President’s Newsletter

Friday, January 24, 2025

Dear Colleagues:

Although the weather may not suggest this, we are now in our Spring Semester! It is great to see the campus filling up again. It was a busy week, with the Provost’s Welcome back event on Tuesday, the Campus Leadership Summit on Wednesday, a visit from our Chancellor on Thursday, and a Cabinet Budget Retreat on Friday. A number of us were also able to attend the Action for a Better Community Breakfast at the Rochester Museum and Science Center on Thursday morning, at which Dr. Roosevelt Mareus was honored as the Signature Citizen of the Year.

All full professors, deans, chairs of departments, governance leaders, union leaders, directors and cabinet members are invited to attend the leadership summits each semester to learn about and engage on a number of timely topics that impact our campus. I want to thank all who came for the gift of their time and wisdom. We were fortunate to have SUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs and General Counsel Kapil Longani as our main speaker this semester, along with Deputy Chief General Counsel Bess Chiu and our own campus counsel Kristin Klein-Wheaton. Collectively, they led a discussion on Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) dos and don’ts, Title VI updates, and immigration issues. It was a lively and information packed summit and I’m pleased that feedback from participants have indicated that it was a valuable experience.

Chancellor King’s agenda included a visit to our cybersecurity labs, and meetings with student leaders and our Empire State Service Corps students, plus one of our student entrepreneurs. The visit finished with an early dinner with College Council members, alumni, local stakeholders, Senate leadership and some members of the leadership teams on campus.

The Budget retreat focused on prioritization of areas of further investment on campus, plus a recommitment to the Cabinet Leadership Guiding Principles.

This weekend we have the ribbon cutting for the Confer Plastics Ice Hockey Team Room and a number of sporting activities on campus.

I’d like to suggest a challenge for us this semester. Can we, as a community, commit to responsiveness to our colleagues? A number of people have raised concerns with me about feeling as if their requests aren’t followed up with in a timely manner from other offices and individuals across campus. I believe it is reasonable to suggest that requests from our colleagues should at least be responded to, rather than ignored. Even if the answer is “no,” it is my experience that this is more welcome than silence. So I offer out a challenge that I will also take up: when a professional email comes from a colleague, let’s endeavor to reply. And where we can make that email a visit or a phone call instead, let’s also try to build community that way. Let me know your thoughts.

And finally, I want to close by thanking the executive leadership team at BASC, especially Bill McNamara, for collaborating so effectively with VP Ian Harper on a plan to support our facilities staff this week during the cold snap. BASC provided over 75 warm meals for our teams who work outside, and I am grateful for their thoughtful partnership and proactive response to the unseasonably cold weather.