President’s Newsletter

Friday, December 5, 2025

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you had a nice break over Thanksgiving. I seemed to have timed my travel well, as I missed the storms that bookended my trip to Minnesota. It was good to see friends and family, though it was an odd holiday this year as I also attended a family funeral the day before Thanksgiving. Moving from grief to celebration is a hard move, but it also helped me remember what I am thankful for, and that is the presence of others in my life who lift me up, even in the harder times.

Back on campus, we do seem to be in the final flurry of activity as we get ready to close the semester out, and the weather is mimicking this mood! It was a busy week, with some significant meetings and events. Extended Cabinet focused on BASC dining plans, a preliminary overview of the Campus Climate survey, and our Igniting Excellence fundraising campaign.

We also had our quarterly College Council meeting this week, and we welcomed a new member, Dr. Margay Blackman, who is a professor emerita and the former mayor of Brockport. We now have a full College Council for the first time in many years. We had presentations on our five-year budget model as well as the Great Colleges to Work For Survey results. Both presentations were very informative. If you did not get a chance to attend one of the Great Colleges to Work For survey town halls, more will be coming so I would urge you to attend.

We also had our Fall Budget Town Hall, which offered a deep dive into our current and forecasted budget. Good news around enrollment, retention, and state funding helped us tremendously in closing our budget deficit, which has improved by $8M to just over $1M predicted for the end of the academic year. This is an incredible accomplishment. Headwinds further out still need to be attended to, however, and we are still striving to close the deficit completely. Mr. Harper’s clear presentation explored a wide range of elements, and if you did not get a chance to be there in person, I recommend that you look at the recorded presentation, which will shortly be available at this link.

The rest of the week was devoted to one-to-ones with four of the cabinet members, JPBC, Senate Exec, and fun events like Holmes Hall Cookies with a Cause and a visit to the Rainbow Gallery in Tower. I also got the opportunity to host an ACE Fellow for coffee this week, Dr. Jerono Rotich, who is a Brockport alum! In addition, I hosted the senior team at Burlingame House for a holiday dinner.

Today I will be holding the final open forum of the year, for Enrollment Management, having a listening session with Witt Kiefer regarding the presidential search, and attending a virtual United Way meeting.

I look forward to seeing you at the final First Friday of 2025 at Alumni House starting at 4pm today. I hope you have a restful or productive weekend, whichever you would prefer.