The American Assembly

What it reported doing in 2019

The Open Syllabus Project: The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) provides the first "big data" look at the primary activity of higher education: teaching. It collects and analyzes millions of university syllabi to generate novel academic and public applications of the expertise embedded in these teaching choices. This data has a wide range of uses in scholarly metrics, educational research, and the sociology of knowledge. It supports the work of teachers, publishers, and librarians, and opens up new ways of connecting academic expertise to wider publics at a time when those connections are being attacked. The OSP also helps answer vital questions about how universities prepare students to develop as thoughtful citizens. The project is supported by the Sloan Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Arcadia Fund, Templeton Foundation, and Digital Science. The program reached a major milestone recently with the completion of the core dataset, which now contains over 6 million syllabi and the launch of the online Open Syllabus explorer. The project now identifies the gender of assigned authors. This will allow us to deploy tools for mapping the comparative frequency with which women authors are assigned across fields, schools, and departments over time. We expect a high public profile for this feature in particular. We also expect, by the end of the summer 2018, to have OSP network graph representations of fields and departments (similar to our large online network graph) available to students, departments, and libraries. In November 2019, the OSP became an independent nonprofit after five years of incubation from The American Assembly. Summer Institute in Oral History The 2019-2020 Summer Institute in Oral History program focused on the challenges we face in documenting the political present when secrecy and distortions of truth threaten the most vulnerable in open societies. What role do public memory and the search for meaning play in rescuing and preserving the stories that we most need to hear? Specifically, we explored what journalists, oral historians, advocates, and scholars of the present can learn from each other, as we sharpen our skills and awareness of how to document the stories that we most need to record and disseminate. The overarching goals are to explore the role of oral history in opening up multiple accounts of truth, and to search for meaning that otherwise may remain marginal moving them to the center of our political discourse. We be Imagining We Be Imagining is a multimodal series of digital programming centered around the We Be Imagining Podcast, Black Siren Radio and our WBI Incubator. Our goal is to infuse academic discourse with the performance arts in order to foster critical conversations around race, gender, class, and disability. This summers institute is co-sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School and The American Assembly.

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 18.2%; rating input score 18
• Program expense ratio: 63.1%; rating input score 63
• Fundraising efficiency: $0 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 0; 0th percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 62nd percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: 0 of 6 controls in place; rating input score 0
  • Compensation committee: Missing
  • Independent consultant: Missing
  • Other Form 990s reviewed: Missing
  • Written employment contract: Missing
  • Compensation survey or study: Missing
  • Board or committee approval: Missing
• Foreign activity oversight: Limited
• Grant itemization coverage: Limited
• Major donor itemization: Limited
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 87.5%; rating input score 88; 18th percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 6 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 67
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Fail
  • Other executive compensation review process: Fail
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Fail
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: 61.7%; rating input score 96; 96th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 22.24; rating input score 97; 97th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 95; 95th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 99%; rating input score 0; 0th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 2.7% per year; rating input score 100; 38th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 6.6% per year; rating input score 100; 61st percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 2.7% per year; rating input score 100; 34th percentile among comparable filings