Newsletter — Office of the Provost

Monday, March 10, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 13

Welcome to Spring!! Okay, so I’m rushing things a little, but considering that next week will be Spring break, we began Daylight Savings time this past weekend, and the winter snow has (mostly) melted, perhaps it is acceptable to be optimistic that the turn of the seasons is right around the corner.

There is a lot of good work going on throughout the academic division, and I am thankful to all the faculty and staff who have been involved in many of the various initiatives. Unfortunately, I can only touch on a few of the highlights within this communication.

Before getting into other items, I would like to welcome Paul Montanaro as the new Interim Director of Institutional Research. Paul recently retired from Excellus BCBS, where he was managing the pharmacy analytics group. Paul has hit the ground running as he quickly comes up to speed with SUNY and Brockport analytics systems. Paul will serve in this role at least through Spring 2026, providing some needed stability to our institutional research operation.

Reorganization

Our reorganization continues to advance. We will have our second candidate for the Dean in the School of Business and Management this week and two more candidates will be visiting after Spring break. Unfortunately, these visits got delayed by weather and illness, but we remain on track to have this search completed before the end of the semester. Please continue to check the Daily Eagle for information on the time and location of our open forums so that you can participate in the selection of our next dean.

In the College of Education and Health, we have formalized the appointment of Summer Reiner as the Associate Dean and are currently accepting internal applications for the Assistant Dean position. Over in Arts and Sciences, we have finalized Monica Brasted as the Dean and Denise Copelton as Associate Dean. Rey Sia continues as Assistant Dean.

Having mostly settled on College and School leadership, I brought together the chairs of our five largest departments to create a Task Force on Departmental Administrative Structure (DAS). They have been working diligently to identify an organizational structure for departments, including Associate Chairs, Professional Advisors, and Program Directors. As part of their preliminary report, they developed a rubric through which we can evaluate the level of support needed for these departments, as well as compensation levels (including stipend and course release) for faculty that would fill these roles. This remains a work in progress, but I expect to be able to announce how we will be making this additional investment in the academic departments before the end of the semester.

Student Success Equity Intensive

I have received some questions as to how our SSEI activities are being impacted by the information coming out of Washington DC recently. I am pleased to say that we are continuing to advance this initiative without hesitation. Our activities are focused on increasing students’ sense of belonging, and as such, they will impact the needs of all students. SSEI’s central vision is one of developing programs that meet the needs of the most vulnerable but applying those programs to all. We focus on students’ sense of feeling valued, their connectedness, and their involvement in our University community. For the most vulnerable among us, it can mean the difference between success and failure. But it improves the performance of all, turning C’s and D’s into A’s and B’s.

A fundamental element of SSEI is that the changes become part of the culture of the institution, uplifting all students through fundamental review of our operations and policies. Our policies team is reviewing language that is seen as not being student friendly and recommending adjustments as needed. As an example, we have proposed to Senate renaming our Academic Dishonesty Policy as an Academic Integrity Policy, emphasizing the many students who do everything right, rather than the few for whom intervention is needed. At the same time, we are streamlining the policy so that it is more easily understood by faculty, staff, and students alike.

Within the student voices initiative, we are working to reach out to students to better understand their challenges, as opposed to what we believe their challenges to be. Through student-led focus groups, we will gain this critical information, allowing us to implement changes that can enhance the sense of belonging. It is a multifaceted initiative that should improve the student experience.

Academics, Professions, and Exploration

SUNY’s transformational funding initiative included support for a student success program known as ACE (Advancing Competition through Engagement). While we chose not to join the first cohort of ACE campuses, Governor Hochul has proposed additional funding that will allow more campuses to join, and we are considering doing so if funding is secured through the State budget. This could cause confusion with Brockport’s newly redesigned first-year experience course of the same name (GEP 103/104 ACE: Academics, Career & Experiences). As such, the ACE instructors developed a variety of alternative acronyms/names and let our ACE students weigh in. The top choice among students was APEX: Academics, Professions and Exploration!

In addition, our experience with the first semester of our ACE program has suggested that the 2-credit hour, 2 course sequence creates scheduling challenges. We have considered options and have advised Senate that we wish to modify the schedule to offer a 3-credit hour course in the Fall semester, followed by a 1 credit hour course in the Spring. The Spring course will be very directly focused on career awareness. As a result, we will be offering GEP 103: APEX 1 (3 credits) and GEP 104: APEX 2 (1 credit) beginning in Fall 2025 as we continue this pilot program for a second year.

Closing remarks

While I am aware of many initiatives currently underway, each of our faculty and staff are also engaged in their own work to improve the quality of education we provide for our students. You are the unsung heroes of SUNY Brockport. I hope you will take the time during Spring break to refresh so that you can return energized for the final eight weeks leading up to commencement. Thank you for all that you do.