Series X: Schools and Divisions

This series, second largest in the collection, is contained in 14.5 Hollinger boxes measuring 7 linear feet. Its subject matter is the academic business of the University. There are sequences for all of the schools in operation in the pertinent years, including, where extant, holdings for departments and divisions within them. An attempt has been made to describe each major sequence consistently, incorporating, when present, files labeled Accreditation, Advisory Council, Budget & Financial Matters, Faculty Meeting Minutes and Search for Dean. This collection contains only listings of minutes by school and date. Actual Faculty Meeting minutes have been transferred to relevant Record Groups. Some materials cover divisions reporting to the Central Administration. The schools are placed in the order consistent with Archives practice, from Arts and Science through School of the Arts. Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) departmental and divisional matters are located following the records of the several connected administrative units; non-FAS units follow those of the School of the Arts. Documents concerned with individual personnel matters were discarded.

FAS materials occupy Box 62 through the first third of Box 65. A major development effort, reflective of the centrality of the Arts and Sciences at NYU, was in the planning stage. An outline of FAS development priorities proposed by Dean Norman Cantor is in Box 62, folder 5, n.d. In folder 6 NYU officers evaluate a revised FAS plan, 7/31/79. For an example of Norman Cantor's personal style, see Cantor to Sawhill 10/16/78. Succeeding folders contain routine material generated in the administrative units Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS), Box 62,folders 15-17, and Box 63, folders 1-2, Washington Square and University College (WSUC), folders 3-4. Divisional and departmental matters follow, led by Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, folders 5-8 and Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), folders 9-15. Some units within FAS experienced marked turmoil in this period, for Anthropology Department see Box 64, folder 1, and Biology Department, folders 4-7.

Business Schools material reflects local and institutional interest in advancing the schools' reputation. It begins with the undergraduate School of Business and Public Administration (BPA), Box 65, folder 7. Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) matters appear initially in folder 11 and continue through the first half of Box 66. In Box 65, folder 13, NYU confronts City University of New York (CUNY) expansion plans for Baruch College. Also in folder 13, GBA is ranked #2 in numbers of business executives with NYU degrees. In folder 15, humanities Ph.D.s switch to business. Dean William Dill's 78-79 Report to the GBA faculty appears in folder 16, while folder 17 offers some thoughts on how to upgrade NYU's reputation and ranking, Fred Siegel to Sawhill 10/5/78 and Sawhill to Siegel 10/16/78. A GBA draft Development Plan is also placed in folder 17, followed, in Box 66, folder 1, by a revised version by Sylvia Baruch, 3/7/79. This in turn is followed by a Dill commentary on the Baruch version, 3/8/79. Then, in folder 2, another kind of plan appears, created by a faculty committee and titled "Strategy for GBA," 6/1/79.

The focal point for the School of Continuing Education (SCE) at this time is another presidential management initiative, in this instance a proposed reorganization of SCE, 11/3/75, Box 67, folder 3. Extensive proposal-related correspondence occupies folders 4-10. Routine matters, mainly program-related, precede and succeed consideration of the proposed reorganization scheme, in Box 66, folders 7-12 and Box 67, folders 11-13.

College of Dentistry records of this period are located in Box 68, folders 1-8. This unit was in considerable turmoil, experiencing both a fiscal crisis and an unexpected decanal resignation. For particulars of the former see the several versions of the New York State Education Department (NYSED) "Report on Financing of Independent Dental Schools," with a draft in Box 68, folder 2, 8/19/77, along with Sawhill's comments to Commissioner of Education Gordon Ambach 9/7/77, folder 3. NYU's responses, along with others' comments, were incorporated in the final version, distributed by Ambach to "members of the Board of Regents," 9/28/77, folder 3. Folder 3 also documents the "sudden and unexpected" change in the unit's leadership with the resignation of Dean Donald Giddon, as cited by Acting Dean Richard Mumma in his 1/4/78 Statement to the Faculty. See the Borowitz Papers, Boxes 66 and 67, for some prior history of Dentistry's financial problems.

School of Education content is for the most part routine, concerned with matters such as course development and approval, budget control, faculty recruitment, etc., Box 68, folders 9-13 and Box 69, folders 1-7. The nature of the Education faculty's philosophy may be gleaned in its mission statement of 3/29/76, which opens by both "reaffirm(ing) its traditional professional purpose and, in keeping with modern concerns, broaden(ing) and sharpen(ing) its purview" Box 68, folder 10.

Gallatin Division material (which incorporates the previously-known-as University Without Walls unit, (UWW)) is limited. There the issue of the moment concerned the proposed transformation from the UWW, a unit "that integrates work, internships and independent study," NYU News Bureau release 2/8/72, Box 69, folder 8, into a permanent, successor unit to be known as the Gallatin Division. This proposal was presented by the President in conjunction with his plan for the reorganization of SCE, Box 67, folder 3 above. Sawhill addressed the members of the University Senate 1/22/76 on these plans, following up on this with a position paper to the University community, 3/4/76, also Box 69, folder 8.

School of Law documentation appearing in Box 69, folders 11-15 is routine. The primary matter at the institutional level concerned the disposition of the school-owned C.F. Mueller Spaghetti Company; these records are in Box 70, folders 1-5. Information on the sale of the company to Foremost-McKesson, Inc. and the division of the proceeds between the University endowment and the School of Law is found in Sawhill to NYU Trustees 9/28/76, folder 3; for establishment of the $67.5 million school endowment and a school long range planning committee, see Dean Norman Redlich to Sawhill and Trustees of the Law Center Foundation, 11/23/76, folder 9.

Medical Center and Schools of Medicine materials follow. While substantial in amount, Box 70, folders 12-16 and Box 71, folders 1-15, the content, like that of the School of Law, is generally routine. There is, however, a Medical Center Fact Sheet 4/80 in Box 70, folder 16 and a Case Study Grant Management document (late 1975?) Box 70, folder 12, which offer considerable detail on the history, structure and general administrative functioning of the Medical Center, while Box 71, folders 10-14 provides a multi-year budget survey.

Graduate School of Public Administration (GPA) records occupy the first 5 folders in Box 72. Two of them, folders 1-2, offer general information. Of the three remaining files, one is titled Advisory Council, one Decanal Memoranda, and the third, Center for Science and Technology Policy. Tensions between students in GPA's Health program and the school can be picked up in folder 1, along with a newly developed "GPA Governance Charter," adopted by the GPA Faculty-Student Council 10/19/76, and a sampling of Dean Dick Netzer's memoranda on a variety of administrative matters. Folder 2 contains further material on issues at the school and decanal level, including additional Netzer memos.

School of Social Work (SSW) material is modest in quantity and, in general, routine in scope, with a decanal resignation, search and appointment process fitting into its on-going rhythm, Box 72, folders 6-10. SSW had recently emerged from a period of great turmoil, during which its continued existence was in doubt, and the material here reflects its success in returning to normal operations. See Borowitz Papers, Box 73, folders 8-18 and Box 74, folder 1 for this history.

The contents of the final 8 folders in Box 72 comprise the School of the Arts record. The activities of the school's Advisory Council are well-documented, in folders 16-18. The balance of these materials is routine.

The next section of Series X is taken up with the two non-FAS divisions with records in this collection, the Institute of Afro-American Affairs and the New York Institute for the Humanities (NYIH). They occupy Box 73, Afro-American Affairs in folders 1-2, and the NYIH the balance. One important event in the limited Afro-American Affairs collection was the resignation of the Institute's founding director, Roscoe Brown, and the undertaking of a search for a successor, folders 1-2. Documentation of the conceptualization and planning for what became the NYIH, including a background paper by Sawhill, titled "The State of Higher Education in the City," and presented by him at a conference on the future of the Intellectual Community in New York City 12/10-11/76 at NYU, a draft prospectus, 7/77, and several discussion drafts, 8/77, 9/21 and 10/77 constitute the NYIH material and offer insight into the thinking and the process by which it came into being, folders 3-11.

The final section of Series X has been subdivided in three. Subseries I, titled "Interschool," contains the record of the Interschool Committee on Undergraduate Education, 10/77-3/79, Box 74, folders 1-2. Subseries II is titled "Transition to Bennett Acting Presidency, ACADEMIC." Folders 3-5 contain Bennett-annotated Academic Long Range Planning materials; beginning with folder 6, and continuing through Box 75, folder 12, are Bennett-annotated school and division Annual Reports for 1978-1979. Subseries III occupies the majority of Box 76, and is titled "Transition to Bennett Acting Presidency, ADMINISTRATIVE-FINANCIAL." Folders 1-2 contain Bennett-annotated briefing materials, while the content of the remainder of this series, folders 3-8, covers computer facilities, cost allocation reports for 1978-1979 and 1979-1980, financial affairs and long-range compensation.