New president takes office at Baruch

Along with the 1,200 freshmen who entered Baruch this fall, the school also welcomed a brand new president. Mitchel B. Wallerstein, who assumed office in August, is the college's third leader in the last three years, following interim president Stan Altman and Kathleen Waldron, who resigned last summer.

Since his appointment in March, Wallerstein has been busy preparing for the job by meeting with cabinet members, alumni, and other parties in the school. He's also been familiarizing himself with the school's history by reading such literature as a biography of Bernard Baruch.

"The transition itself has been easy," said the president in an interview with The Ticker. "But of course, as is inevitable in any new job, the longer you're there, the more you know, and then you start peeling away the layers of the onion and it gets more complicated."

Wallerstein comes to Baruch after serving for seven years as the dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, where he oversaw the social sciences program and led a campaign to internationalize the school.

"It's different in many ways from working at a place like Syracuse University because Syracuse is a private university and this is a public university," he said.

"They're financed differently, they get their money from different sources. Syracuse is mainly dependent on tuition, very high tuition, as compared with what it costs to go to Baruch. So I need to understand the differences between the two. But it's happening. I'm getting a clearer picture."

Wallerstein is indeed very clear about where Baruch stands financially. Though he has big plans, he acknowledges that at the moment, the school is facing severe budgetary challenges.

"We know right now that the situation for this year, and probably almost certainly for next year as well, is going to be very difficult," he explained. "So I've had to adjust my thinking to how can I best position Baruch to weather this storm and be ready and well positioned to grow again, to expand again once the budget situation is better at the state level."

The college is "overwhelmingly dependent" on the state, according to Wallerstein. Unlike many of the other CUNY colleges, Baruch has a private endowment — the Baruch College Fund, which currently stands at over $100 million. But the school still does not have enough resources to operate without the government's help. Still, he is optimistic that the climate will change for the better.

"This will not be a permanent situation and everybody expects that as the economy starts growing again, which its already beginning to do and as tax revenues increase, that the state will be in a better financial position and therefore will be able to give CUNY and SUNY more money."

If and when that happens, the president already has some plans he would like to implement.

One of his priorities is expanding Baruch's international connections and encouraging students to think about career options in other countries. As one of the highest-ranked schools in New York City, Wallerstein believes that Baruch can use that leverage to become a leader abroad.

"I know that studying abroad is difficult for many students because of the financial dimensions of it but I'd like to see if we could find additional ways to explore the international connections and connectivity between Baruch and sister institutions in other parts of the world, which could be a real win-win for our students and for their students," said Wallerstein.

Wallerstein's international focus is one of the effects of his extremely colorful background, which has taken him through several sectors.

After starting out with a teaching career at Holy Cross College and MIT, he moved Washington to work in the non-profit sector, eventually becoming the deputy executive officer at the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering and later joining the Clinton administration as a deputy assistant secretary where he worked on nuclear biological and chemical weapons issues.

He spent 18 years in Washington before going to work in Chicago with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation's largest philanthropy organizations.

"I like to say I've worked in every sector of the economy other than the ‘for profit' sector. I've never worked for a ‘for profit' company but I've worked in the nonprofit sector, philanthropy,  academia, government, and now I'm back in academia, which is where I started."