Grading the administrators: Dean Michele Moody-Adams

Columbia College Dean Michele Moody-Adams, School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora, and Provost Claude Steele have all been at Columbia for at least a full year. This week, the Editorial Board, after speaking to administrators, professors, alumni, and students, will offer our evaluation of their first years and what we hope to see from them in the years to come.

Before she arrived at Columbia, Dean Michele Moody-Adams served as vice provost for undergraduate education at Cornell. In her job in Ithaca, N.Y., she was responsible for the academic lives of 13,000 students in seven undergraduate schools. Cornell’s undergraduate population dwarfs Columbia’s, and its undergraduate mission is distinctly different from Columbia’s focus on the liberal arts.

Dean Moody-Adams came to Columbia—a large and tremendously complicated, bureaucratic organization—from a different world. Her first duty, obviously, was to familiarize herself with our structure and our culture, and she has done so admirably.

She has been more accessible to students than her predecessor was. She holds frequent teas and movie nights and has maintained open channels of communication with the student government, and by all accounts, she has worked well with her colleagues in the administration.

We are impressed with the reputation Dean Moody-Adams has built for herself in only a year, and we are hopeful about the goals she has set out.

In an email, Dean Moody-Adams identified three priorities for her tenure. She hopes to “enhance undergraduate science programs,” to “strengthen … the global dimensions of the curriculum,” and to “ensure the health and integrity of the Core Curriculum.”

The first goal will take time, energy, and money to achieve, but it seems realistic. The second is rather vague. It echoes the administration’s constant advocacy for all things global, but it lacks a concrete set of initiatives. It is the third goal that we believe to be most important for the future of Columbia College.

We also see this third goal as the most challenging, particularly in light of the exact nature of Dean Moody-Adams’ role at the University. She is not only dean of Columbia College, but also vice president for undergraduate education, which makes her responsible for undergraduate education and programs across the University.

That the dean of Columbia College is in charge of undergraduate education at Columbia has a certain logic. Columbia College is the largest and oldest division of the University, and it is also very much this school’s face to the world. In many ways, it sets the tone for undergraduate life at Columbia.

It is critical to have a sense of unity in the undergraduate experience at Columbia. Under Dean Moody-Adams, Columbia has finally gone forward with a unified Committee on Instruction. Long a faculty priority, the unified COI is an inter-school body designed to coordinate the curriculum and rationalize policies between schools. The COI has already overseen a move to standardize the disciplinary process for undergraduates. The unified COI was not Moody-Adams’ idea, but it was realized under her leadership.

We are encouraged by this development, and we believe it serves as an example of the advantages of Dean Moody-Adams’ dual roles. Because Dean Moody-Adams is at the center of undergraduate education at Columbia, she is in a unique position to improve it. She has the opportunity to carve out a space for the college within a more efficient, collaborative, and internally complementary undergraduate program.

But there is also a real danger intrinsic to Dean Moody-Adams’ dual roles. It is no mean feat to juggle two jobs at once. And while one might assume that what is good for Columbia College is good for the University and vice versa, that is not always the case. Dean Moody-Adams has the difficult task of ensuring that her two roles complement each other.

While we trust that Dean Moody-Adams speaks in good faith when she says she is fully committed to protecting and preserving the identity of Columbia College, we have not seen any concrete evidence of how she plans to achieve this goal.

What is the identity of Columbia College? It is, above all else, an institution focused on the liberal arts. Its robust Core Curriculum represents its commitment to a truly liberal education. We cannot imagine a Columbia College without the Core. But the Core is not invincible, and we should not take for granted that, because it has endured as long it has, it always will.

It is incumbent upon Dean Moody-Adams to demonstrate that the Core will be strengthened. The Core is exceptionally expensive to maintain, and, with 120 sections of Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization alone, it is more than just a logistical headache. It seems improbable that the Core would disappear, but it could change or be diluted. Larger class sizes, fewer professors teaching Core classes—we fear these changes because we have already seen them. If we continue in that direction, in 20 years, the Core we know today could be a shell of its former self.

The same can be said of Columbia College as a stronghold for liberal arts education. Historically, there have been no pre-professional majors at Columbia College. But this year alone, we have seen the introduction of a special concentration in business management and a major in financial economics, as well as the announcement of a potential major in public health.

These developments alone do not represent a sea change in Columbia’s mission, but we need to know that what is true today will remain true. If Columbia College moves away from its commitment to the liberal arts, the intellectual and academic experience it offers will necessarily be compromised.

That is not to say we should fear change. We need not hold on to what is old simply because it is old. CC, now considered an untouchable and essential part of the Core, took years to gain acceptance at Columbia, as Dean Moody-Adams wisely noted. She has spoken of efforts to further develop Frontiers of Science and the Global Core—efforts we would welcome.

Dean Moody-Adams may be a vice president, but her primary role at Columbia is dean of Columbia College. As such, it is her responsibility to serve as the guarantor of Columbia College’s mission. We would be naïve if we said that hers was an easy job. She faces tremendous pressure from every direction—from alumni, from faculty, from students, and from her fellow administrators and superiors. She is expected to bring in huge amounts of money through fundraising, a daunting task for a new face in Morningside. She must work within the context of a larger university, where turf and resources are always up for grabs.

And, of course, Dean Moody-Adams arrived here in the midst of the greatest financial turmoil the nation has seen since Nicholas Murray Butler’s presidency at Columbia. The University has fared better than its peers through the financial crisis, but these are still difficult times.

Yet, these are also times of unprecedented opportunity.

Thirty years ago, Columbia College had not yet admitted a woman as a student. Twenty years ago, our global presence was limited mostly to international students and professors, as well as long-distance phone calls. Ten years ago, some people saw Columbia’s lack of space into which to expand as an existential threat to the University.

Today, the dean of Columbia College is a woman. We have almost instantaneous access to information—or to people—anywhere on earth, and we are expanding both within Manhattan and around the globe.

We do not doubt the University’s ability to adapt to a changing world. It is Dean Moody-Adams’ job to ensure that as we adapt, we also preserve. Until she makes concrete her promises to further the mission of Columbia College, we will maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. But we will also remain optimistic. Columbia College may be 256 years old, but it still has room to grow.