to find a successor to Elaine Sloan who is retiring after 13 years as Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian. In searching for her successor, we will look for someone who will help us develop strategies to utilize the new information technologies for academic purposes while maintaining the excellence of our rich print collection and ensuring that the physical facilities of the Libraries and AcIS remain attractive places for teaching, learning and scholarship.
Even while the search is taking place, the Libraries and AcIS will engage in initiatives that will enhance their ability to meet the information needs of our community. Many of these are being funded as part of the six-year strategic plan we created three years ago to invest over $75 million in additional resources in our information services. Under that plan, we already have relieved the off-crowding in our library stacks through temporary measures that have made materials much more accessible than in the past. In partnership with Princeton and the New York Public Library, we are now working on a permanent solution to the problem of housing our growing collections, in the shape of an automated, off-site storage facility which will be located on Princeton's Forrestal Campus. Construction of the first phase of the facility will be completed by the fall of 2001, after which the Libraries will load in over 2.4 million items from our collections over the following five years. Last summer, work began on Phase III of the renovation of Butler Library. In the new phase, we will upgrade all of the remaining stacks and public spaces and create ten new graduate reading rooms. This fall we will begin a major renovation of the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, and are now planning for a Social Work Library in the new Social Work Building that will be built on West 113th Street. The Libraries are also undertaking a host of more modest projects to reorganize materials in the collections, upgrade furniture and improve the physical quality of its spaces through cleaning, painting and repairs.
Last spring, the Libraries conducted an evaluation of its collection development policies and over the summer reviewed its strategic planning priorities. In the coming year, it will implement the decisions that emerged from those reviews for the development of the University's collections and library services. An essential part of those efforts is the further expansion of the University's digital information resources. Work will continue on several projects that are designed to add to the materials in the digital collections and to give users easier access to the University's electronic resources. The Libraries will also be holding discussions with the libraries at other research universities as part of its on-going efforts to strengthen its relationships with other institutions and enhance users' access to their collections.
AcIS is constantly upgrading the University's network, central servers and connections to the Internet to allow our community to take full advantage of the potential of the new information technologies. In the coming year, it will complete the installation of new network architecture that is much faster and has greater capacity than the old architecture and will allow AcIS to deliver new applications and tools that were not previously possible; it is upgrading the University's servers to handle the rapidly growing volume of e-mail; and it is improving the speed of the University's connection to the network by a factor of three. At the same time it is upgrading the physical parts of the network, AcIS is working to liberate us from them by deploying wireless networking. Initially this year, the wireless network will be available only in the area between Butler and Low, but over time AcIS will extend its coverage area throughout the campus and for a limited distance beyond. To make it easier to get into the network from the outside, it has just finished installing a direct connection to the local cable TV provider that will give residents in IRE housing direct, fast access without having to use the telephone modem pool. This fall, AcIS will release a considerably improved version of the on-line directory of classes. It will also improve the ColumbiaNet kiosks on campus to give users direct access to the Web pages of particular schools and libraries. Finally, it will continue to introduce changes in the HelpDesk to improve the quality of the services it provides and to that end has recently recruited a new supervisor to manage its operations.
Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action
This will be a year of transition for our Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action. Beth Wilson has resigned to devote herself to a research project she has wanted to undertake and may relocate out of the New York area. While I do not expect to make any dramatic changes in the office, I am reexamining its organization and functions in preparation for finding a new Associate Provost next spring. In the interim, Zenobia White-Farrell, who joined the Office as Associate Director last year, will direct its activities with oversight from Vice Provost Stephen Rittenberg.
The change in leadership does not mean that the Office will simply be marking time this year. Zenobia is developing a new process for mediating complaints that come to her Office. The new process will draw upon the considerable expertise in mediating in our Law School by using Professor Carol Liebman and the students in the Mediation Clinic she directs in an effort to find informal resolutions to complaints of discrimination and harassment. Additionally, with help from Stephen and Associate General Counsel Patsy Catapano, Zenobia is reviewing how we handle complaints of sexual harassment in light of recent Supreme Court decisions. I anticipate that we will make some changes in our current grievance procedures and issue a new policy statement in the spring. Once we have completed that task, the Office will also make final adaptations in a Web-based training program on sexual harassment we have acquired and make it available to members of the University community on-line.
In recent years we have streamlined our affirmative action clearance systems to make them less bureaucratically burdensome while continuing to ensure that we are complying with the myriad of laws and regulations governing affirmative action. Zenobia will continue this year with that effort. She will be developing simpler, more accessible written descriptions of our clearance procedures for academic appointments which will be posted on the Office's Web site and will start to review with Human Resources how the recently revamped administrative monitoring process can be further improved. Unfortunately, the most beneficial procedural change we could make -- to automate the clearance processes -- is still being held up by the lack of federal regulations implementing the new system for classifying race and ethnicity that we will be legally expected to use no later than the start of 2003. Should the government issue those regulations this year, the Office will be able to finalize a proposal for the capital funding that will be needed to create a Web-based clearance system.
International Programs and Scholars
Each year, Columbia enhances its stature as an international university with new programs and additional faculty, students and staff from other countries. The number of international faculty and staff has doubled since 1995 and now stands at nearly 1,500. Over the same period, the number of foreign students has increased by almost 30 percent to approximately 5,000. The demands on the International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO) for assistance with visa applications have grown accordingly. Without any increase in its staff, it, nonetheless, is now able to respond much faster to the needs of the international members of our community, largely due to its database management and production system which is the first of its kind in the nation. This year, the ISSO will make further enhancements to that system by, for example, moving exclusively to an on-line application for J-1 visa sponsorship and the designation of visiting scholars and by completing the shift over to the electronic feed of admissions data from the schools.
The Office will also modify its Web site, which already provides extensive information to improve both its quality and ease of use. To help the departments and schools understand the complex regulations of the INS and IRS regarding non-citizens, it is organizing twice-yearly workshops for departmental administrators and will continue to work with the Controller's Office on a series of briefing papers. On the programmatic side, it will rework its orientation programs for international students. It is cooperating with Human Resources and General Counsel to revamp the University's procedures for complying with the INS' I-9 regulations. Finally, ISSO will continue to work with the Office of Public Affairs and Ellen Smith, Assistant Vice President and Director of Federal Relations, to educate federal lawmakers and government officials to the concerns of the academic community resulting from its ever greater engagement with international scholars. Recently, for example, it contributed to the successful effort to persuade Congress to exempt institutions of higher education from the intrusive limits on H-1B visas.
Earl Hall Center and the Office of the University Chaplain
Both physically and programmatically, the Earl Hall Center will see important changes in the coming year. The building itself is undergoing renovations, with improvements in the meeting rooms, the installation of a a new roof to replace the one damaged by last month's fire, and a long-needed refurbishing of its public spaces. The opening of the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life has freed up space in the building that will be used, after suitable renovations, to provide more and better space for the Center's constituent units and, in particular, the approximately 80 groups that are part of the Student Governing Board.
In the coming year, we will conduct a strategic review of the Earl Hall Center and the Office of the University Chaplain to help Chaplain Jewelnel Davis create a strategic plan to guide their future development. Chaplain Davis will be working with the United Campus Ministries to help them become a more active and visible part of the Columbia community. The membership of the Ministries is also expanding in response to the changing demographics of our students and will now include representatives of Eastern religions and African-American churches. The Center will reach out to graduate and professional school students, providing them with space and creating new programs for them and their families. Community Impact continues to grow and now runs 25 different service programs for the community around the University. To help with its expanding programs, the Center will provide additional space and administrative support. In addition, Chaplain Davis will work with it on developing long-term plans for its operations. The sacred music programs at St Paul's Chapel continue to expand in richness and variety. Many use the Chapel's Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, one of the finest instruments of its kind in the United States, which will undergo restorative work this year. Chaplain Davis will also continue to introduce programming that emphasizes the connections between faith and learning and the common values we share as a University community.
Finances
The University''s financial condition remains strong. We ended the last fiscal year with a balanced budget, even while we made substantial new investments in our programs, services and facilities. This year, we expect those trends to continue, although large but unanticipated increases in fuel costs and a resurgence of near double-digit health care inflation will require some adjustments in our plans. The schools should balance their operating budgets while staying within our guidelines on endowment spending. With the healthy market returns we have experienced in recent years on our investments, we have significantly increased the distribution of income from the endowment, starting this year. In fiscal years 2001 and 2002 we will increase the distributions by 18 percent, as opposed to the approximately 5 percent rate to which we limited ourselves in the past. In addition, we have modified the Spending Rule to link endowment spending more closely to the market performance while still returning substantial amounts to principal as a hedge against future inflation and possible down-turns in the market. Despite the rise in health care costs, we will still be able to fund our existing fringe benefits programs and consider selected new benefits without any increase in the fringe rate. We will also continue to invest in important new programs, many of which I have discussed in other parts of this letter, and to undertake major capital projects on both campuses and at Lamont.
As favorable as these results have been, we operate in a very competitive environment and must make significant new investments if we wish to enhance our standing relative to our peers. In the coming year, we will continue to work to moderate the rate of growth in tuition. We will be discussing with the deans a new formula for sharing the costs of many new investments we are making across the broadest possible budget base. We also will consider the feasibility of reducing the common cost rate, although this may not be possible with the sharp rise in our energy costs. Those unanticipated increases point to the impact that forces beyond our control can have on our financial condition. We will, therefore, be working even further to build stabilizing features into the budget to protect us from the consequences of unfavorable external economic trends. For example, we are developing reserves against possible down-turns in the stock market. Similarly, we will work on budgeting approaches that will ameliorate, if not avoid entirely, the financial problems we face when energy costs go up more rapidly than we anticipate. This year, we will also be renegotiating the University's ICR (Indirect Cost Recovery) rate with our new cognizant agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.
Last year, we began a new five-year capital plan which will result in an additional $834 million in investments in our facilities and infrastructure. Thanks to these investments, the University's campuses will have a different look by the end of fiscal year 2004. Last year, we completed several important projects, the most visible of which were the new Broadway Residence Hall, the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life and Phase II of the Butler Library renovation. I have already mentioned some of the capital projects we are currently undertaking for the Libraries and AcIS. We also have just broken ground for a new building for the School of Social Work, and shortly will start work on an extension of SIPA that will provide space for the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy and the Learning Resource Center. Other projects now underway include the renovation of the River Hall residential building, an overhaul of the infrastructure of Chandler Hall, infrastructure upgrades in several other academic buildings and residence halls, and the conversion of space in McBain that was previously occupied by the Columbia Press into residential space for students. This winter a major renovation will begin on Hamilton Hall, and we anticipate starting construction on the new faculty residence building at 110th Street and Broadway (which will also house the new Columbia Lab School) in the spring. Work on the feasibility study for the new science center continues, as does planning for a new Geochemistry Laboratory at Lamont. Some of these projects will be fully or partially funded out of the University's facilities renewal budget, which we have increased substantially in size in order to reduce our dependence on debt as a means of financing capital projects.
External Relations
Even as a private university, we have substantial interests in decisions taken at all levels of government. We will, therefore, continue to monitor developments in Washington and Albany closely and remain active in advocating for public policies that serve our needs and those of higher education more generally. As in the past, I will spend a significant amount of time in both the federal and state capitals along with George Rupp and other senior officers of the University. This year we will be particularly busy in Washington where there will be a change in administration, regardless of who wins, and new members among the New York congressional delegation.
Research funding and student aid remain at the top of our agenda of governmental concerns, and here I can report that the news is quite favorable. As in typical election years, Congress is being generous in funding both. It has passed or is expected to pass substantial increases in the R&D budgets of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies and to add significantly to Pell grant funding and graduate student financial aid. We also expect it to approve a change we have sought in the tax laws that will make it easier for individuals to donate IRA funds to not-for-profit institutions. Other areas we will have to watch in the coming year include potentially new regulations on research using human subjects, possible modifications in intellectual property and patent law, and changes in the Bayh-Dole Act that could affect the financial benefits we receive from licenses and patents on innovations developed with federal funding. At the State level, we will continue to work with legislators and members of the executive branch on a new Rivers and Estuaries Institute and NYSTAR -- a new effort to expand the involvement of research universities in economic development and technology transfers. We are also expanding our contacts with legislators and other representatives of Arizona, hosting visits to Biosphere 2 and working to expand the research funding available for that unique facility.
I continue to participate in projects organized by national academic associations. This year, for example, I am chairing the AAU Committee on Intellectual Property and participating in a study of the National Academy of Science of how technology is transforming research universities. I am also co-chairing an effort of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences to create long-term indicators of the health of the Humanities, helping the National Research Council develop a blueprint for a new study of graduate programs, and assisting the National Academy of Engineering with a study of technological literacy. Finally, I will be involved in an effort being organized through the AAU to develop measures of quality of undergraduate programs that will provide the public with a better guide than the flawed ratings published every year by U.S. News & World Report.
I hope that this letter provides your colleagues and you with information that will help you plan your own activities for the year. If you would like a more detailed description of any of the projects on my office's agenda, please do not hesitate to contact me or the appropriate members of my staff.
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