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As 2024 ends, I’m happy with a yr of nice progress for The Metropolis College of New York that has given us good purpose to really feel optimistic.
In 2024, our faculties welcomed extra college students and carried out extra packages to assist information them to careers. It was a yr of record-breaking funding for the College’s analysis, and a yr of progress with the enlargement of 1 faculty.
CUNY’s enrollment progress – 3% for the second yr in a row – has solidified our rebound from the post-pandemic enrollment declines that impacted faculties nationwide and saved too many metropolis college students away from the remodeling energy of a school diploma.
And we’re not slowing down. This fall, greater than 55,000 New York highschool seniors utilized to CUNY faculties throughout our four-week fee-waiver interval – a 62% improve over final yr’s inaugural price waiver marketing campaign.
These college students view faculty as key to their pursuit of fulfilling careers, and we’re working arduous to ship on that promise. This yr, we aggressively broadened our capability to assist them acquire paid internships, apprenticeships and full-time jobs. Our CUNY Spring Ahead program grew by 60% because of funding from Governor Hochul. With Mayor Adams, we introduced an almost $12 million enlargement of the CUNY Inclusive Economic system Initiative. With assist from the Robin Hood Basis, educational departments started incorporating career-infused diploma maps to maintain college students on observe to compete for jobs in fields aligned with their majors.
This yr additionally superior CUNY’s work for the general public good. We introduced the elevation of our College of Drugs to a standalone CUNY establishment, increasing the college’s attain by including grasp’s, doctoral, post-graduate residency and different medical packages and strengthening the college’s mission of offering top quality well being care service to underserved communities.
In February, we opened the Nursing Training, Analysis and Apply Middle at Lehman Faculty, a 52,000-square-foot facility that tripled the college’s capability to coach nurses. CUNY graduates 1,800 nurses every year, almost half of the brand new nurses coming into the town’s workforce yearly.
It was additionally a banner yr for private and non-private funding that can assist advance CUNY’s academic, analysis and public mission for years to come back. Our greater than 10,000 researchers garnered $672 million in exterior funding within the final fiscal yr, an all-time document excessive for the College.
Moreover analysis funding, CUNY hit new highs for main presents from our beneficiant philanthropic donors. The Simons Basis and Simons Basis Worldwide supplied a $75 million present that can make CUNY a hub for computational science and synthetic intelligence and assist our participation in Governor Hochul’s Empire AI challenge. And CUNY has raised $4.7 million from 5,200 donations via this month’s #CUNYTuesday marketing campaign, an all-time excessive for the annual day of giving and a rise of greater than 30% since 2022. There’s nonetheless time to offer and make an impression at cunytuesday.org.
CUNY additionally continued to develop this yr as one of many nation’s most numerous universities. We grew to become one of many first universities within the nation so as to add to its faculty calendar Lunar New Yr, the Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and Diwali. CUNY faculties can have no courses on these holidays beginning in 2025. The motion was championed by college students, who rightly argued that no person ought to face the burden of lacking a category to allow them to have a good time a vacation or competition that’s key to their heritage.
This yr was actually not with out its challenges, and we all know we now have plenty of work forward as a result of our ambitions to higher serve our 240,000 college students are excessive. However I do know the enduring willpower of the CUNY neighborhood will propel us ahead and into new heights in 2025.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The Metropolis College of New York (CUNY), the most important city public college system in the US.
