President’s Newsletter

Friday, March 6, 2026

Dear Colleagues:

The week began with a trip to Albany for a SUNY Presidents’ meeting. The comprehensive presidents met on Monday afternoon and discussed a range of issues including the federal landscape in relation to grant capture (this was also discussed in the wider meeting on Tuesday). Monday evening, the Chancellor hosted us at his home for a reception at which some of the governor’s representatives were in attendance. The main meeting was held on Tuesday, and started with updates from the Chancellor. He outlined SUNY’s latest efforts in relation to long term enrollment growth and financial sustainability. He also noted a new working group on faculty and staff well being. We discussed budget advocacy, campus climate, and how to raise the profile of the entire system. We then had a presentation on the Academic Momentum Campaign. We are expecting feedback on our submission within the next week or so. I’m also delighted to note that Dr. Rebecca Smith has been named an AcMo Fellow! Other presentations followed on procurement, AI, legal issues and marketing. In addition, we heard from Blake Washington, the Director of the NYS Division of the Budget, as well as Jackie Bray, Director of State Operations. It was a full meeting with a lot of take aways.

On Wednesday, the main part of the Cabinet meeting focused on updates from SUNY. Also on Wednesday, I was able to attend the annual Jobs and Internship Fair at the SERC, which was well attended by students. I want to thank everyone who took part in this event. I was heartened to see that over 40 of our alumni were involved in the fair!

The rest of the week was devoted to one-to-ones with cabinet members and other senior leaders, a meeting with the Chair of the Board for United Way, and a meeting with our BSG president, Sharvani Regmi. I also had an advocacy meeting with Senator Cooney.

Thursday night I was fortunate to attend a performance of Skeleton Crew at the Black Box theatre in Tower. If you get a chance to see the performance, I recommend going!

As always, I hope to see you at First Friday this afternoon. Enjoy the weekend!