Lehman College serves the Bronx and surrounding region as an intellectual, economic, and cultural center. Lehman College provides undergraduate and graduate studies in the liberal arts and sciences and professional education within a dynamic research environment, while embracing diversity and actively engaging students in their academic, personal, and professional development.

Lehman College has entered a new era in its history as an institution of higher education. Already known for its outstanding faculty, dedicated staff, superb library, art gallery, theaters, speech and hearing clinic, and athletic facilities, the College will now build a new state of the art, environmentally “green” science facility that will invigorate faculty and student research as well as prepare Lehman students for science-based careers.

As the only CUNY senior college in the borough and southern Westchester County, Lehman College has adapted to meet changing conditions and is poised to respond to new needs and challenges.

On the undergraduate level, Lehman's General Education Curriculum is designed to provide a broad knowledge of the achievements and methods of the liberal arts and sciences and to develop student abilities to participate responsively in informed inquiry into subjects of both public and personal concern. On the graduate level, the College has developed professional programs in nursing, teacher and counselor preparation, accounting, computer science, health services, and speech-language pathology. The College also offers strong traditional liberal arts graduate programs in art, biology, English, history, Spanish and mathematics.

For more than two decades, Lehman has deepened its involvement with the surrounding community. The opening of the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in 1980 and the Lehman College Art Gallery in 1984 has made the College a cultural center for the region. Together with the City and the Humanities Program, the Department of Music, and the Theatre program, they present dozens of concerts, plays, dance performances, and exhibitions that are free or nominally priced.

Lehman College also provides a variety of community services. The Institute for Literacy Studies sponsors classes to teach adults fundamentals of reading and writing, while the Speech and Hearing Center offers comprehensive evaluations of hearing and speech-language disorders.

Lehman has joined with the Bronx Superintendent of Schools’ Office and the educational reform organization New Visions for Public Schools to develop seven new small high schools in the Bronx. The schools—housed within larger, traditional high schools—are formed around the themes of the visual arts, teaching, music, college readiness, health sciences, nursing and allied health, and community research and learning.

In addition, in Fall 2003, the High School of American Studies at Lehman College opened on the Lehman campus. One of New York City’s new specialized high schools and the only one to focus on American history, the school represents a collaboration among Lehman College, the New York City Department of Education, and the Gilder-Lehrman Foundation.