President’s Newsletter

2024-05-24

Dear Colleagues:

This will be the last presidential newsletter of the academic year. I will resume messages at the end of August.

First, a major thank you to everyone who worked so hard to ensure our commencement ceremonies were the celebratory events that we had planned. I am appreciative of all of the efforts, from emergency planning, to volunteer coordination, to parking and more. While we couldn’t control the weather, everything else went smoothly and well, and I am grateful for the collective efforts that ensured this. In case you missed it, we announced six new Presidential Teaching Excellence Award Winners this year:

• Dr. Steven Barber, Department of Accounting, Economics & Finance
• Dr. Beth Morton, Department of Biology
• Dr. Amy Shema, Department of Education and Human Development
• Dr. Ken Xu, Department of Counselor Education
• Dr. Christian Martinez, from KSSPE
• And, posthumously, Dr. Matthew Altenritter, Department of Environmental Science and Ecology

It was also an honor to recognize Dr. Kathy Peterson as the newest SUNY Distinguished Service Professor at the morning ceremony. I am glad that her honor coincided with the first cohort of doctoral students to cross the stage. Our DNP program is, of course, a collective effort, but Dr. Peterson’s exemplary leadership is one of the reasons we were granted a doctoral program—the only one at a SUNY comprehensive college or university.

This week we held our REOC graduation ceremony at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester. It was good to return to this venue for the second time for this event, after pausing it during the pandemic.

I was fortunate to attend the Chancellor’s State of the University address in Albany on Wednesday. The Governor gave remarks and showed her support for SUNY, and the Chancellor set out his plans for the forthcoming year.

It was good to see many of you at the Recognition Dinner where we celebrated both our award winners and our retirees.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend. For those of you who are off in the summer, enjoy the break away from campus. For those of you who work throughout the summer, I hope you find some downtime and enjoy vacations with friends and family.