SIPA Framework Faces Transition

Whoever is selected as the next permanent dean of the School of International and Public Affairs will find the institution primed for a makeover.

For years, faculty, students, and administrators at SIPA have complained of struggling with troubling bureaucratic hurdles, disorganized academic concentrations, and the school’s relationship with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Now, officials are sorting out the details of plans to remedy these problems. When the dean search committee agrees on a candidate for the permanent position, the new leader will be charged with polishing SIPA’s transition.

Acting Dean John Coatsworth said that University President Lee Bollinger has devoted more attention to SIPA than his predecessors and seems “much more committed to help the school confront its challenges in a very creative way than past presidents.”

Coatsworth became known around campus for moderating questions directed toward Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in September. But Coatsworth also used his first semester in the post in a less controversial capacity as he laid the foundation for increasing SIPA’s financial academic autonomy and space over the next decade, and formed a SIPA faculty committee to carry out a review of the curriculum to consider streamlining the school’s academics.

Currently, SIPA subsidizes Arts and Sciences with an average of $4 million a year, according to Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of Political Science Robert Jervis, who previously managed Arts and Sciences budget. The outflow of resources created by the subsidy takes resources that SIPA could use to increase the amount of scholarships and endowed professors. In addition, the financial relationship has threatened the SIPA administration’s autonomy in other decisions including hiring, Jervis said.

“We’ve had a situation where the vice president of Arts and Sciences’ office tries to micromanage SIPA and its budget and what we could do—and that’s just stupid,” Jervis said. “This is surely going to change. No new dean will put up with what we have now.”

Such initiatives would grant SIPA increased control over its own budget, placing the school on par with Columbia’s Schools of Law and Business and allowing SIPA to fund more fellowships and choose its own professors.

A more independent budget would also allow SIPA to shake off what Coatsworth called Arts and Science’s “awkward requirements” for the promotion of tenure and recruiting. “A future dean of SIPA could have the terrifying responsibility of balancing his or her own budget, but could have greater flexibility in recruiting faculty,” Coatsworth said.

Former SIPA dean and current professor Lisa Anderson said she believes SIPA will transition while carefully maintaining ties with Arts and Sciences in order to strike a balance between the graduate school’s autonomy and its connection to the University. “The status quo is probably not ideal, but no one wants to risk throwing out what is a quite remarkable baby simply in order to get rid of some bath water.” Coatsworth agreed that some kind of a relationship will certainly continue.

As SIPA has increased faculty and offered more disciplines, concentrations have mushroomed. Some, Coatsworth said, were added without much thought about their fit within SIPA’s academic architecture. Anderson opened discussions on streamlining the curriculum. The fruits of her labor will begin to blossom when the new dean steps in: Coatsworth said SIPA augmented a faculty review committee that is considering reducing the number of concentrations from 19 to six or seven. The concentrations would be in policy areas, and the cut concentrations would turn into specializations within a discipline or region.

To help SIPA mature academically and financially, Coatsworth said the school plans to move into a new space in Manhattanville specifically built for public affairs classes, leaving the much-maligned International Affairs Building.

The new plan includes blueprints for a 250,000-square-foot building at the corner of 130th Street and 12th Avenue. This new building will “give SIPA the freedom to start over again,” Coatsworth said.

But as SIPA plans its move uptown, it must wrestle with related complicated decisions. Many SIPA faculty members are jointly appointed by SIPA and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the IAB houses academic departments, such as economics and political science, which may or may not move with SIPA. “If they do, that’s a difficulty for undergraduate instruction,” Jervis said. “If they don’t, it’s a difficulty for SIPA.”

joy.resmovits@columbiaspectator.com