University Planning

A generative planning process is underway and will be completed in the spring. 

Leadership
Tokumbo Shobowale, EVP for Business and Operations
Stephanie Browner, Interim Provost and EVP for Academic Affairs
Jennifer Hobbs, SVP for Administration and Chief of Staff
Anne Adriance, SVP for Marketing and Business Development
Melanie Hart, SVP for Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice and Chief Diversity Officer

Support and Coordination
Leads:
Lisa Bonner, AVP, Business Services
Jin Kim, Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Administration
Jane McNamara, Interim Senior Director and Chief of Strategy, Office of the Provost 

Additional Staff:
Irwin Kroot, AVP, Human Resources
Shawn Ogiba, AVP for Enterprise Applications and Business Intelligence
Lisa Preston, VP, University Marketing

For more than two years, the university has been engaged in inquiry, listening, and analysis from operational, cultural, financial, and social justice perspectives. Our planning process is shaped by the faculty, staff, and students across the university, who have made a commitment to teach, research, study, and work at The New School, and share in creating the university's future. 

The following reports collectively bring all of those observations together.

• Reimagining Sessions — a series of meetings held in August 2020 with leaders across our campus that provided insights to improve the structures and services supporting our academic mission 
• Community Engagement Surveys — a university-wide survey and series of small-group dialogues held in spring 2020 with students, faculty, and staff to inform university planning 
• Campus Climate Assessment — a university-wide process launched in 2018 aimed at shedding light on the university community’s  experiences with and perceptions of diversity, equity, and inclusion on our campus 
• CoRE Project — an 18-month initiative involving hundreds of faculty and staff members, designed to identify ways to better serve our students and one another

In the 2019 surveys (e.g. NPS), The New School Community indicated that our data are siloed, our applications are fragmented, and our experience is disintegrated. We had a long history of bringing in new systems to fix the problems created by existing systems - which itself created more complications. The term “platform” gets  used by many people at our university, and we even feel like we suffer from  platform fatigue syndrome. However, in  fact neither of these are true - we don’t have a true university platform, let alone the fatigue. 

Recognizing the technical debt above, the IT dept partnered with select business champions, and began the journey towards creating The New School Platform (TNSP) in 2020. This includes a signal source of truth (SSoT), a tool chest for users to build additional applications, a channel to monetize user applications, a hub to connect users and developers, and an elastic infrastructure that auto scales with workload. Together, these  enable one unified, natural, and low-friction experience. A project of this magnitude (such as Amazon.com, airbnb) takes time to build, but our agile approach will deliver capabilities incrementally. The first capability is focused on building the foundation of the platform - the SSoT. It provides longitudinal intelligence on faculty assignments and will launch in December 2020. In 2021, we will continue to evolve the SSoT capability while also starting the efforts on the “Integration Engine” to seamlessly integrate our systems at scale, version 1 of the user experience, and Salesforce.

Lead:
Ben Sanders, Assistant Vice President for Emerging Technology
Questions? Contact Ben at sanderb@newschool.edu

Encompasses major initiatives to develop external partnerships and business opportunities as means to significantly increase revenue.

Staff leads:
Anne Adriance, SVP for Marketing and Business Development
Mariana Amatullo, Vice Provost For Global Strategic Initiatives
Steve Melzer, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives

Questions? Contact Steve Melzer at smelzer@newschool.edu

This is the work of improving our administrative structures and processes while respecting and acknowledging the unique nature of The New School.

This initiative involves assessing roles, responsibilities and processes in the following areas. The timeline, approach and participants for each will be different. Read on for details.

Human Resources and Finance
A design team composed of subject matter experts from Human Resources, Finance, and the Vice Deans of each college is  working to develop recommendations for more flexible and responsive organizational structures. Read more about the design team’s members, charge, and timeline in the Charter.

Questions? Contact Lisa Bonner at bonner@newschool.edu

Marketing+Communications
This team’s primary objective is to create common understanding and shared standards for the roles and responsibilities between the Marketing and Communications department (M&C), and marketing and communications roles at the colleges and in other administrative departments. This work includes 1) clarifying support provided by M&C, the colleges and other administrative departments, as well as any necessary third parties, and 2) establishment of standards for how college and administrative teams’ marketing and communications priorities are determined, shared, and aligned.

Administration in the Colleges
The College Deans and Vice Deans are in early stages of discussing the timeline and approach for administrative revisions to roles, responsibilities and processes. They anticipate fully embarking on this work in early 2021. Any changes in college administrative roles and processes will not impact future academic structures that might be developed as part of strategic planning.

The university is continuing its work to secure a sustainable and strong future for generations to come. Making the best use of our space is an important part of this process and one of the ways in which The New School can strengthen its financial position. Space-related costs are second only to faculty and staff costs as the largest expense category for the university, and comprise approximately 24% of our annual operating budget. You can read more about the range of measures we are taking here.

Our experience with remote work arrangements for the past nine months has helped us all think differently about our space needs for day-to-day work and to understand more about the types of work that require an on-campus presence. We have learned that remote work is well suited for some activities and roles, and some employees actually favor it. We also understand that, for many, aspects of working remotely have created challenges both professionally and personally. We are using this experience along with three information-gathering touchpoints to help us create a plan for a healthy balance of ongoing remote work arrangements and on-site work that prioritizes academic program delivery and the student experience, as follows:

November Survey
Audience: all managers and area leaders 
Purpose: collect information regarding what activities must be performed on campus, how frequently, and why they cannot be completed remotely.

December Survey
Audience: all managers and area leaders 
Purpose: assess our administrative office and meeting space needs on campus.

January Survey
Audience: all remote employees 
Purpose: understand the conditions under which our remote employees are working and  the effectiveness of our current infrastructure, procedures, and training resources in supporting them. 

Commitments
While these surveys will provide helpful information, there are a few things that are clear at the outset. 

First, as we think about remote work we must remain committed to providing the highest levels of service for our academic programs and the best possible experience for our students.

Second, space efficiency is not our only objective. We understand the importance of connection -- to the campus and to each other -- for all employees. We commit to continue fostering these connections by providing methods and spaces for informal collaboration, social engagement, and a strong sense of community. Achieving the right balance of efficiency and the ability to support culture, collaboration, and connection will require us to think creatively, establish new practices, experiment, and remain flexible.

Finally, we know that accommodating remote work requires a commitment to providing employees with the right tools, services, and support for remote work. Above all, we need to ensure that our policies, processes, and technology are designed appropriately. 

The following administrators are tasked with leading this work. Please feel free to contact them should you have any questions.
Lisa Bonner, AVP Business Services, at bonner@newschool.edu