February 2, 2009

State of the University

I am pleased to have this opportunity to address the faculty and to summarize the major accomplishments of this past year.

By any measure, this has been an extraordinary year for Hofstra University. Hofstra’s hosting of the third and final presidential debate and the creation of a school of medicine in partnership with North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System garnered national attention for the University and will produce lasting benefits in the years to come.

I believe that Hofstra is well poised to leverage its successes during this exceptional year and to move forward to attain the next level of academic excellence, nationally and internationally.

I have briefly set forth below the key achievements of the past year.

Presidential Debate: It is hard to believe that it was just last year, at the 2007 State of the University address, that I reported that we were anxiously awaiting word from the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) as to the final selection of the debate hosts. What a difference a year makes!

After years of planning, preparing the application, and hosting site visits by staff of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the commission, in November 2007, announced that Hofstra University would be the site of the third and final presidential debate, on domestic issues and economic policy. From the time of the announcement until the actual debate took place on October 15, the Hofstra community was fully engaged in the complex logistical and technological preparations for the debate, with the mandate that the Hofstra debate was to be the most professional and efficiently run debate possible, with the intention of impressing the commission and campaigns that Hofstra would be selected to host another debate in 2012. And the debate was a great success, smoothly and efficiently run, with Hofstra’s performance earning high praise from the commission and campaigns.

Once awarded the debate, we were determined that this event be a continuing learning experience – not just an isolated event – for our students and, indeed, for the entire community. Thus, Educate ’08 was launched, through the efforts of Vice President for University Relations Melissa Connolly; an extraordinary committee under the direction of Associate Professor Rosanna Perotti; the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency and its director, Professor Meena Bose; and a host of other faculty, students and administrators. More than 150 Educate ’08 lectures, concerts and other programs engaged our students and energized our community. Thousands of students, along with faculty, administration, staff and community members, attended our Educate '08 events, which included several town hall meetings, artistic and dramatic performances, exhibitions of Hofstra Cultural Center presidential conference memorabilia and C-SPAN's presidential history, and lectures by renowned thinkers and policy makers, such as David Gergen, Charlie Cook, Mary Matalin and James Carville, Maureen Dowd and William Kristol, Paul Begala and Frank Luntz, General Barry McCaffrey, George Stephanopoulos, Mario Cuomo and Richard Haass, Michael Dukakis, Robert Rubin and Paul O'Neill, Michael Goodwin, Edward Rollins and Robert Zimmerman, Dee Dee Myers and Ari Fleischer, as well as scholars, journalists and pundits. Our partners in these efforts were the Department of Political Science, the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, the Center for Civic Engagement, The National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, the Division of Student Affairs, and all the schools and colleges. Almost 50 special courses were also created to enable students to learn more about presidential politics.

More than 350 students volunteered on campus with the media, the CPD and the University. Thousands of students participated in live television and radio broadcasts, visited CNN, C-SPAN, VoteSmart and Rock the Vote in Issue Alley, and attended our Debate Viewing Parties, hosted by Student Affairs. School of Communication students hosted the media at a special reception, and Zarb School of Business students represented the University at the NASDAQ opening bell ceremony. Additional students worked for each campaign and immersed themselves in politics, many traveling with the campaigns in the weeks following the debate to campaign in other states.

On the day of the debate itself, the campus was filled with thousands of visitors, including more than 4,000 journalists, and our students and faculty were interviewed on radio and television and supported the candidate of their choice. All the debate tickets allocated to Hofstra University from the Commission on Presidential Debates were distributed to current students by lottery. More than 6,800 students entered the ticket lottery, and 350 lucky students received tickets to watch the debate live. Other students, faculty and administrators gathered at debate watch sites all over campus, and remained to discuss the issues and performances by the candidates for many hours thereafter.

In addition to meeting the goal of student involvement and engagement in the political process, hosting the debate surpassed our goal of excellent media coverage. Newspaper articles focused on Hofstra for the weeks preceding the debate, including The New York Times article titled “For the Last Presidential Debate, A Nation’s Eyes Will Turn to Hofstra,” two consecutive days of Newsday cover pages, and cartoons about Hofstra by Walt Handelsman. During fall 2008, traffic to our Web site more than doubled. There were more than 12,000 mentions of Hofstra in the national media (an increase of 350% over our typical media tracking) and more than 150 positive stories dedicated to Hofstra's hosting of the debate, our students and faculty, and Educate '08. Coverage included our faculty's roles as experts and pundits both before, during and after the debate; the polls produced by The National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University; and interviews with media from Japan, Korea, Kenya, France, Great Britain, Ireland, and many other countries. The Web site included more than 25 videos, mostly reported by students; thousands of photos; links to other Web sites; news tracking; and resources for visitors.

On October 15, Hofstra peaked at #12 on Google’s top 100 searches, settling in at #79 for the day. The searches spiked at 9 p.m. EST, when the debate began. For the first 16 days of October 2008, Hofstra received 345,851 unique visitors to the site, an increase of 115% over last year’s count of 160,799 unique visitors during the same time period. The Admissions home page had 29,360 visits during the first 16 days in October of this year, compared to 21,471 last year.

 There were 5,709 broadcast stories that mentioned the Hofstra debate, with an estimated 337,689,000 viewers. The Cision (the company hired to calculate data generated from Nielsen) publicity value is estimated at $15,286,661. When we look at print/Web stories between September and October, there were 13,656 stories in more than 3,500 monitored print and Web outlets (national and international) that mentioned Hofstra in connection with the debate, with a potential readership of 12,905,165,456.
 
In total, there were more than 19,000 stories or mentions of the Hofstra debate over two months. When factoring in all of our clips, we saw a 400% increase over the two months in the media coverage we received. What cannot be counted are the countless stories in unmonitored publications, which include college and high school newspapers, e-newsletters, free and local newspapers, which number thousands in the United States and in the hundreds in the New York City area. From this it would be reasonable to estimate that the total publicity value of the media generated from the debate exceeds $30 million.

It is, of course, impossible to fully assess the public relations impact of the debate. Some of the impact is not immediately measurable, but will hopefully be reflected in long-term reputational gains and enhanced name recognition. Suffice it to say that the debate and surrounding programming and media coverage exceeded all expectations and truly put Hofstra on the map.

Moving forward, the University will host Define ’09: New Challenges, New Solutions, a yearlong series of programs that will examine the new presidential administration, its policies and initiatives, the challenges we currently face and ways to address our country's most pressing issues.

Designed to keep our students and our community engaged in politics and civic engagement, this program builds on the success of Educate '08 and the hosting of the October 15 debate. We hope to have participation from all schools and colleges, as well as any department that plans public programs, as we did for Educate '08. We already have several programs planned, including confirmed visits from Anderson Cooper and David Plouffe, and will be announcing a more complete schedule in early spring.

New Hofstra School of Medicine: Since last year, the establishment of the Hofstra University School of Medicine in partnership with North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, has become a reality.

Shortly after I assumed the presidency of this University, I asked the provost and other senior management to begin to explore the feasibility of the establishment of a medical school. At that time, however, we were discouraged from embarking on such a venture because of the lack of perceived need for new medical schools. Thereafter, in 2006, the AAMC recommended that enrollment in medical colleges be increased by 30% by 2015, citing population increases, a doubling in the number of citizens over the age of 65 between 2000 and 2030, and an aging physician workforce, among other factors. This call for increasing the number of U.S.-trained physicians prompted Hofstra to reexamine the feasibility of the establishment of a medical school. During this same period and spurred by the same AAMC announcement, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System was also interested in pursuing the opportunity to create its own medical school or to partner with another institution in forming a school of medicine. North Shore-LIJ President Michael Dowling and I thus began to discuss the advantages of collaborating to create an innovative and excellent school of medicine.

After a yearlong examination of the feasibility of establishing a medical school, our consultants concluded that the establishment of a medical school was feasible and achievable, that there would be a pool of qualified applicants both locally and nationally, and that the partnership between Hofstra and North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, with its strong clinical education, service and research programs, would benefit both institutions as well as the Long Island community.

In May 2007 I appointed a Medical School Advisory Committee to advise on the integration of the proposed Hofstra University School of Medicine with the rest of the University and to create both educational and scholarly synergies between the existing schools and colleges of the University and the new School of Medicine. The committee was chaired by Bernard J. Firestone, dean of Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and composed of representatives from all the academic units of the University, along with representatives of senior management. The committee organized itself into a number of subcommittees, each charged with examining ways in which the School of Medicine could be integrated into the larger University. The subcommittees reported their proposals at a number of meetings, making recommendations as to the relationship between a medical school and undergraduate and graduate science programs; collaborative grant activity; joint degree programs; enhanced internship opportunities; and the development of academic programs within the medical school that would benefit from existing strengths of the University. All the subcommittee reports were endorsed by the Medical School Advisory Committee as worthy of my consideration and that of the School of Medicine, and these reports are being studied by the dean of the School of Medicine and by the relevant committees in the accreditation process.

A formal agreement was signed on March 26, 2008, to establish the Hofstra University School of Medicine in partnership with North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. The agreement provides for a close and continuing relationship between North Shore-LIJ and Hofstra, with substantial support from North Shore-LIJ over a 10-year period and beyond. This relationship, as well as Hofstra’s excellent infrastructure and reputation, makes it possible for the medical school, from the very beginning, to join the ranks of excellent schools with extraordinary clinical opportunities for students and with an established record of research from The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.

This unique partnership brings together two outstanding Long Island institutions, ensuring that the School of Medicine would have excellent clinical training opportunities and research recognition from the outset. Hofstra, with its distinguished schools of law, business, liberal arts and sciences, communication and education, health and human services, provides its renowned faculty and an existing admissions and student services infrastructure, as well as a beautiful campus where a new medical education building and residence hall will be constructed. North Shore-LIJ Health System, as the third largest health system in the nation, brings to this venture a first-class group of hospitals, health care facilities and research institutions, and some of the nation’s most respected physicians and researchers.

After interviewing search firms and considering the possibility of external candidates, as well as considerable discussion and consultation, Dr. Lawrence Smith, North Shore-LIJ’s chief medical officer, was appointed the founding dean of the Hofstra University School of Medicine in partnership with North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, an appointment that we believe will ensure the smooth integration of clinical and classroom experiences and that will provide excellent and innovative leadership. Dr. Smith joined North Shore-LIJ in May 2005 as chief academic officer and senior vice president of academic affairs. In this capacity, Dr. Smith strengthened the health system’s graduate medical education programs and expanded medical school affiliations, significantly enhancing North Shore-LIJ’s ability to recruit medical students and residents. In addition, Dr. Smith was responsible for overseeing the 15-hospital health system’s medical student education programs and academic faculty appointments. Before joining North Shore-LIJ, Dr. Smith was at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, where he served as dean of medical education (beginning in 2002) and chairman of medical education, founder and director of the school’s Institute for Medical Education, professor of medicine and an attending physician. He joined the faculty of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1994 as vice chairman of the Department of Medicine and residency program director. Prior to his career at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Smith practiced general medicine at Stony Brook University Medical Center, where he became a full-time faculty member, director of education and program director of the hospital’s residency program in internal medicine.
The medical school is expected to admit its first class in 2011, subject to obtaining preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and New York state approval. Dean Smith has been meeting with the deans of the other schools on campus, and is involving faculty from all areas in planning for the medical school. Work on the self-study for accreditation is currently underway, and we expect to submit the required materials during 2009.

Enrollment Management: This past year presented particular challenges in enrollment management because of the worsening economy, credit crunch, and intense competition from elite institutions for the top of our class and from local colleges offering significant aid packages to students who do not qualify for comparable packages at Hofstra.  Applications were at an all-time high, exceeding 20,000, but deposits were below the number projected as of May 1, 2008. At that time, the University reacted decisively, determining after consultation with the Board of Trustees not to alter admission standards; instead, projected enrollment was reduced, and budget reductions and other adjustments were made to support a smaller class. At the same time, Admissions continued to aggressively recruit high-performing applicants and worked with deposited students so as to reduce melt; we created funds for economic hardship to assist needy applicants; and we monitored the situation on a daily basis. As a result, the University enrolled a freshman class of 1,655 students (only 80 students down from last fall’s enrollment of 1,735), as well as a transfer class above the reduced budget. And these additional students were gained without sacrificing quality. Indeed, the SAT mean improved to 1182, GPA and class rank remained approximately the same as last year, and students of color increased from 20% to 25%. The percentage of out-of-state students remained at 50% of the class.

Enrollment for this spring looks very positive, with continuing student registration (both undergraduate and graduate) pacing ahead of projections. New transfer and new graduate enrollment also is on pace to meet projections.

Although it is too soon to predict fall 2009 enrollment, thus far, applications are running approximately 8% ahead of last year. Interest in Hofstra is very strong, with our inquiry pools for sophomores, juniors, and seniors all significantly higher than ever before. For example, inquiries (including all indications of potential interest) from juniors now stand at 70,399, compared to 44,363 at this time last year.

Improvements in Retention: The retention of the freshman class that entered in 2007 is at 80.3% (the highest one-year retention figure in our history), up from 79% last year. This is a significant accomplishment, and meets the retention goal set in the Five-Year Plan two years ahead of schedule, a remarkable accomplishment given that the retention rate of classes entering in 2002 and 2003 was 74%.

Student satisfaction has also increased significantly since the 2003-2004 academic year, as measured in our annual survey of undergraduate and graduate students. Students today report higher levels of overall satisfaction with their experiences at Hofstra, are more likely to recommend Hofstra to others seeking a degree, rate the quality of our facilities and services higher, and show higher levels of both academic and social engagement with their peers and faculty. Notably, our freshmen today are also more satisfied than those who entered five years ago. Enhancing student satisfaction and retention has been a high priority of my administration, and the successes in this area are attributable to advances in many areas.

The Division of Student Affairs, the Task Force on the First-Year Student Experience, and First-Year Connections faculty and administrators have worked very hard to create a culture of excellent student service and support. New programs and opportunities in advising, leadership training, parent and family programs, and residential programs, together with increased student and family contact have led to a more supportive network for our students' overall college experience. In particular, the redesign of our first-year academic program followed by the redesign of the advisement system is helping students make the transition to responsible and informed decision-makers, while developing their skills of self-advocacy and learning accountability. Some highlights that were conceived early in 2007 were fully functional this academic year, including the Multicultural & International Student Programs Office, which has a new focus on diversity education and programming for students, the formation of an expanded Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, and the transition from Student Activities to Student Leadership and Activities, making explicit the office’s mission to create not only community-building programs, but also leadership development opportunities for all students.

All departments in the Student Affairs division were able to identify new opportunities to enhance our programs and services for students. A major project was reviewing and revamping our existing judicial code, resulting in the creation of PRIDE Principles. These principles: Personal and Social Responsibility, Respect for All Individuals, Integrity and Ethics, Development of Community, and Expression and Free Exchange, lay out a set of core values for the way we all interact with each other as members of the Hofstra community. The shift toward using these principles to enforce community standards opens a conversation about one’s responsibilities as a member of a community, and can be used far beyond judicial applications on campus. The Office of Commuting Student Affairs has used them to promote the importance of being a good neighbor for our growing population of students who live off-campus with friends instead of with their families. Our resident assistants and resident directors promote them as a way to set floor expectations and mediate roommate conflicts in the residence halls. There are endless possibilities for dialogue and programs based on these community ideals. Our first-year faculty and Student Affairs administrators are all very proactive, assuming the roles of mentors, counselors, coaches, and advocates for our students, leading to increased student engagement in our programs, services and resources.

Continued...