News: Academics

In spite of the Graduate Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers bargaining committee’s decision to pause the union’s strike, the religion department’s graduate workers have decided to continue striking.

Lit Hum texts have been scrapped. Essays in University Writing are being graded without feedback or guidance. Some professors are discussing canceling courses altogether. As Columbia’s student-workers and teaching assistants strike for a third consecutive week and negotiations remain at a standstill, many undergraduate students have seen some of their classes grind to a halt.

Barnard has received a record number of undergraduate applications for the class of 2025. This puts the college among the many selective, historically wealthier universities, including Columbia, that have seen more applicants than ever before amid the coronavirus pandemic—while public universities with smaller endowments and less wealthy students on average scrape for applicants.

“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Let’s go into this with a powerful collective intention.” Alexandra Watson, a First-Year Writing lecturer at Barnard, said as she led a Zoom call in a breathing exercise. With its participants newly focused, the Cite Black Barnard Faculty Cite-a-Thon began.

Columbia bills itself as a major research university, and one such measurement of this label is the number of paper citations its researchers can claim. As of 2020, Columbia had 45 scientists and social scientists ranked within the top 1 percent of the most cited researchers in their respective fields. By this metric, the University has the 18th largest number of top-cited researchers in the world, according to recognized data by Web of Science.

Columbia College announced its 22 Junior Phi Beta Kappa recipients. The remaining eight percent of Phi Beta Kappa recipients from the class of 2021 will be announced in the spring.

Twelve Barnard seniors were inducted as Junior Phi Beta Kappa, the college announced on Friday.