MAKING OF A PRESIDENT
MAKING OF A PRESIDENT
local communities; to create “a college-going culture” in the
Bronx, which was lagging behind the city in both economic and
educational performances.
Sharing a light moment with Lehman College President Emeritus
Leonard Lief in the early 1990s.
time, they would prove to be prescient.
During those same years, CUNY came under fire from New York
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Former Yale President Benno Schmidt
was asked to chair a task force that reviewed the entire Universitywide system. The result was a 1999 reported titled “CUNY: An
Institution Adrift.” The Schmidt report, as it became known, urged
senior colleges to eliminate all remedial courses, making them the
focus of the system’s community colleges—a significant policy shift.
Since Lehman College, under President Fernández’s leadership,
had instituted those changes years before, he was asked to testify
before the New York State Board of Regents. “I was convinced
that the community colleges were better at providing remedial
education to students than the faculty of a senior college,” he
said. Critics complained that Black and Latino student enrollment
figures would plummet; they didn’t. In fact, over time they grew,
particularly at the community colleges.
The Evolution of Higher Education—
and Lehman College
In 1999, with a new Chancellor, former Baruch College President
Matthew Goldstein, at the helm, the University sought to get
its house in order. From the beginning of his time at Lehman,
President Fernández wanted to leverage the College’s academic
standing and its connection to the local community and marshal
the College’s intellectual resources to improve the lives of the
Even during the difficult years of his first decade, Lehman College
had committed itself to a beautification process to improve its
campus facilities. In 1994, The APEX, designed by Uruguayanborn architect Rafael Viñoly, opened with an Olympic-sized
swimming pool, outdoor tennis courts, an indoor track, plus
basketball, racquetball, and handball courts. President Fernández
also updated the College’s technological capacities—computers
were a rare site on campus when he arrived in 1990. In 1999, the
College’s $13.5 million Information Technology Center opened
in the center floor of Carman Hall, the College’s main classroom
building. In his address at his formal installation as president in
October 1991, President Fernández had noted that the central
challenge facing both Lehman College and the City University
of New York was “to educate the next generation of America’s
urban students, and to do it as if our city’s and our nation’s welfare
depends on it, because it really does.” Under President Fernández’s
leadership Lehman College has fostered relationships with an
array of Bronx public schools in an effort to create a fairer, more
equitable public school system in the borough. The goal was
to establish collaborative efforts with the NYC Department of
Education to turn out better-prepared students from the borough’s
K-12 system.
With the dawn of a new
century, Lehman College
made national headlines
when two of its finest, and
longest serving faculty
members, won accolades
that made them household
names in their respective
fields. Composer John
Corigliano, a Distinguished
Professor