Marymount Manhattan to merge with Northeastern

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We will examine plans to merge a small college in Manhattan. We will also examine whether congestion pricing will lead to cleaner air in places where drivers go to avoid tolls in Manhattan.

Marymount Manhattan College, a small liberal arts school that has been buffeted by fluctuating enrollment, has agreed to merge with Northeastern University, which has expanded beyond its Boston base in part by absorbing colleges smaller.

Marymount Manhattan’s name will change to Northeastern University-New York City when it joins Northeastern’s network, which includes campuses in London, Silicon Valley and Toronto. The merger is subject to approval by state and federal regulators and accrediting agencies, a process that could take two years or more.

Northeastern officials placed the decision in the difficult economic context facing small colleges and universities — and Northeastern’s success with programs that provide students with hands-on experience.

Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern, said he wants to tap a much larger market for lifelong learners in New York — people who need to “reskill and upskill” as technology reshapes the education market. work. He said Marymount Manhattan, like Northeastern, had “placed a high emphasis on interdisciplinary and experiential learning,” making the two schools a good fit.

“We want to be in New York,” Aoun said. “We love Marymount Manhattan because Marymount Manhattan is a small institution, but it’s an institution that loves experiential learning.” Aoun also said there is room for a larger school with a broader reach in New York. “No institution, even the constellation of institutions that exists in New York, can meet all the needs.”

Marymount Manhattan began as a two-year women’s college in 1936, became a four-year school 12 years later, and awarded degrees to its first male graduates in 1973. Its alumni include Geraldine Ferraro, the first female to run for vice president; Tony Award-winning producer Aaron Glick; Rose Ann Scamardella, the television reporter who inspired Gilda Radner’s character Roseanne Roseannadanna on “Saturday Night Live”; and Emin Agalarov, an Azerbaijan-born pop star.

Marymount Manhattan is known for its performing arts programs, particularly theater, and its prison education program at two public facilities in Westchester County. But Aoun noted that Marymount Manhattan offers 34 specializations, in everything from behavioral neuroscience to marketing.

Marymount Manhattan officials said they contacted Northeastern, but not because financial problems put Marymount Manhattan in immediate danger of closing. “This was not a reflexive act on the part of Marymount Manhattan,” said Abby Fiorella, president of the school’s board of trustees.

Marymount Manhattan blamed declining enrollment and rising operating costs on an outlook that was “unsustainable” despite a $28 million endowment. The college had about 1,450 students last fall, up from 1,915 in 2017.

Marymount Manhattan has recorded annual deficits of more than $1 million per year since 2020, after posting a surplus of about $900,000 the year before. But Fiorella and Peter Naccarato, interim president of Marymount Manhattan, said their concern is about the future and the expected decline in the number of college-age students in the Northeast.

“We saw these headwinds coming,” Fiorella said.

Northeastern said tuition and fees for Marymount Manhattan students would not increase with the merger, beyond annual adjustments. Northeastern, with 42,000 students across its 13 campuses, charged $63,141 for tuition and fees in the current academic year, $21,271 more than Marymount Manhattan.

Marymount Manhattan’s 85 full-time faculty members will be offered one-year contracts and will be considered for faculty positions at Northeastern, the two schools said. Northeastern will assume Marymount Manhattan’s debts, as well as its assets, which include classroom buildings on the Upper East Side.

Marymount Manhattan opened 88 years ago as an outpost of Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, run by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, a Roman Catholic order. It became a four-year school in 1948 and independent in 1961, although three seats on Marymount Manhattan’s board of trustees are currently held by nuns of the order. Marymount College in Tarrytown merged with Fordham University in 2002; Fordham then closed this campus in 2007.

As for dropping the name Marymount Manhattan, Fiorella said, “Look, you have to look at the sum of all the parts. What was important to us was maintaining our performing arts program, our prison education program and our campus.

Weather report

Expect a sunny morning and a chance of thunderstorms later, with temperatures in the 70s. At night, the chance of thunderstorms remains, with temperatures in the 60s.

ALTERNATIVE PARKING

In effect until June 12 (Shavuot).

The countdown to congestion pricing begins. The nation’s first plan to combat urban traffic and its effects on air quality – while also generating revenue for public transport – is set to come into effect on June 30.

The tolls will encourage some drivers to avoid Manhattan, which could reduce traffic and pollution, as well as carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

But my colleague Hilary Howard writes that it’s unclear how much congestion pricing will contribute to New York State’s ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85%. here 2050. Eric Goldstein, New York City’s senior attorney and environmental director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. , called the direct air quality benefits “modest.” He nevertheless supports the plan because it will provide crucial funding for public transit, without which carbon emissions and air pollutants would increase.

Some people worry that congestion pricing will lead to increased traffic, and therefore increased air pollution, in some places, including the Bronx and Staten Island. Government officials have committed $155 million to initiatives such as an asthma center and better ventilation in South Bronx schools near freeways.

But Rep. Kenny Burgos, a Democrat who represents part of the southeast Bronx and who opposes the current plan, said he was concerned about a possible increase in the number of delivery trucks, which are among the worst polluters.

“If we increase mass transit with worse and worse air,” Burgos said, “it seems like a deal with the devil.”

METROPOLITAN Agenda

Perfect pink bike

Dear Diary:

It was a few years ago and I had gotten a fantastic deal on a floor cruiser bike at the Kmart on Astor Place.

The bike was a dark pink and had a cute basket. It was a perfect small size for my 5’1″ frame.

I managed to get him down the stairs to the 6 train platform and then into a crowded train car.

The problem arose after I went downstairs and had to lug what seemed like an insurmountable flight of stairs down to the street and, ultimately, to my apartment.

As I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked up and considered the challenge before me, a man with a kind smile and what appeared to be the strength of a professional wrestler offered to carry the bike for me. Me.

“You’re not going to run away with that, are you?” I asked.

He looked at me and shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Ma’am,” he said, lifting the bike and heading up the stairs, “I wouldn’t be caught riding this thing.”

— Anne Rodérique-Jones

Illustrated by Agnès Lee. Send your submissions here And Read more from the Journal Métropolitain here.

Glad we can get together here. Hurubie Meko will be there tomorrow. -JB

PS Here is today’s Mini crosswords And Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.