I’d say what is clear to me, and I wanted folks to be clear that are in the Senate, is that the two clear changes that are coming is consolidation is continuing. It’s largely driven by media and where the money is, but conference realignment and consolidating into smaller numbers of schools that are receiving large amounts of revenue is continuing to occur.And if you want to compete at the highest level in intercollegiate sports, it’s going to cost a lot more money. What’s undecided and what’s really up for grabs is where that money is coming from, who it’s spent on and how it’s going to be spent. Those are issues that if this was just a professional sport league would be decided by the owners and the managers and the commissioners. That’s largely where this discussion has been occurring at colleges so far. But there are stakeholders that need to be at the table in that discussion, and those are the students themselves, and not just the student-athletes, but the students who come to college partly for this as part of the experience. It has to be the faculty that are responsible for teaching and curriculum related to these students. And a little more, it has to be the presidents owning up to responsibility for these decisions.

I’ve been trying to get that to happen, to get ���ϲ����� to be at the table nationally for these discussions and here, to get all the University stakeholders at the table. I’m thrilled about this discussion and the involvement of this committee and these issues going forward. I have strong views on a lot of the questions that have been raised, including the role of collective bargaining going forward, including Title IX, including other things. But it’s not just my decision; it’s not the athletic director’s decision; it’s not athletics’ decision—on ��whether to impose a student fee, for example. It’s a more general discussion, and this is just the beginning of that discussion, but it’s going to be fairly active all year. That’s pretty much all I can say at the moment about the uncertainty.

I can give three other quick updates and then take questions. On benefits, open enrollment ended. WellNow has reached an agreement with Excellus, so that urgent care provider is now in network. Negotiation is still going on with FamilyCare Medical Group and St. Joseph’s Health. So we’ll keep you informed as that goes forward. I’m still hopeful that those agreements will happen by Jan. 1.

I do want to let people know that we are transitioning the management of the bookstore, University Campus Store, to Barnes & Noble, and that includes books and course materials. As part of that transition, Associate Provost for Academic Programs Julie Hasenwinkel and Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer John Papazoglou have created and convened and are leading a Textbook Affordability Working Group. That’s formed in response to student concerns, including from the Student Association, about the high cost of textbooks and the lack of advanced notice on what textbooks are required in particular courses. The group’s goals include getting faculty to disclose their textbook requirements before students register for classes if possible, giving students more time to seek affordable options like used books or rentals, exploring options for supporting faculty to select lower cost textbooks and streamlining the textbook adoption process. This has been requested by the students multiple times, including the Student Association leadership. The group is going to share its recommendations once it concludes his work and will be reported out in some way through the Senate.

And the last thing to say is, with all the changes in athletics, I’d also like to notice that some of our teams are having good success, including in football and basketball. And, I hope women’s basketball again tonight. We are opening formally for the first time to the public, the Miron Victory Court for the football game on Saturday. It is a new event space that stretches the length of the space between the Barnes Center and the JMA Wireless Dome. This is a fairly large space that is useful for all kinds of things, indoor tailgating, student events, public events, job fairs. It opens both into the Barnes Center and into the JMA Dome so it can be an adjunct space to either one or both, or neither. If you think of it as a space that could be used for all sorts of things, including things that have currently been restricted to using the Goldstein Auditorium because of size. It has good acoustics and good technology. I thank everybody in Campus Planning, Design and Construction, in Advancement, everybody, who helped get that open, and I encourage you to take a look at it this weekend and buy tickets for the Connecticut game.

We’ve been working with the Employee Benefits Assessment Council, which was created in part on the recommendation of the University Senate, that Tom Dennison chairs, who spoke at the last meeting. In response to what that rise in cost has done, we’ve done two things bearing on open enrollment, which starts Monday morning.

First, we decided that the University should absorb a greater percentage of the cost increases this year, a greater percentage than has been our part in the past. Then separately we also paid very careful attention to the parameters of the separate employee contribution schedule for those folks at the lowest family incomes. Those changes are reflected in the announcements that HR, I think, is going to get out in connection with the open enrollment that starts Monday. So, you’ll be getting a lot more details on that part of it in the next couple of days.

The second issue is what we also talked about, which is this set of high-stakes down-to-the-wire negotiations between the largest local health care providers and Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. That has been challenging. Just to remind folks who weren’t at the last Senate meeting, some area hospitals and large physician practices are not happy with what they perceive as the low rates of increase in reimbursement that Excellus is proposing, given the circumstances they’re operating under. Excellus, in the meantime, is bargaining for perceived lower rates, and they say they’re doing so to help keep health care costs down for employers and employees, like ���ϲ�����. If Excellus and the providers don’t reach agreement, here’s what’s going to happen sometime after Jan. 1:

• For those of you in SU Blue or SU Pro, you’ll be covered by health insurance at those providers, but you’ll be out of network, which practically means a lot more out-of-pocket costs when you visit them. This includes the private hospitals in the area and some of the largest physician practices.
• For employees who have SU Orange insurance from Excellus, they will not be covered if they go to those providers. They will have to pay the full cost then of visiting those providers. The only certain way to hedge against that risk at the moment is to switch to SU Blue or SU Pro, which are more expensive, in open enrollment that starts Oct. 28 and ends Nov. 8.

I want people to know, I think it’s likely that the providers and Excellus will reach agreements by Jan. 1. One of the providers, which is FamilyCare Medical Group, issued a joint statement with Excellus last week that said they were close to an agreement. I do want you to know that based on what I heard in the Senate and as the largest private employer in the region, and Excellus’ largest customer here, we’re doing everything we can to get Excellus and the providers to come to agreement before Jan. 1. But in the meantime, we just have to acknowledge this creates greater difficulty for people in making health care choices during open enrollment. I’m not happy about this. I’m doing everything I can to get things clarified sooner. If there are agreements for some of them before open enrollment ends, we’ll telegraph that right away. You should know, lots of folks, especially in Human Resources, are working hard on this.

Then the other thing is just to tell you about athletics. The next wave of change is coming to intercollegiate athletics. It is going to have wide-range implications, including for academics, for budget, for operations, for students, for the student-athlete experience. I am trying to see around corners and be involved in figuring out how to position ���ϲ����� for this.

The athletic experience here is pretty important to us. It’s part of our defining experience that recruits students, and not just student-athletes. It’s part of our academic programming, it’s part of our brand nationally. It’s very important to why we’ve had fairly significant enrollment success, I believe, in a year when enrollment is down dramatically in many places.

I have been a strong proponent of a plan to unite all 136 Football Bowl Subdivision schools into a single college football league with the National Players Association. It’s called the College Student Football League. It was profiled since the last Senate meeting in The Wall Street Journal and in an op-ed I co-wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

It outlines why I think it’s worth considering and why academics and presidents should step up because of what otherwise may likely happen with athletics.

It’s supported by a significant group of people, but I don’t think that means it’s likely to be the final plan. I’m just hoping it will move the needle from where things are going by default, which is the direction that the SEC and the Big10 athletic directors and commissioners are driving things. That’s a higher education athletics model fueled by billion-dollar contracts from Disney and News Corp, with a relatively small number of large public universities pouring unlimited funds into developing professional football teams. I think the consequences to that are pretty severe, and not just for academics at those universities, but for women’s sports and Olympic sports across all universities in the United States. I think we should be trying to preserve a vibrant athletics culture, a competitive one, that remembers academic priorities of students, that values women’s and Olympic sports, that helps bind alumni to schools and creates rivalries and idiosyncrasies that define college sports right now.

I think that you should realize this is rapidly changing. We are facing right now the settlement of a massive antitrust case. One aspect of it is to create the probability that schools in the major conferences will be paying directly $20 million a year to student athletes, mostly to football players.

I think it’s important for ���ϲ����� to be competitive, but it’s important also to understand the budget implications of that, and the values implication of that. I’ve been trying to get groups to focus on this early and often. We’ve worked through it with the Board of Trustees recently. Faculty Athletic Representative Mary Graham has convened two meetings with stakeholders this week, including faculty, student-athletes, student leaders, and leadership from around the University, including especially the co-chairs of the Senate Athletic Policy Committee. I think the next step, learning from some of our experiences recently, is working through the Senate Athletic Policy Committee to focus on it promptly this year in the Senate and to figure out what other stakeholder groups need to be briefed and discuss the implications of it. We made some progress on that this week.

It’s not a thing that we can spend two years debating because, unfortunately, the landscape might be quite dramatically changed before we can reach a universal consensus in two years. But if the Senate wants to play a meaningful role in this, I need the Senate Athletic Policy Committee to be moving on it fairly soon, reporting on it and information sessions, including for senators who are interested. I need that as well, for student-athletes, for student leaders, and, believe me, there’s plenty of alumni very interested in this as well.

We have a long way to go before this is all going to settle down. Like everything else, it could be affected by the elections. I’m just saying this because if shared governance is going to mean something in this area, we actually have to do the work in this area, and we have to do it soon. Thank you.

Excellus has a huge fraction of the third-party administrative market in upstate New York. The other choices aren’t numerous. Excellus is also being very aggressive with the employers in terms of what they want to charge employers. That’s the next concern coming up soon as we go toward open enrollment. All I can say is that I am aware that people need doctors and need access to urgent care. I’m aware of that. There’s a little bit of brinksmanship going on with the health care providers and with the employers right now. I think what Tom said is it’s new to ���ϲ�����, but it is what’s been going on for more than a decade in other markets. So, we’re playing catch up and learning how you win these brinkmanship games for our employees. That’s a little more than you needed to know, and Tom can tell you if I got that wrong, but that’s how it feels to me.

One reason for this [Employee Benefits Advisory] council is because how this worked in the past was kind of this black box and suddenly whatever emerged was, “Surprise! You don’t have a doctor, and you’re going to pay a hundred percent more for it.” And then we had a Senate meeting, and it was too late to do much about it or even talk about it. We’ve been trying to get more integration with this council earlier in the year so that people representing all the constituencies affected have input and not the day open enrollment occurs. We’ll see how that works. From my perspective, folks, it’s worked really well in some of these early issues like the retirement fees and the dental [insurance]. I think facing the problems with Delta Dental that Professor Gray raised in this body was very helpful, but health benefits is such a bigger thing. So, it’s going to be harder in the year ahead.

The University overall, notwithstanding what I’ve just said, is in good shape right now, particularly in terms of finances, advancement, and enrollment. That’s kind of back-office stuff, but that’s pretty important for all our lives. We finished FY24, which ended on June 30 with a small surplus of $1.5 million on a budget of more than $1.7 billion. We are three months into a FY25, and we’re running a still smaller surplus–but still surplus, not a deficit–for this year. Our endowment has been steadily growing. By the end of this calendar year on Dec. 31, I expect we will achieve the very ambitious goals we set in 2019 when we launched the Forever Orange $1.5 Billion Campaign. And we’ll finish it on schedule, and we’ll close the campaign at the end of December.

We received this past year just under 45,000 undergraduate applications, the most in our history. We’ve enrolled a very strong undergraduate and transfer class despite historic changes from the Supreme Court and the truly unbelievable meltdown of the federal financial aid system. Many of our peers, I think, wish their news on finances and advancement and enrollment was like ours. So that’s good news. I thank a lot of people in this room who helped with all the aspects of that.

This is the first University Senate meeting for Lois Agnew as our interim provost and vice chancellor. She’s doing a fabulous job, in my humble view, and I’m very grateful to her. We have onboarded 94 new full-time faculty and 90 new part-time faculty this fall.

We last night formally opened our new D.C. center, which is on New Hampshire Avenue on DuPont Circle. That follows the successful opening of the new center in North Hollywood in Los Angeles. The new D.C. center provides home to academic programs for many schools and colleges and for students, a large group of whom are there this semester. It’s also where our Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is based. It has offices for federal government relations, for alumni advancement, and for a local office for the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families. I just saw it for the first time last night. It has outstanding classroom space and event space for the whole university. I thank a lot of people who came together to pull that off.

We also opened two new residence halls this fall primarily for sophomores on the main campus. Orange Hall was transformed from the Sheraton, and it now houses 390 students. Milton Hall, the apartment complex that was called the Marshall just behind Marshall Street, also opened. It was brought under the University’s housing umbrella. It has 270 students in it. That’s been a lot of work. That’s been the first stage of the strategic housing plan implementation.

Ten days ago, we hosted the largest Coming Back Together Reunion of our Black and Latino alumni ever. Fifteen hundred Black and Latino alumni and friends were here. There were events in every school and college, in the Dome, and in Hendricks Chapel. We dedicated the Barner-McDuffie house on 119 Euclid. And just lots of people came together to make that a very engaging experience. I’m really grateful to everybody, especially to the team in advancement for that. So, that’s all good news.

I thought I would conclude with a caution about what’s coming at us, what’s coming at higher education, including at selective, private institutions like ���ϲ�����. We’ve watched what’s been happening to our neighbors, including Cazenovia College and Wells College that closed. The finances are getting tougher in the sector every year. Several of our peer institutions, including distinguished R1 research universities, are facing severe budget restrictions. Lately, that includes American University and Penn State University as well as West Virginia University. They’re abruptly dealing with layoffs, elimination of programs, and repeated deficits. And a lot of other schools also are facing highly fraught labor relations that are impacting the daily experience of students and faculty, as well as the staff that really keeps those schools running and intact.

A lot of schools like us are facing a dramatically changing and more expensive landscape in intercollegiate athletics. That’s a topic on which I want to work with the newly named committees in charge of the Senate. I’ll say it’s an environment that’s highly unstable and that is at times quite problematic, including from an academic standpoint. Some work through the Senate Committee, through the AAUP, through the full Senate on that probably has to happen this semester if there’s going to be meaningful involvement in the decision making ahead.

My point of all this is it’s stressful. I think we’re in pretty good shape to face all this, but I’m also not surprised that, given all this going on and given the politics of the world, I’m seeing attacks on traditions of shared governance continue and become exacerbated from various directions. I talked about this at the first Senate meeting last year, and I’ve seen it accelerate. By shared governance, what I mean is that at this institution, it is still the case under our bylaws and our practices that the Senate, through its constituent stakeholders has authority over the curriculum and the granting of degrees. That’s not advisory, that’s authority. Everything else is advisory to the chancellor, but the chancellor actually occasionally asks for advice and provides information so that that advice can be given on a timely basis. That’s in theory how it’s supposed to work.

I’ve been seeing that model either vanish or be lost faith in it at other institutions. I’m saying to you that I haven’t lost faith in it here. It does, though, require that when we have challenges coming at us, that we do the work. By doing the work, I mean your job as senators, humbly, and my job as an administrator is not to show up and be entertained once a month at these meetings. Our job is actually to show up for the committees, to read the reports, to write the reports, to give the information, to get the information that’s necessary. So that when we make tough decisions, they are decisions that people have had an opportunity to advise on or, where the authority over, to decide. And, that’s work. I know that everybody complains about meetings and committees, but I guess given what we’re going into, the alternative of not doing the work is seeing some of the things happening that we’ve seen on other campuses. What most troubles me about other campuses is a lack of valuing all of the university, and all parts of the university. So I’m going to do the work, or try to do the work, encourage others to, and I hope you do, too. I’m sure you’ll have many questions when we get to that point.

Thank you.

Twenty-five days to Commencement. It’s hard to believe and package it. Today I’m going to be very brief. I do want to note with great sorrow the passing last week of two of our Life Trustees, Mike Falcone and Bernie Kossar, and the passing in the line of duty of two local law enforcement officers. They were Onondaga County Sheriff’s Deputy Lt. Michael Hoosock and ���ϲ����� Police Officer Michael Jensen. They’re both graduates of our sister school, Le Moyne College.

I’m just going to provide quick updates on four shared governance issues.

The first is honorary degrees. I have confirmed honorary degree recipients for the May 12 Commencement, all from the list approved by the Senate. The awarding and revocation of honorary degrees, like all degrees, is solely by the Board of Trustees and solely upon the recommendation of the Senate.

At the March 20 Senate meeting, the Senate voted to recommend the University revoke an honorary degree. In doing so, the Senate filed a new procedure approved a little more than a year ago by both the Board and the Senate. In accordance with that procedure, I referred the Senate’s recommendation to the Board of Trustees for consideration at their May meetings.

The second issue is staff and faculty benefits. In September at the University Senate meeting, I shared with you that, at the recommendation of a faculty and staff working group, I’d be creating a new employee Benefits Assessment Council. That group includes University Senators. The new council began meeting this year as a new experiment in furtherance of shared governance. It includes faculty and staff recommended by the Senate. Professor Tom Dennison chaired the council, and Professor Eric Kingson also helped a lot.

The council met all year. It worked well. In particular, they received a crash course on University benefits and plans, and they reviewed and approved recommendations for a more equitable and transparent payment of retirement plan fees that TIAA charges the faculty and staff plan.

I think the experiment has been a success. I, therefore, ask that the council in the future continue to work and provide updates to and through the Senate Committee on Employee Services, Fiscal Affairs and Operations. That’s one of the new Senate committees, and one of the issues that we left hanging was exactly how it would integrate with the Senate. That seems like the right committee to do that for next year.

I want to say that the only major issue I currently foresee in employee benefits is our dental plans, which have challenges and need to be reevaluated and I expect to be reevaluated in part by a survey of faculty and staff. And that is one of the issues that will go to this council.

The third issue of the shared governance is sustainability, pursuant to recommendations of the Student Association and the Graduate Student Organization. After briefing the full Senate, I last year appointed a Sustainability Oversight Council and, again following the recommendations, set the goal of ���ϲ����� reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2032.

Earlier this month, after review and approval by the council, the University released an updated Climate Action Plan. It can be founded on SU News among other places. I am happy to send the full report to anybody who emails me. The plan has two main goals:

1. To say precisely how we’re going to get to net zero emissions by 2032; and how we’re going to measure metrics and progress each year; and also
2. To dramatically reducing single-use plastics by the 2027-28 academic year through a phased approach.

The revised plan provides a phase structure and specific projects that are going to get us to these goals. I’m really grateful to the Sustainability Oversight Council. It is small. It’s one trustee, one faculty member, one student and me. The council is going to continue to work with the Sustainability Management staff on new ways to reduce emissions, and we’re going to be reporting to the Senate and the University each year. While 2032 may not sound ambitious, it’s considerably more ambitious than most other universities I’m aware of. So keeping track of being on track each year is pretty important for shared governance.

The last shared governance area this year is athletics. I think you all know that it’s been sweeping and turbulent change for the last three years in intercollegiate athletics. I hope you all realize that much more dramatic changes are coming fast at us. I’m part of a working group, which includes some university presidents and leaders in sports working on new solutions, some of which have been featured recently in The New York Times and The Athletic. I believe colleges and universities must work together fast to create sustainable models that ensure the future success of collegiate athletics and especially includes preserving women’s sports and Olympic sports. I’ve been vocal on this issue because ���ϲ�����’s strong athletic tradition is so important to our students and our alumni, to our brand, and to Central New York.

So far there has been little shared governance involvement in planning for the changes coming at us. This has to be different next academic year. I’ve reached out to the Senate Agenda Committee, to AAUP leadership, and to the academic deans to discuss over the summer how we approach these issues in the next year. I’m sure they will involve consultation and counsel with and from the Senate Committee on Athletic Policy. I think there’s going to be more action in that committee for the coming year as well.

So those are my updates. Thanks to everybody for the hard work all year.

Just before spring break, the University announced plans to build two new residence halls. These will be the first new construction residence halls in at least 15 years. The first will be a new residence hall located on Ostrom Avenue across the street from Thornden Park on what are currently vacant lots. This project is currently in design, and construction will begin later this year. The second project will start with the demolition of Marion and Kimmel residence halls and the Kimmel Dining Center. On that site, a modern new residence hall will be built. The size and timeline for the Marion Kimmel site is still under evaluation.

The student experience division has already hosted listening sessions to ensure the Ostrom Avenue facility meets students’ needs. These sessions have included first and second-year students, peer educators, LLC students, Student Living staff and student leaders, and the Student Advisory Council.

These two new planned residence halls are in addition to previously announced plans to convert the Sheraton Hotel to a residence hall, and fully incorporating 727 South Crouse, which used to be known as The Marshall, into our housing stock. Conversion of the Sheraton will begin just after Commencement in May. Both that building and the building at 727 South Crouse will be part of our residence halls for the Fall 2024 semester.

The other update is that most saw the announcement that two-time ���ϲ����� graduate and longtime iSchool Professor Jeff Rubin is taking on a new role as the University’s inaugural senior vice president for digital transformation and chief digital officer. His responsibilities will include establishing a Universitywide artificial intelligence strategy, overseeing data management and security, and leading the information technology team, among other key priorities. Jeff has been serving as a special advisor to me on SU Global and Digital Transformation for the last couple of years part-time. Now full-time he’s going to be helping in this new role. His extraordinary history of success includes planning and implementing high-speed connectivity at the JMA Wireless Dome. He’s the founder of SIDEARM Sports, which is the company that’s the nation’s leading digital provider for college athletics. I am confident that under his leadership the University is on course to be a digital and technology leader.

Finally, I’d like to recognize ACC Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year, ���ϲ�����’s Felisha Legette-Jack. She was one of 10 semifinalist coaches for National Coach of the Year as well. In her second season, she’s really been an inspiring leader here. And, the women’s team heads to the NCAA Tournament. They play Saturday at 3:30 p.m. the winner of the Auburn/Arizona game, and I’m very proud of that.

I also want to recognize our men’s basketball Coach Adrian Autry. This year’s team won 20 games, the first time that’s been achieved in a decade. In his first season, Coach Autry has proven he’s a devoted coach who puts character front and center of what he does.

That’s my report. Thank you.

My only remark today is to answer Senator Van Gulick’s question from the Jan. 24 meeting. To remind folks, he asked about reseating the JMA Wireless Dome this summer, which will make it much more accessible and more comfortable, but also reduces the number of seats and moves almost everybody’s seats. As part of that, they’re repricing the Dome seats, and that’s been public. Senator Van Gulick’s question was, in the repricing, there’s a charge for a donation and a charge for the ticket price combined. Although he phrased it much more tactically, I think his question was really: Is the new pricing intended to avoid taxes under our RCM budget model?

I looked into that and the short answer is: No, it’s not intended to do that. Actually, it’s been the case since 1980 that there’s been for many, if not most seats, a separate ticket charge for the donation and for the ticket price, and that’s handled differently under RCM. That’s continuing now. Because people’s seats have moved, they’re seeing different percentage allocations. The intention is not to change what’s been the system since the 1980s. But because of Senator Van Gulick’s apt question, I’m going to closely monitor whether the RCM taxes on Dome ticket revenue as a percentage of total ticket revenue remain consistent under the new pricing. I know that’s pretty arcane, but I’m going to watch it closely.

Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Reed. I have some quick updates and a happy announcement I’ll conclude with, but first I’d like to acknowledge the loss of two students from the ���ϲ����� community over the winter break.

Matthew Benedict, of Massachusetts, was an online graduate student in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. He earned his undergraduate degree from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and was pursuing a master’s degree in cybersecurity.

Liam Zoghby, a sophomore in the School of Education’s InclusiveU program, was a lifelong Orange fan. He recently served as a student manager to the men’s basketball team, and was a graduate of Jamesville-Dewitt High School. I thank a lot of people who supported one another and Liam’s family by attending his Celebration of Life last Friday afternoon. And I thank Coach Red Autry for honoring Liam with a moment of silence at the basketball game Saturday.

I join everyone in our community who is mourning the loss of these two students.

I hope everyone has had a good first week. We begin the spring 2024 semester with more than 560 new students on campus—first-year students, transfer students, law students, and graduate students. We also began with the wonderful Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dinner at the JMA Wireless Dome. I thank everybody who did that work.

The enrollment news is happy for the 2024 entering undergraduate class. For the third year in a row, applications are at a historic high. Traditional first-year undergraduate applications are up 6% from last year at this time, with well over 44,000 applications received.

I also want to alert the Senate to two pilot programs that we’ve been using to increase enrollment and access to the University and success at the University.

The first is to remove barriers that make it easier for veteran and military-connected transfer students to enroll at ���ϲ�����. This past fall, we started a new pilot program through the College of Professional Studies to streamline the transfer credit assessment process. This provides student veteran applicants very timely information that demonstrates ���ϲ����� is a competitive option. This pilot program will run through the end of fall 2024.

Second, the College of Professional Studies, working with academic units and academic affairs, initiated a degree completion pilot program this past summer. We currently offer 12 online undergraduate degrees and more than 400 online undergraduate courses. The idea of this pilot is to use that arsenal of online courses to help our students who have been unable to complete their degrees. There are thousands of students who started here at ���ϲ����� and then didn’t finish for various reasons, including challenging economics or health reasons or the pandemic. Instead of making those students feel like they are abandoned, we want to welcome them back and make it easy and affordable for them to finish.

The University reached out to 275 former full-time students last semester. Nearly 30% of those students have followed up to learn more. I think about five students are already finishing up, and another 28 students are working on their bespoke program to get their degree completed with these online courses. I thank the Office of Online Student Success for helping with this. This semester we’re reaching out to 600 additional non-complete degree students to help them do that. We’re going to assess this pilot at the end of the year and we’re going to work closely with Dean Mike Frasciello and academic affairs faculty and deans to see what worked and what didn’t, and decide whether to continue it.

We are in the middle of a chief information officer (CIO) search, just to remind folks. We’re looking for a forward-thinking, permanent technology leader. We have a wonderful interim. We launched that search last semester. We have a slate of candidates we’re interviewing virtually and expect to complete that in the next week of two and have a new CIO on board this semester.

I’d like to share a little bit on Micron and economic development. We had our Board of Trustees meeting this past week. One of the topics on the agenda was Micron and economic development, and Micron leaders attended. The most important thing to report to all of you is this project is moving forward quickly. It’s actually happening faster than many of you may be expecting. We have a lot of headlines of the challenges from it. The biggest challenge right now is the housing market and how we’re going to do housing when we have another 50,000 new jobs added, which will be in the next four to five years. All this economic development is going to change this university in significant ways—our ��housing, our neighborhoods, our commuting, our child care, our schools, and health care.

I experienced a time of fast growth in Nashville, Tennessee, when I was in a leadership role there. The difference from Nashville to ���ϲ����� right now is that our growth is coming faster, and our local culture has little experience with growth in our lifetimes. Upstate New Yorkers like me are understandably skeptical about the impending economic growth due to unrealized promised and hopes in the past. And yet this time it actually is really different, and it’s coming at us fast.

There’s a lot of people at the university preparing for this. In the year-and-a-half since the Micron announcement, we have a team, led by Vice Chancellor Mike Haynie, working every day to maximize this opportunity. It’s required a lot of work with local government and business leaders and other higher education institutions to adjust and figure out how we can help. Not all in the Senate are aware of everything going on. It has required a lot of bandwidth from many people, including and especially in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. There is tremendous opportunity more broadly. I think we need a bigger update to a broader community on what’s going on. If you’re peaked of interest by this and want to get more involved, let me know.

I am also very focused right now on reinforcing and rearticulating our historic values and commitment to academic freedom and free speech, partly because of events in the world last semester. I’m grateful to Provost Gretchen Ritter and to Vice Chancellor for Student Experience Allen Groves for helping with that. Provost Ritter will speak to that in a moment.

I have appointed Provost Gretchen Ritter and Chief Student Experience Officer Allen Groves to lead a working group to come up with a ���ϲ����� statement on free expression and academic freedom learning from the best elsewhere. They’re charged with developing a proposed statement that reflects our values, reaffirms our commitment to these values, and is informed by recent experiences and what we’ve learned from them. I’m glad Senator Thomas Keck from the Maxwell School has agreed to serve. He is joined by four other faculty members: Nina Brown, Sean Drake, Lauryn Gouldin, and Martin Abreu Zavaleta; Dean Behzad Mortazavi from the College of Arts and Sciences; Mary Grace Almandrez, vice president for diversity and inclusion; Daniel Kimmel, president and chief executive officer of the Graduate Student Organization; Student Association President William Treloar; Nathanael Linton, law student representative to the Board of Trustees; and two trustees, Steve Ballentine and Gisele Marcus.

I thank all those for helping with this. I expect written reports to the Senate on their work this semester.

And, the last happy announcement is that today we can announce a historic gift from Trustee Sharon Barner in support of 119 Euclid, ���ϲ�����’s student center for Black culture and history.

This large naming gift will support robust student-centered programming, foster a sense of belonging, promote student leadership, and recognize the legacy of Black community contributions on this campus. 119 Euclid will be renamed the Barner-McDuffie House, in honor of the support of Trustee Barner and her husband, Haywood McDuffie.

Official celebrations of this gift are being planned for the coming year. I hope you will all join us. We really try to expand meaningful opportunities for all students to build a sense of belonging here.

I look forward to working with you this semester. Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Reed. I am going to be brief. There are just six days left in the fall semester. My brief updates are on the University’s benefits process, which Professor Reed already talked about; saying a little bit about the proposed changes to the Senate Bylaws; and then a little bit more about the impact of events in the Middle East on campus.

On benefits over the last week, we really made significant progress to stand up a new system that will allow input early and often from faculty, staff, and the University Senate on proposed changes to benefits. That includes the establishment of the Employee Benefits Assessment Council that has membership from across the campus, part of which Professor Reed just discussed. These members have been selected. They include:

• Four faculty members elected by the Senate;
• Four staff members who were self-nominated and selected by Council Chair Professor Tom Dennison and staff members from the Senate, and
• Three additional members that have been selected by the chair of the council with input from me.

The committee will meet for the first time this month. I’ve already deferred one proposed change from administrators in benefits to the council. I am waiting for the outcome of today’s and next Senate meeting’s bylaws discussion to formalize the connection between the council and Senate governance, but we’ll be doing that early in the coming semester.

On the bylaws more generally, I think there’s been heroic work this fall by the Ad Hoc Bylaws Committee and Professor Kira Reed. I know the committee is going to present its initial recommendations for discussion, which I’m going to listen to carefully. I’ve heard a lot about it. I expect that I will support the outcome of the process, and I think I’m going to support that because I think the changes will help the Senate and its committees function more effectively in the future and will incorporate more diverse perspectives.

I do believe in shared governance. I believe it’s important. Over the course of my more than 30 years in academia, I’ve seen a slow yet steady decline in involvement in shared governance at most universities. I think part of that decline is because many college administrators don’t value it. But I think some of the decline simultaneously is because fewer faculty members show up and do the work for many reasons, one of which may be the perception that administrators don’t value it. But at this University, shared governance remains vital to our success and some of the challenges we’ve come through in recent years. I am grateful to all the Senators, including the faculty, staff, and students who are attending today’s meeting and who are engaging in and contributing to the Senate’s work through the committees. That includes the work to strengthen the governance by revisiting and consolidating the Senate’s structure.

On the Middle East, it’s continued to be a difficult semester at ���ϲ����� and in the world in part because of events in Israel and Gaza. There have continually been concerns coming in, at least I’ve been seeing concerns continually coming in from all sides—from students, from faculty, from staff, from alumni, from trustees, from parents, from the community—and most recently from a raft of elected officials, arising partly out of events in Washington in recent weeks. What I’d say about all those concerns is that there isn’t much that everybody agrees on, except the belief that most universities have handled things really badly.

For me, the safety of ���ϲ����� students must remain a top priority in all this. And what I say next, I don’t say lightly. I think sometimes we must prioritize the safety of our community above academic freedom and free speech. Since our Senate meeting last month, when I talked about this, I’ve received a lot of questions about the definition of “safety,” including from our AAUP leadership.

Again I must emphasize that when I say we sometimes must prioritize student safety, I’m not talking about being safe from disparate views or being safe from uncomfortable perspectives or from language which some may disagree with or find objectionable. By safety, I mean actual threats that may be reasonably perceived as resulting in physical violence or the real risk of physical violence, including even when the speaker may believe they don’t intend to actually incite or encourage violence.

What I want to say to you today is, folks, there really are crazy and extreme people out there, and some of them are violent and will be incited to take things out on campuses, particularly when egged on by extremist messaging or certain triggers. They are rare, but they are a real concern to me, and to many in our community.

Many of you have shared with me that while you understand this, you are also concerned that safety and this threat will be coopted as an excuse to erode free speech and academic freedom. I think those concerns are fair and merit vigorous debate. I believe the time is right for our university community to develop a shared statement on free speech and academic freedom. Over the break, I will confer with the appropriate stakeholders on campus to explore charging a working group with initiating this important work. I will provide an update on that at the next Senate meeting on Jan. 24.

Over the last three weeks, the University has sponsored three faculty panels and an online forum to discuss topics related to academic freedom and free speech. The Academic Affairs team has hosted training sessions for faculty and teaching assistants on navigating contentious topics in the classroom, especially with regards to events in the Middle East.

Provost Ritter will speak to that and the importance of this kind of discourse in a moment.

It remains a challenging time. I know that. I know these are difficult and deeply divisive topics about which many of you feel passionately, and which have a true human impact, including on many of you. I do think that the vast majority of our community has responded to these issues with grace and empathy for one another. I am particularly proud of how our students have conducted themselves. For example, the Student Association passed a resolution last week that called for peace. I think the Student Association articulated their position on the merits of the issues, while demonstrating real maturity, compassion, and care for all those in our community impacted by these really horrific events. I thank the students for their leadership.

I am going to take questions after the provost speaks. I wish you a good final week of the semester and a refreshing break. Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Reed. I need to update the Senate on two pieces of University business before turning to current issues for our community regarding the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. I know our provost will address these latter issues in greater detail, including issues of student safety, free speech, and academic freedom.

The first update is about housing. As announced last week, the University plans to convert the Sheraton Hotel on Waverly into a 400-bed residence hall. Work will begin in May of 2024 following spring Commencement. We have met with all Sheraton employees and assured them they will be offered positions with the University. Many of those positions will be union roles. The new residence hall is expected to open in Fall 2024.

The changes at the Sheraton are the first phase of executing against the University’s new housing strategy. For the last three years, our finance, facilities, and student experience teams have conducted thorough research, an assessment of our existing facilities, and thoughtful exploration of our options. The result is a housing strategy that earned approval from the full Board of Trustees earlier this month.

I wanted to provide a little context for this work today. Basically, the University’s housing portfolio remains largely the same as in the 1970s, with two notable exceptions. Those include the addition of Ernie Davis Hall in 2009 and the addition last year of the building formerly known as The Marshall.

The University has made updates to many residence halls over the years, particularly to bathrooms.

As of last summer, ���ϲ�����’s housing was ranked in the 50th percentile, in comparison to our peers. But I fear we are falling further behind as our current housing stock cannot keep pace with students’ evolving wants and needs for living spaces that are welcoming, accessible, inclusive, and air conditioned. Merely adequate housing is not where ���ϲ����� wants to be, especially given the significant investments made over the last four years to enhance the student experience in our classrooms.

The housing strategy will be executed in phases and will take time to implement. We expect full implementation to take around a decade. Off ramps have been built into the plan to allow the University to think ahead and shift the approach, if necessary, because of changes in enrollment, finances, or student needs. Much like we’ve done with the Campus Framework, we can adjust and course correct based on emerging needs and new lessons we’ve learned. We’re going to be making public additional phases of the housing strategy as the plans are finalized in the coming months.

The other University update is on benefits. On Sept. 26, I delivered a proposal to University Senate members outlining a new process for incorporating faculty and staff feedback on proposed changes to our benefits. That process was informed by recommendations made over the summer by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Benefits Engagement, which was chaired by University Senator and Professor Eric Kingson and Chief Human Resource Officer Andy Gordon. We are now ready to proceed on the creation of the Employee Benefits Assessment Council that was recommended. My role under that is to select the chair and, using your feedback, to charge the committee for this year.

I have asked Tom Dennison, professor of practice emeritus in Maxwell’s Department of Public Administration, to serve as chair of the Employee Benefits Assessment Council, and he has agreed. He has deep personal and professional expertise in benefits-related issues and made a lot of contributions to the Ad Hoc Working Group that worked all summer. He holds a doctorate in health planning and administration from Penn State University, and a master’s in hospital administration from George Washington University.

The next step is for the University Senate to elect four faculty members to serve on the council and for Andy Gordon to coordinate with Senate Committee Chair Kira Reed on that process.

We also need four staff members to serve on the council. Tomorrow an email will be sent to all staff seeking nominations. The nomination form will be open through Monday, Nov. 27.

Chair Dennison will select the remaining three members of the council. I have strongly recommended to him that Professor Eric Kingson either be selected as a faculty representative by the University Senate or be included as one of the chair’s selections. That’s because Professor Kingson has a long history of fearlessly advocating for humane ���ϲ����� faculty and staff benefits. I have come to greatly respect his expertise, as I suspect many of you have. I believe his extensive knowledge of our benefits processes will aid the committee. I have talked to Professor Kingson, and he is willing to serve if asked.

My charge to the committee will formally specify the specific engagement with Senate shared governance through one of the standing Senate committees. Those committees are in somewhat of a state of flux right now, as you know, but that will be part of the process and the charge. I look forward to how this experiment works and assessing it at the end of the year. Those are the updates.

Turning to the Israel/Hamas war, the first thing I will say about this is to acknowledge that whatever I say won’t be enough. In the last five-and-a-half weeks, I have painfully learned that words will never be adequate for the horror of the terrorist attacks and the holding of hostages. Words will never be adequate for the anguish of innocent Palestinian civilians who have been and are being killed, have lost and are losing loved ones, and are suffering through a real humanitarian crisis.

The consequences of this conflict are continuing to accelerate and continuing to wash across our campus. With a community as diverse as ours, there is daily incoming anxiety and fear from all directions. Some of that anxiety is about what the University is doing, and what the University’s position is on the war and what’s going on in Gaza.

Some of that anxiety and fear is about the support for or sharp criticism of people who publicly take positions on all this. Some of it is frightened and angry students and parents. And just to be clear, students are frightened and angry. They are frightened about antisemitic acts. They’re frightened about hostility to anyone who speaks up for Palestinians in Gaza. They’re frightened about perceptions that law enforcement and the University are taking unfair sides and taking unfair steps.

On top of all of that, faculty and staff are concerned that, in the heat of this moment, basic values of free speech or academic freedom or civil discourse about important world issues, of which this is certainly one, will be lost or will be compromised in some way that is hard to recover from for this University.

I’ve seen all over campus people carefully and thoughtfully trying to figure out what’s right to do for everybody, and then doing it. And I’m proud of that. Our first priority has to be to all our students. That’s not just the students we agree with or disagree with, but to all our students. And for me, that responsibility to our students comes first, including over academic freedom and free speech. If our students are threatened and their safety is threatened, that’s a priority over academic freedom and free speech in my view.

But, and it’s a big but, I think we have to be very careful not to invoke student safety too easily and compromise academic freedom and free speech too quickly. Safety can be very broadly defined. I’m not talking about being safe from views you don’t like or to be safe from uncomfortable truths. I’m talking about actual threats that are reasonably perceived as resulting in physical violence or the real risk of physical violence, which we have seen on other campuses. When the safety of our students is significantly threatened, we have to act. It has been an incredibly difficult line to draw these past few weeks, and I know there are very strong opinions as to whether we are getting it right.

When it comes to academic freedom and freedom of speech, I have stood up for our faculty before. I will continue to do so. I believe these are values integral to a great academic institution. This has not always been popular. I have taken heat from people within and outside of our campus. And I will take that pressure. But I will always prioritize the safety of our students above all else. I will do that without reservation.

But in these moments where I have defended our faculty, they have publicly owned their perspectives. What I think about the substance of their ideas is not the point. I will defend their right to put it out there. The provost is going to speak more about this shortly.

In this tough time, I am so grateful to say I think our community has, by and large, been incredibly responsible to a degree not seen on many other campuses. Which brings me to an aspect of what students, faculty, and staff are experiencing around this country, and how we are dealing with it here. People are being subjected to anonymous statements that are at times profoundly disturbing. People are hiding their identities so that they can say or do things they do not want to be held responsible for out of fear. They are doing it online, some not out of fear but because they do not want to be held accountable. They are doing it especially in connection with professors and students they disagree with. And they are doing it on campuses and in various forms of communication.

I have, for the last 10 years, insisted that this University and its people stand firmly in support of students and faculty when they are threatened, whether anonymously or not, for acting within their academic freedom. That has come at a personal cost that I gladly bear. What I have not done and will not do, is support or respond to anonymous messages or anonymous groups. This is an academic community in which we each have to take responsibility for what we say and do.

If you want to be anonymous, you are avoiding that responsibility, and I do not respond to or engage with people who do not want to be responsible for the consequences of their actions. That said, what I will do is my utmost to protect the confidentiality of those who need to communicate, but fear retaliation in any form.

Finally, I want to remind all of you of what I said at the first Senate meeting of this year. In September, I said I expected it to be a stressful year on this campus because of events and challenges coming at us from Washington and the world. And I urged us to listen to each other, and to listen believing in the good faith and concern for the whole University of those who speak. That is how I intend to continue to listen to all in this community. I am grateful that you have done so as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Reed. My remarks will be brief. I don’t need the full time allotted, and I’ll answer questions after the provost’s remarks.

I’d like to start by acknowledging that it’s been a really challenging time these past two and a half weeks.

I appreciate how deeply our campus is feeling the terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel, the escalating conflict, and now the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I am grateful for your support of your colleagues, your students, faculty, and staff, especially those with family, friends, and loved ones in the region. On campus, there have been peaceful vigils hosted by both Jewish and Muslim student organizations that have welcomed students from many faiths. The Maxwell School hosted a panel that provided space for an academic discussion with experts representing multiple disciplines and perspectives. And tonight, the University’s 14 chaplains and 27 religious and spiritual life groups will co-host an interfaith peace vigil in Hendricks Chapel.

There have been incidents in classrooms and around campus that have been challenging for our students and faculty. Concerns about those incidents are being run through the University’s appropriate processes with great care. It is important that we don’t overreact and that we don’t underreact. Provost Ritter will address some of the ways Academic Affairs is providing guidance and resources to faculty in a moment.

We have students, faculty, and staff from all over the world, many of whom hail directly from the impacted region. We are a university that is committed to being welcoming to all. Living up to that is especially important and sometimes difficult in times like these.

This includes how we support our Jewish students, especially those with loved ones and connections in Israel, and our Muslim students, with loved ones and connections to Gaza. I continue to call on our community to show kindness, grace, empathy, and compassion to all our students, faculty, and staff—particularly those who are suffering and grieving, and to do this regardless of your individual views and perspectives.

Many people in this country are unhappy with how universities are handling these issues. I have heard from members of this community who are both happy and unhappy with this university’s response. Our official communications have been proactive. We’ve been trying to be very careful in them. We are driven by our moral obligation to all in our community, that includes students, faculty, and staff. Community members do have the right to speak out on their personal perspectives as individuals. The University’s official communications are our best effort to speak on behalf of our entire community and to continue to foster a community that holds together and is welcoming to all. Because we are a real university with a wide array of people and views, I would not expect everyone to agree with the University’s official communications. But I do think almost everyone here does agree that our students who are struggling deserve our diplomacy, sensitivity, and kindness.

At a time when, across the country and around the world, there is a rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic threats and violence, our students really are on edge, and we need to listen to them. I assure you that we are taking appropriate measures to keep our community safe, and will continue to do so.

The only other thing I wanted to talk about today is employee benefits. Prior to the last Senate meeting, I shared a memo and several additional documents to engage faculty and staff in the benefits process.

The information outlined a new proposed process to incorporate faculty and staff input on any proposed benefits changes. I’d like to try this experimentally starting next month, and I had requested your feedback before I implemented that experiment.

I have received some feedback, particularly encouraging me to specify how the Senate bodies are going to be engaged in an ongoing basis in the benefits review process. I will specify that shortly. I have also received at least one proposed change in benefits internally for 2025 that I am deferring to this experimental process. I’ll incorporate any other suggestions I receive, including at this meeting and today, and get this process started next week. I want to remind folks that this was the result of a lot of people’s efforts over the summer, including the working group that Eric Kingson and Andy Gordon chaired. I thank everybody who has worked on it.

I think we should all give this a chance and see what its results are and honestly assess it at the end of the year in the Senate. I will specify steps in the process for ongoing engagement by Senate committees when I get this out next week.

Thank you.

Thank you, Professor [Kira] Reed. It’s a pleasure to see so many of you in person. We’re well into the fall semester and the new academic year, and it’s off to a great start.

Today I want to provide updates on our strong close to fiscal year (FY) ’23, on our ever-changing athletics environment, on benefits, and on sustainability. Provost Ritter is going to address, among other things, legacy admissions and changes to the University’s admissions process in light of the Supreme Court decisions this summer impacting race as a consideration in university admissions.

First, some key metrics: Last month, we welcomed 22,948 students to ���ϲ�����, 103 new full-time faculty members, many wonderful new part-time faculty members, and four new deans to campus. Two weeks ago we celebrated the career of a ���ϲ����� legend, Dean and Senator Diane Murphy. Last week, we surpassed 200,000 graduates from programs of the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families. And yesterday we launched the implementation of a new academic strategic plan.

All this builds on an astounding finish to FY23. ���ϲ����� met or exceeded our goals based on just about every goal and metric. The Fall Census for enrollment last week confirmed the University has the largest total enrollment and undergraduate enrollment in our history. The University was more selective in our undergraduate admissions than we’ve been in at least the last 25 years.

The Forever Orange Campaign, launched in 2019 right before COVID, is now within 9% of our $1.5 billion goal. Our FY23 budget, which was completed on June 30, had a small, less than 1/2 of 1% of our budget, but a surplus, which is good. And we project a balanced budget for FY24. We have announced several new partnerships that are creating unique opportunities for growth for our students, faculty, staff, for this University, and for the Central New York region. We’re in a pretty strong position going into this year, including compared to our peers.

It is a good time to build on this strength. Because we have some pretty significant challenges coming at us.

I want to start with the challenges of athletics. The world of college sports continues to evolve, and we are far from done with changes. They are impacting the ACC [Athletic Coast Conference]. In June 2024, Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Methodist University (SMU) will join the ACC. These are fine schools. They align with our academic profile and athletic strengths, including in Olympic sports. I believe, and Athletic Director John Wildhack believes, these new schools provide stability for the conference in the short term. In the long term, I think we should expect more change. A lot happened over the summer. I did consult with academic leaders in the course of deciding how to vote and how to proceed on Stanford, and Berkeley and SMU.

In the short run, it protects our conference and does so with schools that are strong academic schools. It protects the ACC from the experience of the Pac-12. But, given the continuing change coming at intercollegiate athletics, we as a university need to be prepared for whatever comes. We need to be strongly positioned to be prominent in sports, including academically. But we also need to be prepared to realize that the current situation is not a stable one, for a whole bunch of reasons. I just want to reassure you that a lot of us are working to make sure ���ϲ����� has a strategy.

Orange football is undefeated this season, which makes many people very happy. Four of our six teams are nationally ranked in the top 25 this fall. That includes men’s soccer, field hockey, and men’s and women’s cross country. We’re so proud of our student athletes, who continue to compete at the highest level and deliver on the academic level as well.

Next, I want to talk about benefits. This morning I forwarded to the senators and other University stakeholders a memorandum on a new process for evaluating proposed changes to our University’s faculty and staff benefits. It’s a long memorandum in the supplemental materials, and I don’t expect any of you to have read it all yet. It builds on hard work all summer by a working group chaired by Eric Kingson and Andy Gordon. I neglected to credit and acknowledge the other members of the working group, to whom I am deeply grateful.

They are:

• Suzette Meléndez, professor, College of Law
• PJ DiPietro, professor, College of Arts and Sciences
• Tom Dennison, professor emeritus, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
• Dan Cutler, director of learning communities, Student Experience division
• Kristi Johnson, administrative specialist, College of Arts and Sciences
• Cory Wallack, associate vice president of student health and wellness, Student Experience division
• Alicia Madden, senior director of budget and administration, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
• Pun To (Doug) Yung, professor, College of Engineering and Computer Science
• Matthew Sessler, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 200*

I would appreciate feedback on this report. As I said in the memo, I hope that feedback comes via email to me at chancellor@syr.edu or in the next Senate meeting or in the committees between now and then. After incorporating that feedback, we will implement the proposals on an experimental basis for this academic year. We’ll see how it goes and decide what the final process is. I thank everyone who helped with getting us to this point, including senators and committee chairs who wrote to me about this last year.

Next on sustainability, we made a commitment as a university last year at the April 19 University Senate meeting based on an extraordinary amount of work by the Student Association and other groups at the University. We accelerated the University’s timeline for achieving carbon neutrality to 2032, eight years earlier than our previous goal of 2040. That is going to be a lift, and the work on that lift has started.

First, I’ve established a Sustainability Oversight Council to make sure we’re on track and shared in that goal, and to oversee and audit the work being done by the Sustainability Management Office of the University. The Council has four members and those members have all agreed to serve. They include:

• Student Association representative Olivia Curreri, who is Student Association vice president of university affairs, and a senior in Maxwell and Newhouse;
• Charley Driscoll, University Professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and a faculty member with expertise in this area;
• Trustee Ken Pontarelli, who leads a group at Goldman Sachs focused on sustainable investing in transformative areas such as clean energy and waste; and
• the fourth new member I decided is going to be me so I can pay attention to this closely.

The Sustainability Management Office has been working hard in recent months to realize what we need to do to reach this new goal. The University replaced the Lally Athletics Complex arena lighting, which is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 141 metric tons per year. The exterior lighting in front of Smith Hall, the Hall of Languages, and Maxwell was also updated over the summer. This fall, lighting in the main Quad and the main parking lots on North Campus will be updated. But there’s more to come and not all of it has been realized yet.

Future sustainability projects in the near term are focused on the science buildings, which have the highest energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Further steps and some shared changes to all our cultural practices are going to be needed as part of this. I need the Senate to realize that there may be habits we engage in that we need to change if we’re going to get to carbon neutrality by the deadline.

So those are my quick reports, and I’m willing to take questions on anything. But I want to speak lastly about the year ahead. It’s more than a little scary. What’s going on globally, what’s going on in politics—as our agenda committee chair referred to, what’s going on in climate change, what’s going on in the courts, and what’s going on in higher education, leaves a lot of us with some good reasons to despair. I know that. But I also believe many of the challenges really are opportunities for this University to step up and lead. It’s up to us working together to identify the opportunities and take them. This is a chance to show the world— certainly the higher education world—that ���ϲ����� is a different and better place than many others. We have done well as a community through challenging times. I believe that is because for all our warts, for all the constraints, we still have better values and better shared governance than most of our peers.

I saw this because all summer I have watched as preeminent institutions of higher learning in this country faltered on issues of academic freedom, and faltered on support for the full range of academic programs that define a great university. And, indeed, they faltered on basic understandings of principles of faculty authority and shared governance.

We should not go there at ���ϲ�����. We should actually listen to each other. Every year, I learn more about what I don’t know, which is a lot, by listening. I believe the key to success in this scary year ahead starts by each of us starting with an assumption of good faith in one another and truly listening to each other as scary things commence. I for one intend to practice that good faith.

I say that to you today because having studied pretty carefully where it has gone south, too often the deterioration of shared governance is preceded by the belief that criticism is made with evil intent. In my experience, that’s just not true here at ���ϲ�����.

I urge us all to approach our interactions with students, with our colleagues, and with leaders with the belief that each of us honestly has the best interests of this University at heart. Our university will benefit. We’ll keep the incredible momentum ���ϲ����� now has going strong, and we’ll be able to lead in some areas where other universities cannot.

Thank you.

*After the creation of the working group, Matthew was appointed to a non-union position and he stopped attending the working group meetings after July 1.

I also want to remind folks that the One University Awards are happening this Friday at 4 p.m. at Hendricks Chapel. It’s a way to celebrate so many extraordinary people at this University—faculty, staff, students, community members, including the Chancellor’s Citations and the Forever Orange Award. We’re celebrating professors emeriti. We’re conferring the Chancellor’s Medal on Dean Diane Murphy. And Gwenn Judge is coming back so we can give her an award. If you have a chance to come, if you worked with folks, there’s a lot of meaning in that event. So I hope you come.

At the last Senate meeting I promised an update on the commitment to advance our sustainability goals at this university. I’m pleased to report that the University has revised our timeline for achieving net carbon neutrality to 2032, eight years earlier than our previous goal of 2040.

This grew out of efforts of our Student Association and its outgoing President David Bruen, and the student leaders here and at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and at LeMoyne College. David just relentlessly focused, because they’re going to be around longer than some of us, on reducing our carbon footprint sooner. Reaching this ambitious new goal is going to require every member of our community to work on changes. And we’re going to be doing that this fall.

Just for a preview of coming attractions, it will require that the days of these things [holds up plastic water bottle] are numbered, as are single-use plastics in various ways on this campus and in our facilities all over the world. There will be other things, too. We’re also adding a proactive oversight group to assure we’re on track each year to get into net carbon neutral, no later than 2032. I thank everybody who worked on that.

Turning to the benefits issue: this was part of an issue that is raised in the resolution and in some materials.��I provided a report in a written letter to Emily [Stokes-Rees] on Monday that was not that far away from some of these committee reports. It’s been provided to some of you, but will be published to all of you. But I want to give a gist of that quickly.

I’m appointing an ad hoc working group right away on benefits engagement to work over the summer and reach recommendations in a report by August. I’ve reached out to Senate Chair Emily Stokes-Rees to request recommendations, including for four or five faculty members or staff to work with me over the summer on that. I’d like to receive recommendations from you all as well by May 1 because I want the first meeting to occur before Commencement.

I have asked the leaders of that effort to be Falk College Professor Eric Kingson and Andy Gordon, senior vice president and chief human resource officer. I’m going to meet with that group over the summer. The charge for that group is:

• Review options and recommend a structure for soliciting feedback from faculty and staff;
• Make recommendations on health care rates and review proposed benefits changes for calendar year 2024; and
• Consider other matters directly about benefits brought forth by the University Senate, faculty and staff.

We’ll share their report with the Senate and appropriate committees before the first Senate meeting in the fall. The first Senate meeting in fall often is not quite as crammed an agenda. Based on that report and the discussion of it, we’re going to have a new process that we’ll use on an experimental basis for next year. And we’ll get feedback at the end of the year as to how that worked, and come up with the final process for the year after. I know that’s a very iterative process, but this turns out to be more complicated. And there are disagreements. I identified at least one in the first meeting with Eric and Andy. I want to get them transparently on the table and resolve them over the summer so we can talk about what they are. Thanks for everybody for helping with that. I do think it’s going to be a fairly transparent process for the coming year—both on what the process is going to be, and what it’s going to be for the coming year.

Just quickly, there’s good news I want to share that the University’s Student Experience division was recently named one of the 27 Most Promising Places to Work in Student Affairs by Diverse Issues in Higher Education. That award goes to workplaces that are vibrant, diverse, supportive and committed to increase excellence. Thanks to everybody who helped make that happen, including the leadership under Senior Vice President Allen Groves.

The Schine Student Center has now officially been designated a great place. Our renovated Schine Center was recognized for excellence in the design of student-centered facilities from the Association of College Unions International. Congratulations to Facilities and all the students and people who participated in the design. I could also thank lot of people, but the provost has told me she’s going to thank them in her remarks, so I’m going to stop. I’ll be here for questions after her remarks. Thanks.

First, I have been reviewing suggestions for changes to our process for deciding benefits for our faculty and staff. I have received some input from our human resources professionals, from concerned Senate bodies and from faculty experts. I’ve also reviewed a report that a group of Senators worked on titled “Recommendations Toward Improving the Employee Benefits Determination Process,” and I am taking that report quite seriously. I expect to consult with HR leadership and Professor Eric Kingson in the coming week and to report fully at the April meeting on this and to provide a written report to the Senate on next steps before that meeting.

The second thing is to talk about sustainability at ���ϲ�����. We have some previous guideposts for the University’s efforts. First—we have ���ϲ�����’s that you can find on the . This document benchmarks our status and outlines specific strategies over the next five years to bring us closer to carbon neutrality.

I have now also reviewed carefully the more recent report on sustainability and recommendations of our Student Association (SA) which worked with students from ESF and Le Moyne on this project. I have spoken since then about priorities under that report with the SA leadership. I expect an announcement, in conjunction with SA leadership, before the next Senate meeting on new steps the University is going to take to enhance sustainability.

Third, I want to speak about the forthcoming Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action in higher education. We expect that these decisions will be coming in June in both the Harvard and University of North Carolina cases. Based on the oral arguments in those cases, it appears quite possible that the Supreme Court will effectively end affirmative action in higher education in these opinions.

With that possibility in mind, we are faced with a question of how ���ϲ����� is prepared to maintain a diverse and inclusive student body in what may be a post-affirmative action era.

I have created a working group led by Provost Ritter and Chief Student Experience Officer Groves to proactively prepare for this issue. The group has been working hard on several actions in recent months. First, the team is assessing potential outcomes of the court’s decisions. Second, they are devising strategies to maintain our diverse and inclusive University based on each of these potential outcomes. And third, they will be communicating this work in the coming weeks to raise everybody’s awareness and to engage our community on this effort.

We are being proactive in our approach so that we can be nimble and respond based on the detail in the court’s decisions. Inclusion has been one of the core tenets of ���ϲ����� since its founding in 1870. We are committed to maintaining a diverse student body in the future. The Supreme Court’s decisions may make this more difficult, and may require us to redouble our efforts in different ways. But ���ϲ����� will remain a diverse and inclusive university.

Those are my two minutes today. ��Thank you.

Good afternoon. I’d like to give a couple of my minutes to Senior Vice President Allen Groves and DPS Chief Craig Stone for a reason I’ll give.

Monday night, like some of you, I was up late following the horrible events at Michigan State University. Of course, we learned that three promising, young students were killed and five others seriously injured. On behalf of all of us at ���ϲ�����, I have expressed condolences and offered support to our colleagues at Michigan State, as I did to our colleagues at Virginia last semester, and I have with dismal regularity done at other colleges and universities.

These are jarring and horrific events. It is hard to understand them. I know that when it happens on a college campus, it’s hard not to think “what if this happened at ���ϲ�����.” I know that thought has probably occurred to all of you multiple times.

I wish I could promise that an event like this will never happen here. I wish I could guarantee that we can take steps that will guarantee that it never happens here. Unfortunately, in the situation we’re in currently in this country, I can’t make those promises.

What I can say is that our university has been across the entire leadership aggressively preparing and training for these moments. Preventing these events, as best we can, is the highest goal. We do a lot of work on that. But we also prepare to react, respond and minimize the threat to our communities to keep it as safe as possible. It is easy to forget between the events, the steps and resources available. I thought given recent events, just two minutes from Allen [Groves] and Chief Stone reminding us of some of this might be appropriate.

I ask permission for Allen to speak.

The full text of his remarks is below.

I’m going to be very brief. Last week in my winter message I provided a thorough update on many of the University’s top priorities. If you haven’t had an opportunity to watch or read it, a link to the message and the transcript of it is on SU News, and it was emailed to you last Wednesday. Please treat that as my written report or part of it.��I just have three other quick updates.

First, I want to thank everybody who participated in the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in the Dome on Sunday. It was a capacity crowd of 2,000 people for the dinner and even more for the really inspiring program and keynote address from pastor and community leader Rev. Phil Turner.

Second, on enrollment for fall 2023, we are fortunate once again to have received a record number of undergraduate applications–41,678. This is a 3% increase from last year, which was itself the highest in our history up to that point. Applications from students of color are 8% higher than last year. Undergraduate early decision applications are up 9% from last year. And applicants have a higher high school GPA than last year’s applicants.

���ϲ����� remains test optional, but we saw a significant increase in the number of students who submitted SAT scores this year. The average SAT is down slightly from last year.

It is still very early in the process for our graduate, doctoral and law applications, but our graduate and doctoral applications are running well ahead of last year at this time. Our applications for our online JDi program were also very strong. Overall law applications are down compared to this time last year, which is consistent with national trends.

The bottom line is, early signs are very positive for an outstanding cohort of new students for the fall of 2023.

Benefits Update

Third, on benefits for our faculty and staff: As you know, after getting counsel from some of you on this call, the University is investing an additional $1 million to offset rising health care costs this year. That includes lowering the anticipated contribution increases for all employees enrolled in health insurance for 2023, but also expanding eligibility for the lower cost Schedule B health insurance, and then further subsidizing the Schedule B employee contribution to limit increases for all plans to less than four percent. As a result, the number of employees enrolled in Schedule B this year increased by 54%. I am happy at this result. I’m grateful to those who helped me work that through, including especially Professor Kingson, who is a senator.

In my October report to the Senate, I also indicated that the University would refine the process of how health care benefits and changes to them are determined. I requested the process incorporate more feedback from the Senate and Senate committees, and this is the semester that process is going to be refined. I’ve asked Karen Morrisey in Human Resources to work directly with the Senate Committee on Services to Faculty and Staff this semester on this.

I just today have read the committee’s annual report to the Senate, which is on the agenda for this meeting, and I really look forward to working with Karen and the committee on those recommendations. That concludes my report.

Thank you.

“The selection of members to serve on the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure is essential to the University’s efforts to assure fairness and consistency across the promotion and tenure process. It also assists in assuring adherence to the highest academic standards of excellence and in providing a superb educational experience for our students,” says Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer . “I encourage all eligible faculty to take part in the election process to help the University in its efforts on both of these forefront goals.”

The committee is composed of tenured professors drawn from 12 electorates aligned with the faculties of 10 of 11 schools and colleges plus two electorates from the College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences has separate electorates for faculty in the sciences and in the humanities. The College of Professional Studies is not represented on the committee.

The online balloting identifies potential committee members from each of the electorates having open seats. Only tenured full professors are eligible to serve on the committee. Once balloting closes, a slate of three candidates from each electorate is forwarded to the provost for final committee selection. Committee members serve staggered two-year terms and are not eligible to serve two terms consecutively. Additional information about the committee, its composition and its operations can be found in the ��on the provost’s website.

Nominations are to be returned electronically. Balloting closes Feb. 1. Representatives from the Appointment and Promotions Committee of the University Senate will then identify the faculty endorsed by their colleagues who are willing to serve and then forward the list to Ritter, who will invite individuals to serve. The committee will be fully seated by March 1.

We lost both a student and a trustee since our last meeting of the Senate, and I want to recognize and acknowledge them. Last weekend, I met with the family and attended the Hendricks Chapel Memorial service for Bob Sharipov, who was a junior in Falk College. He was a first-generation student, an immigrant from Brooklyn, New York. He was killed in a car accident as he was traveling home for Thanksgiving. Another ���ϲ����� student traveling with him was seriously injured in remains hospitalized. I’m just really grateful to all the folks in student experience and in Falk College who really came together to support our students and Bob’s family. I especially thank all the students who turned out on Sunday to speak about Bob at the memorial service in the middle of their exams. It meant a lot to Bob’s family.

Also, today was the funeral for Walter Broadnax, who was one of our most distinguished professors in the Maxwell School and a longtime trustee of the University. I’m proud he was my friend, and I’m very grateful to Dean David Van Slyke, who traveled and spoke at his service, which was in Washington, D.C.

This past weekend, the United States Department of Justice took into custody a man who I believe made and placed the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 in 1988. That’s such a significant milestone in a decades-long process to bring those responsible for the bombing to justice. I’m grateful to the law enforcement officials in both the United States and Scotland for just relentless work on this project. I know that the victim’s families, their friends and their loved ones have shown tremendous strength and determination in seeking justice for more than three decades. So, it’s really welcome news. And I note that the annual memorial service marking the Dec. 21 attack is in Hendricks Chapel on Wednesday of next week. I hope those of you who can come, will come and join at 2 p.m. on the 21st.

Finally, I just want to congratulate our student athletes and the coaches and staff on the men’s soccer team, which on Monday won the national championship and a close game against Indiana. We’re proud of their hard work. We’re proud of their success, both on and off the field. The men’s soccer team is one of 10 of our athletic teams that had a perfect graduation rate this past year.

Let me just thank everyone for a very full semester and all the work you did all semester. I hope you enjoy a well-deserved break and especially safe travels over the holidays.

“The full Board of Trustees had its November meeting on campus earlier this month. They installed five new Trustees and there’s a new Board Chair. Trustee Jeff Scruggs will be the first person of color to serve as chair of the Board of Trustees when he assumes the role at the May meeting. He has over 20 years of finance experience and currently serves as head of the public sector and infrastructure group at Goldman Sachs.

“Jeff Scruggs is not a ���ϲ����� graduate, but has a deep connection. I think some people in the meeting probably know that his father, Otey Scruggs, was a renowned professor of African American history at the Maxwell School for more than 25 years.

“Jeff Scruggs has been a strong advocate in ensuring this University is welcoming to all. He served as the co-lead of the Board’s Advisory Committee on University Climate, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility and also the Special Committee on University Climate, Diversity and Inclusion.

“The Board also reviewed the honorary degree revocation standard and process. This included consideration of the feedback provided by the University Senate Committee on Honorary Degrees, Student Association and other constituent groups.

“The Board made two revisions to the draft report. First, they clarified in the standard that lawful speech is not a valid basis for the revocation of an honorary degree. Second, they accepted the recommendation that came through the Senate to remove the world “moral” from the standard. They voted then to adopt the revised standard and process.

“Through Emily [Stokes-Rees], all of you should have received the final policy along with the report and all the comments that were received on it. The next step is for the Senate to take any steps necessary to implement the process.

“A specific petition for the revocation of an honorary degree, as I understand it, would then be submitted to the Senate Committee on Honorary Degrees. If the Senate committee advances it, it would go to the full board.

“The only other new development since the fairly recent Senate meeting is it’s been a highly successful fall season in many fall sports. That includes the men’s soccer team, which won the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conrference] championship this past weekend and is in the NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] tournament playing here this coming weekend.

“But undoubtedly our biggest success was announced today—the high graduation rate for our student-athletes. This year we achieved a 93% graduation success rate—with more than half of our teams having a 100% success rate. That ties ���ϲ����� for fifth among all 69 schools in the Power 5 conferences and is the most important thing after all.

“Just reminding everybody we have a long-standing tradition here on campus to host an annual international Thanksgiving dinner for our international students. That’s tomorrow night. Thanks for all of you who are coming and serving as hosts. It introduces the more than 600 international students who are coming to Thanksgiving traditions in this country. Thank you for participating.

“I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving next week as well.”

In the last month, we have hosted more than 1,500 alumni for a successful Orange Central reunion weekend. We had more than 7,000 family members for Family Weekend, the largest ever. And, we have had major speakers on campus, including Representative Liz Cheney, and an incredible array of classes, events, research and performances. Last week I taught 51 students all day Saturday and Sunday—they were from six schools and colleges, graduate and undergraduate students. They came from 12 countries and spoke more than 20 languages. And, it was among the finest group of students I have taught in 35 years. I feel very fortunate to teach here.

The biggest news from the last month is the announcement by Micron Technology at ���ϲ�����’s D’Aniello Building. Micron is building the largest semiconductor fabrication facility in the U.S. here in Central New York. This megafab, as Micron Technology refers to it, will include the nation’s largest cleanroom, which is the size of 40 football fields.

This is a $100B investment in our community—the largest private investment in the history of the state of New York. It will create 50,000 new jobs in this region, including 9,000 high-paying jobs directly with Micron. This involves $500M in education alone to train or retrain workers in our community.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring an economic resurgence to Central New York. The University was a key part of the team that recruited Micron Technology to our area. I am really grateful to everyone in our community who played a role in attracting Micron. For the University that included Vice Chancellor Mike Haynie; Provost Gretchen Ritter; Dean Cole Smith from Engineering and Computer Science; Dean David Seaman, currently both dean of Libraries and the interim dean of the iSchool; Vice President for Research Duncan Brown and Vice President for Community Engagement and Government Relations Cydney Johnson, among others.

It really is a tremendous opportunity for ���ϲ����� too. In courting Micron, our team demonstrated how the University can be a partner in many critical ways. These include collaborating on new research and development efforts, student internships, student success initiatives, creating a pipeline of capable and talented workers, and building the infrastructure to prepare our community for jobs in new and evolving technology fields.

I’ve spoken a lot in the last couple of years about the importance of being entrepreneurial in all we do. This is really time to put that approach into action. We must move quickly and creatively to realize the full potential of this opportunity. How prepared and proactive we are as a university will have a direct impact on our success and the success of the region. I think we can do this well. I’ve created a program office to coordinate all our Micron-related efforts at the University. Vice Chancellor Mike Haynie will serve as executive leader.

The program office will run point on all coordination with Micron from research to educational training to community relations. At the same time, Provost Gretchen Ritter, who you will hear from next, will be working on advancing academic and research opportunities with our Micron counterparts. Our hope is to make collaborating with ���ϲ����� simple for Micron, and to build on the successful partnership we’ve already established over the last few months.

Next, I’d like to address employee benefits. Open enrollment begins in five days on Halloween on Oct. 31. This year, unusually high inflation is impacting just about everything in this country, including health care costs and benefits costs. For this year’s open enrollment that created a challenge. Because of my experience with benefits changes last year, I sought counsel on how to manage benefits changes differently going forward. If we follow past practice and process and apply the standard agreed algorithm used to determine the employee contribution rate for employee health insurance this year, it would have resulted in very significant double digit increases in health premiums and contributions by all our staff. After in the last month consulting with some deans, some faculty experts and staff in the budget office, I have concluded those increases are untenable for our people and particularly for our lowest paid staff. I understand the increasing pressure inflation has had on our employees and their families. As a result, I have directed Human Resources to do two things. First, to invest an additional $1M this year to offset rising health care costs for this year. Doing this has lessened the overall impact of what would have been double digit increases. As a result:

• For Schedule A employees, the individual coverage increase will be less than 5%, and the family coverage increase will be less than 8%.
• For Schedule B employees, the changes will be even more helpful. Schedule B provides lower cost insurance to our staff who meet lower income thresholds. For Schedule B employees, the increase will be less than 4% for all plans.
• After listening to faculty expertise, and I’m very grateful for it, the University is also expanding Schedule B eligibility by raising the income limits for those who qualify.
• I’ve also asked Provost Ritter to use part of the extra funding to work with Human Resources to explore expanded support and coverage for part-time faculty as well.
• Finally, I have checked very carefully and been assured that there will be no increases in deductibles, co-pays and coinsurance regardless of your plan selection this year.

That is the first step I have directed, albeit late in the process of preparing for open enrollment. You will receive more detailed information about open enrollment and 2023 benefits in the coming days. Nevertheless, this has not been an ideal process. The second step is that I have directed Human Resources to work with leadership and through the University leadership and the University Senate and its committees and appropriate other bodies to refine the process of how health care benefits and changes in them are determined. I would like changes in that process be made on a timely basis so that new process can be in place by the end of this academic year and inform next year’s open enrollment.

Later on the agenda, we have the honorary degree revocation proposal, which is in draft. I drafted it at the charge of the Board of Trustees. I thank many of you who have provided input on this standard of process already and the University Senate Committee on Honorary Degrees, which comprehensively debated it and we may hear from a little more later. I welcome questions and discussion later in this meeting.

We’ll do an executive summary of all the feedback we’ve gotten. That will go to the full Board of Trustees with the current draft for the Nov. 4 meeting. I will provide an update on the board actions at the Nov. 16 University Senate meeting.

Finally, I’d like to recognize all the student-athletes who had a pretty amazing fall season. The Orange men’s soccer team clinched the Atlantic Division title and are currently ranked fourth in the country. The women’s field hockey team finish the regular season undefeated at home and ranked ninth in the country. The men’s and women’s cross country teams are going to the ACC championships on Friday. Both teams are nationally ranked in the top 15.

And, ���ϲ����� Football is having its best season in 35 years, currently ranked 16th in the country. We are taking on Notre Dame this weekend. There must be somebody on this call who didn’t know that. It will be a sold-out game, the second this season.

It has been an incredibly busy and productive semester. We have much to be proud of and excited about for the future of ���ϲ�����. Thank you.

Now in her role as associate provost for faculty affairs, partners with the and other academic affairs leaders to support key faculty initiatives and advance the University’s vision for and scholarly distinction.

Jamie Winders, associate provost for faculty affairs

“Being a faculty member has given me a knowledge base. I don’t always have the answers, but I have a good sense of what questions to ask. There are lots of moving parts in what we do, so we have to understand how the parts fit together as well as seeing the big picture,” Winders says. “It’s important to understand how to support faculty and support the work the deans are doing without getting in their way and without undermining the work of the schools and colleges. And it doesn’t hurt to have thick skin.”

Winders is also a in the in the . She’s best known for her work on international migration and emerging technologies and as founding director of the��University’s . Winders is associate editor of the international research journal and was editor-in-chief of the��International Migration Review��from 2017 to June 2022. She has served as department chair and director of undergraduate studies, faculty representative to the Board of Trustees, chair of the Arts and Sciences and Maxwell faculty councils and chair of the University Senate research committee. Winders began her new role as associate provost for faculty affairs in December 2021.

Winders answers some questions about how she approaches her role and implements its unique range of activities and perspectives.

Thank you.

We are in the fourth week of the fall semester and off to a strong start. For the first time in several years, it feels almost like the start of a typical year.

Our campus is in great shape thanks to our facilities team that worked all summer to make a number of improvements. The first of several transformative research laboratory renovations are underway at both Link Hall and the Center for Science and Technology. Maybe the most noticeable change is our new gateway to campus on Waverly Avenue between Schine and Newhouse. The entry features a new sign and enhances accessibility by replacing stairs with wheelchair-friendly walkways. Accessibility updates also were completed to the Link Hall Allyn Innovation Center entrances.

The University is also in the final stages of completing the Onondaga Nation Memorial on Shaw Quadrangle. The commissioned artwork of native artist Brandon Lazore was installed this summer. I hope you will join us later this semester at the dedication ceremony. We’ll get the details of that out to you as soon as it is available.

In May after the last meeting of the Senate, we entered into a new naming partnership at the Dome with JMA Wireless, a local 5G technology company with international reach. The new JMA Wireless global headquarters and its expanding manufacturing facility are just down the Hill from the Dome. And, it is helping to revitalize downtown ���ϲ�����. As part of the agreement, JMA will upgrade the stadium with the latest 5G technology. When complete, the JMA Wireless Dome will be the most networked stadium on a U.S. college campus. I think this partnership will transform the experience in the stadium. The improvements will help draw more high-profile events to campus, such as the recent Elton John concert, which just concluded.

This summer the University made changes to realign public safety and Title IX operations The realignment was based on very extensive feedback from students, faculty and staff. Today, both the Department of Public Safety and the new Student Title IX team now report to the Division of Student Experience. The new Faculty/Staff Title IX team will continue to report to Human Resources. The goal of this is to tailor our prevention and response strategies and to better support and advocate on behalf of our students, faculty and staff.

There have been some new leaders since Commencement. We welcomed in June Mary Grace Almandrez, who started as the new vice president for diversity and inclusion. Her enthusiasm and approach have proven to be a great fit for ���ϲ����� already.

She is overseeing and helping facilitate the implementation of the five-year strategic diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility plan. If you haven’t had the opportunity to get to know her, you will learn later in this meeting she is an extraordinary and great addition to ���ϲ�����.

Brett Padgett is our new senior vice president and chief financial officer. He also started on Sept. 1. He comes from the University of Chicago, where he most recently served as interim vice president and chief financial officer. Brett has more than two decades of experience in financial administration and a Navy veteran.

Professor Mary Graham has been selected as the University’s new faculty athletic representative. For a decade, she has served as professor of sport management in Falk College and as affiliated faculty member in Whitman. ��Many of you know her from her work with the Senate. In this new role, she will serve as an advisor to me and the provost on the student-athlete experience and as a liaison between academics and athletics, including to the NCAA and to the ACC. Mary succeeds Rick Burton, who served in this role since 2014. My thanks to Rick for his many years of service and thoughtful guidance through a time of great change in athletics.

I want to update the Senate on benefits issues because these matters were much discussed in the Senate last year. A lot has changed both at the University and in the world since we last discussed these issues.

First, as to retirement benefits. As some of you will recall, after listening to concerns in the Senate, I suspended the implementation of changes to our retirement benefits that would have required newly hired employees to choose to contribute some of their own compensation in order to qualify for a University 10% match. Senators expressed many concerns, including how this change would in fact play out for our lowest compensated new staff members.

Over the summer I decided to suspend indefinitely this change to our retirement benefits. The data I have now reviewed does not convince me that the proposed change will not have adverse effects on the retirement savings of our lowest paid employees. And we are in a time of staffing shortages where I believe the highest priority should be recruiting and retaining new staff.

The other benefits issue was health insurance contributions, which is particularly salient now because open enrollment is coming up on us beginning at the end of October. We at SU have very good health benefits, including compared to almost all our private university peers. They are so good that we faced a problem in that other employers in ���ϲ�����, and particularly new private employers, have strong incentives to have two employee couples insured by SU rather than by them. We were in a gradual process of adjusting our family contributions to lessen this incentive, which in turn caused contributions to rise for family coverage. That was the issue we discussed last year. It is still an issue of concern to me and still an issue of concern to the Provost.

But again, a lot has changed in the last year. In particular, for the last five years we have been able to keep increases to individual employee contributions for health insurance very low—indeed, at zero for three of the last five years. This year, we are seeing rapid inflation in health care costs, like almost every other cost. If we were to apply our traditional process and algorithm, that would call for very substantial increases in health insurance contributions across the board this year.

We are still working on what to do about this. All I can report today is what I am carefully considering in this area. First, I am considering, in this unique time of staff hardships and staff shortages, having the University absorb a substantial share of the increased costs that our algorithm would otherwise assign to each employee. Second, I believe it is time to expand our schedule B eligibility. Schedule B is the lower cost schedule for health insurance for our lowest paid employees. I believe the income threshold for schedule B probably needs to be raised.

We will need to make these decisions in the next few weeks, and we will be reaching out to some of you for counsel in that time frame. Those interested in providing that counsel, I would like to hear from soon.

Next, I’d like to provide a brief update on our key metrics for the fiscal year end close. The fiscal year of the University closes on June 30. ���ϲ����� is in better shape than most of our peer institutions coming out of the pandemic. Fiscal year 2022 was one of our strongest fundraising years in school history. We exceeded our cash flow goal by more than 150%. The Forever Orange Campaign just passed the $1.2 billion toward its $1.5 billion goal.

For the budget, we ended FY22 with a small surplus after two years of small deficits during COVID. Our endowment is down just slightly despite the turbulent market. That compares favorably with most of our peers.

Turning to enrollment, we have one of the largest entering first-year undergraduate classes ever. The fall census numbers will be finalized tomorrow but we are at approximately 4,100 new first-year students, about 400 over our goal. We had record applications. Although we admitted fewer students, we had a record number of students who accepted. We had lower summer melt than our modeling predicted, meaning more of the people we got deposits from really intended to come here. We were a first choice school.

The ultimate result is that ���ϲ����� was the first choice for a lot of students—more than we expected. That’s a great thing, but 400 more students that we expected is a challenge. And it is a challenge for lots of teams across the University.

I want to recognize the really heroic work of our deans, our academic affairs team, our leaders in student experience, in housing and facilities to get additional courses scheduled and staffed and to get housing identified so that all entering student will have the quality first-year experience we expect.

The team decided the top priority was keeping our first-year students together and on main campus. To do that DellPlain was converted to an all first-year residence hall. That meant moving 200 sophomores elsewhere who had previously selected rooms in DellPlain in the lottery, and that was upsetting to them. They were given four housing options, including the Sheraton, the newly purchased Marley Building—which has a floor of residence in it, a former sorority house on Walnut Street and University Village Apartments. Ninety percent of the sophomores got their first-choice alternatives. While they were not all happy with this change, I think the teams did their best to provide what our first-year students should reasonably expect, while accommodating our returning students. I’m grateful to everyone who helped with this effort.

My final report before I turn it over to the Provost and then take questions is on the Senate resolution last spring to revoke the honorary degree of Rudy Giuliani, which was awarded in 1989. Like all degrees, only the full Board of Trustees has the power to approve or revoke honorary degrees. I brought the resolutions from the University Senate as well as the Student Association and the Graduate Student Organization to the full Board of Trustees in the May meeting. The board discussed the issue and charged me with recommending a standard and process for revoking an honorary degree.

Over the summer, I worked with our legal counsel, our audit, our archives and others to research ���ϲ�����’s history and the processes in place at peer institutions. With the help of Gabe Coleman and Abby Perer here today, I drafted a very substantial report regarding honorary degree revocation, which I provided to the Executive Committee and was discussed last Friday.

To summarize quickly what the report shows, it shows that in our 152-year history, only two degrees had been revoked—both earned degrees. One was a Ph.D. revoked for plagiarism in a doctoral dissertation. The other was an undergraduate degree revoked based on fraud in an application. We did not find any evidence of an honorary degree being revoked.

The report I submitted recommends a process to revoke honorary degrees that largely follows the same process used to award a degree. The Board requested I share this report with the University Senate, Student Association and Graduate Student Organization for comment. It has today been issued publicly to those groups, I ask that comments be provided by the Oct. 26, 2022, Senate meeting, including at that meeting. The report and all comments will be referred to the full Board and discussed at the November Board meeting, which is on Nov. 4. ��The Senate also may need to amend some of the bylaws in order to implement it.

Once the process and standard are in place for revocation of an honorary degree, that process and standard would be applied to the Rudy Giuliani case. I think it is important that we look at this process as a whole and be careful, but I think there’s a way forward provided in the report. There are also some issues embedded here that are covered in the report that I think people will want to discuss. And I’d like the benefit of that discussion to go to the full board on Nov. 4. I encourage you to read that and make comments either directly to me or through the Senate processes, including at the Senate meeting on Oct. 26. I suspect that the Student Association and the Graduate Student Organization may also want to review and comment.

Those are my updates. It is good to see you all back. Thanks for getting us to this point.

As you heard, Provost Ritter isn’t able to join us today. She’s actually leading the accreditation or the evaluation of another great academic institution. And that’s a very important task. She asked me to share her gratitude to all of the senators for your commitment to our university, and your generosity and engagement with her during her first year at the University.

There are now 32 days left until Commencement. And it’s 78 degrees as I speak in ���ϲ�����. And that means that the next month is going to be very intense and very fast. And the temperature on Commencement day could be anywhere from 50 degrees colder to 20 degrees hotter—for those of you who haven’t experienced ���ϲ����� during the last month of the semester. We began the semester by changing the academic calendar to safely respond to the omicron surge. There have been a lot of changing situations since then, but I think we are ready to power through to the end of the academic year. And I thank you for that.

We’ve welcomed two new leaders to ���ϲ����� since we last met. At our last meeting, there was a specific question about the women’s basketball coach search, so I’ll start there. We are pleased to welcome back our alumna, and our first female student-athlete to have her jersey retired, Felisha Legette-Jack. Coach Legette-Jack comes to us from the University at Buffalo, where she spent 10 seasons building a strong program. I look forward to the upcoming season with her at the helm and seeing you at women’s basketball games. I also want to officially welcome Craig Stone to campus. He started on April 1 and has hit the ground running in his new role as associate vice president and chief of Campus Safety and Emergency Management Services. If you haven’t had the chance yet to meet Craig, I encourage you to reach out and introduce yourself.

Now, to updates. We’ll cover a couple of other topics but first let me talk about benefits.

On the subject of faculty and staff benefits, at the last Senate meeting, I shared that the University would be working with the appropriate Senate committees and groups to engage on this issue carefully and thoughtfully before any more changes are made. In the three weeks since that meeting, I understand that Andy Gordon has given fairly lengthy and detailed answers to questions about the retirement and health benefits issues that were submitted by the University Senate Committee on Services to Faculty and Staff. There was a lot to digest and it’s fairly recently been provided. I understand that the committee was not ready to meet with the HR team last week, and will do so in the near future.

So, where we stand right now with regard to retirement benefits is, as of today, there is still more that needs to be studied and understood and discussed. And I’m not satisfied that we have the right answer yet. As I have said before, no changes will be made until I am satisfied that has happened. It is important to take steps to help employees secure a strong retirement savings. At the same time, we need to be sure we are offering competitive benefits as compared to our peers on the health benefits issues.

I understand that the changes continue to raise questions for some faculty and staff. For this reason, I will await the further information that we receive from our outside actuaries over the summer and from consultations that are going on, including with the relevant folks in the Senate before making any decisions on health care contributions.

At our first Senate meeting in the fall, I will discuss the results of our actuarial information and issues about health plan costs for the November Open Enrollment period.

Finally, as I referenced in the last Senate meeting, I would like to evaluate further changes to selection and charges for the committees that assist us in providing feedback about benefits plans. I will be looking for experts both from within the University and from externally who can better provide feedback on proposed changes and our values related to them going forward, and hope to have that in place to report on it in the September meeting as well.

As we wrap up a semester where we’ve asked for flexibility and patience—as we have for the last two years—I want to talk a little bit about the in-person experience going forward and what to expect.

COVID will be with us for a long time, as an endemic illness like the flu. It’s not going to end at a set date and for certain, we are not going to have a victory dance. It is going to subside into an endemic situation that at various times will concern us more and at other times will fade into the background. We have proven that the University can make the right decisions when the latest public health guidance, science and data are available to us. I do want to emphasize that ���ϲ����� is now moving forward from a pandemic to endemic public health management.

And what that means is that we have a very concrete sense that all of us have sacrificed a lot in recent years. Juniors on this campus have never known what we’d call an entirely “normal” spring semester. Our students have been patient. Our students have largely followed the many extra protocols, rules and requirements we’ve requested and required. I’d say that going forward out of respect for that, we should all plan to provide out students all the experiences every ���ϲ����� student expects and deserves.

Over the past two years we have continually asked ourselves “can we do this?” As a university, we’ve shown that we can. Sometimes we have been able to do things that other universities haven’t and we’ve shown a lot of grit and grace. I think we should assume this will continue. We will conclude this spring semester safely and nimbly. I suspect there could be changes up and down depending on the circumstances, but I think we should all plan to have a normal fall semester in fall 2022 with all the academic and extracurricular activities that define the Orange experience.

Since Provost Ritter can’t be with us today, she asked me to give a brief update on the Academic Strategic Plan refresh. The Academic Strategic Plan Preparation Group represents almost every college and school. They have been meeting weekly to plan how to accomplish broad engagement with stakeholders across campus once the planning process kicks off. The provost has set out an aggressive timeline for completing the refresh. The goal is a process that results in a plan that is in place by the end of the Fall 2022 semester.

I’ll turn to some outstanding achievements from members of our community. Eight faculty members—so ��far—have been awarded prestigious CAREER grants from the National Science Foundation.

Our students are also doing very well this year competing for prestigious scholarships and fellowships. We have a record-breaking three Goldwater Scholars.

Our students have also earned other notable and competitive awards. Among them, a winner of a Hollings scholarship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a prestigious Beinecke Scholarship winner. We should all be proud of these accomplished members of our community.

We can also take great pride in the many people from across our campus who do things big and small that make ���ϲ����� thrive. We will celebrate many of them next week at the One University Awards on April 22 at 4 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel. This year, in addition to recognizing the 2021 class of emeriti faculty that I hope this body will approve later in this meeting, we’ll recommend service awards for countless faculty and staff who stuck with us through thick and thin throughout the pandemic. We will formally install Bea González as the University mace bearer.

We will also recognize individuals who have made an extraordinary impact on the University and our broader community. This will include presenting the Forever Orange Award to Patricia Burak and Father Gerry Waterman. Jorge Castillo, director of the LGBTQ Resource Center, will receive the Diversity and Inclusion Award. Professor Mark Glauser will receive the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence: Lifetime Achievement Award. I will also be presenting the Chancellor’s Medal to Jaime Alicea, the retiring superintendent of the ���ϲ����� City School District, who has worked with the University for many years and helped that district work through COVID this past two years.

This is an opportunity for all of us to honor these and many other outstanding individuals for their contributions to our campus and our community. I hope you will make every effort to attend the ceremony in person at 4 o’clock next Friday.

I’ll turn now to our search for a new faculty athletics representative. Professor Rick Burton has served admirably as our faculty athletics representative to the NCAA since 2014. He is coming to the end of his term, and we are actively seeking nominations for the next faculty member to serve in this important capacity.

The faculty athletics representative works closely with both the provost and the athletic director, and reports to me. This individual serves as an institutional liaison to ���ϲ����� Athletics as well as a representative of the University in ACC conference and NCAA matters. Key issues this position has focused on in the past include new and ongoing NCAA legislation, student-athlete welfare and advocating for the best interests of the University and its constituencies.

Individuals interested in applying for the position should submit a letter of interest by Friday, April 29, to nomination@syr.edu.

Next Thursday, April 21, the Community Review Board will hold its first open forum at 11 a.m. in the Melanie Gray Ceremonial Courtroom in Dineen Hall. This is the board that was created following the independent review of DPS. The entire community is invited to attend. The CRB is also inviting members of the campus community to serve on the CRB for the upcoming year. You received an email last week about the nomination process. There are six available seats—two undergraduate students, and one graduate student, staff member, faculty member and administrator. So if you are interested in the Community Review Board, you might attend that open forum or nominate those you think would be good to serve.

Finally, as I conclude on time, Professor Stokes-Rees, I strongly encourage faculty to participate in Commencement, Convocations and the Doctoral Hooding Ceremonies and related events. It has been three years since we have had an entirely normal set of graduation events, and I know it means a lot to our graduates when their teachers and mentors join the celebration.

If ever there was a year we should all turn out to acknowledge and respect what our students have accomplished, this would be that year. Please do your best to be there for our students in whatever way you appropriately can. I know you have been there for our students so amazingly these past few years, and I hope you can also help joyfully send them onward in May.

Thank you, I can take a few questions.

Good afternoon. I hope everyone had a good spring break and is ready for the fast-moving second half of the semester.

Before I begin what are going to be really brief updates, I want to take a moment to reflect on the Service of Commemoration held yesterday in Hendricks Chapel. Some of you on this meeting helped with that moving ceremony, and I thank all of you. Each year at the ceremony, my role is to read the names of faculty, staff, retirees and trustees who have passed away during the previous year. There were a lot of them this year, and there were also student names read as well. Many of those whose names I read are people I know personally. Their friends and family attend this event, and it was meaningful to them. I know that many of the people we commemorated yesterday meant a great deal to people here in this assembly. I thought it would be a civilized thing to do to ask that the minutes of this Senate meeting reflect the names of the people we remembered and that we take a moment to hold their memory in our thoughts in silence.

Thank you. My updates are going to be brief. I want to talk a little bit about changes to the University’s benefits for faculty and staff and then about three searches ongoing or completed that we’ve been briefing the Senate on along the way.

I spent a day during the spring break reviewing just how we as a University got to where we currently stand on retirement benefits and health care benefits. By that I mean I reviewed the substance of our current retirement and health care benefits for faculty and staff, and the process by which two changes were adopted—one the requirement of a match for new employees to receive retirement contributions by the University, and the other an increase in the cost of family coverage under some, but not all, of our health plans.

I want to reaffirm that the match requirement for retirement benefits has not yet been implemented, and will not be implemented unless and until I am satisfied that the questions raised in the Senate and its committees have been adequately answered, which will be this summer at the very earliest. The increase in the cost of family coverage for some of our health plans was to be implemented in three steps, one this year this past January, one next year, and one in 2024. That first step has been implemented, but any further steps again will not be implemented unless and until I am satisfied that the questions raised in the Senate and its committees have been adequately answered, which in this case at the earliest will be open enrollment at the end of October 2022.

I said all of that at the last Senate meeting. What I did not say was how I thought we should go about addressing the concerns that have been raised. I did not say because I was not yet sure about it and wanted spring break to think about it. I do now know more about how I think we ought to proceed.

Over break, I reviewed the points made in the Senate meetings, and I read the various Senate reports and minutes, including the two committees that previously worked on these issues—the Benefits Advisory Council, which is appointed by our human resources leadership, and the Senate Committee on Services to Faculty and Staff. I have respect for these committees and their members. I believe they proceeded on these proposed changes consistently with how benefits changes were considered in the past under previous chancellors. That said, I don’t think the traditional process worked well in surfacing and addressing all the relevant issues so that the Senate could serve its appropriate shared governance role—in this case its role as advisor to the Chancellor on issues of concern to faculty and staff. In particular, I don’t think we consulted widely enough with the expertise we do have available across the University, including on the faculty, and I don’t think we consulted widely enough with representatives of those directly affected by the changes, which is a subset of our faculty and staff.

In reflection on all this, I would like to view this as an opportunity to revise our process for benefits changes so that this does not happen in the future. It has been a very long time since anyone looked carefully at our benefits process as a whole. And it is foreseeable that, given events in the world, including war and inflation, there will be pressure on our benefits, some of which we cannot predict, and anxiety about them in the future. We need to get the process right going forward and learn from what’s happened this year.

What I propose to do between now and the April Senate meeting, which is just three weeks away, is to have University leadership confer with broader groups of relevant stakeholders and experts on BOTH the substance of these particular proposed changes and the desirable process for any changes to our benefits going forward. I am also directing the collection of data on these particular proposed changes, some of which was recommended as part of the process of these Senate meetings. That would include comparable data from peers and data on impact on our people. That data will help inform both the substance and the process discussions going forward.

I will report back to the full Senate on the progress on this work again at the April meeting on what further steps need to occur after April given what we’ve learned. There will be more discussion of this and an opportunity to discuss the initial steps forward at the April meeting.

I will turn now to new leadership appointments. Our new associate vice president and chief of Campus Safety and Emergency Management Services, Craig Stone, starts April 1. He has over 30 years of law enforcement experience. Much of that has been in public safety at major universities, including Ohio State University. I want to thank those who served on the search committee, including Brice Nordquist, Andrew Saluti, Dean Raj Dewan, and our student representatives, David Bruen and Yousr Dhaouadi, who helped with that search.

Yesterday, we announced that Mary Grace Almandrez will be our new vice president for diversity and inclusion. She was selected following a national search that yielded a highly qualified and talented pool of candidates and finalists. She will lead the finalization and implementation of the draft DEIA Strategic Plan. She will also collaborate closely with student leadership and stakeholder groups.

She has nearly 25 years of experience in higher education, including leadership roles at Brown University, the University of San Francisco, and, most recently, at the University of Rhode Island (URI). Her appointment will start on June 1. I want to thank the entire committee, including chairs Cerri Banks and Brian Konkol; student representatives Britnee Johnson and Malique Lewis; and faculty representatives Christopher Hamilton, Gladys McCormick and Suzette Melendez. I think Mary Grace is going to lead us to the next level in this important work. This is important work not just for Mary Grace but for all of us.

Finally, the search committee for the new chief financial officer has almost finalized the position description. We are working with Korn Ferry as our search firm. We do anticipate a robust pool of candidates with the experience to drive the long-term fiscal sustainability of the University. That will be a relatively fast process that I hope will produce a chief financial officer in place this summer. I don’t want to take for granted what Gwenn Judge has done for us in the interim. Under her leadership, things have run well. We anticipate a balanced budget for this fiscal year, which had more challenges than expected because of what’s been happening in the world these last couple months. I am grateful to Gwenn and optimistic about that search.

Those are my updates. As usual, I will take questions after Provost Ritter’s remarks. Thank you.

Today, in February 2022, I fear we may be facing a very different but significant moment with some great challenges. I refer to the fact the sovereign state of Russia has apparently commenced an invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine. ���ϲ����� has students, faculty, staff and alumni from Ukraine as well as from Russia, and they have families. An unusually high percentage of our students, faculty and staff are active-duty military or in the Guard or Reserves and may see their lives and schedules changed dramatically on short notice due to the response to this conflict. The economic sanctions and measures being implemented and contemplated between nations could have significant effect on our university and our people in an environment where supply chains and international travel are already quite strained. And a widening conflict in Europe is likely to make it quite a bit more challenging for us as a global university to realize our vision of being a place that is welcoming to all.

I am asking University leadership and academic experts to help us prepare for these potential challenges, to learn from history—for those of you who know it better than I do, and to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses in how we responded to the recent change in government in Afghanistan. For now, all I am specifically requesting of the University community is that we each be mindful of the additional stress that some of us are now bearing. In particular, I ask that we be understanding and supportive of student, faculty and staff who are directly affected by events in Europe. We will be reporting further in the coming days and weeks about the University’s proactive planning for this changing situation.

The first month of the spring semester is behind us, and I think things are going well—better than many expected. We were challenged with the omicron variant in January. I think our decision to delay the start of the semester has proven to be the right call. I also credit the University’s vaccine requirements and testing protocols in our successful start to the spring semester.

COVID cases have, in fact, significantly declined from the beginning of the semester. As of today, we have 66 active cases in the campus community.

On Monday, the University moved to the blue level of our masking framework based on the recommendations of our public health team. This followed the expiration of New York State’s mask mandate. Just as a reminder for those of you not aware, the blue level means masks will continue to be required during academic instruction, regardless of vaccination status. This includes classrooms, laboratories, libraries and lecture venues. For anyone who is not vaccinated, masks are still required everywhere indoors and outdoors when in groups, and the unvaccinated must continue to participate in weekly testing. Although the situation could change, I currently am not predicting any change from the blue level up to and through spring break.

At last week’s Senate forum, there was discussion about students whose access to campus IT resources was disconnected. That occurred with students who were not compliant with providing proof of meeting the University’s vaccination requirement. I just want to assure you that didn’t happen without a lot of notice. Students received more than 30 messages regarding the requirement since we announced it on Dec. 6. Since the start of the semester, noncompliant students received more than a dozen text and email messages that specifically referenced that they would lose access. I know this was challenging for students, but talking with our peers, including in the ACC, we have not found other methods that actually work in ensuring our students, faculty and staff are kept safe from the risks posed by exposure to large numbers of unvaccinated people. As evidence of that, we are now happily at 98% compliance among students, 100% compliance rate among faculty, and 99% compliance with staff. The remaining 1% of staff includes mostly newly hired employees in the process of getting vaccinated or those who are newly eligible for the booster.

I want to thank the staff at the Barnes Center at The Arch and in HR for managing all this in the last couple weeks. It has been a huge lift with all hands on deck to ensure that we are obtaining and tracking vaccination status where we need it to be for the safety of our community.

I know that has been challenging for all our students, all our staff and all our faculty. I know it has taken a lot of dedication to get this done.

In speaking with some of our ACC peers over the last few weeks, I just want to emphasize what I learned. As hard as all this has been for each of us in our community, thanks to all of you, we are doing exceptionally well compared to our peers. They are envious of what our community has been able to achieve in our commitment to safety.

I’ll turn now to searches for a few key leadership positions.

The search for the next associate vice president and chief of Campus Safety and Emergency Management Services is nearly complete. Over the last two weeks, the three finalists interviewed with the search committee and key stakeholders. I’ve met with the finalists. You can expect an announcement soon. I am grateful to Brice Nordquist and Andrew Saluti for serving on this search committee as well as Raj Dewan, our dean representative; David Bruen, the student association representative; and Yousr Dhaoudi, the graduate student organization representative.

On the search for a new chief financial officer, the search committee has been selected. We will be working with search firm Korn Ferry to identify qualified and dynamic candidates for this role. I am grateful to Emily Stokes-Rees for serving on this search committee. And I am grateful to Gwenn Judge, who has been very ably serving as interim CFO and will do so until we get the new CFO in place.

The search for the next vice president for diversity and inclusion is progressing well. The search committee, chaired by Brian Konkol and Cerri Banks, interviewed six candidates in recent weeks. The committee has narrowed the field to three finalists, who will be on campus for interviews over the next two weeks. Thanks to Raj Dewan for serving as the dean representative and to Gladys McCormick and Suzette Melendez for serving on this committee. Thanks as well to Brittnee Johnson from the Graduate Student Organization and Malique Lewis, who is the Undergraduate Student Representative. I think we will have our new vice president for diversity and inclusion on board before the end of the semester.

We look forward to this new leader driving the effort to finalize and implement the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility strategic plan. We have been analyzing feedback received from just under 1,000 students, faculty, staff, alumni and groups. We have the quantitative analysis, and I am expecting the report on the qualitative feedback next week. All to help our new leader understand our community’s concerns before we finalize the plan.

I would like to address the comments that were made regarding both health and retirement benefits during last week’s Senate forum, which I have not yet fully processed. The proposed change to the retirement benefit for new employees has been deferred and will continue to be deferred until I have time to process the feedback I’ve received, including last week. Any further changes to health benefits will not occur until a careful process leading to late fall 2022 open enrollment. The University will engage with the appropriate groups in the spirit of shared governance later during the spring semester and into the summer. That includes among others, the Benefits Advisory Council and Senate Services Committee. I appreciate the feedback I have received from many of you and look forward to the findings that result from this work.

On the Campus Framework Refresh, we announced that we are going to refresh the Campus Framework last month. Our Campus Framework is our plan for the design of our campus to serve all our communities. It has served us very well for the last five years, but it is now time to review and refresh the plan. I’ve created a working group led by Pete Sala to assess our current needs and priorities particularly as they have changed over the last five years, in academics, housing, student experience and athletics.

So far we’ve followed the framework pretty carefully. It has directed nearly $300 million in capital investments that have transformed our campus and helped align our physical campus with our aspirations. This progress can be seen on the Einhorn Family Walk, at the Schine Student Center, the NVRC, the Barnes Center at The Arch and the stadium, and improvements to many teaching spaces and living spaces on campus. But the world has changed a lot in five years. We do not want a static plan that will not evolve with us. As we look to the future, I have asked the working group to address three areas:

1. What major lessons can be learned from the first five years of implementation of the Campus Framework report?
2. What revisions should be made based on those experiences?
3. What changes are necessary to reflect our current needs and strategies in academics, student experience, housing and athletics?

I’ve asked the committee to report back to me in April on their findings. Those recommendations will be presented to various stakeholders, including the full Board of Trustees in May.

Notwithstanding the caution I gave you at the start of these remarks, I am optimistic for our university as we head into the remainder of the semester—especially given all that we’ve been able to do under great stress this last month. With pandemic conditions improving dramatically, we can refocus on our long-term goals and priorities to advance academic excellence in a university welcoming to all. I do expect challenges, including some we do not foresee today, but I think you and our university are doing well, and we are equipped to address it. I am grateful to all of you.

Thank you.

The full text of his remarks is below.

Good afternoon. Forty-eight hours until the end of the fall semester 2021. I know it has been a long academic experience, like all of 2021. I know that many of you will still be grading or finishing final exams or projects for a while yet, but I sure hope that you are able to spend some time with loved ones and some rest.

I am extremely proud of and grateful for how well you have all navigated the semester. It required commitment from faculty, staff and students. I really think everyone has done their part to keep our campus safe and to help students continue to make progress toward their degrees. Our students have by and large very responsibly followed the COVID guidelines, and we brought back, with help from all of you, the vibrant campus life that is so important here.

We have had about 15,000 undergraduate students, 6,000 graduate and professional students on campus throughout this semester and more than 500 students studying abroad and are shortly on their way home safely. Applications for new students for 2022 are doing very well by all accounts. It is a hopeful sign for the coming year. And we will be welcoming a very strong new group of students to the University for the spring semester in January.

Our current plan is to open for the spring semester on Jan. 15 on schedule. Implicit in that plan is the hope that if there’s another wave of the virus, which I suspect there is, it will be waning by mid-January. All I can say is the team and I are spending a significant part of every day watching the situation and preparing for the various scenarios we might face.

This afternoon, I will provide an overview of our spring 2022 planning, a review of our academic year goals, and an update on a few key leadership searches.

Last week, we announced all eligible students, faculty and staff are required to receive a booster shot prior to the start of the spring semester, and those not yet eligible are required to do so as soon as they are eligible to do so. Once again, exceptions will be made only for those with medical or religious exemptions. This is due in part to the federal requirement that employees of all contractors be vaccinated. As far as our New York City employees, there are new requirements going in place in New York City on Dec. 27.

There are judicial challenges to the federal vaccine mandate for federal contractors, which we are. Some universities, a significant number, are backing off their vaccine requirements. At this point, the legal challenge does not affect the determination by ���ϲ����� on vaccination and boosters. We are proceeding. It is risky to hold off on planning for boosters until the courts provide clarity. We as a private university are proceeding with our expectation that our booster requirements will be in place for the spring semester.

We have the logistical pieces in place for faculty, staff and students to submit evidence of vaccination. All faculty and staff have received instructions on how to provide documentation through MySlice. The Barnes Center has contacted all students with guidance for uploading their documentation. While it may be a lift to make this happen, our public health team believes this is the right thing to do. And, I do too. We intend to continue to trust the science and follow the advice of our campus public health experts and those at the county and state level on this issue.

We are watching developments with the omicron variant and with another wave of the virus very closely. Monday, Onondaga County announced the identification of the first omicron case locally. We are seeing an increase in the local cases in our community. We can assume more will follow and a significant number of them will be omicron variant.

All semester, our case numbers have remained low. For the last 11 weeks, we have had a positivity rate of less than 1 percent, and we’ve been doing a lot of testing. However, there has been an uptick recently. With the emergence of omicron, we’re just going to have to watch this day by day because we have seen at a campus not far from us that the situation can change very quickly. Cornell announced yesterday that they were moving all finals online and closing down all in-person activities due to cases more than doubling since the end of last week. They had just under 1,000 student cases as of yesterday. We’re less than one-tenth of that. We aren’t there yet. I do think we’ll go up in the next reporting later today. I think we’ll be over 100 but not much over. Again, studying Cornell, what we’re seeing is things can increase very rapidly. We’re going to have to be very careful in our planning day by day, including for the remaining events we have planned at the University over the weekend and next week. We’ll be communicating about this as we go along as we have been. We’re ready to pivot if we have to. That said, it looks like we’re going to make it to the end of the semester in 48 hours intact.

That’s taken a lot from everybody, and I just want to acknowledge that and thank everyone in this meeting for your contribution.

In terms of progress toward goals for 2021-2022 and the overarching goal of advancing academic excellence in a University welcoming to all, I have six things to highlight since we last met.

In terms of the student experience, Orange Success has launched a mentoring program that will connect first-generation new and transfer undergraduate students, including those starting in January, with sophomore and junior mentors at ���ϲ�����.

Second, Academic Affairs, and we’ll hear more on this from Provost Ritter in a moment, has initiated the review of our cluster hire program and our research operations have commenced. Thank you to all of you who are involved in this effort. These reviews will be critical to the refresh of the Academic Strategic Plan.

There are lots of key faculty searches in progress. I think that’s great news. I hope everyone involved will help keep these moving forward with dispatch so that we are competitive in our hiring this year. That we hire early, not late.

In the area of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, we are looking forward to the preliminary feedback from the recent campuswide survey of the draft strategic plan. I know that there has been substantive input from Senate committees. Thank you for the time and thought you have brought to that process.

In advancement, and in order to meet our annual and Forever Orange fundraising goals, staff have resumed travel and in-person activities this summer. Fundraising this fall has been very strong. I’ll be reporting more on that after the close of the calendar year on Dec. 31.

This is a good time to acknowledge that while many of us appreciate Orange Appreciation days, there are many who continue to work full tilt through Orange Appreciation Days. That includes not just advancement staff but also facilities staff and the student support staff for the students who are not able to return home. I thank all of them.

And lastly, in area of the Campus Framework, design planning is in progress for the new Allyn Innovation Center and renovation of Link Hall and for Phase 1 of the Athletics Framework.

I want to say a little more about the Campus Framework, which was a fairly massive campuswide effort that Sasaki and Associates advised on almost five years ago. The framework did a great job informing our decisions in design and building on our campus over the last five years, but it is probably time to refresh it because the world has changed. In addition to issues brought to light by COVID, we have been working on a strategic approach for housing and for academic space. In the coming semester we’ll be collaborating across campus with a refresh to the Campus Framework.

Those are just a few examples of the progress we have made to date.

Turning to key leadership searches. The search for vice president for diversity and inclusion is moving along as scheduled. The search committee, co-chaired by Cerri Banks and Brian Konkol, has met several times. The committee participated in an implicit bias training session to ensure the search process is inclusive. The position description has been widely circulated. We’re building a very strong pool of candidates. First round interviews are expected to be held in early February.

Next, the search is in full swing for the associate vice president and chief of campus safety and emergency management services, which Allen Groves chairs. The search committee has vetted a list of approximately 10 semi-finalists. Virtual interviews were conducted last week. The search committee is recommending moving forward with three finalists with in-person interviews scheduled for January. Our plan is to have the position filled as soon as possible and no later than the end of spring semester.

As you all know, after more than 40 years in law enforcement, Bobby Maldonado will retire later this month.

Last week, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees recognized Bobby Maldonado for his leadership in helping the department earn accreditation from the gold standard of law enforcement accreditation agencies. It cited his work strengthening training programs and community policing. And it praised his hiring of staff from underrepresented communities, resulting in 43% of the Department of Public Safety’s current team identifying as people of color. We are grateful to Bobby for his work here at ���ϲ�����, and we wish Bobby the very best!

Early in spring 2022, we will launch the search for a new chief financial officer for ���ϲ�����. In the meantime, I thank Gwenn Judge for her excellent service as interim senior vice president and chief financial officer through all of the coming semester. I will be conferring with leadership after the next 48 hours.

This semester and the last 48 hours are just like the rest of the semester. Every day there are new developments, and we have to adjust. I have one request to you all before I conclude. The deadline for nominations for the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence has been extended to Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022. Full guidelines are available on the Chancellor’s Citation webpage on the Academic Affairs website. I would be grateful if you would nominate your colleagues who you feel deserve Universitywide recognition. Faculty can be nominated for faculty excellence and scholarly distinction. Faculty and staff can receive the award for contributions to the student experience and University initiatives. Students can receive the award for excellence in graduate and undergraduate work and research. Finally, anyone can be nominated in the lifetime achievement category.

As you know, we’ve had a lot of retirements that we’ve had during COVID or are coming up, so please think about who particularly toward the end of their careers we should be recognizing with a lifetime achievement award at the University level. I don’t think I and others say thank you enough for extraordinary work.

I want to end with a few words of gratitude. Thank you for rising to the occasion all the past year. Thank you for giving your all to a very tough year at ���ϲ�����. I hope you unplug and unwind, enjoy time with loved ones, and have happy holidays!

Thank you.

The full text of his remarks is below.

Thank you, Professor Stokes-Rees. I am going to be brief.

We are just going into what has been accurately characterized as the most needed Thanksgiving break in a long time. Today we are exactly one month from the last day of the semester. Just to remind folks as well, there is a significant group of our students who aren’t able to go home for this break. I want to thank everybody who is helping to host the international student Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night, which is going to be attended by hundreds. I particularly thank the faculty and staff who have agreed to serve as table hosts. I do encourage everyone to get a break next week.

Today I want to update you on influenza and COVID, the status of leadership searches, and progress on the DEIA Strategic Plan.

Campus Highlights

But first, just to emphasize that it has been an intense semester and a lot happening on campus since the last meeting of the Senate, including some remarkable developments. We had 1,650 alumni join us on campus for Orange Central. It was a real pleasure to present a dazzling array of alumni awards. There were more than 60 programs during the weekend. I know that many faculty and staff helped make these events happen and I am grateful to everyone who helped with that.

We also formally dedicated the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building, home of the National Veterans Resource Center. That was followed by a celebration of the 10th year of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families. Then last week, for the first time, we held ceremonies recognizing Veterans Day at the NVRC.

And this past Sunday, ���ϲ����� retired the jersey of Felisha Legette-Jack. Number 33 is the first jersey of a female ���ϲ����� athlete to be retired. It was an extraordinary moment, and we were able to do it with Orange fans looking on. Hopefully the number 33 will come to have meaning that is as important to us in our community as 44 does.

As we enter the last part of the semester, I am reflecting on how different things were a year ago. It’s taken an extraordinary amount of effort by this whole community to make this campus as vibrant as it is. It’s scholarship and activity and life, and considerably more vibrant than almost all of our peers. I’m just grateful. I know how stressful that has been on everybody to pull that off. And I appreciate and ask that we be, as Professor Stokes-Rees noted, aware that as exuberant some seem on the surface, there’s a lot of fragility that needs grace. Particularly at the end of the semester when at times members of our community have things that come crashing down and that grace will be very much appreciated.

COVID and Influenza

Managing COVID effectively has been a critical to making that happen. Last week we saw a small bump in cases, likely from gatherings around Halloween, but there hasn’t been any sustained growth in cases. Active cases on campus have actually stayed very low. Last week marked the seventh consecutive week with a positivity rate of 0.4% or below—last week it was 0.2%. We have provided booster vaccinations for eligible students at the Barnes Center.

While COVID numbers remain low, what we are seeing is a rise in cases of the flu. We are requiring the vaccine of all students, faculty and staff who do not have a medical or religious exemption. It’s critically important that everyone do their part to lessen the impact of flu. The Barnes Center has been holding vaccination clinics and is still open for appointments. So, anyone who is not vaccinated for the flu, there’s every indication that, unlike last year when flu was at an historic low because of COVID precautions, this year is going to be a challenging year for the flu. So, I urge you if you have not already done so to be vaccinated.

Leadership Searches

Turning to the two key leadership searches underway, I have charged the committee leading the search for the next associate vice president and chief of campus safety and emergency management services.

The committee includes an undergraduate, graduate and law student representative and two faculty members. Thanks to Andrew Saluti from VPA and Brice Nordquist from arts and sciences for agreeing to serve. I’m grateful to Bobby Maldonado for delaying his retirement and to Allen Groves for chairing the search. We have retained Spelman Johnson to help us identify candidates.

We are also working to address the vacancy left by Keith Alford’s departure. The search committee for the vice president for diversity and inclusion has been charged. It includes broad representation from staff who serve multicultural, LGBTQ, international and undocumented students and the disability community. It also includes undergraduate and graduate student representatives. Thanks to faculty representatives Suzette Melendez from law, Gladys McCormick from Maxwell and Christopher Hamilton from Newhouse for serving on this committee. We have partnered with the search firm of WittKieffer to conduct a national search. Our goal is to have a new leader in place in the spring.

DEIA Strategic Plan

Turning to the DEIA Strategic plan, for which the new vice president will be charged with leading implementation, the interim leadership team has extended the deadline for feedback on the draft plan. The deadline has been extended from Nov. 15 to Dec. 3. ��They have also created an option for groups who have discussed the plan to submit their collective feedback. Anyone can provide feedback through the link in the message received earlier this week or by emailing DEIAPlan@syr.edu

Thank you, and I will take questions after Provost Ritter’s remarks.

The full text of his remarks is below.

Thanks, I am going to be brief.

Shortly, Provost Ritter will address the University Senate for the first time. With her arrival on campus, I really think we have the leadership in place that we need to continue to refine and make progress toward the University’s strategic goals. Allen Groves and Cerri Banks also have already made an impact on the student experience since they have been here, just since July. Together, these leaders will be leading our efforts to advance academic excellence in a university welcoming to all. It is on all of us to work with them, to support them and to work across departments and units to achieve this strategic goal.

Before I turn it over to the provost, I just want to update you on a couple of things that have been of interest to the Senate in the past.

This is the Library Storage Facility addition. The project is well underway. This photo is from a month ago. This addition will provide 14,000 square feet of high-density shelving, which will nearly double the facility’s capacity and its storage for rare and unique collections in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment. Steel framing has begun and will be complete in November. The targeted final completion date is Feb. 1, 2022. So, progress on that area of interest to the Senate.

Just in case you have been unaware of all ���ϲ�����-related media for the last decade, there are plans to replace the viaduct on I-81. That’s the one the runs alongside campus at the bottom of the hill. ���ϲ����� is supportive of the community grid plan. The University has been, since the Senate met last April, meeting intensively with state and federal leaders throughout the planning process. That includes a visit from Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in June to extend his support for the project. The comment period ended on Oct. 14, which is an important process point. The early stages of the project will start pretty soon. The early stages focus on the I-481 corridor. It will be probably late 2023 or early 2024 before the viaduct comes down and we see the effects directly adjacent to the main campus. So, the main impact coming in the next 18 months to two years will be the rebuilding of I-481, which will primarily affect all of the ���ϲ����� community that comes in from 180 degrees of the metropolitan area from the north around the east to the south. We’ll be following that closely. We have an extensive team working on that project, including supporting plans to make it an opportunity to help the community and the neighborhood and the integration of the University with the neighborhood.

The Forever Orange Campaign has been going great guns since we last spoke. We are focused on fundraising for our faculty and students. We have raised additional financial aid, including endowed scholarships. We have raised funds for research and for 18 new professorships and chairs. I am pleased to share that the University’s Forever Orange Campaign has raised a total of $1.045 billion toward the goal of $1.5 billion. This means that the Forever Orange Campaign has exceeded the previous campaign’s goal of $1.044 billion. So, basically the University has now raised more than ever before in a campaign in its history.

Here you can see a list of the 18 professorships and chairs now created, pursuant to the Forever Orange campaign. We have worked closely with the advancement team, with the deans, with the provost and the student experience team to say that in the final third of the campaign, we are particularly focused on making academic progress. And that means that the focus of the final third of the campaign is particularly on academic programs, more endowed faculty positions and more student scholarships and fellowships.

Finally, I just want to end by thanking everybody for creating a robust living and learning environment on campus. We have a range of in-person activities going on on campus. Faculty are teaching in-person, some outdoors of course, and intense activities are happening almost on all fronts as they normally would, with adjustments such as masking. And, of course, pulling that off has required terrific work by faculty and staff behind the scenes to work as best we can to keep people as safe as we can.

I thank everyone for the return to normal campus life this semester. I know it’s taken a lot out of you. It’s so critical, I believe, to the mental and social health of our students to have the full range of campus activities in person. Again, we have had a lot of important events since the Senate last met, including Family Weekend, fans returning to the stadium and most of all, our students are happy to be here and experiencing the campus the way it was pre-pandemic. I know from talking to many students that they appreciate that you are working so hard to do this and grateful to you who are making it happen.

Thank you, and I will take questions after Provost Ritter’s remarks.

Good afternoon. I will be fairly brief and if I have any extra time, I want to give it to Provost Liu, and certainly take questions with him at the end of his remarks.

We are now into our fourth full week of the semester. I know it has been a busy start to the academic year for all of us. It is good to see our campus vibrant once again with lots of activity in classrooms and outside them.

As this is our first University Senate meeting this year, I will provide a snapshot of enrollment projections, budget and advancement. I want to briefly cover the DEIA strategic plan and our strategic priority for this year.

But first I want to address the protests last night, which I for one, heard loud and clear. As you know, the University can’t comment on any situation involving an identified student, due to student privacy rules. I can tell you that ���ϲ����� takes instances of sexual and relationship violence very seriously—I do too. There are robust processes here for reporting and addressing incidents. And one part of that process is that it does need to start with someone reporting this to a University employee. I know that is not always easy and it asks a lot. I want to point out to everybody that the report doesn’t have to be the person who experiences the violence to start the process. It can be a witness. It can be a friend. But the report is necessary to initiate the process. Over the past summer, the Chancellor’s Task Force on Sexual and Relationship Violence worked hard with others to create a website that consolidates resources from across the University—including reporting options—in one place: sexualrelationshipviolence.syr.edu. I urge people to go to that address.

I have also asked Dean Diane Murphy, who co-chairs that task force, to partner with Allen Groves and his team in Enrollment and the Student Experience, now, to review how systems are working at both the individual and Universitywide levels. This task force has been working since 2014, and every year it has taken dozens of steps to improve communication, raise awareness, implement training and regularly review the campus climate related to sexual and relationship violence.

Ultimately, the University is bound by New York State and federal law in this area. There has been much debate over Title IX regulations in recent years. As a university, we have been a participant in that debate, and in advocacy in Washington. The current White House administration is reviewing the changes made by the previous administration. And that review is not completed. We have to follow the law. We also have to work every day to offer compassion, care and support for those who are impacted by sexual violence. All of your help with that is greatly appreciated.

Today is John Liu’s last University Senate meeting as Interim Provost. John has led the academic enterprise of the University through one of the most difficult periods in our lifetimes. At heart, John is a scientist. He seeks guidance from facts and evidence to shape his decision-making. He has been very courageous in his decision-making. He has navigated according to facts, his knowledge of the University and his unique experiences.

His team was directly responsible for significant parts of our efforts in diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. That work includes the faculty diversity hiring plan, professional development and the First Year Seminar. He kept us on track with regard to online education and development of the research clusters.

As many of you have seen in SU News, after some well-deserved research leave, John will return to academic leadership as vice president for international strategy in June 2022. I just want to say how grateful I am to John for his leadership through challenging times, and to thank him profusely.

New Leadership

Gretchen Ritter, currently the associate provost and dean of arts and sciences at The Ohio State University, will step into the role as provost and vice chancellor. Her first day is Oct. 1. She is a distinguished scholar of political science with a track record of leadership success at the University of Texas at Austin, Cornell University and, most recently, at Ohio State. We really look forward to welcoming her. I thank the Search Committee and the Agenda Committee of the Senate for their great help in this search and the process, which achieved a great result.

Also with us today is Allen Groves, senior vice president for the student experience. Allen arrived on campus July 1, joining us from the University of Virginia, where he spent more than a decade as associate vice president and university dean of students.��Cerri Banks, our new vice president for student success, is traveling on behalf of the University today, but I urge you to get to know her as well. She is a three-time ���ϲ����� alumna who was most recently dean of students and vice president for student affairs at Skidmore College.

I am so pleased these new leaders have decided to join us at ���ϲ�����. I am grateful to all who have participated in the search. Allen and Cerri are already having a significant impact in improving the student experience at ���ϲ�����.

COVID-19 Response
I also want to briefly talk to the COVID situation and response. I am acutely aware that the COVID situation continues to be stressful for all sorts of people in our community and our campus. I speak with leaders at peer institutions often every day, really for the last 18 months, including today. I can tell you that we are doing very well by comparison to almost all our peers, including this semester. Our vaccination rates are very high, nearly 98% of our students are vaccinated with 2.1% being granted an exemption for medical or religious reasons. Our positive case numbers are low. We have 91 active cases today among our almost 30,000-person community: 82 students and 9 employees. Numbers have been falling steadily for the last seven days. To date, and throughout the pandemic, we still do not see evidence of a transmission in the classroom. Faculty cases currently are 1% of total cases since Aug. 31 and our contact tracing indicates that those exposures have come from activities outside of the classroom and their teaching responsibility.

Our students are, by and large, happy to be here and happy to be back to in-person learning. They are—for the most part—wearing their masks, following public health guidelines and participating in a very extensive surveillance testing program. It has produced a positive testing rate that is very favorable compared to our peer institutions.

With the virus changing often, the public health team is monitoring the public health landscape and working with local and state authorities. We continue to make decisions medically as we go along based on data and science and public health guidance. I can guarantee you these decisions are not always popular. I can guarantee that almost none of them please everyone. And I guarantee that we hear from, and listen to people frequently, in response to what we’re trying to enforce each day. But I do assure you that our decisions and actions are going to continue to prioritize the health and the well-being of students, staff, staff, neighbors and the Central New York community. Because accurate facts matter. There’s a lot of stuff in the blogosphere that occasionally is not accurate. Because accurate facts matter, particularly when public health is involved. I do urge all of us to visit the state’s website frequently. We update that regularly with the most up-to-date and accurate factual public information.

Coming Back Together and Commencement

Over the weekend, we welcomed the Class of 2020 back to campus for Commencement. We got back more than half of the class, 16 months after they graduated and more than 5,000 family members, friends and guests. I’m just so grateful. It happened, it took a team of lots of people, including lots of people on this Zoom meeting to make it happen. I want to thank all of them. I also want to thank SUNY ESF. This Commencement marked a return to the tradition of ���ϲ����� university and ESF doing a joint commencement. And it represents a very good dynamic between two institutions right now, where the leadership and faculty at both institutions, I believe, recognizes that we’re symbiotic. And that we are better each day because of the relationship with the other one.

We also had 825 registered to return to campus for Coming Back Together last weekend. That was the reunion of our Black and Latino alumni, which had a whole range of events and contact and support for our current students. That was pretty amazing. And I’m grateful for that.

I’ll turn now to progress with our work in diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. I expect to announce the search committee for the next chief diversity and inclusion officer by early October. Meanwhile, Dean Diane Murphy, Professor Shiu-Kai Chin and Cerri Banks with Student Experience are leading the charge with our DEIA strategic plan and our leadership. They are working through finalizing the plan and socializing and listening to the community. Engagement from and participation by all will make this plan a success. They are also helping to identify initiatives from the plan that are being implemented quickly, this semester. I am grateful for their efforts.

The final plan has to reflect a broad range of input, from the campus climate pulse survey to the DEIA strategic plan steering committee, to the work they are doing now. And I mentioned that because there are parts of the draft plan that call for our curriculum to change. And that being the case, we need to continue to recognize that the purview of the curriculum is the faculty in general and the University Senate in particular. So, we will focus attention, particularly to the curricular aspects of that are important for the Senate in this fall, in the coming year.

The reason I am emphasizing our collective responsibility for DEIA is directly linked to my view of the highest priority for the University this year: Advancing Academic Excellence in a University Welcoming to All. I want us to look at almost everything we do this year and all the folks who help steward it through this lens—to resource this, to enable this, to prioritize this and to measurably hold ourselves accountable for progress on this.

Advancing academic excellence, of course, will be led by our new provost and will require support from every one of us, not just in academic roles, but also fundraisers, to general counsel, human resources, our bright young people, our chancellor, this is the year to do that.

A University welcoming to all: We need to make everyone who ���ϲ����� serves feel, every day, that they belong here as much as anyone else. That they can learn and explore and be uncomfortable at times, but always within an institution that values them and will have their backs when they need it. This is the year to move that needle as well, based on what we have learned in the last two years.

This work is on all of us. We are looking to Gretchen and Allen and Cerri for fresh perspectives on this. We are going to substantially support their efforts, including changes they recommend. And we are going to need to respect their priorities as job one, regardless of where in the University we work. I intend to model that this year and hope you will too.

The second thing we will need to do is pull together the many initiatives and strands of planning that are going on in support of these priorities. This includes the DEIA strategic plan. It includes the last third of the Forever Orange Campaign to where we go next with the campus framework and facilities, free speech and civil discourse, digitization and technology.

Academic Excellence in a University Welcoming to All. You are going to get tired of me saying that, but that’s what’s going to be the focus for me.

Enrollment Forecast
Turning to a brief review of some metrics—I’ll start with the enrollment forecast—the final census date for fall 21 is tomorrow so these are not final numbers.

Our first-year headcount projection of 3,760 is above our goal of 3,650 by 110 students. This is the result of a 24% increase in applications (+7%/1,488 over last year) and melt of admitted students that is much lower than expected.

Our law and Ph.D. enrollment is quite strong. Our master’s enrollment is below goal in some of the schools and colleges. Overall fall 2021 total enrollment is up about 400 students and close to the peak enrollment in fall 2019.

Undergraduate students of color are projected to comprise 31% of the enrolling class this year. Students of color made up 30% of the fall 2020 first-year class. And those numbers do not include international students.

Budget and Endowment
Turning to the budget, we ended FY21 on June 30 with a $15 million planned deficit. This is about 1% of our operating budget, which is quite manageable. due to increased costs and decreased revenue associated with COVID.�� We largely avoided the layoffs and benefits cuts we saw at many of our peers. We are planning for a balanced budget in this fiscal year. This includes $307 million in student aid, a 7% increase over the previous fiscal year, way above the current rate of increase in tuition.

The value of the total endowment as of the end of the fiscal year was more than $1.8 billion. It has grown very substantially in the last three years. This growth has enabled us to increase the total dollars paid out to schools and colleges while maintaining a responsible payout rate.

Advancement
In fundraising, we ended FY21 with $137.6 million in new business and $106.7 million in cash across the threshold at the University. This is the largest amount of cash received in any year in our history.

As of Aug. 31, the Forever Orange Campaign has raised a total of $1.031 billion in new business toward the goal of $1.5 billion. And that means very soon, we will surpass the total raised in the last campaign of $1.044 billion, under current careful counting standards and regular audits of the campaign.

Our goal for this fiscal year is to raise $160 million, or $440,000 a day, every day this year and all year. And that means that I am back for traveling a lot and asking for a lot this year—with the mantra Advancing Academic Excellence in a University Welcoming to all.

That concludes my remarks. I wish you a safe and productive semester.

Thank you.

“I am gratified by the trustees’ vote to add these two positions,” says Kathleen Walters, chair of ���ϲ����� Board of Trustees. “This action will allow us to better understand the needs and opportunities that exist for law students and staff at ���ϲ�����, who previously did not have a representative to the Board. Receiving input from broad representation will help us make the best choices for the entire community and the long-term future of the University.”

The addition of these new representatives follows separate proposals from the graduate student representative to the Board of Trustees advocating for a law student representative, and the University Senate advocating for staff representation.

Approval for these roles follows careful consideration from the Board Organization and Nominating Committee and a vote by the full Board of Trustees to grant a change in the University bylaws needed to create these new roles.

Walters says these additional roles will strengthen the University’s connections to the Board of Trustees and amplify the voices of University students, faculty and staff.

The law student representative will report to the board at Executive Committee and full board meetings on behalf of the students enrolled in the College of Law for a one-year term. The dean of the College of Law will select a rising third-year law student to serve as the law student representative from among applicants recommended by the director of student affairs at the conclusion of a school-wide application process.

The staff representative will report to the board at Executive Committee and full board meetings on behalf of University staff for a non-renewable two-year term. The Chancellor will select the staff representative from among applicants recommended by the senior vice president and chief human resources officer at the conclusion of a Universitywide application process.

It is anticipated that all new representatives to the Board will be in place by Sept. 1 to participate in Board orientation in early September with Trustees who serve in Board leadership roles.

About�����ϲ�����

���ϲ�������is a private research university that advances knowledge across disciplines to drive breakthrough discoveries and breakout leadership. Our collection of 13 schools and colleges with over 200 customizable majors close the gap between education and action, so students can take on the world. In and beyond the classroom, we connect people, perspectives and practices to solve interconnected challenges with interdisciplinary approaches. Together, we’re a powerful community that moves ideas, individuals and impact beyond what’s possible.

Thanks, Professor Haddix. Our University is often blessed to have the right person in the right role at the right time. This is true even when the work turns out to be more onerous and different than anybody planned. And I really think that this is the case for what Professor Haddix has done for all of us the last two years. I just want to acknowledge that this is her last meeting, presiding over a full meeting of the Senate. I’m just so grateful to you for your leadership. It’s what this University needed.

In just a month, we will be holding in-person Commencement exercises in two years. And that’s hard to believe, but I thank everybody on this call and in our community for pretty heroic work to keep our university on track all year and this semester so we can do that.

I also want to join with Professor Haddix in acknowledging the impact of recent events, including the trial of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. And thank everybody who worked to create opportunities for discussion on campus. I encourage anyone who needs support to take advantage of the many resources offered by the University. And I ask that we offer grace to our colleagues and classmates at this time, which continues to be challenging.

Since we last met, New York State has opened vaccination to all individuals over 16 years old for COVID-19. Two weeks ago, we began vaccinating students, faculty and staff at our own Barnes Center. As of yesterday, the State of New York reported that 42% of adult New Yorkers have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

At ���ϲ�����, I am very proud to report that as of today, more than 66% of our students are fully vaccinated and have documented their vaccination status in our online database. We believe many more have received the first of two shots or have been fully vaccinated elsewhere and have not yet uploaded their data to our systems.

As of today, more than 67% of benefits-eligible faculty and staff have filled out the attestation that they have been fully vaccinated, or have received their first of two doses, and a small number have received an exemption. For many reasons, I am encouraged to see the response from our entire community.

As you know, we had a spike in positive COVID-19 cases on campus earlier this month. However, last week those numbers began declining. As a result, on Monday we reopened our dining halls.

We expect to be able to continue relaxing some restrictions as public health indicators improve. Our circumstances at SU, as a result, compare favorably to the vast majority of our peers.

Last week I announced that students, faculty and staff who access campus as of June 1 are required to be vaccinated. Medical or religious exemptions will be accepted. However, the vast majority of those on our campus this summer should be vaccinated. This same requirement applies to the fall semester. This decision is supported by the Public Health Team, by our faculty. The data shows that the vaccines are safe and very effective. As we have done since the start of the pandemic, we are making decisions that are supported by science. We were among the first universities to make this a requirement. Many other universities, including many peers, have since announced similar requirements. This is how we will proceed.

On the subject of Commencement for the Class of 2021, we are grateful that the State of New York has expanded access so that we are able to hold in-person Commencement ceremonies in the stadium, next month. Based on state capacity limits for in-person commencement activities, which are different than state capacity limits for in-person athletics activities, even in the same venue, we are permitting graduates to invite up to two guests to attend in person.

We are asking that students indicate their intent to participate by the end of this week. Following that, we will update students and faculty with the details of the ceremonies.

Academic Honors

I’ll conclude with some wonderful academic news about some of our faculty and students:

• Chris Green (assistant professor, Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, College of Arts and Sciences) who was recently awarded a significant grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• Stephen Kuusisto (University Professor, Burton Blatt Institute, School of Education) received a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry.
• Junior Alexander Metcalf, from the College of Engineering and Computer Science, has been selected for the 2021 Goldwater Scholarship. He is majoring in aerospace engineering and is a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program. The Goldwater Scholarship is among the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships awarded in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics.
• Junior Cameron Gray, from the College of Visual and Performing Arts, who was named 2021 Beinecke Scholar—the second in ���ϲ����� history and one of only 16 in the nation. The award provides graduate funding and mentorship for juniors in the arts, humanities or social sciences. The Beinecke Scholarship seeks to encourage and enable highly motivated juniors of exceptional promise to pursue graduate study in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Thank you to everyone who has helped and encouraged these outstanding faculty and students.

I will take questions after the Provost’s remarks.

Thanks, Marcelle. I will take less than three minutes. We are now mid-way through the spring semester. Congratulations to the ���ϲ����� women’s and men’s basketball teams on their performance in the NCAA tournament–arguably, together, they have had the best performance of any school in the ACC.

On Fall Semester Planning
Aug. 30 will be the first day of classes for the Fall 2021 semester. We are adhering to the published academic calendar and are planning for a full range of in-person classes and activities this August.

I ask that we all plan around this assumption, even though it is not likely that we will be fully through every aspect of the pandemic.

We will continue to follow the best public health guidance in the summer and fall and ensure that we are caring for those who remain at risk. We will also do everything possible to support our international students, recognizing that the visa process remains very challenging in many parts of the world. And we will continue to support those who will still need to pursue their academics remotely.

It’s too soon to know exactly what COVID-19 will look like six months from now, but with improving conditions and continued optimism on the part of elected officials we work with, I expect we will return, by August, to a full range of in person classes and experiences.

And, we still need to manage through the rest of this semester. It still has challenges and surprises in store for us, as the virus has all along. The public health team has been tracking a cluster of cases in several of our residence halls. While the University is no longer forced to go “on pause” with 100 positive tests in a fixed two-week period, we are nevertheless being cautious. As promised, we have taken action well before we reach the new metric of 880 positive tests over a rolling two-week period. These recent steps include transitioning to grab-and-go dining and closing lounges in several residence halls. We are also requiring our on-campus students on North Campus to participate in testing twice a week. Additional steps will be taken if necessary, we are monitoring this situation very closely. Peer institutions like Duke and Cornell have experienced large outbreaks. So we know things can change quickly, and we have to stay vigilant.

Vaccine production and distribution is ramping up. More groups are becoming eligible for receiving vaccinations. This includes our staff and faculty who report to campus for work. Soon there will be widespread access to vaccines, bringing us closer to a return to normality.

Finally, I want to confirm to all that the provost search is well underway. I appreciate everyone who has participated in dialogue during the discussion sessions around campus. We are on track to conduct interviews in May and announce the new provost this summer. And, the senior vice president for the student experience search also is well underway. It attracted a robust and diverse pool of candidates. Excellent progress there. This search is on track to be completed in late spring.

That’s my report, thank you.

Thank you, Professor Haddix. I hope you are all well, almost three weeks into the semester. I want to just thank everybody for all of the adjustments that were necessary to delay the spring semester by two weeks, that was a hard call and it imposed a burden on some. In retrospect, it looks like a good call, but of course, as with all COVID decisions, it was made in the face of some uncertainties. So a lot’s changed in the couple of weeks since the semester began and, indeed, since the Senate Open forum two weeks ago.

I will address the review of DPS led by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and our next steps. I will also share what the revised state guidelines for colleges and universities mean for our COVID response. And I will provide an update on the leadership searches currently underway. John Liu will speak and then we’ll take questions.

On Monday of this week, Loretta Lynch and her team did issue the final report, a very independent review of DPS. The final report includes a review of DPS, its response to events in the 2019-2020 Academic Year; a review of DPS Standard Operating Procedures (SOP); and a series of recommendations. It also includes a framework for a ���ϲ����� Department of Public Safety Community Review Board, which will provide input to and promote accountability for DPS. The report is available on the Campus Commitments website and through a link at SU News. I urge all of you to review it in its entirety, as it is comprehensive and voluminous. I received the report on Saturday.

I spoke with Ms. Lynch on Sunday and thanked her for the report. The review included DPS documents and data, video footage, Internal Affairs investigation files, use-of-force incident reports and DPS training materials. Ms. Lynch’s team reviewed email records and more than 20,000 documents. They interviewed 77 members of the University community, including students, faculty and staff—including DPS personnel. They also hosted three virtual feedback sessions and reached out to leaders of 243 student groups.

The recommendations, which are detailed in the report, include guidance on responding to calls; training expectations; engagement with the community; creating a customer service mentality; transparent and timely DPS communications; revisions to the disciplinary process; and others. They include 10 recommended changes to DPS standard operating procedures and 23 additional recommendations. I accept the conclusions of the report and have directed the appropriate leaders to implement the recommendations.

In the coming weeks, we will receive recommendations from the Board of Trustees Special Committee on University Climate, Diversity and Inclusion. We will also receive the results of a campus climate survey conducted by Dr. Damon Williams. Together, these reviews and reports will serve as a foundation for a Universitywide strategic plan for diversity, inclusion, equity and access.

So there’s a lot of work to do. As I shared in my message to our community on Monday, we haven’t always gotten things right. And we will make the changes needed to get them right in the future. In these areas, the University as a whole, all of us need to be invested in this important work. Rebuilding trust takes time and commitment from all of us.

Going forward on COVID matters: last Friday, New York State updated its guidance for when colleges and universities must “pause” because of COVID infections on campus. There were several significant changes. Before these changes, and since the start of the fall semester, 100 infections over a fixed two-week period has been our limit before a mandated pause. In general, the new guidance is more reasonable given the size of our campus.

Under the revised guidance:

• The University is no longer subject to the 100-case limit within an arbitrary two-week period. Both the limit and the time period were changed. Instead, the limit is now 5 percent of the total on-campus population, which, at ���ϲ�����, is approximately 880 individuals, and the time period is the last 14 calendar days. So, the time period resets each day. This new metric is now reported on our COVID dashboard. We revised our dashboard this past weekend to reflect this.
• In another change, this new standard applies only if we continue rigorous and extensive surveillance testing. Otherwise, we will be back to the 100-test limit.

This policy change is good for ���ϲ�����, along with other larger universities in the state. It recognizes that 100 cases on a campus of our size is disproportionate to standards for infection rates in the general community.

That said, the state guidance is a floor, not a ceiling. Right now we have around 32 active cases. In my view, we would, on this campus, be taking strong public health steps to further contain activities well before we got to 880 cases. We can’t take New York State’s flexibility as permission to let down our guard. This goes for our entire community. Our expectations for students abiding by the Stay Safe Pledge and public health guidance have not changed. Our disciplinary process has not changed. Our enhanced testing measures have not changed. We will continue to monitor our cases very closely. We will not wait until we get close to the 880 case threshold to take action. In the event that we have emerging clusters of positive cases or community spread, we will take proactive public health measures. This may include actions like pausing in-person activities. We will continue to take precautions until such a time as most people are vaccinated. Things are improving, but we have months to go yet with this virus. For now, we will remain vigilant as ever.

In terms of leadership searches, the search for the senior vice president of the student experience is proceeding well and the first-round interviews are going to happen in a few weeks. We are on track to announce the appointment in the spring.

For the provost search, I met with and charged the full committee yesterday. The committee has begun its work, and we plan to move quickly to appoint a new provost by this summer. A search consultant is in place and hard at work. I have talked to many people about this search and hope to continue those conversations as the search progresses. The vision is that the search committee, as in previous searches, will identify more than one finalist that they believe qualified and capable of the job. They will then share those finalists with me for final consideration.

I want to conclude with two pieces of business. First, I see from the agenda that we will be hearing from the Honorary Degree Committee, and I want to thank them for their timely work. Second, I celebrate that last week, ���ϲ����� was named a top producer of Fulbright Scholars in the 2020-2021 application cycle. Thirteen of our alumni received awards. This is a wonderful indication that our strategy with the Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising is bearing fruit with tremendous success. My thanks and congratulations to all of the dedicated faculty and staff mentors who assisted each successful Fulbright scholar with their application.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Professor Haddix. Thanks for being here before the semester starts. We are halfway through the academic year, which has not been normal in any sense. We all have concerns and challenges at work and at home.

I want to start today by expressing my gratitude to everyone who made last semester possible. This was the hardest semester the University has faced in our lifetime, I believe. We came through it with so much to be proud of, thanks to our faculty, students and staff. The pandemic is not over by any means. The spring semester will test us in new ways. I think we came through it reasonably well and it took all of us listening to each other to do that.

At the same time, we need to make progress on our key strategic goals. So, I’m going to share some information that should give us confidence that we can make progress toward our enrollment, budget and advancement goals. I will also brief you on the spring semester searches.

Undergraduate Enrollment Updates

As you know, we did relatively well last fall in a tough environment for undergraduate enrollment.

The deadline for undergraduate regular decision applications was Jan. 1. However, we anticipate receiving additional applications throughout the spring. It is conceivable that we will surpass 39,000 applications.

At this time, we are up +25 percent (+7,837) in overall undergraduate first year applications for fall 2021. Domestic applications are particularly strong (+33 percent; +8,479). This represents an all-time high for applications received.

Undergraduate early decision applications are down by 11 percent (-232) compared to January 2020. International early decision applications have fallen -36 percent (-191), accounting for most of the decline.

For the Spring 2020 semester, which starts in earnest with some move-ins this weekend with students from outside contiguous states, thanks to the quarantine requirements. Our deposits for new first-year students are substantially ahead of last January (+133 percent). We have 112 deposits for spring ’21 compared to 48 last year. This increase is driven by students deferring from the Fall 2020 semester. Spring transfer deposits are down slightly from last year with 55 deposits on hand compared to 63 last year.

These are really good, confident numbers for this year. This is a result of an aggressive and targeted recruitment strategy, particularly early in the process. It also reflects our fall policy to make test scores optional in light of the pandemic’s impact. We are considering extending the test optional policy for another cycle because testing continues to be highly problematic for high school students in the U.S. and abroad.

These results reflect the efforts of many folks here in the Senate, in the schools and colleges, in enrollment management and in marketing and communications. I also believe it can be significantly attributed to how everyone managed COVID in the fall. I’m grateful to all the sacrifices everyone has had to make so this could happen.

Budget and Endowment

Moving to our budget, we continue to experience the impact of the pandemic on our revenue and expenses. There are still many unknowns. As we have experienced, conditions can shift rapidly. However, we currently remain on track to a manageable deficit in FY21.

This budget assessment does not take into consideration any potential federal relief funds. It also does not account for the possibility that the pandemic makes it impossible to have in-person instruction because of developments we can’t control. But with those caveats, if we can stay on this trajectory, we should be able to move forward without additional major impacts to our people or our programs. That is something that relatively few universities can say. So thank you for that.

Our endowment is the highest it’s ever been by far. It went over $1.5 billion at the end of November. This is partly because of the disconnect between the stock market and assets and economic realities in the world. It is also because we have maintained a very responsible payout rate of our endowment. It has been very tough to do in a pandemic but it is really important to put us in a position of financial strength coming out of the pandemic. A conservative payout keeps the endowment growing, it keeps donors confident in us, and in turn generating growing budget contributions each year, despite the lower payout rate. This has in fact been reflected in the endowment funds that are going to our schools and colleges.

Advancement

In advancement, we are on track to pass the $1 billion mark in the Forever Orange campaign in late spring or early summer of this year. As a reminder, our goal is $1.5 billion in the campaign and our goal for this fiscal year is $140 million in new business. As of Dec. 31, we have raised $60.47 million in new business. Last year at this time, our total was $106.46 million in new business, but that includes the very large gift from the Newhouse Foundation. We are ahead of where we were last year in terms of cash contributions. As of Dec. 31, the total was $58.5 million, compared to $49.3 million at this time last year.

I thank the entire advancement team as well as our deans and everyone who has worked hard to remain connected to our donors and alumni this year.

COVID update

In terms of a COVID update, there will be lots of communication on COVID matters affecting students, faculty, staff and parents.

Things are going to get better. While the vaccine has arrived, we need to continue to exercise patience. Even in these early phases, the number of individuals who are eligible to be vaccinated is far higher than the number of doses that are available in New York right now. I am grateful that some of our front-line health care and emergency management staff and some of our faculty teaching in person have been able to get the vaccine and some of our faculty and staff over age 65. Even if you’ve been vaccinated (I haven’t because I am not eligible yet) it’s not time to relax, both in terms of your own vigilance for the sake of others. And because we know that demand outstrips supply and it will take time for those currently eligible to be vaccinated and for eligibility to be expanded by New York State.

I was talking to a doctor this week that the COVID rates in 18- to 24-year-old individuals are reflected in the COVID rates in the elderly two weeks later. So I ask everyone, as the semester starts, to maintain extraordinary vigilance. We have expanded our testing capacity to reduce the time from “test to result.” We anticipate processing three times the number of tests that we did this fall, at a rate of up to 4,000 a day. We are testing every on-campus student every week. We are using a surveillance testing method developed at Yale University that has been adopted by many of our peers. It uses the same highly-accurate saliva PCR process but reduces the time required to process samples. Instead of a mouth swab, you just deposit your saliva into a sterile tube, and many of us have been doing that each week. Students will be required to test every seven days. We will also be asking faculty and staff to test on a routine basis. To make this possible, the Stadium Testing Center has been expanded and transformed for enhanced physical distancing, privacy and efficiency. The team in Enrollment and the Student Experience has updated the Stay Safe pledge to be much more specific about travel and visitors, which we know contributed to outbreaks last fall.

We have also made many adjustments to our academics and student life to be ready for the spring semester. The Schine Student Center will be open in days now. The stadium will be used for classes, activities and open study during the day. We are working on the calendar and on student wellness days and on wellness activities at the request of our students. There will be wellness days for spring semester 2021 and more details will be coming shortly. We are even more prepared for spring, thanks to the hard work of so many.

Leadership Searches

In terms of leadership searches, the next senior vice president for student experience is progressing well. Cole Smith, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, and Candace Campbell Jackson, senior vice president and chief of staff, are co-chairing the search. The committee includes a broad representation of students, faculty, staff and Trustees.

You may recall that we are partnering with the firm Witt Keiffer to conduct a national search as our search consultant. We completed an extensive listening campaign in October. The consulting team met with more than 25 groups, including students, staff, faculty, alumni and University leaders.

The position description was posted in early November and the response so far has been very positive. The committee is reviewing candidates this week and plans to conduct first round interviews in February. We are on track to announce a new appointment in early spring.

On the provost search, thank you for approving the slate and thank you for all the consultation that went in it. I have met four times with the University Senate Agenda Committee to discuss the search process and the search committee. I think the search committee is appropriate and I thank all of those who put the search committee together.

The provost has to represent all of the faculty and there are many important tasks in front of the new provost.

• First, and to date, we have hired 48 of the 157 faculty lines approved within our cluster hiring initiative. The incoming provost will oversee many of the remaining hires and has the ability to significantly shape our future faculty.
• Second, there are structural funds allocated towards provost priorities as part of Invest ���ϲ�����. The $37 million in structural funds dedicated to strengthening our research enterprise has only just begun to bear fruit. There is a real opportunity to significantly increase our research profile through smart hiring, targeted investment and investments to ensure we stay strong in our niches and build strength in other areas. This is an area where a candidate can show real leadership.
• Third, we are in the process of repositioning our capital improvement program to invest in academic buildings to enhance the academic core. The incoming provost will oversee this initiative, which will change the face of our academic delivery for years to come.
• Fourth, the new leader will be at the forefront of implementing the emerging $40-70 million faculty diversification fund that will help us build a culture at the department level in which faculty from underrepresented minorities want to not only come to ���ϲ�����, but also spend their careers here.
• Fifth, as you know, we currently enjoy relative strength in market position in international education. In the post-pandemic world, we expect to expand our international reach and explore new international opportunities that may come available in the next 24 months.
• And finally, our local footprint in Central New York is strong, but we intend to significantly expand our academic footprint in some of the regional markets. We see growth potential in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

For all of these reasons, and many more, I expect this search to be highly competitive. I believe the search committee will serve us well.

In closing, I thank all of you. I will take questions after the interim provost’s remarks.

Thank you, Professor Haddix—Marcelle. It’s the last day of the fall semester and a pretty exhausting fall semester. Good afternoon. I know that many of you are in the midst of exams, grading finals and calculating grades. If you didn’t see it live, the Holidays at Hendricks virtual broadcast on Sunday evening was a wonderful lead-in to the holiday season. It’s a testament to what everybody did—across the University—to ��find a way to make this semester work. I know it’s symbolic of so many other events and performances and competitions and lectures and classes that people did, but thousands of people did watch it live. It really shows how well our faculty, the folks in Hendricks Chapel and the Setnor School of Music and the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and all of our wonderful faculty and student performers did, including Peppie Calvar. So I urge you to watch it. It’s representative of what we’ve all been able to do this semester in tough circumstances.

Today I am going to update you on spring planning, leadership searches and progress on diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility.

Spring Planning

As I noted last month, we have activated several of the Fall 2020 Open working groups in our spring 2021 planning. They are:

• Public Health and Emergency Management
• Student Experience and Engagement
• Academic Strategy
• Infrastructure and Residence Life
• International Students
• Disability Related Considerations

On Friday, these groups provided reports with recommendations for the spring semester based on current public health conditions. And the team is working through their recommendations as part of our overall plan for the spring.

Our goal remains to begin the spring semester on Jan. 25. But—as everyone on this call has to know—conditions in the country are very fluid and we have to be ready to change course depending on conditions at that time. As we have done from the beginning we will be ready to change course and all of our decisions will be led by guidance from our public health officials and elected leaders and our public health faculty. We will always prioritize the safety and health of our University and Central New York communities.

I can’t emphasize enough that the situation continues to change rapidly. Over the weekend, Onondaga County set a record for the highest daily number of cases since the pandemic began. Obviously we are seeing that in other places in the country. We have taken additional action to support the county’s ongoing efforts to combat the resurgence of the virus. This includes encouraging faculty and staff who can do their work remotely to do so. And we continue to offer COVID-19 testing to all faculty, staff and those students who are remaining on campus through Winter Break through our own testing center.

I think we all know but I think it is worth me saying again, I think we did reasonably well compared to our peers in the fall. We have a great team. I think the spring will present different circumstances and different conditions than what we saw in the fall. And therefore, it’s going to call for careful decision-making in different spots. The surge of cases we are experiencing in the community is one factor. Winter and weather limits our ability to hold academic and co-curricular activities outdoors. Fortunately, we will have access to the renovated Stadium and the Schine Student Center. The renovations of this facility are nearing completion, just in time for the start of the spring semester. Utilizing these spaces will allow for moderately sized academic, co-curricular and extra-curricular events and gatherings that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to do outside.

We know that early intervention is key for preventing spread. That is why our testing program is so important. It was, in many ways, our advantage in the fall, thanks to a lot of people working hard and a great partnership with Upstate Medical University. We are planning for enhanced testing capabilities in the spring. We have conducted more than 116,000 tests so far. We’ll continue to work with Upstate, and we’ll expand our own laboratory capacity. For spring, we do expect that we’re going to have to more than double our capacity to do this right.

During the fall semester, we learned a lot about our students. The vast majority followed public health safety protocols in a way that some did not expect. I am very proud of what they achieved. But I am a bit concerned that we do need to evolve and learn from the fall to the spring. Right now, the Student Experience team is reviewing and updating the Stay Safe Pledge for the spring semester and making changes. And there will be updates in expectations and requirements for student conduct. Students will be held accountable to meet the expectations of the revised pledge.

We had hoped international travel would have resumed by now. Sadly, it has not. That is why we made the difficult decision to close our ���ϲ����� Abroad centers for spring, with the exception of limited cohort of architecture students will study abroad in Florence, as this is a critical part of their academic trajectory. We believe that we’ve figured out a way to do that safely. We are cautiously optimistic we will be able to offer our full slate of ���ϲ����� Abroad programs in fall 2021.

Leadership Searches

The search for the next senior vice president for Enrollment and the Student Experience continues. Cole Smith and Candace Campbell Jackson are leading the search. The position description was posted last week and the response so far has been very positive. The search committee expects to review candidates in late January and conduct first round interviews in February. We are on track to announce an appointment in the early spring there.

As I promised, I didn’t even start thinking about the provost search process until after Thanksgiving, but I have now done that. We have begun the preliminary steps to search for the next provost and chief academic officer. I met with the University Senate Agenda Committee last week to discuss the search. The co-chairs of the Senate Committee on Academic Affairs provided an update and shared feedback they have begun to solicit from faculty. That meeting was short. I only got 20 minutes, so we need more time there. They provided feedback from faculty and that was quite helpful, including from what we didn’t get in the last search. I have also talked to the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees. I need at this point to consult further with stakeholders, including the individual deans. There are also a lot of units that report to the provost, including things like the press, for example. So I’ll be doing that consultation before Christmas. Then, coming back, we’ll be working with the Agenda Committee and Academic Affairs Committee of the Senate to put the committee in place. In doing that we’ll follow the governance provided in the Senate Bylaws to name the slate of potential members of the search committee, and then the slate is finalized and sent to the full Senate membership for ratification, which I think is likely in the January meeting. I do believe with learning from the experience last time and the recommendations already received, we’ll be positioned to appoint the new provost in late spring with the expectation that the new hire will to be on campus in the summer.

It’s a great time for people to connect with Marcelle, Christine Ashby and Matthew Huber to provide your input. As you do so, I ask you to consider that the successful candidate for provost will need to lead a process to revise and update the Academic Strategic Plan, which is now five years old. Many parts of the plan have been implemented, and other things have changed a lot since that plan was adopted. And certainly higher education and the world situation has changed a lot. I have also shared with the Board of Trustees that provost candidates are attracted by how closely their academic ambitions match those of the institution. So it’s really important that the search committee, which includes faculty, students, deans and trustees, be a very strong one, with high expectations of themselves in their work and on behalf of the university.

So I’m just asking people to pay attention to this process.

Diversity, Inclusion and Equity

In the last meeting, I was asked about Loretta Lynch’s review of the Department of Public Safety and the Climate Survey undertaken by the Board of Trustees Special Committee on Diversity, Inclusion and University Climate. They are rapidly nearing their conclusion.

In February, we anticipate that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and her team will have completed their review. Their report will follow shortly thereafter and they will also be sharing their final recommendations for the Public Safety Community Review Board.

Also in February, we expect to receive the findings of the Campus Climate survey conducted by Dr. Damon Williams and his team. In addition to the survey results, his team will provide tangible actions the University should take given the climate study findings. So a lot of reporting, no doubt, that the Senate will want to discuss in February.

That’s my report. Thanks, everybody, for your grit and grace this semester. I am proud of what you’re able to do. I am very, very aware of what it took and what it took out of you. So many people have worked very hard under difficult circumstances, and I am very grateful to all of them.

That concludes my remarks. I’ll take questions after the interim provost’s remarks.

Thank you, Marcelle. Good afternoon everyone. I will keep my remarks brief. I will provide updates on 1) last week’s transition to online learning; 2) Spring 2021 planning; 3) ESE search; and 4) academic performance among our student-athletes.

We are now a week out from Thanksgiving. Our hope was to be winding down the on campus part of the semester starting now. Instead, we had to begin that process a week earlier. Concluding in-person, on-campus learning last week was not something we planned to do or wanted to do. But, it was the right call.

We were on track to exceed the New York State threshold of 100 positive cases in a two-week period.

But much more importantly, we were seeing an increasing prevalence of cases all over ���ϲ����� and Onondaga County. Outside of our region, the virus is surging across the country and has been for several weeks. This has started to be reflected in our students, and we were observing some evidence of transmission within some residence halls. This is a shift from recent weeks where we were able to identify small clusters and then test and isolate positive cases before they spread.

So with those factors in mind, it was prudent to move to online classes when we did. As a result of that, many of our students are leaving campus early to complete their semester at home. I want you to know that they are participating in pre-departure COVID testing (more than 7,000 students have tested for departure already). The bulk of our students will be leaving in the next seven days. We continue to follow the departure protocols and testing guidelines for students that we announced back on Oct. 14, very early, including pre-departure testing. Our students are checking out of their rooms in the residence halls and almost all are following the guidelines. We are providing free safe transportation to our students to major cities in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region.

There ARE a significant number of students, who for a variety of reasons, must remain on campus. And we’ve made arrangements to support these students for as long as they need to be on campus. We have a quite adequate quarantine and isolation states. We will provide those accommodations as long as necessary for our students.

The shift to remote learning was relatively smooth. I thank the deans, faculty, ITS and of course our students, for making this transition possible.

Spring Semester Planning

The second topic is spring semester planning, which I am sure we will get questions about. As we work to wrap up the residential part of our fall semester, we are learning from that and looking ahead to spring. It is our intention to offer an in-person residential experience beginning on Jan.25 subject to public health authorities and guidance and the situation in our country, which is—as you know—very dynamic. We have learned a lot from our successes and our challenges this fall. We will take what we have learned and apply that to the Spring 2021 semester.

I think as a university we did relatively well compared to our peers this fall. The spring semester has to be even better. In particular, we must have more and safer universal testing. We will have more and safer indoor spaces for academic and non-academic pursuits. So we will need to have an even better plan for the spring. We will have an even better plan.

To support this work, we are reconvening six of the committees that were integral in planning our fall semester. Those six committees are:

• Public Health and Emergency Management
• Student Experience and Engagement
• Academic Strategy
• Infrastructure and Residence Life
• International Students
• Disability Related Considerations

We have 10 weeks at least before the start of the spring semester, and for those committees, which again will include faculty and staff, we will again ask that you provide your ideas and feedback to these committees, to your chairs and deans, and to the interim provost as we work hard over the next 10 weeks.

We also heard from a lot of faculty and some students that the tents on the Quad and outdoor spaces were very helpful in delivering instruction. Unfortunately, most of those are coming down for winter. I am pleased to share that we have a plan and are working hard to refine it for major spaces coming online that we will use for socially distanced academic and student life activities. We are looking at how we can best allocate and use all our space. That space emphatically includes the stadium, which is now open and the Schine Student Center, which is going to be open as soon as the final stages of the renovation are complete. I toured the building last week with Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala. It is a truly spectacular space. It is much bigger than anyone realized because of how it was divided up in the past. The Schine will be coming online for staff in December and for students in January.

The timing of this reopening could not be more aligned with our current needs. The Schine provides renovated and accessible spaces that are suitable for socially distanced learning, gathering and socializing. For example, the new design provides a bigger vestibule area outside of Goldstein auditorium, modern spaces for many of our cultural centers and versatile mixed-use space. There will be new dining services, including Kosher and Halal food. Many of the features you will see in the building are the direct result of feedback from students and community members. We are planning a series of opening events and activities—all within public health guidelines—in January. The main point is the Schine will be online for the spring.

ESE Leadership Search

Now, a brief update on the search for the next leader of Enrollment and the Student Experience.

As announced on Oct. 8, Cole Smith, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, and Candace Campbell Jackson, senior vice president and chief of staff, are co-chairing the search for our next senior vice president for Enrollment and the Student Experience. The committee includes a broad representation of students, faculty, staff and trustees. We are partnering with Witt Keiffer on the search. Earlier this month, the search firm met with more than 25 groups, including students, staff, faculty, alumni and University leaders, including members of the University Senate Student Life Committee. The search committee will meet later this month to review these findings. We hope to announce a new leader in late spring.

Academic Performance Among Student-Athletes

My last update is on the academic performance of our student-athletes. With everything else going on in the country I am afraid that it will go unnoticed. Yesterday, the NCAA announced the Graduation Success Rate and Federal Graduation Rate data for all NCAA Division 1 institutions. I’m pleased to share that our student-athletes continue to perform extraordinarily well in the classroom. ���ϲ����� Athletics ranks in the top 10 among Power 5 schools. We’re also one of six ACC schools in the top 10.

Some key highlights include:

• Our overall GSR is 94 percent, which is the highest since the NCAA began tracking;
• A record 10 teams have a 100 percent score, with women’s tennis and volleyball achieving this distinction for the ninth consecutive year; and
• Since a senator asked me about it before this meeting, I will report that our graduation success rate among Black male student-athletes is 89 percent, also an all-time high.

The data reflects the class that enrolled in 2013-14 and graduated within six years.

I am grateful for the academic advisors, support staff and coaches who support our student-athletes. And most importantly, I am proud of our student-athletes. We need to continue this and follow it closely. They continue to excel in the classroom, serve their communities and achieve great things.

Ending with Gratitude

Finally, I want to share a note I received last week that is really to all of you. It came from a parent of one of our students. It’s just one of many the University received throughout the semester from grateful families. It was addressed to me, but it is a reflection of the work of you and your colleagues:

“You and your entire ���ϲ����� community have done an incredible job this semester. I can’t imagine the amount of work that has gone into opening ���ϲ����� and keeping it open. I am so proud that my daughter chose to attend the university and even more so now. ��While there has of course been stress and anxiety, which is to be expected, the people at ���ϲ����� have made this experience as comforting as possible given all of the circumstances in the country. I am constantly sharing the good experience with others. I am very sorry that the end of this semester is ending in a flurry of activity. But I am still so proud of what ���ϲ����� has accomplished. Thank you.” I pass that thanks along to all of you who have done all of the work this semester.

Thank you. I will take questions after Interim Provost Liu’s remarks.

Thank you, Professor Haddix.

We are on the edge right now. Our University needs to step back from the edge so we can continue the productive ongoing work to address issues of diversity, inclusion and safety that has been happening since November.

We need to step back from that edge. I want to direct that first step back right now.

Our students, 23 of them, are protesting inside Crouse-Hinds Hall. They are our students. They are protesting because of incidents of racism and anti-Semitism and hate. They are angry about those incidents and are frustrated that perpetrators have not all been found and punished. Meanwhile, they feel that they are being punished for protesting this and other things.

I’m angry and frustrated about this as well. Some perpetrators have, in fact, been found and punished, including with suspensions, including this semester, but people don’t know that because our student conduct process has been kept so confidential. Nevertheless, I believe it is also true that at the least one and maybe more of the perpetrators are still out there in our community.

Some of the students in Crouse-Hinds Hall are seniors. We should all want them to be able to go to class and to graduate. I want that. I want us all to remember that as our starting point.

These students are afraid they will be arrested and forced out of the building. They have suspension dangling over them. They are concerned about being fed.

Enough. I am not going to let students be arrested and forced out of Crouse-Hinds Hall. The building is now closed. The students now there can stay there. I have directed arrangements for ensuring they are fed and cared for.

I am also directing that interim suspension be lifted and the suspension procedure be stopped while we all step back.

I am doing these things because I have been listening to many people in the last 24 hours, including many senators, many students, many faculty and many alumni. You don’t all agree. That is an understatement. This is ���ϲ�����. But after thinking hard about the many differing opinions that have been advanced to me in various ways, I have concluded that we can move forward productively by starting with compassion for our students and with de-escalation. I am taking these first steps. I hope that all of us, and all in our community, will model this as well. If we don’t do this, all the real progress on these issues that this University has made since November, and that has to continue, is in jeopardy.

There has been progress since November. The steps so many have helped take are documented on and shared regularly via many channels. We are fighting incidents of hate that are now becoming common on many campuses around our country.

Our students at ���ϲ����� have the right of free speech and protest. That right doesn’t mean that students can without consequences protest anywhere at any time in ways that seriously disrupt the learning and other necessary activity of other students and our community. It is also true that occupying a building after closing hours is disruptive, and has been in Crouse-Hinds Hall. In the past, I have used every ounce of my discretion under the non-disruption policy to accommodate peaceful protest. I have done that, particularly where there were very serious concerns of students and our University community and a need for space and time to have safe and productive dialogue about solutions.

My discretion is not unlimited. It is not unconstrained. It can’t continue forever. At some point, it is true that violation of the disruption policy has to have consequences that should be managed through the Code of Student Conduct. We are not at that point now. I believe we should give more time to this process.

Members of the Special Committee of our Board of Trustees were on campus last week. They conducted twenty sessions with concerned students, faculty and members of the campus community. They heard a lot that they will address in their report later this semester, including about campus safety, residence life, communications, curriculum and the very different experiences people have here based on who they are. This week, members of the Independent Advisory Panel are on our campus and also listening widely to our community. They are national experts on diversity, inclusion and safety. They have already been helpful.

We need to learn from this process and act to implement the commitments and the recommendations that come from all this work. I ask that we all step back and take a deep breath, in ways I have mentioned and in other ways, and work to make this University better for all of us, and especially for our students.

Having said and directed this now and today, I have two more mundane but related points to report on now. First, one of our commitments relates to our curriculum for all undergraduate students related to diversity and inclusion.

Later in this meeting, you’ll hear two reports from two ad hoc committees who have been working on how to engage our undergraduate students in discussions of identity, equity and inclusion in the classroom. These are important steps forward. In particular, the development of a new, more extensive, better first-year seminar class to replace SEM 100 is an important priority for this University. We have promised this to our students. We—and when I say we, I include our faculty in each school and college, our deans and our senate—have to deliver on this.

Second, I have heard many concerns about space assignments on campus, including for those who have been particularly targeted by recent hateful actions. Getting appropriate spaces for our students of color, including Greek organizations, and our indigenous students, is an urgent priority that is being worked on intensely by many students, faculty and staff, including Pete Sala.

The good news here is that additional spaces are becoming available to work with. We are in the midst of a “great shuffle” on our central campus.

The great shuffle is made possible by the opening of the Barnes Center, the National Veterans Resource Center (NVRC) and ultimately the Schine renovation.

It is a domino effect. It has to be managed thoughtfully. As one space opens up, we are able to make additional moves that benefit our students and academic focus and take into account recent concerns. For example:

• Because the counseling services moved to the Barnes Center, we could move Alumni Engagement into the counseling center building.
• Then, we moved Institutional Assessment (that’s Jerry Edmonds’ team) into the space that Alumni Engagement vacated in the Goldstein Alumni and Faculty Center.
• This, along with the relocation of some key student services to the Henry Center Complex, allowed us to move Keith Alford’s team into Steele Hall. We can also move HEOP and Student Support Services out of the basement of the School of Education, where they have been for a long time. We need in that process to make sure that they can maintain their historic ties with the School of Education.
• The shuffle also enables the Office of Research and the Graduate School to have space in Lyman Hall, the Maxwell School to get needed nearby space in Steele, which allows student services to be expanded.
• It enables Falk College to expand student service and other space vacated by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF).

These are just some of the pieces of the shuffle, but the key takeaway is that we are following the Campus Framework while also prioritizing academics and students on central campus. I promised our indigenous students, our Native American students, that they do not have to move from 113 Euclid until we find better space that they agree on. I am meeting with them again next week. We also promised that we would prioritize space for multicultural Greek organizations and have identified some options and are reviewing them with student leadership.

We are focused on using space in the heart of campus to address the promises we made to our students and our academic needs.

I know that it is February and it is gray, and I know that the last 48 hours have been tough. We can face tough things here. We are doing hard things now. In just about 10 days the Dome will close. This will end an era where every heavy snowfall has been a safety hazard to our staff. We have had to put our staff on the roof to shovel snow off the Dome to prevent that collapse. I’m grateful that this time is ending. It involves sacrifices in the next six months, including moving many events—including Commencement. If we can face that hard thing, I think we can all take a deep breath and remember we are here because of our students, first and foremost, and they want us to get diversity and inclusion right on this campus.

I’d be even more grateful if we all take a deep breath and step back to do that. Thank you. I will take questions after the Provost’s report.

Thank you, Professor Haddix.�� I just want to thank Professor Schell for what I think is an accurate tribute to Professor Bruce Carter. He was a mentor to me in that he mentored me on the complex and idiosyncratic entity that the Senate is, and he was willing to tell me what I didn’t want to hear. That is rare. I am grateful and join the Senate in thanking him for his service.

I have a brief update on the racist and anti-Semitic hate speech and actions we have experienced at the University. This experience has been painful, divisive and abhorrent for our students and many others. I believe that we are dealing with racist and hostile people who have spewed threats, some from a cowardly cloak of anonymity, and I think it’s been with the express purpose of damaging our students’ ability to learn and the inclusiveness of our University. As a lot of us have said, our University cannot and will not stand for this. I am grateful for the many individuals who have stood up against hate and who have provided constructive and thoughtful feedback about what we—as a community and as an institution—can do going forward. I am also grateful to the many faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members who have shown support, kindness and grace to our students in this tough time and accommodated them in many ways.

I have spent most of the last few weeks meeting with and listening to people in our community, including student groups, faculty individually and in groups, staff, community and faith leaders, and law enforcement personnel. I spent the night at Day Hall last Monday and met individually with about 200 students there. I also spent an evening at Haven Hall listening to students. I have met with our indigenous students, faculty and staff, who also have serious concerns that have received little press attention in recent weeks. These students presented a thoughtful, collaborative and well-researched set of recommendations. I am grateful for their work and for their willingness to partner with our University going forward.

Before I discuss what we have accomplished since Nov. 20, I want to give credit to the Council on Diversity and Inclusion and many others in this room and beyond. They have worked very hard to accomplish some key diversity and inclusion milestones since the Spring of 2018, including:

• helping to appoint leadership for diversity, equity and inclusion for the University as a whole and in the schools and colleges;
• helping to invest $1.67 million in research and scholarship focused on diversity, accessibility and inclusion;
• helping to enhance counseling resources and increase the diversity and language abilities of our counselors;
• helping to train faculty and staff on unconscious bias and discrimination and on inclusive teaching, such as the Advanced Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Institute held in August; and
• helping to enhance diversity efforts in faculty and staff hiring.

And yet, acknowledging—and I feel it is worth acknowledging—that this is just some of the work we have done since 2018. We must do more.

Since the last meeting of the University Senate, we have agreed to address a large number of specific concerns brought forward by different student groups. In my view, the concerns are all issues that we are addressing now or must be addressing promptly because they are the right thing to do.

They are the right thing to do even while we simultaneously continue to aggressively pursue the investigation and appropriate prosecution of those responsible for racist and anti-Semitic hate speech and conduct.

We have been moving quickly into implementation of action on the student concerns. We have agreed to act on each of the concerns that have been brought forward. There were three areas where, initially, we were not sure that we could fulfill a commitment that the students had asked of us.

The first of those areas was the request to implement a housing portal that would allow future residents to choose a roommate based on mutual interests and identities. While a solution that allows race, ethnicity or religion to be the basis of roommate selection is problematic, I believe we have found a way to address the students’ underlying concern. We can implement a new roommate-matching software package that allows students to connect based on matching criteria such as mutual interests and schedule compatibility. We believe that we will be able to get this in place for the Fall 2020 selection process that begins in March.

The second area was the students’ request that we make diversity training progress of tenured professors available through a public website, up to the extent permitted by law, and make the completion of the required diversity and inclusion training part of the requirements for tenure. Posting training status on a public website by name would be a violation of privacy. We have, instead, committed to publishing aggregate data by school and college each academic year, requiring annual training of all faculty and staff in discrimination and unconscious bias, and holding deans accountable for the performance of their faculty in completing the training. We have also committed to enhancing that training.

The third area that the students brought forward is engagement by the Board of Trustees: Would the Board of Trustees be willing to commit to engagement with the campus community and others? This was not something that I could commit to on the Board’s behalf back in November, because I can’t speak for the whole Board unless they authorize it. Also, the full board only meets twice per year. That said, I am happy to report that the Board has been working intensively on this student request over the last three weeks. The work has been fruitful and it is clear that they are committed to engagement. I understand from the Board leadership that you will be hearing more about these opportunities very soon.

Additionally, we have accomplished the following since Nov. 20:

• We have guaranteed—and it’s important that we repeat it in the contexts of respecting peaceful protest—that there will be no sanctions or consequences for students who participated in the sit-in.
• We have implemented a policy for timely notification of hate speech and hate crimes in instances where such notification will not compromise an investigation.
• We have added security cameras to public spaces in select residence halls and are aggressively working on how to install additional cameras and how they should be installed to balance the interests of security and resident privacy.
• We have deployed 20 of 90 planned new residential community safety officers in our residence halls. The remaining 70 will be deployed by the beginning of the spring semester in January.
• We have notified the community about the “Silent Witness” tool on the DPS website. This allows campus community members to provide anonymous reports about hate speech, hate crimes and other safety concerns, so they will be properly investigated.
• People have been concerned about transparency and accountability and how the University is going to show progress on the things we have promised to do. We have established a web page at to track concerns and responses.
• We have reached out to more than 200 students who self-identified as being willing to participate in various working groups working on the implementation of these recommendations and many have already agreed to participate. We are also reaching out to the Jewish students, international and indigenous student groups, the Student Association and Graduate Student Organization, the Residence Hall Association, Greek Life and all other registered student organizations to seek input.

As all of these things have been happening, I’ve been listening to so many people. The overwhelming message I have heard, including from students in Day and Haven Halls, is that people are concerned and worried. There is almost a universal sense of anxiety, and that is an opportunity. People do not agree on every detail, but almost everyone wants this University to model a world-class inclusive and supportive environment for all people. And they think that’s not just what this University needs, but that is what this country desperately needs.

We are finalizing plans for how we will demonstrate and communicate accountability on these actions. We will also be seeking the counsel of experts—national and international experts. You can expect to hear more on these topics very soon.

There are dozens of actions that this University has taken over the last few years to enhance diversity and inclusion and to uphold the dignity and worth of every human being. There are dozens more we need to take. We are taking these actions in a way that respects the role of the faculty in the curriculum, the faculty in faculty training and development, and the faculty in faculty hiring. We are taking these actions with broad student input and support. We are taking these actions for the simple reason that they are the right thing to do. We are taking these actions because they are in the best interest of our students.

Thank you.�� I will take questions after the Provost’s remarks.

Good afternoon. We’re in the middle of the semester. There is a lot going on and so I have quite a few updates to share. Provost Wheatly is not here with us today because she is a peer reviewer for Boston University’s re-accreditation and is at a site visit today.

There are eight topics that I want to briefly cover today—some of which would normally be addressed by the Provost. I can take some questions but may refer them to others.

• ���ϲ����� Abroad
• Enrollment
• Budget
• Fundraising and Campaign
• Financial Holds
• SUNY-ESF
• Dean Searches
• Free Speech Working Group

In Hong Kong, protests continue after many months.��Our Hong Kong Center has been operating throughout, with appropriately heightened security measures. We have a real-time security service that keeps us posted minute-to-minute with neighborhood and block-to-block information. This has allowed our students to largely steer clear of the more dangerous moments during their months in Hong Kong.��This center works on a modular curriculum broken into three parts:��a travelling signature seminar, two months of classroom instruction, and then internships.��We are moving into the third and final phase, and feel comfortable sending the students to internships around the city. We have been in close contact with the students and their parents throughout.

In Santiago, Chile, over a million people took to the streets for a peaceful rally on Friday. This follows weeks of protests that have been, at times, violent.��The violence has mostly been outside of Santiago, but we have taken significant precautions for our students in Santiago. Those students take classes and live in home stays throughout the city.��For now, our students have had some classes disrupted by the protests, which involve the transit system, so we have made some schedule adjustments. The students are safe and on track to end the semester on time.

For both the Hong Kong and Santiago centers, these protests have presented us with some security and safety challenges, and have threatened to disrupt the instructional schedules for our students. I have been blown away by the work of the ���ϲ����� Abroad staff and many faculty and academic leaders on main campus who have been on standby to help out if the disruptions meant our students couldn’t complete their semesters.

Also in both cities, our students have been exposed to an unusual form of experiential learning. But this cohort of students have had a window on democratic movements that few of their peers will have.��We are watching this for the spring semester.

We have just completed a comprehensive review of the model, quality and value of instruction offered by ���ϲ����� Abroad at our centers around the world. As many of you know, ���ϲ����� has centers in seven countries, where our students and students from over 70 other universities take ���ϲ����� courses during fall, spring and winter terms. The study asked whether or not the centers represent a valuable way for ���ϲ����� to deliver on its strategic objective of giving an international experience to every student who wants one.

The answer was nuanced. I think if we could re-invent our center model, we would not create exactly the system we have now.��There are some real challenges with our current model that the report identified:

• Our model is geographically unbalanced, with five programs in Europe, one in east Asia, one in Latin America and none in Africa and none in the other parts of Asia.
• Our model is tooled to support semester-long study.��For some athletes, artists, researchers, working students, socially engaged students and others, semester-long study is either not possible or not ideal.��So, whatever we do with the centers, we need to create more short-duration international options for our students.
• Our model does not now create a lot of opportunity for our faculty on this campus who wish to teach, research or contribute abroad.��We have a lot of faculty at those centers, but, by and large, they are not from here. Here again, as with students who eschew semester study, we need to create options for these faculty. We would like our faculty to have this opportunity.

The study found some real strengths as well:

• Our centers’ instructional model provides very good curricular tie-ins for our students. Even students in professional schools or with rigorous curricular needs can find the courses they need, whereas they might not be able to with other providers of study abroad.
• Our centers provide excellent incentives for the schools and colleges under the RCM model.��Deans and department chairs have incentives to encourage their students to study abroad. At other institutions, they encourage study abroad but the budget model discourages it.
• Our centers provide outstanding health and wellness, housing, travel academic support and student support services, which is increasingly in demand by students and parents.
• Our centers are very well known and respected in the academic study abroad marketplace and serve as terrific platforms for who we are as the University abroad.

The report finds that our center model is a real asset for ���ϲ�����, but we need to do a few things right away to improve it:

• ���ϲ����� Abroad should work with schools, colleges and faculty to develop short-duration international experiential learning options, more of them connected with the centers or outside the centers.
• ���ϲ����� Abroad must start a campuswide conversation to diversify the locations of our centers. I’d like to see them in several new locations in the coming years.
• ���ϲ����� Abroad and Financial Aid have to work together to structure the Invest ���ϲ����� investments in new financial aid to facilitate the goal of every student having a study abroad experience who wants one.

I want to thank all of the academic leadership, faculty and staff who visited the centers over the last 18 months who contributed to this report.

I’ll close this section by asserting that ���ϲ����� really is a global campus, and our centers are an excellent contributor to our internationalization objectives. But, like everything, we need to work on improvements in some areas.

As most of you know, we are now well past our census day—when we report our final enrollment numbers. We have met our enrollment targets while also improving the academic profile of the incoming class and holding steady on our diversity goals. Significant improvement in Hispanic and African American undergraduate enrollment. There are a lot of moving parts that must work in concert to get to this outcome. It is a coordinated effort, including Enrollment and the Student Experience, Marketing and Communications, and all of our schools and colleges and programs (including faculty who participate in student recruitment)—top to bottom.

We have also continued our upward trajectory for veterans and military connected students. We now have 1,375—the largest in years.

I offer two observations on these results. First, strong enrollment and strong demand drives our budget, because of how tuition dependent the University is. This, in turn enables us to invest in the Academic Strategic Plan. I know you all know that, but it’s worth celebrating. Second, this enrollment trend runs counter the experience of many institutions around us, in the Northeast and in the Midwest. The demographics coming at us mean we need to continue to work.�� I’m glad that we are succeeding now, but it’s not a complacent happiness.

I’m pleased to report that we finished last year well and have an approved balanced budget for this year. We are on track as of the end of the first fiscal quarter. Tiny surplus on our budget.

I show this to you once a year so that I can remind you of the difference between new business and cash.�� Cash received lags fundraising totals significantly. We ended the year with an 8.9 percent increase in total funds raised year over year. More than half of the total gifts came from alumni, and more than 61,000 donors made gifts of support—a 16 percent increase year over year.

As you may have heard, we are launching the public phase of the Forever Orange Campaign next week. This will happen before the next Senate meeting. There are a few aspects of this campaign that I want to emphasize that are different than in the past. First, we are seeking to significantly build our endowment. This is important for future generations of ���ϲ����� students and faculty. It gives us the margin to weather many things that may be coming at us. Second, we are seeking to deepen our engagement with a broader pool of donors and alumni outside of ���ϲ����� and Central New York. We are going to launch a big public phase next week. The majority of donors are from outside Central New York and are new donors. Our donors should reflect that we are an international research university. Third, we need to double the proportion of our alumni who are actively engaged with us, whether through philanthropy or through helping us with student internships and employment or through being an advocate for ���ϲ����� in communities across the country and around the world. This is ambitious, but we will be measuring it.

While I am on the topic of the campaign, I also want to thank all of the members of the faculty-staff fundraising committee. Philanthropy that comes from the people who know the University best and care the most is particularly meaningful.

Next, I want to move to the topic of financial holds. It turned out to be a lot more complicated than most of us expected. I want to thank the ad hoc committee for their complete and thoughtful report. I will listen to the discussion of the report today, but I do expect to be supportive of the committee’s recommendations.

As I have shared previously, we recently came to an agreement with SUNY-ESF to extend our longstanding partnership related to instructional, recreation and co-curricular services and support. ESF has submitted that new agreement to the State of New York, and we are awaiting approval of that new agreement.

At the same time, for the past year, many members of the ESF community have been engaged in a SUNY-directed effort called the Discovery Challenge, designed to identify opportunities to build on the College’s strengths, assets and partnerships to position the institution for future growth. They are doing this at a time of change in leadership. The ESF Discovery Challenge Report was recently completed and made public, and I have told ESF leadership that we are committed to explore how ���ϲ����� can��reasonably and appropriately��support the long-term aspirations detailed in the Discovery Challenge Report.

Next, I’ll turn to the status of the dean searches. I want to welcome Cole Smith to his first University Senate meeting as dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Cole—would you raise a hand so people can see you? He joins us from Clemson and hit the ground running. He’s been here a week, and he still looks like his picture! We haven’t aged him yet. I want to thank Can Isak for his stewardship of the college as interim dean—he ensured a smooth transition. I also want to thank John Liu, who chaired the search committee, and all of the committee members for a job well done.

The searches for deans in the iSchool and Newhouse are progressing well. Campus interviews for the iSchool dean are scheduled through early November. Thanks to David Seaman for providing leadership continuity as interim dean, to Gene Anderson for chairing the committee, and all of the committee members for their service.

The Newhouse search committee is in the process of building a pool under the able leadership of Craig Boise and John Wildhack. In the interim, I am so grateful to Amy Falkner for her long service as interim dean.

As almost everyone here knows, I focused my remarks at the last University Senate meeting on the topic of free speech. The text of what I said was posted the next day and is available at this weblink.

I said last month that I think our university needs to provide an environment where people can discuss difficult issues, from different perspectives, even if those discussions at times make us uncomfortable. I expected that what I said would provoke comment and make some uncomfortable, and I have heard from a lot of people since then—many folks across the spectrum of constituencies and views on this campus were seriously troubled by aspects of what I said, and many folks across the spectrum of constituencies and views on campus were seriously engaged and supportive of what I said. I wish I could say that everyone agreed on what they are supportive of and troubled by. ��I have learned from some of the comments, and I hope to learn more today. So far, the only action I have taken in response to this discussion is to create and charge a free speech working group, which met for the first time yesterday.

Here are the members: three students, a graduate student, an undergrad and a law student, selected in consultation with the elected governance bodies of those three groups of students; three faculty members, including Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech at Newhouse; Gladys McCormick, of Arts and Science and Maxwell from the history department; and Marcelle Haddix of Education and chair of the Senate Agenda Committee. There are also three trustees and three administrators on the work group—Amy Falkner, Steve Bennett and Marianne Thompson, who is the dean of students.

I just want to read the charge for the committee again:

I charge the free speech working group to review policies governing free speech and civil discourse at ���ϲ����� and suggest revisions where appropriate. This review should assure the right to free speech and provide parameters to help secure that right. It should also address behaviors that provide barriers to a person’s access to free speech and outline how we should respond to such an incident or behavior.

I am acutely aware that these are hard questions that go to the heart of our community and involve academic freedom. I raised them in the Senate in the first instance because I knew they would require the Senate’s feedback and discussion. So, I think this process is just starting, and I am sure you will hear more about it.

Finally, there is an issue on which I have been hotly questioned much more than free speech in the past month. That is the issue of whether our student-athletes should be able to benefit from the use of their name, image and likeness. The NCAA yesterday announced a major change in position on this issue. ���ϲ����� has issued a statement in response, which John Wildhack, our athletic director made last night.

Statement from John Wildhack

“We appreciate and support the NCAA Board of Governors’ recent action that paves the way for student-athletes to benefit from the use of their name, image and likeness in a manner consistent with the collegiate model. As work begins on updating the relevant bylaws and policies to reflect the Board of Governors’ position, ���ϲ����� will continue to elevate all aspects of our student-athletes’ experience. This includes providing enhanced academic support, holistic health and wellness resources, and integrated academic advising and career planning. These actions, and others, further position our student-athletes for success on the playing fields, in the classroom and beyond.”

“Each of our faculty members—and each of our students—needs in the pursuit of knowledge to be able to say things and write things that can be troubling, provocative and at times makes many of the rest of us profoundly uncomfortable. Our students and faculty need to be protected in doing this from retribution except in very limited circumstances,” Chancellor Syverud said in remarks to the University Senate Sept. 18. “If we really want to protect our faculty and students in their free speech and in their pursuit of knowledge, we cannot silence people who express uncomfortable views.”

The Free Speech Working Group is charged with reviewing policies governing free speech and civil discourse at the University and suggesting revisions to further enhance a culture of open dialogue and diversity of thought on campus. It will be co-chaired by Steven Bennett, senior vice president for academic operations, and Amy Falkner, interim dean of the Newhouse School. The members of the working group are:

• David Edelstein, Board of Trustees representative
• Mackenzie Ess, graduate student representative
• Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech and associate professor of magazine, news and digital journalism in the Newhouse School
• Marcelle Haddix, chair of reading and language arts and Dean’s Professor, School of Education
• Lujane Juburi, undergraduate student representative
• Natalie Maier, Student Bar Association representative
• Bobby Maldonaldo, chief of the Department of Public Safety
• Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history in the Maxwell School
• Reinaldo Pascual, Board of Trustees representative
• Richard Thompson, Board of Trustees representative
• Marianne Thomson, associate vice president for student experience and dean of students

Ex officio members of the working group include Dolan Evanovich, senior vice president for enrollment and the student experience; Dan French, senior vice president and general counsel; and Candace Campbell Jackson, senior vice president and chief of staff.

As part of Chancellor Syverud’s charge, the group’s review of policies should assure the right to free speech and provide parameters to help secure that right. It should also address the behaviors that provide barriers to a person’s access to free speech and outline how the University should respond to such an incident or behavior. The group is expected to deliver interim recommendations to Chancellor Syverud in January 2020 and final recommendations by May 2020.

I just want to thank Marcelle Haddix for stepping up as chair and for your remarks.�� And I agree, I just want to welcome all of our new senators. I just would observe that robust shared governance goes way back in our University’s history. I thank all of you for taking this seriously.

I want to first highlight progress made toward several very significant goals that has happened since we last met.

• First, we largely met our enrollment goals for the 2019 entering class. We welcomed 5,884 outstanding new members of the incoming class of undergraduate, graduate and professional students. I note that 26 percent of the class identifies as students of color and that doesn’t include well over 15 percent who are international students.
• Second, our University and deans and Advancement team raised more than $163 million by year end close on June 30—the most funds raised over one year in our history;
• Third, we closed this year on June 30 with a balanced budget—indeed a small surplus—and the Board in May approved a balanced budget for FY20, which we are running slightly ahead of at this point.
• Fourth, we are well on our way to our reaching our $100 million Invest ���ϲ����� goal. As of June 30, $31 million of the tuition rebasing and cost reduction goal was achieved and our fundraising goal, which was a two-year goal of $40 million, was exceeded at $54 million.
• Fifth, the SEIU, our largest bargaining unit, and the University reached a favorable five-year agreement in our contract negotiations. It’s the longest contract in a long time and the first time in decades the new contract was ratified by June 30, before the old one expired. I think this is a great outcome for both our union members and the University, which allows us to plan over a longer horizon to 2024.

I believe the University has momentum from meeting these goals and from all of the work of people positioning of the University in our community. Meeting these goals enabled us to welcome a diverse group of new faculty to campus this fall—more than 107 full-time faculty and many part-time faculty. We are in a strong position to kick off the campaign in November. And meeting these goals certainly impacts our ability to deliver on the Academic Strategic Plan, including building and renovating buildings that will help us achieve that plan. You see a lot of high-profile construction projects on campus, but there were also 65 academic projects over the summer, including classrooms and auditoriums, technology upgrades and accessibility improvements.�� We are not all the way there yet. The room that the agenda committee meeting occurs in across the hall still has an overhead projector and a VCR in it. But for our student experience, this is particularly important.

The Atlantic Coast Conference Network launched in August in more than 35 million homes. There are a lot of benefits to this, but the most important for me are that our students can gain firsthand experience producing athletic broadcasts. Students from Newhouse, Maxwell and the Falk School are involved in that. There is also unprecedented coverage of ACC women’s athletics and we should all watch that.

I’ve heard from lots of people asking about Commencement 2020 since we last met, and that’s given the ongoing Stadium construction and the huge cranes. The construction requires that the building be vacated as of March 1. I know people are worried about having a wonderful Commencement experience when they can’t be in the Dome for this one year. Many people have been working hard on this issue all summer. Their strong advice is that Commencement 2020 be on the Shaw Quadrangle. We have explored many alternative options and prioritized, in choosing Shaw, the experience and tradition and accessibility that we can provide there. We are committed that the 2020 Commencement, which coincides with our 150th anniversary year, has to be very positive, very special and very memorable.

Tomorrow, we are going to be sending a message out to the entire campus community on the planning for Commencement 2020. And, in the coming weeks, the University will communicate with graduates and their families about specific events, activities and schedules.

And now, lastly, I have something that is particularly important, so I’d be grateful if you could just pay particular attention right now.

Here is the important thing.

Knowledge crowns those who seek her.

That is not a marketing slogan. It is the animating idea of our university since its founding.

We must seek knowledge.

In my view, seeking knowledge requires that each of us be willing to be uncomfortable at times.

Comfortable is what you are—what I am—when I am in a La-Z-Boy recliner eating potato chips. Comfortable is what you are when you are on vacation with your family.

In a real university, when you are seeking knowledge, you better be ready to be uncomfortable. And that’s because when you are genuinely seeking knowledge, you learn things you did not previously know, and sometimes you learn them from people you disagree with. And indeed, sometimes—indeed for me—what you learn is genuinely disruptive—and it can disrupt your whole world view. That has been true in physics and astronomy, including at this university. But it also has been true in law, and communications, and religion, and in gender studies, and so many other subjects, including in political science.

I believe that you are unlikely to learn very much at all if you are always comfortable at a great university. The definition of “comfortable” in academia really is the situation where you only listen to and hear from people with whom you already completely agree. A great university is not like, and we cannot become like, many viewers of Fox News and MSNBC.

And I say this to you today for three reasons. They are reasons that I think will make lots of people in our Orange community uncomfortable.

The first reason is about the free speech of our faculty and our students. I am not speaking here quite as much about our staff or those faculty who have administrative roles—and that’s because staff and administrators are often construed as speaking for the University, and that constrains them in their speech in ways that do not apply to our faculty generally or to our students. But with that possible exception, each of our faculty members—and each of our students—needs in the pursuit of knowledge to be able to say things and write things that can be troubling, provocative and at times makes many of the rest of us profoundly uncomfortable. Our students and faculty need to be protected in doing this from retribution except in very limited circumstances. That is why, in my role as Chancellor I have refused to censor faculty who say controversial things even when many in the world are howling for me to do it. In my role as Chancellor I refuse even to say I disagree with the faculty member except in very narrow circumstances—and for students I believe those circumstances are even narrower. I know the lines here are sometimes hazy and there are exceptions. Theta Tau springs to mind. Sometimes a University and Chancellor has to speak out. Most often that is necessary when words are accompanied by actions or by really extraordinary circumstances. I think these exceptions should be few and rare. Almost all of the time, students and faculty need the freedom of expression to at times make others uncomfortable. They need to have that freedom at ���ϲ�����, and for most of our history they have enjoyed it. That is one major reason we can claim to be a real university.

The second reason I am addressing all this (and not just trying to give a sermon) is this: if we really want to protect our faculty and students in their free speech and in their pursuit of knowledge, we cannot silence people who express uncomfortable views. There are lots of ways in this troubling era to silence people we disagree with. Sure, the University can publicly censor them: “Professor X has academic freedom to say stupid things, but of course reasonable chancellors like me reject utterly everything the professor says.” That’s what a lot of president’s say! But that takes real courage to speak out in response to, even when you have tenure. That can silence people.

But there are also more insidious ways to silence people. We can denounce people by piling onto a petition before we have even tried to independently learn the facts or arguments. We can instantly assume bad faith on the part of others who are trying to seriously engage in discussion—indeed, we can attack comments that were probably intended in good faith, however misguided we think them. Indeed, we can if we are not careful to easily convert those comments into a formal complaint, thus inhibiting speech through fear of an administrative or legal bureaucracy.

Worst of all, we can simply shout down those we disagree with. We can yell louder or get more people to yell, so that the things that make us uncomfortable are not heard by anyone. And that is the academic equivalent of destroying the copies of the newspaper we disagree with, or hacking the website, or indeed burning or banning the books we disagree with in the library. We can impose our views on others by destroying the speech of those we disagree with. And that way almost always has ultimately led to disaster for all, including the people doing the destroying. I am worried about this issue in our country, so I am worried about this in the coming election year.

The third reason I am addressing the issue of free speech at a great university is the hardest one. If our students are going to learn, are going to seek knowledge and to grow, I think they need to be exposed to a true range of views, not a rigidly enforced and homogenous orthodoxy. That exposure is very difficult to achieve at a university, or in a department, where the faculty are too ideologically uniform. In hiring new faculty, I believe our university needs to be more attentive to this issue, and more concerned.

These second and third matters—the silencing of speech that makes some uncomfortable, and the exposure of our students to a range of views on uncomfortable subjects—are matters that I think need our attention this year, as we go into a polarized election and as we hire hundreds of new faculty.

Some of you, and many in our community, may (and I think probably will) disagree with some or all of what I have just said. And I say, good. Let’s talk about it, then. Let’s talk about it honestly, openly, civilly if possible, uncomfortably if needed, but let’s talk. As a steward of this university, I have a moral responsibility to speak up for what I think are the necessary conditions that enable us to seek knowledge. I do not have a monopoly on that moral responsibility. You all, each of you, share this responsibility for our Orange community. I could be wrong on aspects of this. I don’t think I am now, but Lord knows I have been wrong at times before. And so have each of you. So, I think we need to seek knowledge together and get something done on this now, this semester. I have members of our board who support me. I’d like our Senate to support me on this.�� Maybe not today, but soon. I think it is now vital to our future as a real university.

I know the provost and I will welcome questions now.

Thank you.

The text of his remarks follows:

I will be quick. I first want to apologize that I can’t be at the Senate next week, I am going to be in Atlanta. Provost will be here. Thank Ramesh for his leadership.

Dean Branham

Thank you for the moment of silence for Lorraine. Her loss is a big one for the whole university. At my inauguration I gave this long speech. Afterward she came up to me and said, “It’s the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications. We care about facts at ���ϲ�����.” She cared about facts and cared enough to tell you directly, and she was still your friend after she straightened you out. We need more of that.

Commencement Speaker

At the Student Marshal event on Saturday, we announced that Mary C. Daly G’94, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, will deliver the 2019 Commencement address. Mary’s personal story will have an inspiring message for our graduates. Mary, a high school dropout, went on to earn her Ph.D. in economics here at ���ϲ�����. Her success in public service, and her research on economic inequality, wage and unemployment dynamics, workforce development and disability and retirement policy are truly a testament to the impact she’s had both personally and professionally.

Visit by Renée and Lester Crown

Yesterday, with help from Student Affairs and Arts and Sciences. Renée and Lester Crown were here on campus, and it was a great opportunity to showcase the Honors Program. They also embraced the concept for the Schine renovation.

Chief Diversity Officer Search

I met with the two finalists for the Chief Diversity Officer search and then the members of the search committee on Friday. I am currently in negotiations with the preferred candidate. I expect to conclude those negotiations and announce an appointment before the end of the month.

Faculty Manual Revisions and Background Checks

Tom will be giving the report, and thanks to the entire committee that has been working on this. Since April 2018, the Academic Freedom, Tenure, Promotion, and Ethics (“AFTPE”) Committee has been considering two issues, at my request:

(1) suggested revisions to the process for investigating and adjudicating complaints of misconduct filed against faculty (Section 4.11 of the Faculty Manual)

(2) background checks for newly hired faculty.

As a reminder, I made this request in the spring of 2018 when the AFTPE reported to the full Senate on a pending case, indicating that the case had been ongoing for more than one year. We felt it was important to consult broadly.

If the proposed changes to the faculty complaint process are endorsed by the full University Senate, I will urge the AFTPE to continue to work with the appropriate administrative offices with due speed to revise the text of Section 4.11 of the Faculty Manual, which will need to be approved by the Senate in the fall. It won’t be over today, no matter what happens today, it will have to come back with revisions to the full Senate.

After the discussion today, I will also ask that the appropriate offices move forward quickly with the background check implementation, taking into account the concerns we hear today.

Stadium Renovations

It’s been in the news, but not on everyone’s radar. Our goal is to move construction on the stadium forward this summer with the goal of temporarily vacating the building—including all athletic competitions and events—by March 1, 2020.�� That means we need a group of people to work on a plan about what we will do for Commencement in Spring 2020, including the possibility of an outdoor commencement. Of course, as with all construction, timelines are constantly evolving. We will continue to keep the campus apprised of updates around this and other construction occurring

National Scholarships

I am told that the national scholarship awards announcements will continue to come in this month. As you know, Dina Eldawy was awarded a Marshall Scholarship. We have 16 Fulbright semi-finalists.�� Finalists are being announced country-by-country over the next few weeks. So far, we have six recipients and one alternate.

We have two critical language scholarship recipients, one to Korea and one to Azerbaijan. One NCAA graduate study award winner—Santita Ebangwese—who will be pursuing and advanced degree in bioengineering.

Student Financial Aid

As we look to next fiscal years’ budget, we are prioritizing attracting and retaining promising students from across the socioeconomic spectrum. We are increasing the student financial aid budget by nearly 9 percent. The nearly $280 million allocated is the largest in University history.

Faculty Honors

Finally, I want to share some faculty news.

• Teng Zhang, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation.
• Theo Cateforis, associate professor of music history and cultures, has been elected president of the Popular Music Society.
• Johan Wiklund, the Al Berg Chair and professor of entrepreneurship at ���ϲ�����’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management, has been granted the inaugural RMIT Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
• School of Architecture assistant professor Joseph Godlewski has been awarded the 2018-19 New Faculty Teaching Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

A lot of faculty accolades at ���ϲ�����. I want to remind everyone that other awards will be presented on Friday at 4 at the One University Awards. I will stay to take questions after the Provost’s remarks.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks given at the meeting:

Good afternoon. This is a hurried time of the semester. I know we are all feeling it. We conduct a great deal of business in the last six weeks of the semester. We have a number of shared governance tasks to accomplish in the remaining time we have. I have four brief updates.

First, I want to update you on the search for a Chief Diversity Officer. The search committee has produced an outstanding group of candidates, and we hope to have an announcement soon—my intention is that this will be before the end of the semester. I want to thank the students, staff and faculty that have served on the committee. As I have mentioned before, our goal is to have this key leader in place by July 1.

Next, I’d like to mention the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement, now known as the SOURCE. I used to think that it was impossible to create a new program with lots of input and also proceed at warp speed. We have done it. In less than six months, we stood up and dedicated the SOURCE—you can read about it in SU News. This is a combined effort of so many people in our campus community—I want to recognize all of the people in this room who participated. This is going to dramatically increase support for and involvement in undergraduate research across all schools and colleges. The SOURCE has already received over 130 proposals for undergraduate student research projects. I’d like to congratulate the students, faculty and staff for a successful launch, and I look forward to seeing what our undergraduate students will achieve with this support.

Third, the One University Awards will be presented on April 12. I hope that you will plan to come. We will be recognizing a lot of people who are devoted to this university, including in the area of shared governance.

Finally, when we raised tuition as part of Invest ���ϲ����� we were determined to ensure that we can maintain socioeconomic diversity. To do that, we needed to raise $40 million for student financial aid in two years. We have surpassed that goal more than six months ahead of schedule.

Thank you. This concludes my remarks. I will take questions after the Provost’s presentation.

The shared competencies are the following:

• Ethics, Integrity and Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion;
• Critical and Creative Thinking;
• Scientific Inquiry and Research Skills;
• Civic and Global Responsibility;
• Communication Skills; and
• Information Literacy and Technological Agility.

Student Association Vice President Kyle Rosenblum ’20, a psychology and policy studies major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, says the shared competencies will position students for success. “The shared competencies framework guides our learning with flexible general education requirements, while at the same time ensuring that each program is better preparing students for life after graduation.”��

The shared competencies will promote the crucial knowledge and skills essential for all students to develop in their time at ���ϲ�����. “These are core competencies that transcend the specific requirements of schools, colleges and programs,” says Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly. “The long-term goal is for all undergraduates, regardless of major, to acquire and demonstrate the essential skills and knowledge of a distinctive ���ϲ����� education.”

A ���ϲ����� Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Shared Competencies, consisting of students, faculty, staff and administrators, led this effort since 2017. “The process of developing the shared competencies and framing language that were approved by the Senate in December has been a model of how the Senate and its committees should be involved in developing major academic policies,” says Robert Van Gulick, philosophy professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, University Senator and member of the University Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Shared Competencies. “The Senate Ad Hoc Committee was given the lead in developing the list of competencies, and it followed a broadly consultative process with input from the hundreds of faculty and students who responded to the initial draft proposal. We anticipate the eventual creation of a new Senate standing committee on assessment, with wide representation from all of SU’s diverse schools and colleges.”

The six shared competencies include framing language that describes broadly the range of knowledge, skills and attributes that each competency entails. This framework builds on the Academic Strategic Plan’s promise to provide students a distinctive experience that instills “the capacity to think deeply and analytically; to listen and learn from diverse life experiences, cultures, and points of view; to act with ethical and academic integrity; and to engage in ways that enrich scholarship and enhance our communities and the world.”

The shared competencies were also shaped by the Middle States accreditation process. Anne Mosher, faculty chair of the Maxwell Program in Citizenship and Civic Engagement and chair of the Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Shared Competencies, says that the next step will be to learn how each undergraduate program in every school and college can adopt and enhance the competency framework. “We’ll be interacting with deans, department chairs and undergraduate directors to discuss some of ���ϲ�����’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment preliminary mappings of the six competencies to individual undergraduate major programs,” Mosher says.

Last July, Provost Wheatly appointed Mary Graham, professor of sport management in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, to work closely with Mosher and the Ad Hoc Senate Committee. “We are designing a faculty-driven assessment process that will enhance consistency in learning outcomes across majors,” Graham says. “At the same time, we want the process to support the uniqueness and thoughtfully designed programs of study across the schools and colleges.”

The Ad Hoc Committee plans to pilot test the assessment of the communication skills shared competency during the 2019-2020 academic year. “We chose the communication skills competency first because it has straightforward framing language and we know from the IEA’s research on each undergraduate program that teaching and learning in this area occurs campuswide,” Mosher says.

Anyone interested in more information on the shared competencies should contact Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment (iea@syr.edu), Senate Ad Hoc Committee Chair Anne Mosher (amosher@maxwell.syr.edu) or Provost Faculty Fellow Mary Graham (megraham@syr.edu). In addition, more information and Frequently Asked Questions can be found at this .

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks given at the University Senate meeting:

Good afternoon. I have three very brief updates today.

Revisions to the Faculty Manual

As you know, New York State has issued new guidelines for sexual harassment and abuse policies and procedures. They took effect in October and, at that time, we revised ���ϲ����� policies to be in compliance.

I want to again today remind us all that we still have important work to do. The Agenda Committee of this body has tasked Academic Freedom, Tenure and Professional Ethics Committee to work with the Office of General Counsel and the Office of Equal Opportunity Inclusion and Resolution Services to improve the procedures in Section 4.11 of the Faculty Manual for responding to complaints of sexual assault and harassment against faculty and to ensure that new faculty we hire have consistently undergone an appropriate background check related to these issues. The Agenda Committee has requested that draft recommendations be submitted to the full Senate. I ask that the Senate consider and resolve those recommendations before Commencement 2019—time is now running short.

Adverse Weather Announcements

The last time the Senate met, much of the country was in the midst of extreme weather, including here in ���ϲ�����.

As you may recall, the University canceled evening classes and activities on Wednesday, Jan. 30, and remained open on Thursday, Jan. 31. This decision was based on the latest weather forecasts, which indicated that conditions on Thursday morning would not be as extreme and based on a number of other considerations that the emergency management response team assesses—such as the number of classes potentially disrupted and the physical conditions on campus.

Even taking these factors into account, the University fell short on implementing the decisions and communicating with our campus community.

I have spoken with Tony Callisto, our chief law enforcement officer and leader of our emergency management response team, and Dara Royer, our chief marketing and communications officer. I have requested that they work together to ensure changes to operational status are decided and communicated with more clarity and timeliness.

It’s important to note, that as a residential community, the University will, in general, remain open for business despite adverse weather conditions. But, despite that, if we make any changes, or for that matter if we don’t, we must do a better job communicating with our community.

Visit to Latin America

Last week, I had the honor of meeting with faculty and administrators at EAFIT University in Medellín, Columbia. Between 1962 and 1969, scholars from the management school at ���ϲ����� helped in the establishment of EAFIT—their university’s 60th anniversary coincides with ���ϲ�����’s 150th. Today, EAFIT is one of the leading universities in Latin America with an internationally recognized business school and a structure that largely mirrors that of ���ϲ����� with humanities, arts, information sciences and other areas of study. The university has hired a cohort of faculty who earned their PhDs in the United States and is on a positive trajectory. Our own Francisco Sanin and a group of students from our School of Architecture met with EAFIT in 2017 and began to rekindle our relationship, which seems to have been largely forgotten on campus.

Last week I was joined by Whitman Dean Gene Anderson, Gurdip Singh from the College of Engineering and Steve Bennett, who oversees ���ϲ����� Abroad and our exchange programs, to meet with senior administrators at EAFIT. As you likely know, ���ϲ�����’s international presence is somewhat different from our peers as it tends to be a “build our own” strategy.�� Many of our peer institutions do form partnerships with highly regarded universities in selected strategic locations where faculty collaborate on research, faculty and student exchanges take place, and, often, undergraduates choose to come to the U.S. partner school for graduate education.

The conversations last week were productive. We signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore a partnership for a 4+1 course of study in mechanical engineering which, we hope, will develop into a richer relationship that can benefit both institutions. There are potential collaborations across all of these areas.

Thank you. This concludes my remarks. I will take questions after the Provost’s presentation.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

Good afternoon. Two weeks back I delivered my Winter Message to the campus, I will keep my remarks today brief. In case you missed it, I highlighted some of the reasons we should be proud of our University and laid out four key areas that we want to focus on this semester that will advance our Orange values overall success. The text and video can be found on our web site, if you click on SU News for Jan. 14.

Today I want to update you on two priorities. First, the transition underway in the University Ombuds office and, second, of our response to new proposed rules for Title IX.

Ombuds appointment

Last week we announced that Neal Powless has been appointed University Ombuds. I am very pleased that he is joining the SU leadership team. He has served ���ϲ����� in positions in career counseling and as assistant director of the Native Student Program in the Office of Multicultural Affairs. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Newhouse School, having previously earned a master’s in counseling here at SU and a bachelor’s degree at Nazareth College. He is also a Nationally Certified Counselor. He has demonstrated the leadership, practical skills and competence to help ensure that ���ϲ����� lives up to our standards for a respectful, responsive and ethical campus community. Please join me in welcoming him to this important role. Neal’s appointment was effective on Jan. 22—meaning that he has been in the position for exactly seven days.

Sam Clemence has served as the interim Ombuds since the office was created and has been instrumental in managing a smooth transition. I am very grateful to Professor Clemence for his role in getting the office set up and beginning outreach to the campus community. Thanks to the search committee.

Title IX

As I noted last month in this meeting, the U.S. Department of Education has released revised proposed guidelines for how universities must comply with Title IX. Comments were open on these guidelines until this past Monday. We submitted comments on behalf of ���ϲ����� and a link to those comments was provided in the first campuswide update of the semester that went out yesterday.

Our comments were based on input provided by campus stakeholders. I am grateful to members of the Chancellor’s Task Force on Sexual and Relationship Violence, along with the Office of Equal Opportunity, Inclusion and Resolution Services and the Office of the University Counsel. In short, our comments focus on the definition of “sexual harassment” in the proposed rules and the proposed disciplinary procedures set forth by the Department of Education.

You can find the link to that letter in SU News for yesterday and on the Diversity and Inclusion web site. This will likely be an ongoing conversation, and I appreciate those who have given their time.

Finally, I’d ask for a moment of silence to honor a member of the Orange family who died in an accident over the weekend while traveling home to visit family. Brianna Herrera was a senior in the School of Information Studies, majoring in information management and technology with a minor in public communications in Newhouse School. She was a member of Sigma Delta Tau sorority.

Please join me in a moment of silence.

Conclusion

Thank you. I remind the Senate that, in March each year in Hendricks Chapel, we as a university have a service of remembrance for all our Orange colleagues—faculty, staff, students, emeriti and retirees—who we lost in the course of the year. Their names are spoken, and they are remembered. Many family members and staff and faculty and students come. This year’s service will be on March 20. I will take questions after the Provost’s presentation.

Opening

Good afternoon.�� First I just want to thank Bruce, thank you for that presentation which was helpful.

I guess I’d also add to it… by the way, all accurate from what I know from reading the governing documents and I haven’t read the full unabridged Robert’s Rules of Order in a while… but I would also say that those are the formal rules and there’s more to it than that in terms of it sets up a structure, but we’ve been in this journey of the last five years, to actually strengthen shared governance at this university.

It may not seem linearly positive to you but we’ve come a long way from what was a pretty low point, which was around the promotion decision a long time ago, four or five years ago.

And part of that project is, from my point of view, going beyond the formal structures to basic understanding and respect of the rules and expertise of different groups.

So the reason curriculum and degrees have been assigned to this body is largely because of a view that the Board of Trustees should not be setting who gets a degree and should not be controlling the curriculum.

That should be with the faculty that have an expertise in it, which is why I think we talk about a faculty Senate.

And also the reason some things are left within the board’s discretion is because of a view that there are some areas where the Board has more expertise or fiduciary responsibility.

My responsibility is sometimes uncomfortably be the representative of one body to the other and remind one body of the expertise of the other and that the university only works with each body understanding the expertise and the organic nature of the university as not being a corporation and not being a monarchy.

So I exist to take advice from this body.

I have been coming to all the meetings of this body for that reason.

I give brief reports, but candidly, more important than my brief reports, I view, is the questioning after the reports.

But it’s important to keep that constrained so that the Senate has time for itself.

Let me go quickly because I’ve consumed five minutes of my five minutes.

My comments will be brief. First, I will update you on three things. 1) The comprehensive review of Greek Life, 2) a milestone for the Institute for Veterans and Military Families and 3) the student diagnosed with meningitis and our response. I then need to talk again about harassment and abuse.

Comprehensive Review of Greek Life

First, the update on Greek Life: The Greek Life survey had a strong response rate (41.6 percent) from undergraduate, full-time students.

During their site visit, the external reviewers met with a broad group of stakeholders, including students not affiliated with Greek life, Greek-affiliated alumni, Greek Council presidents and Chapter leaders, new member educators, house directors and housing corporation representatives, staff in the Division of Enrollment and the Student Experience, Greek community members, representatives from DPS and ���ϲ����� Police Department, faculty and staff advisors, and with me.

The draft report from the external reviewers is due by Oct. 17. The report and recommendations will cover a number of topic areas related to Greek Life, including staffing, personnel, policies and programming.

IVMF

Second, IVMF. On Oct. 17, the Institute for Veterans and Military Families marks a milestone. Over the past six years, IVMF has provided services that enhance the lives of veterans and service members and their families as they transition back into their communities.�� The number of individuals we have served in these programs has recently passed 100,000 people. A ceremony recognizing this milestone will be held in Heroy Hall Atrium at 5:30 on Oct. 17. So many faculty and staff of this university, from across all parts of the university, have helped make this possible. I thank all of you for this effort, as well as for helping our student veterans, whose numbers have continued to grow. We will continue to work to make ���ϲ����� the best for veterans.

Meningitis

Third, Meningitis. As most of you know, we had one student diagnosed with bacterial meningitis earlier this month.�� We believe all individuals in close contact with this student have been notified and given antibiotics. The student and family report that professors have been extremely generous and helpful in making accommodations for academic work. I want to thank all faculty for support of this student. It is what I hope we aspire to for every student who finds himself or herself in challenging circumstances.

Policy on Sexual Harassment and Abuse

Now, on sexual harassment and abuse.

New York State has issued new guidelines for sexual harassment and abuse policies and procedures. They took effect yesterday. We have revised our ���ϲ����� policies to be in compliance. I again thank the Senate for approving new policies last May regarding potentially abusive relationships between faculty and students.

I want to again today remind us all that, in my view, we are in a transformational time in this country and at this university on these issues.���� We still have important work to do. I ask, indeed I implore, this Senate to improve the procedures in Section 4.11 of the Faculty Manual for responding to complaints of sexual assault and harassment against faculty. I also ask that we ensure that new faculty we hire have consistently undergone an appropriate background check related to these issues.

I thank the Agenda Committee for tasking the AFTPE (Academic Freedom, Tenure and Professional Ethics) Committee to work with the Office of General Counsel and the Office of Equal Opportunity Inclusion and Resolution Services. I believe the Agenda Committee has requested that draft recommendations be submitted to the full senate. I ask that the Senate consider and resolve those recommendations before Commencement 2019.

Finally, you will notice a lot more people in orange soon. Oct. 18 – 21 will be our Orange Central weekend, and we expect more than 2,000 alumni to return to campus for the most extensive set of reunion and alumni events we have scheduled in many, many years.

That is my report. I will take questions after the Provost speaks.

Also, he asked the University Senate for its leadership in revising the processes for resolving complaints against faculty members and ensuring that background checks are completed for new faculty hires.

Opening��

Can you hear me now?�� If I use my outside voice? Thank you.

I just have some brief updates.

First, I just wanted to report, highlight some accomplishments and the timetable for what we have accomplished.�� I want to ask for your help and a quick assessment.

The university did accelerate over the summer, including a lot of us who worked on the revamped first-year experience.�� Many faculty and others worked on this over the summer and if we have the opportunity to thank them, I would be grateful. We couldn’t have made as much progress over the summer without the hard work of all these folks, including students and the leaders and staff of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. I’m grateful.

We did receive this summer a very strong report from the Middle States accreditation, which is very complimentary. I want to thank the faculty and staff who worked on it. It was a big effort and I am grateful for the positive outcome.

The university last month welcomed 89 new faculty members. I can tell you they’re impressive and eager to be great teachers and mentors and scholars and creative colleagues. This is the vanguard of efforts to expand our faculty. This year I’m particularly eager that I work with the Provost and the chairs and the faculty and the deans to focus on faculty professional development and on strategic hiring and retention initiatives for the faculty. I know the Provost is going to speak to that during the course of the semester. Faculty are producing a strong portfolio across the board. Research is growing among all disciplines.

We are operating in FY’19 with a truly balanced budget once again. The university met fundraising goals of $150 million in new business this past fiscal year including $24 million for scholarships as part of the $40 million we needed to raise last year and this year for scholarships under Invest ���ϲ�����.

We have a very academically qualified and very diverse undergraduate and transfer class and we have very strong undergraduate, strong graduate and professional cohort this fall.�� I believe we have record enrollment of students who are veterans and military-connected.

I put a lot of updates in the video I sent out last week.�� I included updates on progress and diversity inclusion, improving the student experience, physical infrastructure, and on review on Greek life. So if you haven’t seen that gripping eight-minute video, I encourage to you watch it. I won’t repeat it here.

Disability External Review Process

I did note in the video that the disability external review process has not moved as fast as we hoped. The top consultants are not able to complete a project as fast as we were hoping to. We need to make progress this semester in the disability areas so I’m working with the leadership of the committee and the community to identify concrete steps that we can get done this semester, even before the delivery of the disability audit. For those interested in being involved in that, and working with this committee, I want to thank you

Policy Updates and Gaps to Address this Academic Year

Third, I just want to thank the Senate for their hard work on the consensual and romantic relationships policy. The Senate and the committees played a positive and constructive role in that process. It took some time. I hope that we can take what we’ve learned and move forward, both from balancing a sense of urgency and the importance of shared governance to apply it to any gaps or transition rules as we implement this policy this year.

And there are two gaps that do need to be addressed that I know of already and they’re going to be familiar for those of you in the Senate last year. I do think we need to improve the procedures in section 4.11 of the faculty manual for responding to complaints against faculty. I think we should expedite the process for sexual assault and harassment. Currently, it takes multiple semesters and sometimes multiple years to resolve these complaints, and I ask that the Senate work with resolution services and the office of university counsel to determine whether there are better, more efficient processes and fair processes for changes we should make to improve the length of the process.

And second, I think we need to ensure that the new faculty we hire have consistently undergone an appropriate background check related to these issues. We also want our faculty, new and current, to be supported with appropriate professional development opportunities on these topics throughout their career as rules change.

As with the consensual relationship policy review, I’m asking the Provost’s office to work with relevant Senate Committees this year to move these issues forward.

Looking Forward

Many of you played an active role and helped last summer and this past summer and in the spring in addressing the challenge of culture change at ���ϲ�����. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who engaged with making our university more inclusive and who are helping us improve the student experience.

We are not finished.�� We are looking to the faculty to help us be proactive and to the students and to help us be as nimble as possible in this challenge.

Next academic year will be the 150th anniversary of ���ϲ�����’s founding.

The sesquicentennial will provide opportunity to celebrate history and accomplishments and a committee has been working on ways to mark that milestone with various events over the course of the year.�� This summer they have been working on ideas for how we can mark the 150th year in a way that’s consistent with what makes ���ϲ����� unique in its values and our academic strength.

I’ve discovered lots of unknown and untold stories in our history that are pretty amazing. Some of them are stories to be proud of… some of them are mistakes.

So we have a great history department, a great library and archives and we want them to be part of the sesquicentennial to highlight both the noble stories and the mistakes. I would like to work with the Senate and the Sesquicentennial committee to figure out how to do that a little differently than the Sesquicentennial that’s all celebration

I look forward to working with you over the coming year and I look forward to being part of the Senate. I send you best wishes for the school year and we’ll take questions after the Provost’s report.

Also in his remarks, Chancellor Syverud recognized students Dina Eldawy and Crystal Letona on their selection as Truman Scholars and Anthony So on his selection as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. He also recognized Professor Emeritus Donald Siegel on his election as president of the Geological Society of America.

The Chancellor’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, appear below:

Opening

Good afternoon.

I thank all Senators for your hard work this academic year. Serving on the University Senate is just one of your many responsibilities. I appreciate the time you dedicate to shared governance and wish you well as we head into the final weeks before Commencement.

I had four or five matters I planned to briefly discuss today, but first, in light of recent events, we first need to address an incident we at the University learned about this morning.

I have watched part of the videos from Theta Tau. I am shaken and deeply disturbed by what is on them, as I would hope anyone in our community would be.�� I believe I described the videos accurately in the message I sent out earlier today:�� this is racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and ableist, by which I mean hostile to people with disabilities. The fraternity has been suspended and appropriate proceedings have been commenced, which will proceed fairly and appropriately.

We took these steps promptly after learning about the conduct and the video this morning. Before communicating with the University community, I sought counsel from Senate leadership, faculty leaders, student leaders, and the Diversity and Inclusion Council.

This afternoon, I attended a meeting for the community overseen by Hendricks Chapel and its dean. I learned a lot about next steps at that meeting.�� I have also asked that today all members of our community receive information about resources available to address concerns and impact of this incident.

I have asked the agenda committee and the Senate committee chairs for further counsel going forward.�� I want you to know that, of the dozens of faculty, staff, students, and alumni I have spoken with today, there has been uniform agreement that this conduct is antithetical to our values as a University. There has been uniform agreement that we have a lot of work to do right now if we care about those values. There has been uniform agreement about the importance to reaffirm who we are as a University. Who we are as a university is that we are an inclusive student-focused research university that fosters a richly diverse and inclusive community of learning and opportunity. That is from our vision and our mission that we all participated in adopting. I believe we need to stick to it, whatever happens on this campus or in the world. That is the vital thing to address today.

Without diminishing that, I do also call your attention to some other announcements.

Truman Scholars

Please join me in celebrating a tremendous achievement by two of our students. ���ϲ����� this year has not one – but two Truman Scholars this year.�� Dina Eldawy and Crystal Letona.

Eldawy is an international relations and citizenship and civic engagement major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School.�� Letona, is a communications and rhetorical studies major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and a policy studies major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School.

Only 11 ���ϲ����� students before them have received this prestigious scholarship.

The Truman Scholarship is awarded nationally to approximately 55-65 college juniors each year in recognition of community service, academic accomplishment and commitment to a career in public service. This year, more than 750 students were nominated by schools and colleges from around the country. Recipients receive $30,000 to fund up to three years of graduate education leading to a career in public service.

Also today, it was announced that one of the nation’s 30 Paul and Daisy Soros fellows will be Anthony So, who is pursuing a MFA in fiction at ���ϲ�����. Only 11 universities other than ���ϲ����� have Soros fellows for 2018.

I also congratulate Don Siegel, emeritus professor of Earth sciences, who has just been elected president of the Geological Society of America, which has 25,000 members and is one of the highest honors in the discipline.

Invest ���ϲ����� News

I want to share two pieces of Invest ���ϲ����� news.

First: As you may recall, during my Winter Message in January, I said we must work to ensure certain priority elements of the Academic Strategic Plan be implemented before the end of the semester.

Of course, two of those priority areas are advancing innovation and discovery and enhancing the student experience.

Today, I am pleased to announce – as part of the $100 million Invest ���ϲ����� initiative – the creation of a new Center for Undergraduate Research. The center will focus on creating and sustaining a culture of inquiry among our undergraduate students.�� I thank all the students, academic staff, and faculty who have brought this vision to make this happen.

This is the result of collective efforts by multiple constituents—including the Student Association, the University Senate Research Committee and the Renée Crown University Honors Program. This will quadruple the funding for undergraduate research and will benefit thousands of students starting in just a few months.

The goal of this group’s work is to strengthen, centralize, coordinate and expand capacity for undergraduate research and train faculty mentors.

Thanks to the leadership of Cathryn Newton, Special Advisor to the Chancellor and Provost for Faculty Engagement, the best ideas of students, faculty and staff were brought together to create this new and exciting center.

There is evidence that this kind of commitment to undergraduate research will help us recruit, retain and graduate a more diverse and talented student body, and prepare them for post-graduate success.

The Center will report to both Provost Wheatly and Vice President for Research John Liu.�� It is a vital step in supporting a more expansive and interdisciplinary research enterprise across the university.

The second Invest ���ϲ����� announcement is this: The Counseling Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Education and Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics are launching a new initiative that will significantly expand counseling services for students. It will also provide professional experience for our graduate students in the health profession fields.

Through Invest ���ϲ����� funds, the Counseling Center is in the process of hiring a training director. The new director will provide clinical supervision and oversee a team of graduate student trainees and behavioral health interns. These interns will represent several academic programs, including clinical psychology, school psychology, counselor education, social work, and marriage and family therapy.

The graduate student trainees will provide individual counseling, assist with group therapy, and lead educational programming to expand the capacity and reach of the Counseling Center.

The behavioral health interns will work closely with Health Services and the social work students will work closely with the Office of Health Promotion. Together, they will support efforts to expand outreach and education about holistic health and wellness topics.

We will announce more details on both new Invest ���ϲ����� initiatives in the coming week. I look forward to updating you on the launch and funding for the new Center for Undergraduate Research and encourage your engagement.

SUNY ESF Update

At our last Senate meeting, I briefly discussed our relationship with SUNY ESF. As you may recall, ESF recently announced a long-range plan that includes an increase in undergraduate enrollment from approximately 2,000 to 3,000.

In addition, ESF plans to create a general education college that would begin providing general education instruction, eliminating the need for ���ϲ�����’s College of Arts and Sciences to provide such instruction.

Both aspects of this plan have significant implications for ���ϲ����� and our existing services agreement with SUNY ESF.

I discussed this plan and other issues in a meeting with the Chancellor of the SUNY schools, Kristina Johnson, earlier this month.�� I have also corresponded on these issues with ESF President Quentin Wheeler. We all agree that our institutions have enjoyed a positive and productive relationship, and we desire to continue to have a positive and productive relationship as our institutions evolve.

Currently ���ϲ����� provides many services to ESF beyond instructional services including but not limited to:

• instruction-related disability services;
• the majority of SUNY-ESF co-curricular services;
• the vast majority of recreation services for both students and faculty and staff; and
• virtually all campus IT services.

The recent announcements signal ESF’s intent to evolve the substance and character of the longstanding relationship between our two institutions.

Accordingly, last Monday ���ϲ����� formally notified ESF of our intent to renegotiate the current services agreements over the next 24 months, after which time the current agreements will expire.

ESF leadership has designated Vice President and CFO Joseph Rufo as the point of contact with whom members of my executive team can begin discussions about the next phase of our partnership with ESF. I look forward to working with Vice President Rufo, Provost Wheatly and others as we cooperatively plan the course of our two institutions.

Sexual Harassment Policies

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I want to acknowledge the work of the group from the Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Professional Ethics Committee and the Committee on Women’s Concerns. They have been hard at work reviewing the University’s policy on faculty-student relationships and I understand they will present their recommendations today.

I have read both of the committee reports that were distributed to the Senate last Thursday. I am pleased to see that both committees have recommended substantive changes to the faculty manual that I think are critical to fostering an appropriate learning environment for our undergraduate students.

I thank the committees’ members for giving their attention to this important matter, and expect their work on other policy issues will continue into next semester.

I look forward to the conversation we will have today around this very important issue.

Conclusion

That is my report today. Thank you.

Chancellor Syverud also addressed the matter of rankings and the renovation of Archbold Gymnasium, specifically the new pool as part of the plans.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

��Opening

Good afternoon. I’ll be brief.

Commencement

I hope you saw the announcement last week that Kathrine Switzer, barrier-breaking athlete, author and activist, will deliver this year’s Commencement address. An alumna of both the Newhouse School and the College of Arts and Sciences, Kathrine is perhaps best known being the first woman to officially enter and run the Boston Marathon. I have known Kathrine for many years. I expect that she will have a thoughtful and inspiring message to share with everyone in the audience.

ESF Relationship

There has been a lot of news coming from SUNY ESF recently. Last week, President Quentin Wheeler announced his intention to step down at the end of this academic year.

What you may not have seen though, announced a few weeks ago, is SUNY ESF publicly shared its strategic growth plans, plans that have potential implications for ���ϲ�����. In particular, SUNY ESF announced its intention to:

• grow its undergraduate enrollment by as much as 50 percent, or about 1,000 students;
• create a College of General Education; and
• shift much of its general education instruction from ���ϲ�����’s College of Arts and Sciences and other departments to providing this instruction in-house.

Given the longstanding partnership between ���ϲ����� and SUNY ESF, the newly announced strategy requires us at ���ϲ����� to seriously consider and reflect on our relationship with SUNY ESF.

In light of SUNY ESF’s announcement, I have asked senior leaders to make recommendations about how to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship moving forward that is supportive of our own academic strategic plan.

We will keep you apprised of any new developments and will ask for the participation of many as we do our due diligence.

Disability Services Audit

As you know, I have asked that we evaluate all of the University’s disability services and related policies. This audit is now underway. Michele Wheatly, vice chancellor and provost; Dolan Evanovich, senior vice president for enrollment and the student experience; and Pete Sala, vice president and chief facilities officer, are leading this important work.

They are currently populating the steering committee that will oversee the disability services audit.

A call for nominations went out last week. I understand that many students, faculty and staff have already expressed interest in serving on the committee. We intend to announce the steering committee in April.

Rankings

I also want to briefly address rankings. I have been giving this subject a lot of thought over the last few months.

First, I have three immediate thoughts related to U.S. News’ 2019 edition of rankings of graduate and professional programs:

1. We continue to have globally competitive graduate and professional school programs.
2. Some of our graduate and professional school programs are doing better than others in the rankings.
3. And finally, and most importantly: rankings are not our mission, not our vision, but some rankings are relevant to our academic strategy.

Our strategy is our academic strategic plan—the roadmap to take ���ϲ����� to the next level of excellence. We have begun implementation of many facets of this plan and have put funding mechanisms into place to help us achieve our ambitious but attainable goals.

Do rankings influence whether we can successfully implement our academic strategic plan? Some rankings do, most do not.

There are hundreds of rankings. Rankings and lists sell magazines or drive traffic to websites.

Every aspect of our university is ranked by somebody, and often by multiple outside entities. Our libraries are ranked, our landscaping is ranked, our dining hall services are ranked, our Greek life is ranked.

Our academic and administrative leadership at ���ϲ����� believes, after a lot of research that included surveying deans and others, that certain rankings, while problematic in their algorithms and methodologies, are nevertheless salient to our success as a university.

This semester, we have started an effort to identify our rankings strategy given this reality. How do we remain driven by our mission and vision while also paying attention to salient rankings? That is the question I am thinking about.

Arch Pool

There has been a lot of conversation recently about renovation of Archbold Gymnasium, specifically the new pool that will be built as part of the renovations. I understand that there has been concern about the number of lap lanes.

Considerable engagement has been done over the last several years on this question (including a survey of 5,000 students, faculty and staff). It is obvious to me that folks in Recreation Services and CPDC need to pause and update more people about the Arch pool. We are fortunate to have two pools on campus: one in the Women’s Building and the forthcoming pool in the new Arch. It is our goal to meet everyone’s needs, most importantly our students, but also faculty and staff. Both the Women’s Building pool and the Arch pool will have lap swimming in the future. However, the current plan for the Arch pool is to offer more modern, inclusive and accessible options. That approach came as the outcome of a lot of direct feedback from our undergraduate students and benchmarking national trends in university recreation centers across the U.S. And, because we know that prospective and current students place high value on health and wellness and that healthy students are more academically successful, we must ensure access to recreational and fitness activities that meet today’s students’ needs. While it’s important our pool offerings represent the interests of all of our community members, a student-centered approach emerged as the priority for the new pool. There has been some concern expressed about this. I have asked CPDC and Recreation Services to consult further on the issue of the number of lanes in the new pool. I suspect you will hear more from them shortly.

Finally, I want to remind the Senate that we need to focus in our April meeting on the pressing issue of sexual abuse and harassment policies, especially as it relates to relationships between faculty and staff and undergraduates. This work needs to be our collective priority. As I emphasized in December and in January, I hope we can make tangible progress on this important issue at our next meeting. It would send an unfortunate message to our entire community if the Senate is unable to make substantial progress on this issue in April and defers matters to the fall.

Conclusion

That is my report for today. Thank you.

About ���ϲ�����

���ϲ����� is a private, international research university with distinctive academics, diversely unique offerings and an��undeniable spirit. Located in the geographic , with a global footprint, and��, ���ϲ����� offers a quintessential college experience. The scope of ���ϲ����� is a testament to its strengths: a pioneering history dating back to 1870; a choice of more than 200 majors and 100 minors offered through 13 schools and colleges; nearly 15,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students; more than a quarter of a million alumni in 160 countries; and a student population from all 50 U.S. states and 123 countries. For more information, please visit .

Chancellor Kent Syverud chats with students.

Also in his remarks, Chancellor Syverud recognized graduate student Cameron McPherson on his selection as ���ϲ�����’s first George Mitchell Scholar. He also reflected on the passing of Chief Irving Powless, Jr., a leader of the Onondaga Nation and a friend to the University.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

Welcome

Good afternoon. I’ll be brief. I know you all have worked hard for our students and university this year and are looking forward to a well-earned holiday break. There are still some important matters for us all to address in December. I want to speak about a few of them, including disabilities issues, sexual harassment and workplace environment, and the federal tax bills.

Remembering Chief Irving Powless, Jr.

��First, I hope you have noted that at ���ϲ����� we have been working hard, in multiple ways, to show respect for the Onondaga Nation and the Haudenosaunee. This is appropriate and long overdue, and I thank all who are helping. On Thursday, we lost a leader of the Onondaga Nation, Chief Irving Powless, Jr., who died at the age of 88.

Chief Powless was the chief of the Beaver Clan of the Onondaga Nation. He was a leader within and beyond the Onondaga Nation as a lecturer, author, teacher, lacrosse player and protector of the environment. He was a friend to this university and to this community. He served as��secretary of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs for more than 30 years, and was a historian of his people. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree in 2009 from ���ϲ�����.

I ask that the minutes of the Senate show our University’s collective respect for Chief Irving Powless, Jr., one who embodied the wisdom of the land, a historian, ambassador, actor, musician, veteran, defender of the environment and champion of justice.

Changing Tax Policy

��Like so many of you, I have been closely monitoring and closely involved in advocacy on the tax reform legislative process. As a citizen of this country, I have grave policy concerns about the tax bills that go well beyond the provisions that directly impact universities. As steward of this university, I have grave concerns about how portions of the bills unfairly impact our students, alumni, faculty and staff.

My biggest concerns during this process have been the threat to the deduction for interest on student loans, the taxation of tuition benefits for our faculty and staff and their dependents, and the very serious tax implications for graduate students. I know there is much uncertainty and anxiety, particularly among our graduate students and faculty and staff. I am meeting right after the Senate meeting with our Graduate Student Organization.

This legislation has serious financial implications for our students and employees, and also serious budgetary impact for the University. Sixty percent of our students receive some sort of student loan. As a result, those students will no longer be able to deduct interest on those loans. Faculty and staff who use our remitted tuition programs will be impacted by proposed cuts. And our graduate students are seriously threatened by the treatment of remitted tuition as taxable income.

A large team of folks, including me, have been working almost full time on these issues for the past weeks. Our government relations team has been in close and constant contact with the New York State delegation and committee staff. We have repeatedly shared our concerns about provisions in the House bill that would negatively impact our students, faculty, staff and the University.

We continue to monitor this situation and will keep you updated as the legislative process moves forward.

Disability Issues

��I now want to say something about the University’s work related to disabilities.

I have been troubled this semester by what I have experienced as a disconnect between two narratives about our University and disabilities. One narrative celebrates the successes and accomplishments various parts of the University have achieved in moving forward for true inclusion of all our students, faculty and staff, including those with disabilities. The other narrative notes the often misunderstood or unacknowledged issues that still remain and the great progress we still need to achieve, including in the daily lived experience of our students. I have personally appreciated the good faith and good will of folks with each of these narratives, but I worry that we are not perceiving each other enough, and that therefore further progress is endangered.

To address this, I think as Chancellor I need to ask our community to focus on two things in particular in the rest of this academic year.

First, the University announced on Dec. 1 that we have approved the new Information and Communication Technology Accessibility Policy. After months of discussion and community input, the adopted recommendation of the Chancellor’s Workgroup on Diversity and Inclusion recognizes the need for the University’s information and communication technologies to be accessible, including to individuals with disabilities. I approve of this new policy. I think it has a lot of implications in many areas, including for the work of the Senate. I think the new policy will require allocation of significant resources through our budget process, including for IT accessibility specialists and for ensuring that our classroom materials, library resources and many other areas of digital content are accessible to disabled people. Implementing this policy is going to take work from many of us, and it is work that has to include at every step our people with disabilities. I ask your help and support with this.

Second, I have gotten a lot of feedback from folks about where the University currently is poised related to disabilities, including feedback from disabled student leaders and other constituents. I think we are at a time where it is reasonable to expect our University to conduct an evaluation of our disability services and related policies, including for example related to medical leaves, service animals, academic accommodations, student housing and other areas. I would like to get this evaluation started this coming semester—to evaluate whether we are in compliance, where and when we are going beyond compliance, and whether we are creating a more positive and welcoming campus for people with disabilities. I’d like us to ask some foundational questions as part of this work, including where should our office of disability services be located, what should our organization and reporting structure be for our many folks working in the disabilities area, and what level of resources are necessary to budget for our disability service providers.

This has to be a transparent process. It should not deliver its conclusions at the end to our faculty, staff and students with disabilities. It should involve our disabled people all along the way, including in the process of forming the questions and identifying the answers. The message I have repeatedly gotten this semester is “nothing about us without us.” It is a powerful one I think we should act on.

Those are some immediate actions we should take to improve our campus climate for those of us with disabilities, and thus for our whole community. I think we need to embrace in this process a cross-disabilities perspective in which two things happen: we consider, expect and embrace both observed and hidden disabilities, and that we make the actual lived experience of our disabled community members inform our decisions and ultimately strengthen our strong academic reputation as an international leader in disabilities related research, teaching and service.

I think these are the right first actions to address the disconnect I described, and to get us all together on same page as a university we are proud of in this area.

��Faculty Manual Request

��Now on harassment: In recent weeks, all of us have been confronted with new evidence of work-related sexual harassment and misconduct, and the long-term harm caused when individuals misuse their power and titles with those less powerful. I think we are required, at this moment, to re-examine all of our programs and policies to make sure we are doing the best we can to prevent and respond to this. The University is now doing so.

One aspect of this work particularly requires Senate attention. I have heard from faculty members, including in the humanities and the professions, who believe it is time to re-examine the faculty manual, specifically how we govern faculty relationships with undergraduate students. Currently, our faculty manual does not forbid these types of relationships unless the faculty member is pursuing sexual relationships with undergraduate students the faculty teaches, advises or supervises. It is time to re-evaluate that section of the faculty manual. I have asked the Provost’s office to work with the deans and the appropriate Senate committee to conduct a re-evaluation this coming semester.

It is critically important that our policies support this goal as defined by the faculty manual: ���ϲ����� is committed to maintaining a healthy, safe, respectful and productive working, learning and teaching environment.

Ombuds Office

Provost Wheatly is out of town in New York today. She asked me to share a brief report on the Ombuds Office and the Faculty Salary Survey.

We are establishing the University’s Ombuds Office sometime this coming semester. An Ombuds Office, of course, would provide a confidential place for students, faculty and staff to address concerns, issues or conflicts. I expect Provost Wheatly to brief the Senate on this effort when we reconvene in January.

In terms of the Faculty Salary Survey, Provost Wheatly asked me to share that this will be released next week, for your review and engagement.

��Conclusion

��Finally, I join all of you in congratulating our student Cameron McPherson on his selection as ���ϲ�����’s first George Mitchell Scholar. We wish him well in his graduate studies at Trinity College Dublin and we are proud of him.

And I invite you all to join me at 10 a.m. on Jan. 13 in Setnor Auditorium for our Winter Convocation, welcoming new, first-year, transfer, discovery and exchange students.

Chancellor Syverud also addressed the University’s Economic and Community Impact Report and the ongoing effort to contain the spread of mumps.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

Welcome Remarks

Good afternoon. First, thank you to all who participated in three events that took place on our campus since we last met.

First, yesterday we celebrated the installation of the seventh dean of Hendricks Chapel, the Rev. Brian Konkol. It was an inspiring set of events, and I believe we can look forward to a revitalization of student and University participation in the ministries and programs the chapel sponsors.

Second, Remembrance Week occurred during the week of October 22, marking the 29th anniversary of the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the work of the Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars. It was a hopeful and healing set of events.

Next year will mark the 30^th anniversary of the tragedy.�� Planning for commemoration will begin soon.

Third, our Board of Trustees met last week in ���ϲ�����, including the full board and nine committee meetings. Our new dean, faculty and student representatives were in attendance: Joanna Masingila, Duncan Brown, Jack Wilson, James Franco and Chizobam Nwagwu.

The Board of Trustees approved the Archbold Gymnasium renovation. As part of the renovation, the new Barnes Center at the Arch will include a state-of-the-art, student-focused health and wellness complex. On Saturday, we will host Board Chairman Steve Barnes and his family on campus to celebrate their gift, which is making this transformation possible.

Work on the Arch will begin by January and conclude in the summer of 2019. Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala is working with student leaders to assure that all activities have good temporary arrangements during the construction, and we will be sharing those arrangements with the campus community after Thanksgiving.

We also expect that Gov. Cuomo will be on campus in the coming weeks to celebrate the site dedication of the National Veterans Resource Complex, also known as the NVRC.

��Like the Arch, construction on the NVRC will begin by January. The NVRC will open in January 2020.

Economic and Community Impact Report

Last month, the University released the findings of two studies that detail the University’s profound impact on the Central New York economy and communities.

I thank Vice Chancellor Michael Haynie and Vice President for Community Engagement Bea González for leading this effort.

To understand the University’s contribution to the region, it is important to regularly assess how our direct and indirect investments in the community are working.

These findings indicate that ���ϲ����� is, and will remain, deeply rooted in the City of ���ϲ����� and the broader Central New York region. A few highlights:

• ���ϲ����� is the largest private employer in Central New York with more than 6,000 employees.
• The University’s day-to-day operations, research and spending by students and visitors generates more than $1.1 billion in added income to the region each year, the equivalent of supporting more than 15,000 jobs across Central New York.
• The University invests directly in public sector services, including $1.2 million for Centro to provide public transportation throughout the Connective Corridor, and $2.3 million in payments to public utilities and local government for services like traffic control.
• The University invests $51.1 million each year in our community, in regional access scholarships, programs and services, along with an estimated 260,000 hours of intellectual capital and engagement from volunteer students and University employees.
• This $51.1 million includes $19 million in programs that benefit both students and the broader community by providing career development and training opportunities for students while enhancing health, education and economic development in the region. Examples include the Gebbie Clinic, La Casita, the South Side Innovation Center and local programs of the IVMF.
• Also included in the $51.1 million is $5 million in annual direct funding to support the work of nonprofit organizations in ���ϲ����� that strengthen arts, culture, education and other civic initiatives. This includes ���ϲ����� Stage, Near West Side Initiative, Community Folk Art Center and On Point for College, among others.

Now that we have completed this thorough assessment, we will use this information to continue guiding our purposeful and impactful engagement in the community.

Health Situation Update

Now, a brief update on the ongoing mumps situation. Since our last Senate meeting, the University, in partnership with the Onondaga County Health Department, hosted several clinics to administer a third measles, mumps and rubella shot, also known as a booster. Demand was high—nearly 4,300 students received the booster. This week, Health Services is hosting four additional clinics to provide the booster to students still interested in receiving one.

In particular, the University’s areas of focus are isolation and sanitization. Isolating potentially infected students and aggressive measures to sanitize areas where those students may have come into contact are critical to contain the further spread of mumps.

As a reminder: you can find the most up-to-date information on the health.syr.edu website.

Conclusion

That concludes my update. Thank you for your continued partnership.

Chancellor Syverud also updated the University Senate on a number of important issues, including the forthcoming economic and community impact report and the ongoing work of several committees and workgroups.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

Welcome

Thank you, Ramesh. It has been an amazing week for ���ϲ�����. On Friday, our entire football team, led by an inspiring coach, defeated defending national champion Clemson in the Dome. Over the weekend, we welcomed 5,479 parents and family for Family weekend with many activities in every school and college, our best family weekend in many decades. On Monday, our physics department and the gravitational waves research group were center stage around the country and around the world for the observation of a neutron star collision and the discovery of how gold, platinum and other heavy elements necessary to life come into existence. Yesterday, our professor of creative writing, George Saunders, won the Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious global awards in literature. And early this morning, we were able to announce that in ���ϲ�����’s first annual giving day, more than 3,500 alumni, faculty, staff, students and friends gave more than $1.7 million in one day to support financial aid, academic programs and other urgent needs at the University.

I know this is the age when administrators and politicians are prone to exaggeration. So I want to be careful when I say I can’t remember a single week in recent years when any University had more to be proud of than ���ϲ����� in this past week.�� In particular, I note that the two major academic announcements of the past week—the gravitational waves announcement and the Man Booker prize in literature—both come out of strategic support from our College of Arts and Sciences for our physics and creative writing programs over many years.

I would like to ask all our colleagues present who come from Arts and Sciences to remain sitting.�� I ask the rest of us to show our gratitude and support for the achievements of the College of Arts and Sciences by rising now to applaud them.

Thank you! Now, I get to talk about the mumps.

Health Situation

A growing number of mumps cases have been confirmed among our student population.

With continued counsel from the Onondaga County Health Department, we remain focused on educating the campus community about the prevention, detection and treatment of mumps.

There is evidence that these efforts are working. Students are visiting the Office of Health Services immediately when they begin experiencing symptoms.

As a result, our medical staff is able to treat and isolate affected students swiftly. This allows us to limit the further spread of the illness.

As of today, we’ve had 24 cases of mumps diagnosed. That is the total number of cases diagnosed since the first case was identified in late August. That does not mean 24 students currently have mumps. In fact, most of these 24 students have already made a full recovery and are no longer contagious, and are back at their studies.

Based on previous mumps outbreaks at other universities and colleges, it is likely we will continue to see new confirmed cases through the end of the semester. The county has told us that it will take time for the disease to run its course on our campus.

To keep the community fully informed, we are posting confirmed and probable cases on the health.syr.edu website.

Economic and Community Impact Report

��As you know, earlier this year the University initiated an economic and community impact assessment to allow us to better understand, quantify and communicate the significant effect of our investments on the City of ���ϲ����� and Central New York.

As a research institution, we appreciate the value of data. And that is exactly what we sought out —information beyond perception.

It is obvious from the data that we have reviewed thus far: ���ϲ�����’s investment in the City of ���ϲ����� and Central New York—both from an economic and community impact perspective—continues to be profound.

Our university remains deeply rooted and invested in Central New York.

Beyond the University’s direct financial investments, ���ϲ����� reaches well beyond its campus to touch lives, invest in our neighborhoods and expand opportunities for the residents of Central New York.

We will be releasing preliminary reports on Oct. 30 on our community engagement as we continue our deep dive into the data.

Workgroups and Committees

��Many of you, along with your fellow campus community members, have dedicated countless hours serving on workgroups and committees that are critical to the University mission.

Much progress has been made and work continues on the following initiatives:

• The Ad Hoc Committee on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)/Undocumented Students
• The Council on Diversity and Inclusion
• The Task Force on Sexual and Relationship Violence
• The Campus Facilities Advisory Board, also known as CFAB

Some updates have already been shared with the university community in recent weeks, particularly about the work of the Task Force on Sexual and Relationship violence and the CFAB.

In addition:

• We have now reactivated the Ad Hoc Committee on DACA/Undocumented students.
  • Supporting these students is important work and must continue, given the continued uncertainty.
  • Shelly Sipley and Jennifer Mathews will continue to lead this effort.
  • Membership is being expanded to include more representation.
  • Dolan Evanovich, senior vice president for enrollment and the student experience, and I will be hosting one-on-one meetings this semester with all impacted students.
  • Resources and support services for these students have been defined and communicated via the diversity portal, which can be found at diversity.syr.edu.
  • This week we will provide a written update to the campus community on these efforts.
• The Council of Diversity and Inclusion has also continued its work this semester.
  • It is currently reviewing the status of the short-term and long-term recommendations.
  • The council continues to engage with other efforts on campus, including hurricane/natural disaster relief initiatives; the Internationalization Council; and the Ad Hoc Committee on DACA/Undocumented Students.
  • The council will share more updates with the campus community by the end of this month.

The team at SU News will continue to report on the progress of these workgroups and committees. I urge you to follow these updates closely and remain engaged in the important work happening all over campus.

��Hendricks Dean Installation

��Finally, I invite you to join us on Tuesday, Nov. 7, for the installation of the Rev. Brian E. Konkol as the seventh dean of Hendricks Chapel.

The event will be held at 4 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel. A reception will follow in the Milton Atrium in the Life Sciences Complex.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to meet Dean Konkol, I encourage you to do so. He and his family are a wonderful addition to the ���ϲ����� community.

Conclusion

��That concludes my update. Thank you for your continued partnership.

Chancellor Kent Syverud interacts with students and their families after the New Student Convocation on Aug. 24.

During the meeting, Chancellor Syverud extended support to all members of the University community impacted by Hurricane Harvey and the impending Hurricane Irma.�� He also spoke on the University’s position regarding the change in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program announced by the federal government on Sept. 5.

The Chancellor offered thanks to staff, faculty and students on a successful ���ϲ����� Welcome and provided updates on 2017-18 enrollment data, new faculty, new University leaders, year-end budget and fundraising and Invest ���ϲ�����, among other items.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

Welcome Remarks

Good afternoon and thank you, Ramesh. I am happy to report at the first University Senate meeting of the year. This is an important public occasion at the start of our year. I therefore acknowledge with respect the Onondaga Nation, the indigenous people on whose ancestral lands ���ϲ����� now stands.

I have been asked by the agenda committee to restrict my remarks to 7 minutes.

I’d like to extend sympathy and support to all members of our University community impacted by Hurricane Harvey in Southeast Texas and Louisiana, and to express concern for all those in the projected path of Hurricane Irma.

We have nearly 120 students who are from the region affected by Harvey. Staff from many offices, including the Counseling Center and Student Assistance, are offering personal and academic services to our students to help them through this difficult time. Dean Brian Konkol is also overseeing a ���ϲ����� effort to contribute relief to the affected areas.

DACA

Yesterday, the federal government announced that it was rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), while protecting beneficiaries until March 5, 2018, so that Congress can pass legislation. I wrote to the campus community yesterday about this sad decision, which our University joined in opposing. We have DACA beneficiaries among our students and they are as Orange as any of us. They need our help and support. Let’s not let them down now.

���ϲ����� Welcome

I want to thank the many folks in this room for making ���ϲ����� Welcome such a successful experience for more than 5,000 new students. I think it was the best ���ϲ����� Welcome ever.

2017-18 Enrollment Data

We welcomed first-year, transfer, graduate and professional students. We’ll report more on graduate and professional enrollment at a future meeting.

For undergraduate enrollment, the news is good. We are projecting that this year’s entering class is slightly smaller (which was our goal), more diverse and has stronger academic qualifications on average than last year. We have enrolled approximately 3,630 incoming freshmen, which is about 75 less than last year.

The total number of incoming freshmen of color increased by approximately 74: 960 students of color today versus 884 students of color this time last year. Twenty-six percent of the total new undergraduate student population at ���ϲ����� are students of color—up from 24 percent last year. About 20 percent of incoming students are first-generation college students and roughly 75 percent of ���ϲ����� students are receiving some form of financial aid. New undergraduate students represent 46 states, along with Washington, D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, and 53 countries.

New Faculty

��In addition to new students, we also welcomed many new faculty this semester. I have met many new part-time faculty, and this morning we formally signed the University’s new agreement with our part-time faculty union. I thank everyone on the teams that reached that agreement. We have 90 new full-time faculty last week, including tenure and tenure-track professors as well as teaching professors and professors of practice. Last year the number was 86.

Slightly more than one-quarter of the new faculty identified as faculty of color.

New Leaders

��We are also welcoming four new University leaders this semester:

• Gene Anderson, Dean of the Whitman School of Management;
• Brian Konkol, Dean of Hendricks Chapel;
• Zhanjiang “John” Liu, Vice President for Research; and
• Dara Royer, Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer.

All have brought skills and experience to campus that will enhance the student experience in unique and diverse ways. I look forward to working with them and encourage you to get to know these new leaders.

Year-End Budget Update

We are now two months into our almost $1.4 billion fiscal year 2018 budget. We closed out fiscal year 2017 fairly well.

We had a $1.3 billion FY17 budget. When the budget year closed on June 30, 2017, our revenues were roughly $6 million less than we expected. This was mostly a result of shortfall in fall 2016 enrollments in master’s programs.

Our expenses were $21 million less than budgeted, primarily because of lower than budgeted health benefit and workers compensation costs.

Overall, in FY17 we ended with a truly balanced budget with a 1% surplus and without net use of carryovers. The fiscal year 2018 budget also projects net positive results without a net use of carryover funds.

Year-End Fund-raising

Fund-raising efforts continue on an upward trajectory. Our fiscal year 2017 goal was $125 million in new business. We finished the year with $125.76 million, making our goal. That’s a 25 percent increase over FY16.

We have set FY2018 goals of $150 million (another $25 million, or 20% increase). That is ambitious but achievable.

Endowment

��Our endowment, after remaining essentially flat for a long time, is again now growing. Investment performance for the Total Managed Endowment was 12 percent for FY17, a significant increase. Our total endowment passed $1.25 billion this summer for the first time.

��Invest ���ϲ�����

Last month, we introduced Invest ���ϲ����� to the University community. The $100 million initiative aims to provide all students with a distinctive, world-class learning experience that prepares them for professional and personal success.�� It will provide financial support for the implementation of various priorities as identified by the Academic Strategic Plan.

Over the next five years, Invest ���ϲ����� will:

• Redefine the student experience;
• Advance discovery and innovation; and
• Expand opportunity to students of talent and promise from across the socioeconomic spectrum.

The funding to support these initiatives and others will come from three sources:

• $40 million in new gifts to support student scholarships, of which more than $6 million has already been pledged;
• $30 million in administrative efficiencies and cost reductions, of which I understand $20 million have so far been identified and do not involve staff layoffs;
• $30 million in additional tuition revenue, including a tuition premium increase for first-year and transfer students entering in the fall of 2018. This is not for any current students.

Critical to this process is your participation in the priority setting process. Yesterday, the team working on Invest ���ϲ����� hosted the first of three engagement sessions. There are still two more engagement sessions: Sept. 20^th and Oct. 3^rd.�� Both events will be held in Goldstein Auditorium.

Additionally, next week, the Senate will host a special meeting focused exclusively on Invest ���ϲ�����. At that time, you will hear from Provost Michele Wheatly; Dolan Evanovich, Senior Vice President for Enrollment and the Student Experience; Amir Rahnamay-Azar, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Matt Ter Molen, Senior Vice President and Chief Advancement Officer.

��Workgroups and Committees

There is also a lot of ongoing, important work that many of you have helped with on the Diversity & Inclusion Council, the Task Force on Sexual & Relationship Violence, the Ad-Hoc DACA Committee and the Campus Facilities Advisory Board. I’ll report more on each of those next meeting. There is still a lot to do.

Coming Back Together

In just over a week, from Sept. 14 through Sept. 17, we will be celebrating out 12^th Coming Back Together reunion, which focuses on our African American and Latino alumni. It will be our largest CBT ever, with about twice the attendance of the last one in 2014. Eight hundred attendees have registered so far.

I urge you to make time to attend some of the events. There are many to choose from.

Closing

So, it is a challenging environment right now, and it will continue to be challenging. I’m not referring to hurricanes. Nevertheless, you’ve helped ���ϲ����� progress in many ways. Thank you for all of your help.

Questions?

��Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

��Opening Remarks

��Good afternoon. In light of today’s full agenda, I will keep my remarks brief.

Additional April Senate Meeting

First, I want to remind you that I will be unable to attend the Senate meeting that was recently added to the calendar for next Wednesday. I had shared with the Agenda Committee that I could make a meeting in May, but that I have a long-standing advancement travel commitment on April 26th. Provost Wheatly will be present and will speak at next week’s final Senate meeting.

One University Awards

��This Tuesday, April 25, at 5 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel, the University will host the inaugural One University Awards Ceremony. The awards ceremony will bestow various University awards. They include:

• The Chancellor’s Medal for Outstanding Achievement: this recognition is awarded to individuals in honor of their trailblazing and extraordinary contributions to society and/or the University.
• Also awarded is the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence: this recognition will be awarded to members of the University community for outstanding achievement in teaching, scholarship and creative work.

The One University Awards Ceremony will also confer the following recognitions:

• The Tolley Medal, for leadership in lifelong learning;
• The Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement and Scholarship;
• The Meredith Professorship for Teaching Excellence; and
• The United Methodist Scholar-Teacher Award.

The ceremony will also recognize the University Scholars; Senior Class and School and College Marshals; Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars; and emeriti faculty.

I ask Senate leadership and senators to join the University for what I expect to be a terrific event.

��Honorary Degrees

��Later today, the University will announce that five individuals will be awarded honorary degrees at Commencement on May 14^th. The recipients include:

• Frank Bisignano, Chairman and CEO of First Data, a supporter of the University, and father of a 2011 alumna;
• Vernon Jordan Jr., a national civil rights activist and a senior managing director of Lazard Frères & Co. in New York;
• Vincent Poor, a scholar, researcher, and teacher who is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University;
• Thomas Porter (Sakokwenionkwas, “the one who wins”), the founder, spokesperson and spiritual leader of the Mohawk Community of Kanatsiohareke; and
• Carrie Mae Weems, an internationally renowned photographer and video installation artist, and ���ϲ����� resident for more than two decades.

The Senate approved the nomination of each of these candidates. I thank all those who worked on these nominations and helped create an outstanding 2017 class of honorary degree recipients.

Emeriti Faculty

Also recognized at Commencement by name will be our emeriti faculty. This continues a tradition we established two years ago. ��This is another opportunity to honor our emeriti faculty, particularly on such an important day. Many—indeed almost all—of our emeriti faculty continue to teach, to write, or to serve across our community. And they continue to care a lot about this place and the people here.

Budget Update

I want to provide a very quick update on the University budget. The current fiscal year 2017 budget is projected to be balanced at year-end. The year-end results are expected to modestly exceed the planned $1.5 million net addition to carryover.

For the coming fiscal year 2018 budget, prudent financial management continues to positively impact University financial results. For the second consecutive year, a balanced budget plan for the fiscal year 2018 has been formulated without any planned net use of carryover funds.�� Schools and colleges, and administrative units are currently working on detailed budget plan submissions that are to be completed by early May.

That said, I know the Budget Committee has worked hard this year and has an important presentation today.

All I will add now to that presentation is this: In order for our University to achieve its ambitions in improving academics, research, faculty and the student experience, we will need very substantial additional resources beyond what is reflected in the FY18 Budget. Those resources will have to come from additional fundraising, careful examination of tuition, and administration cost efficiencies.

Update on Free Speech Policies

As the Senate will recall, last semester, after lots of campus discussion and feedback, the University updated three policies related to free speech. These three policies were the Anti-Harassment Policy, the IT Resources Acceptable Use Policy, and the Campus Posting Policy. The first two policies were implemented and are in effect as of January 1.

In early January, the Campus Posting Policy, which received the most feedback, was sent to the Senate Committees on Student Life and Administrative Operations for further input.�� As a result of that input, the Campus Posting Policy has been shortened and simplified, and made less restrictive. An updated draft is being sent back to the two Senate committees for final feedback. In addition, Dolan Evanovich, Senior Vice President for Enrollment and the Student Experience and his team are reviewing a request from the Senate Student Life Committee for more physical posting locations on campus.

Communications and Marketing Search

The search for the Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing is making good progress.�� The search committee is led by John Wildhack and Rochelle Ford, and Opus Partners is the search firm.�� The committee plans to hold first round interviews next week and bring finalists to campus before Commencement.

Hendricks Chapel Dean Search

The Hendricks Chapel Dean Search is in its final stages. We expect to have a formal announcement by this Friday, April 21st.

Thank you. That is my report today. I’ll take questions after the Provost’s Presentation.

He also updated the Senate on the upcoming One University Awards ceremony and “It’s On Us” National Week of Action, and the University’s academic partnership with Le Moyne College.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

Opening Remarks

Good afternoon. I will very briefly report to the Senate on half a dozen matters.

Commencement

First, the Senior Class Marshals announced at lunch today that Vernon Jordan, Jr. will deliver this year’s commencement address on Sunday, May 14.

Vernon Jordan, Jr. is an attorney, business executive and civil rights activist. He has enjoyed a long and distinguished career. He served as chairman of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Transition Team. He has also held several presidential appointments, including the President’s Advisory Committee for the Points of Light Initiative Foundation and the Advisory Council on Social Security.

Mr. Jordan was at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. He served as Georgia field director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and director of the Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council. He later served as president and CEO of the National Urban League and executive director of the United Negro College Fund.

The Senate has previously approved Mr. Jordan for an honorary degree, a Doctor of Laws, which will be awarded at Commencement.

Commemoration Event

Yesterday afternoon, Hendricks Chapel oversaw the University’s first-ever Service of Commemoration. The event honored all faculty, staff and students who passed away in 2016.

The names of faculty, staff, and students who have passed were read and candles were lit in their memory. The service will be held annually and is inspired by the Remembrance Scholars’ motto of “Look Back, Act Forward,” a call to action to remember those we have lost and act forward in their memory.

It was a well-attended and beautiful event. I thank the many people who made yesterday’s service happen, including Sam Clemence, interim dean of Hendricks Chapel. I hope there will be Senate representation in the years to come.

Dean Clemence, professor emeritus in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, has done a wonderful job leading Hendricks Chapel as interim dean. He is currently serving as co-chair, along with Senior Vice President Candace Campbell Jackson, of the Hendricks Chapel Dean Search Committee. Finalists are now being interviewed and we expect an announcement by Commencement.

Administrative Reorganization

I know the Senate Budget Committee presentation has been deferred to next week’s meeting by the Agenda Committee. I think the Budget Committee has been working hard and admirably with Gwenn Judge and with our new CFO to educate folks about the budget and about strategic budget choices ahead. The questions I have heard fairly constantly are always variants of (1) what are you going to do about cutting the growth of administration and administration costs; and (2) how are you going to fund key academic and student life priorities, including faculty and financial aid.
I just want you to know I have heard that and we are working cooperatively on that. Right now, you should understand that we are in the midst of reorganizing in three areas that are relevant: We are combining the divisions of enrollment management and student life; we are getting ready to combine the areas of communications and marketing under new leadership; and our CFO is assessing all the units in the Division of Business, Finance, and Administrative Services. Our goal in this is to assure that all units in the University are well-supervised, efficient, and aligned with the academic priorities of the University.

One University Awards

Next month, ���ϲ����� will hold the One University Awards Ceremony on April 25 in Hendricks Chapel. The awards ceremony will bestow various University awards.

They include:

• The Chancellor’s Medal for Outstanding Achievement: this recognition is awarded to individuals in honor of their trailblazing and extraordinary contributions to society and/or the University.
• Also awarded is the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence: this recognition will be awarded to members of the University community for outstanding achievement in teaching, scholarship and creative work. Over time, the focus of the awards changed to reflect new priorities and institutional directions.

The One University Awards Ceremony will also confer the following recognitions:

• The Tolley Medal, for leadership in lifelong learning;
• The Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement and Scholarship;
• The Meredith Professorship for Teaching Excellence; and
• The United Methodist Scholar-Teacher Award.

The ceremony will also recognize the University Scholars; Senior Class and School and College Marshals; Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars; and emeriti faculty.

I ask Senate leadership and senators to join the University for what I expect to be a terrific event.

“It’s On Us” National Week of Action

In just over two weeks, ���ϲ����� will participate in the spring “It’s On Us” National Week of Action. I encourage you to participate and get involved with this important effort. Between April 3 and April 7, the “It’s On Us” national campaign encourages every community member to take part in ending sexual assault.

A great team at ���ϲ����� is responsible for coordinating our campus’ events, including:
• Peer Educators Encouraging Healthy Relationships and Sexuality;
• Several student organizations; and
• The Office of Health Promotion.

I am proud of our community’s collective work to prevent and end sexual and relationship violence.

Le Moyne Partnership

For the past several months, Provost Michele Wheatly, Associate Provost Jeff Stanton, and many deans have been working with their counterparts at Le Moyne College to identify new academic partnerships between our two institutions that are beneficial to both schools.

These new partnerships will focus on those academic areas that match our strengths and will provide new opportunities for both ���ϲ����� and Le Moyne students.

The committee, composed of undergraduate and graduate students and faculty and staff members, serves as a liaison between students and the University’s administration.

Its members can be reached by email at SenateSLC@syr.edu; on Twitter at @USen_Life; on Instagram at @USen_Life; and on Facebook at ���ϲ����� Senate Committee on Student Life (@senateslc).

José Marrero-Rosado, a senior biochemistry and anthropology major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School, is the committee’s chair. He says the committee’s mission is to help create the best student experience possible at the University.

“The Student Life Committee has always tried its best to fulfill its role as liaison between the student body and the University Senate,” he says. “We have decided to launch our presence on social media in order to better serve our students as well as to keep fulfilling our role as liaison.”

Committee members are hopeful that students will reach out to them with concerns they might not be aware of, but could work to either solve or bring to the attention of the right officials.

“We would also like to know what the students think about specific issues (or good things) on campus, including the ones the committee has been working on lately,” Marrero-Rosado says. “In the end, it is the voice of the whole student community that matters the most.”

Chancellor Syverud also encouraged the members of the Senate to participate in the Feb. 28 Campus Framework Forum; introduced Amir Rahnamay-Azar, the University’s new senior vice president and chief financial officer; and asked the Senate to join him in thanking Gwenn Judge for her exceptional service as interim chief operating officer.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks as prepared for the University Senate meeting:

Opening Remarks

Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here today. Before I share a couple quick updates, I want to extend my gratitude to Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly and to all of you for participating in last week’s open forum. Hosting an open forum is part of Senate bylaws. I think it is good that after many years of not holding a forum, we have started this tradition again.

I today asked the Senate Agenda Committee to help suggest the structure and membership of a committee that will plan the University’s activities to mark our sesquicentennial, our 150th birthday. Our 150th birthday year is in 2020, which also happens to be an election year. As I have been listening to the discussion on various issues in the Senate today, I have been thinking about getting to 2020, and who we are going to be as a University and as a country when we get to 2020.

Folks, we are in a marathon, not in a sprint. Two friends in the noon-day running club, a great ���ϲ����� tradition, have recently reminded me that the tactics and strategy that gets you successfully through a marathon are different than the tactics and strategy that gets you successfully through a sprint. I would like our University to get to 2020 in a state where we are thriving and our values are intact.

I am taking under advisement the counsel we have received from Senators today on various issues. For now, all I want to add is that I reaffirm that the values of ���ϲ����� include our steadfast belief in shared governance, our respect for civil discourse and free speech, and our rejection of discrimination on the basis of religion or national origin. I believe each of those values is going to be challenged at times from all directions between now and 2020. There will be times when we all don’t agree on what these values require in particular contexts. That is ok—we are a university—we are not all supposed to agree with each other all the time. But we are supposed to listen to each other. And I hope we can all continue to agree on these shared values, including today especially that we embrace each and every member of our community, including those of Islamic faith and those who come from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Syria.

Last week, General Counsel and Slutzker Center staff hosted two in-depth open houses at the Slutzker Center. Dozens of students attended. The University remains focused on providing support to our students, faculty and staff directly impacted by the administration’s executive orders. The Senate Academic Affairs Committee has also formed a subcommittee, which has drafted a proposal for pathways to degree completion for students affected by U.S. immigration policies. I expect further discussion of that proposal in the very near future.

DACA/Undocumented Students

There also continues to be many discussions about how we can best support our diverse student body, many of whom may be undocumented or beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA.

Last week, I announced the creation of an Ad Hoc Committee on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals/Undocumented Students (DACA). This committee will be charged with establishing opportunities for dialogue and reflection among students, faculty and staff to promote and advance a diverse and inclusive campus community. This committee will also:

• review what ���ϲ����� is currently doing in terms of supporting these students;
• explore best practices at other colleges and universities; and
• identify and recommend ways in which we can enhance our support of this group of students.

I am finalizing the membership of the DACA Committee to include students, faculty and staff. The goal is to compile a committee with significant experience and expertise in this area. I plan to name the committee by the end of the week. If members of the Senate have interest in serving on the committee, they should contact my office.

I understand some members of ���ϲ����� affiliated faculty and staff have been working to organize an event with Congressman John Katko later this week. I understand Congressman Katko will be unable to attend. I want the University Senate to know that Congressman Katko and his staff have been very helpful in recent times on individual immigration issues involving our faculty and students. He and I are talking about immigration-related issues and that will continue in the future.

Campus Framework Forum

Provost Wheatly and Pete Sala, vice president and chief facilities officer, updated the campus community last week about the ongoing Campus Framework planning process. Envisioning and bringing to life the future of our campus is a significant undertaking—both logistically and financially.

As such, we continue all of this work in a deliberate, meticulous and collaborative manner. Given all this great activity, we are taking additional time to ensure that all feedback is accurately and appropriately reflected in the next draft of the Campus Framework.

I encourage you to attend the next Campus Framework forum, scheduled for Feb. 28 at 4 p.m. in the Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3. In tandem with the Campus Framework Advisory Group, Provost Wheatly, Vice President Sala and Cathryn Newton, special advisor to the Chancellor and provost for faculty engagement, will host the event. The goal is to share input received and solicit additional feedback on next steps, particularly as it relates to academic priorities.

New CFO Begins

Finally, I ask that you join me in welcoming Amir Rahnamay-Azar, who is here with us today. Amir is our new senior vice president and chief financial officer. Today is his first official day—although he’s been hard at work for several weeks to ensure a smooth transition.

Today is also the first official day since June that Gwenn Judge has not been our interim CFO. Gwenn has returned to her role as our chief budget officer, and will continue to work closely with the schools, colleges and the University Senate. I am deeply grateful to Gwenn for her service over the last eight months. She has shown grace, dedication, integrity and respect for everyone at the University. Could you all please join me in thanking Gwenn?