Patrice Derrington, who oversaw Columbia University’s highly regarded Master of Science in Real Estate Development program for nearly a decade, is heading to NYU.
Derrington will serve as NYU’s Schack Institute for Real Estate Chair of Strategic Academic Initiatives. She also plans to teach courses.
“Patrice Derrington brings a wealth of industry expertise and a track record of teaching excellence to Schack,” Marc Norman, Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair and Associate Dean of the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate, said.
Derrington arrives at NYU after an abrupt departure from Columbia University documented by The Real Deal.
In May 2024, the dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, known as GSAPP, declined to push for Derrington’s tenure and removed her as head of the masters program, which people call MSRED. She was allowed to remain a professor but told not to teach classes. No written explanation was provided.
More than 70 MSRED alumni sent a letter to Columbia leadership asking for Derrington’s reinstatement. Marc Holliday, CEO of SL Green, who endowed a professorship, also expressed support for Derrington.
Derrington’s exit from Columbia touched on a brewing tension within GSAPP and academia at large between abstract ideas and industry-specific proficiency.
In her new role at NYU, Derrington said she will seek to educate students on technical skills and engage in critical evaluation of the field. She will work with the program’s academic director, staff and faculty to improve existing programs and initiatives.
“I do believe that real estate education has suffered from not being regarded as an intellectual learning process, globally,” Derrington said in an interview. “And previously it has really been typically a learning-on-the-job type education.”
Derrington once managed the real estate assets of David Rockefeller and is a licensed architect with a Harvard MBA and a Ph.D. in architecture and civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She has published two books, including “Built Up: An Historical Perspective on the Contemporary Principles and Practices of Real Estate Development.” Derrington was an associate professor at NYU’s Schack Institute from 2012 to 2016.
“Institutions, specifically the most elite institutions tend to coalesce around certain voices and certain positions,” she said. “NYU is just so large … that it necessarily has many voices and many approaches to whatever you are learning.”
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Inside the turmoil at Columbia’s Master of Science in Real Estate Development program
