President’s Newsletter

Friday, January 31, 2025

Dear Colleagues:

At the Leadership Summit last week, I mentioned a speaker that I’d heard present at a SUNY meeting over a year ago, Lara Hope Schartz. She’s the author of Try to Love the Questions: From Debate to Dialogue in Classrooms and in Life. She asked us, “What is the most commonly right answer in the world?” It had us stumped for a while, and most people shouted out “No!” I may have been one of them. But she then told us the answer: “I don’t know.” And she challenged us to get comfortable with saying “I don’t know” and to model that behavior for our students.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s message to campus, this has been a week that has put that truth into practice. There is much that I don’t know right now about the impact of various, sometimes competing, announcements that have been made this week. I know that can feel uncomfortable and perhaps unsettling. SUNY convened a meeting of presidents this week to discuss some of these issues and also to give updates on the state budget and advocacy.

In the meantime, the semester has well and truly started this week. Our students’ return impacts all aspects of campus life, and I have enjoyed seeing the campus busy and vibrant again after the semester break. I have had various one-to-ones with senior leaders, attended a United Way board meeting, spent at day at the REOC, and convened a town-gown lunch with the mayor, the village manager, the Brockport chief of police and his lieutenant, Chief Vasile and Assistant Chief Price, and Dr. Acker, where we discussed how we can work collectively together to support our students and our community. I also presented at NEST training to support new staff on campus.

Cabinet met four times this week. The first meeting was with our Legal Counsel, Kristin Klein-Wheaton, to complete a tabletop exercise on planning, while our second was our regular cabinet meeting, which focused on preparations and planning around meeting new web accessibility standards. We met on Thursday to complete the last session of a nine-month engagement on leadership development and teamwork, and we met this morning to undertake a SafeZone refresher.

Later today I will be meeting with Dr. Amy Guptill and Dr. Amy Shema to get updates on their taskforces related to transportation and food on campus, in preparation for the town halls on these topics in February. What these meetings remind me is that we are leaning into our values and our mission in all that we do at SUNY Brockport. We are a strong and welcoming institution with good student numbers, a steady fiscal base, and a commitment to building a better Brockport. Thank you for all that you do to make this a great place to learn and work.