President’s Newsletter

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Dear Colleagues:

Late last week, the state budget was finally passed. Amongst the highlights that impact Brockport are the following:

• $114 million in increased operating aid for State-operated campuses which includes funding to cover most of the state-negotiated pay raises. For SUNY Brockport, this means we will receive an extra $2.174M. This includes some funding for research activities, and was based on a formula that included Fall 2024 student FTEs, the number of employees we have who are covered by union negotiations, and a percentage of our overall research expenditures. This is the third straight year that the state has covered pay raises, which is excellent.
• $12 million investment to sustain and expand the ASAP|ACE retention and completion programs. We have been invited to be involved in the 2026-27 cohort for this program.
• $550 million for critical maintenance at SUNY’s State-operated campuses and Statutory Colleges, along with $60 million in additional flexible capital for State-operated campuses. We look forward to seeing SUNY’s distribution model for this funding, which has not yet been announced.

In addition, we will watch Governor Hochul’s free community college initiative closely, which is aimed at adults aged 25-55 without a degree who choose to pursue an associates degree in a high-demand field. We have close relationships with our three local community colleges (in fact, we enroll the largest number of transfer students from GCC, FLCC and MCC of any other university in the area) so we are hopeful that this new initiative will have a positive impact on our transfer student enrollment in a few years’ time.

The state budget is very favorable for SUNY, and I will be continuing my legislative advocacy work over the summer, as there is also a provision in the budget to allow for clawback of funds if the budget is negatively affected by federal reductions or unanticipated reductions in their overall general fund revenue.

The Chancellor convened a meeting of the SUNY presidents this week to discuss both the state budget and the federal landscape. He reiterated his pledge that SUNY will continue to advocate on behalf of our students; our employees and the wider community to restore funding and to avoid the proposed large cuts to budgets that support research, our students, and various high impact programs. SUNY’s plan remains to litigate where appropriate; to advocate for legislation that supports our mission, and to educate both the legislature and the wider community on the immense impact that SUNY has on our local and regional communities. The SUNY comprehensive presidents also met this week to discuss issues relevant to comprehensive colleges and universities.

This week we had several events to support our students as they get close to commencement, which will obviously happen tomorrow! The Lavender Ceremony was on Monday, followed by the Umoja Ceremony on Tuesday, with guest speaker Joey Jackson – an alumnus who is a prominent attorney. He can often be seen on CNN in his role as a legal analyst. We also simultaneously celebrated the fifth anniversary of the opening of the Joey Jackson Intercultural Center. In his speech to students, Joey emphasized being a “taker” rather than a giver. He urged students to take advantage of opportunities presented to them; to take control of their futures; and to take initiative to further their aims. Later, during a dinner with Joey, he reminisced about his time as a BSG president and student leader in the 1980s. It was so impactful to hear of his love of his alma mater, and it is my hope that the students who are graduating this week will similarly come back to campus in future years to give back, and to talk about the impact Brockport has made on them.

Coming up later today we have the Honors graduation, the Nursing pinning ceremony and other events, including a dinner with our honorary degree recipient, Mr. Troy Pearley. The ROTC Commissioning Ceremony will, unusually, be held after commencement this year, on Saturday. I am glad our students were able to arrange to stay an extra day so that they can be commissioned.

This week we had the final Extended Cabinet meeting of the academic year, at which Dr. Lorraine Acker offered a comprehensive update regarding the efforts and initiatives that Student Affairs undertook over the year. The other highlight of the meeting was an opportunity for everyone in the room to offer updates from their areas. We are so fortunate to be in the position that we are at Brockport: we have a growing student body who has re-engaged in campus life; growing academic programs and investments in building our faculty base; growing financial support from our donors and friends; and a campus that is beautiful and ready for our commencement activities. We also all noted at least one thing we were proud of, which ranged from the silly (I completed the NYT Mini crossword in 19 seconds this week!) to the profound: we are proud of our students who have overcome tremendous odds to be successful at the REOC and here at SUNY Brockport. I was grateful to all in the room for their willingness to share bright spots and good news.

This is my final regular newsletter of the academic year. So in closing, please know how much I appreciate the work that you do, and how grateful I am that you are part of our academic community. I look forward to tomorrow’s commencement activities, and to seeing so many of you there, celebrating alongside our graduates.