Welcome to the 2024-25 academic year. It feels good to have the whole community back together and getting ready to welcome our students.
Many of these new students and their families were on campus this summer, and one of my favorite things is seeing the campus through new eyes. Our visitors always comment on how beautiful our campus is. That’s down to the hard work of our facilities team, and I am grateful that they invest so much in making Brockport a great place to work and learn. Did you know that over the last year, the Facilities Maintenance and Operations and EHS teams completed over 12,000 service order calls, cleaned and maintained 2.75 million square feet of building space (the equivalent of 42 football fields!), mowed 210 acres, maintained 100 acres of athletics fields, serviced 13,950 doors, inspected 1,200 fire extinguishers, monitored 15,000 building control points, and shoveled 644 steps. Now, in case that sounds familiar to you, you may have seen those figures in a recent Daily Eagle.
Mr. Ian Harper, our new VP for Administration and Finance, collected that information and called it Reasons to be Proud. This fits so well into our strategic plan objective to Nurture a welcoming, vibrant and engaging campus community where faculty, staff, students, and visitors generate a sense of school spirit: Golden Eagle pride.
We could not do this without our amazing team in facilities who are here all summer long, and I think they deserve a round of applause.
The work that our facilities crews do in the summer is complemented by other professionals: HR, BITS, advancement and communications, EOP, budgeting, undergraduate admissions, the Center for Graduate studies, student accounts, records and registration, ASC, SAS, summer chairs and administrative support, and financial aid, amongst many others. If I didn’t call out your area, then please know that the work that you undertake in the summer is very much appreciated. I do want to single out financial aid this year. They deserve a major shout out for everything that they did to deal with the chaos that was the roll out of a “simplified” FAFSA! Thank you, Kimbereley Willis and your team! I am so very grateful to you for your professionalism and hard work.
Every year I think the non-student facing months will be a quieter time, and every year I am reminded that there’s no such thing as a quiet time on campus. Our campus remained busy and vibrant throughout the summer, and many of you were here each day to ensure that our campus operations ran smoothly. Thank you.
This my tenth year as your president, and I am thankful that you have entrusted me with the responsibility to serve this institution. It is an honor and a privilege to be here, and I am looking forward to what we have in store this year.
Normally at this point in my convocation speech I reflect on last year and our collective accomplishments, and how we have fulfilled objectives under our strategic plan But today I’d like to begin our time together by talking about a really important issue that can be somewhat divisive:
There’s a right way and a wrong way to hang toilet paper.
You know what I mean. It’s fundamental. I’m going to guess most of you believe this to be true. We’ll talk about the rest of you in a moment. But let’s just start with the fact that most of you believe that there’s a right way to put the toilet roll on the holder.
I’m also going to guess that we don’t actually agree on what that right way is. And if you don’t agree with the way that I see it, you’re obviously wrong. It’s a topic dear to my heart because it was responsible for years of frustration in my household. And there are only two of us living there.
So let’s break this down. There are probably 4 responses to this major issue of right and wrong.
- One group thinks the paper should roll from the top.
- Another group thinks the paper should roll from the bottom.
Most people are in one of these two camps. But there are two other camps out there.
One camp says, “What the heck are you even talking about?”
And the other camp says, “It doesn’t matter which way the roll is on the holder, so long as someone has put the roll on the holder.” If I’m honest, that might be the healthiest group. It’s a group that recognizes difference and embraces it. We should perhaps all strive to be part of group four.
I belong to one of the first two groups. My husband belongs to one of the last two. I’m still not sure which, and we’ve been married more than three decades.
For years—and I mean years—this was a huge frustration in my family. It got to the point that I thought that my husband was deliberately trying to make me mad by putting the toilet paper the wrong way around. And he was succeeding! I was mad! I was constantly frustrated. I could not believe he would provoke me like this, so often.
Now here’s the deal. I never noticed when he did it right. Not once. I only noticed when he did it wrong. And years after this battle began, I realized another thing. He didn’t care which way the toilet roll was on. He didn’t even notice. I was the only one who noticed. I was the only one who cared. And I was the only one who could stop the battle. Why? Because I can only control my reaction, my response. I can’t make him care about this trivial little thing.
And since I was the only one who cared, I had a second option. I could change the roll to fit my preference, if I ever saw it rolled the wrong way. So I did. And the battle was over. Because actually the battle was just in my head.
You might think this a very silly story. And it is. Truthful, but silly. Yet I’m thinking about how this small battle is reminiscent of so many larger issues in our world. We divide into camps. We believe ourselves to be in the right, and someone else to be in the wrong. We start battles when others don’t even know we’re doing so. And we have to learn to talk across differences if we are ever going to get out of this kind of binary thinking.
Why is this relevant today? Because it’s likely to be a year that has its challenges. We know how hard it is to talk across differences. We see that both nationally and internationally. As we head towards the November Presidential election, tensions are rising across the country. That, coupled with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and the overall deterioration of political discourse in society, means that a lot of colleges and universities are on edge. Last spring demonstrated how political disagreements have the potential to adversely impact university campuses and, even worse, put people in danger. But it doesn’t have to be that way. An institution of higher education should be a place where the issues of the day can be discussed civilly and productively. We must work together as an academic community to foster respectful, engaged dialogue. It’s our moral and educational responsibility.
And SUNY is invested in helping us achieve this. Over the last few weeks, SUNY has created a new mandatory Title VI training for all faculty and staff which will assist individuals in knowing what their role is under this important federal obligation, and you’ll be contacted about this via HR soon. All of us will be required to complete this training by the end of September. What this training will do is assist us in knowing what we must do to create a positive and inviting campus, and how we must act if such an environment is challenged.
SUNY has also developed new policy templates for Freedom of Expression & Assembly, camping, posting, and the identification of individuals on campus which they expect us to have in place for the start of the academic year. So we have been busily updating our policies to match SUNY’s requirements. In most cases, this means tweaking things slightly from what we already have in place, and putting SUNY’s language into our own policy templates. These are unusual times, and I want to assure our community that we are following SUNY guidance and requirements in these processes, as well as working to honor our own practices. I regret that the time constraints we are working under don’t offer us the same amount of dialogue as we would normally undertake regarding policy, but as per our policy process, our 30-day stakeholder review can be waived when exigent circumstances require it, or when changes are minimal and mostly cosmetic.
While most of what is in the new or revised policies fits in with past practice and changes are relatively minor, some things will be different. For example, within our posting policy, SUNY Brockport will be implementing a no individual signs on exterior windows section. This is an extension of the practice that we have in place for residence halls. I want to assure you that individuals will continue to have the opportunity to decorate their spaces and offices with messages that mean something to them. It’s just that those messages will not be externally facing.
Remember that, to a passerby, it is not an individual’s office window, but a SUNY Brockport building, and a statement in a window is read as a statement by the university. And because content neutral policies require an all or nothing approach—you allow everything no matter how abhorrent to the general population or you allow nothing—we have determined that nothing is the best way forward for an inclusive campus community.
As a university, we reject racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of bias and discrimination. We reject discrimination or marginalization of any groups of students in clubs and other organizations. We are committed to an inclusive and welcoming environment for all groups of students, faculty and staff.
And I’m reflecting, too, on what it means to be a university president and what role I can play in helping our community as we navigate these uncertain times. The role I think works best in this instance is one of listening, not lecturing, one of enabling dialogue and not leading it. To that end, I will be issuing a Statement on Statements next week to the entire campus. This Statement on Statements will outline the fact that I plan to refrain from publicly commenting on most matters of public concern. Statements that come from the Office of the President will be limited to matters that impact the core function of our university.
Just this past weekend, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal by Douglas Belkin which talked about campus protests. It focused on how university leaders are navigating this space. The article notes that “being neutral isn’t the same as doing nothing. Another path through the thicket of demonstrations has been directing student energies toward learning and discussion.”
This is exactly what we will do. Yesterday’s Leadership Summit focused on planning for ways to engage student energies into positive dialogue versus heated debate. The return of Community Conversations this fall, along with our well-established program of Deliberative Dialogues, will assist in this endeavor. And you can help, too, by modeling positive interactions, by incorporating our Better Community Statement into your thoughtful engagement with others, and by modeling Group Four of the great toilet roll debate: healthy inclusion of diverse responses to the same information.
I want to assure you that planning for possible campus disruption isn’t the only focus of the year. There is so much to be positive about. We have had another healthy year for enrollment, and we are on target to match—or surpass!—last year’s incoming first year and transfer student numbers, with strong recruitment at graduate level as well.
In other good news, our structural deficit has been significantly reduced. We have also received additional funding from SUNY for this year of around $2M to help offset employee raises, and with student numbers potentially exceeding our overall target, we are in a stronger position financially than we have been for years. In addition, we have maintained healthy reserves at around $26 million, while still investing in areas of needed focus, including student scholarships.
This is the second year of our advertising campaign, Excellence within Your Reach, and it is certainly paying dividends. In addition, our new website, launched in March, is making telling our story easier and easier.
We have much that we will be doing that supports our mission, vision, values, and yes, strategic plan. We tell our story through our strategic plan and the objectives we have set out for ourselves.
The Strategic Plan Assessment Committee concluded its work this past year and developed a series of Key Performance Indicators that we will use to track progress going forward. During our 2024-25 academic year, I have asked Dr. Sara Kelly and Mr. Ian Harper to lead a new Strategic Plan Steering Committee to shape and influence the next few years of the current plan. A series of Goal Groups are being formed to ensure that we maintain progress on each of our institutional goals, before we start the process of strategic plan review again during the 2026-27 academic year.
In the shorter term, we have a number of initiatives to pursue this year. In order to be a great university at which to learn and work—goals one and four—we are charging a task force with reviewing communal spaces on campus to encourage social engagement, harness informal learning spaces, build community, and create an atmosphere of belonging and engagement. I am grateful to Ms. Darcy Porter for chairing this group.
In addition, Goal one initiatives include expanding our enhanced educational opportunities such as internships, undergraduate research, and career guidance, as well as continuing to review and enhance our program array at every level. We’re offering microcredentials for the first time, with programs in Geo-Hazardous Waste and Non-Point Source Pollution, UAV Drone Remote Sensing and Surveying, and Public Health Workforce Skills. Our Engaged Eagle Program will really take flight this year as well.
To be a university engaged with its community, we will maintain our external engagement and continue to raise the profile of Brockport in Rochester and beyond. One commitment I have made on behalf of the university is to join the College Presidents for Civic Preparedness group. This is a group of campus leaders dedicated to advancing critical inquiry, free expression, and civil discourse on campus. It is convened by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and is guided by three Civic Commitments:
- Educating for democracy is central to our mission
- We will prepare our students for a vibrant, diverse, and contentious society
- We will protect and defend free inquiry.
To be a sustainable and thriving university for the 21st century, we will maintain our focus on revenue generation and deficit reduction, and we will raise additional private dollars to ensure that we invest in student success. Moreover, we will double down on our commitments to the environment and to green initiatives.
And to be a great university at which to work, we will further develop our Employee Success Center, creating a staffing model and seeking a physical space in which to centralize this work. We will also continue to build on the recommendations of our Presidential Campus Climate Committee and our Shared Governance Committee to ensure that all have access to opportunities for career development and growth, and that we recognize and celebrate the good work that everyone in our academic community undertakes.
The work that we do to Build a Better Brockport is important work. We develop our community, educate our students, engage with others and seek solutions to complex and difficult issues. If we do all of this, I know that excellence is within our reach as well.
I want to end today’s convocation by acknowledging the successes of our faculty and staff both individually and collectively. After all, you are what makes Brockport a great place to work.
Over the last year, our Small Business Development Center (SBDC) worked with 690 clients. They assisted 43 new business starts, and supported 77 jobs. Overall, they are responsible for $9.9M in economic impact.
In terms of fundraising, we raised over $4M this year, 10% higher than last year. This reinforces the truism that people don’t give to institutions that have needs: they give to institutions that meet needs. And we are meeting needs across the region and beyond. Our Advancement and Communications team won a record eight awards from SUNYCAUD and PRism for programs and projects.
We had a great year for grant capture, with Sponsored Program Activity of over $5.1 million.
Of particular note, Dr. Jennifer Ramsay received almost $650,000 from the US Army Corps of Engineers to fund collaborative archaeological work with SUNY Potsdam at Fort Drum.
Dr. Roosevelt Mareus spearheaded a significant six-figure grant for the construction of a mobile welding lab, a project that had the support of Monroe County and was officially launched on June 20th.
Our environmental science colleagues continue their successful run of grants, with an astounding $835,790.46 in grants won this year.
Dr. Lauren Liebermann secured 5 major grants for her work with Camp Abilities and related activities.
And we had many new and early career faculty pursue grants this year. I’m grateful not only to them, but to their colleagues and mentors for supporting this work.
Dr. Kimberley Willis was named Most Valuable Professional by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
Ms. Tammy Gouger has been selected to serve on the Eastern Region board of directors of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) for the 2024-26 fiscal years.
Ms. Ida Perez from the REOC was inducted as a member of the Children’s Institute Coterie which recognizes individuals who have provided significant, sustained and very special support to the Children’s Institute.
Mr. Scott Haines has been elected as the NYS Representative for the National Intramural-Recreation Sports Association.
Dr. Kathy Peterson was named a Distinguished Service Professor, one of only the 33 Brockport faculty members to have received a distinguished professor award since 1973.
Over the last year, five individuals have been promoted to professor or Librarian and I’m going to ask them to stand if they are able so that we can recognize their achievement:
- Keith Baker
- Mustafa Canbolat
- John Keiser
- Moonsun Kim
- Jennifer Kegler
Congratulations! I’d like to introduce our most recent Chancellor’s Award Winners:
- The following individuals have received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching: Dr. Afeez Hazzan, Dr. Zachary Robinson and Ms. Jacqueline Slifkin
- Ms. Jules Oyer received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching
- Dr. Jessica Sniatecki received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service
- Dr. Paul Moyer received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities
- And Ms. Melissa Furness received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Classified Service
Congratulations, colleagues!
There are a few new faces at Brockport this year who have taken on director level or above roles, and I’d like to ask them to stand to be recognized:
- Ian Harper, VP for Administration and Finance
- Chris Smith, Assistant Vice President for Advancement
- Emily Marchese, Director of the Career Design Center
- Catie Lalonde, Director of CELT
- Lisa Thompson, Director of EOP
There are also current employees who have taken on new director level or above roles and I will ask them to stand as well:
- Crystal Hallenbeck-McPhall, AVP for Finance and Management
- Denise Copelton, Interim Associate Dean for Arts and Sciences
- Summer Reiner, Interim Association Dean for Education, Health and Human Services
- Darson Rhodes, Interim Associate Dean for Business and Management
- Giancarlo Cervone, Director of Web Management
- Thomas Chew, Director of New Student and Transition Programs
- Rachael Killion, Director of Budgeting
- Zach Lyman, Director of Multimedia Production
- Darcy Porter, Director of Content Strategy
- Erin Rickman, Director of Advising and Student Support Programs
- Adam Standish, Director of Giving
- Betsy Standish, Director of Alumni Engagement
I am delighted to see so many people having the opportunity to progress in their careers right here at Brockport. Forgive me if I have missed others, and know that you are appreciated for your leadership.
We also have 96 new faculty and staff amongst us. If you joined our Brockport community in the last year, will you please stand and be recognized by your colleagues?
Colleagues, these are the newest of our community. During the employee appreciation luncheon coming up next, I ask that you look out for them, that you introduce yourself, and you welcome them into our campus community.
Thank you all for being here today. It’s going to be another great year!