President’s Council Meeting Focuses on Collaborative Research

ALBANY, N.Y. (Oct. 5, 2021) — Faculty took center stage at the President’s Extended Council meeting last week, highlighting some of their collaborative and interdisciplinary work and how it fits into the University’s Signature Strengths framework.

President Rodríguez opened the meeting, greeting the in-person audience in the Campus Center Board Room as well as those attending remotely, and reflecting on the difficulties of the past 18 months. “In so many ways there has been so much loss as a consequence of this pandemic that we must all recognize and acknowledge,” he said. “However, as an institution we have done great work, thanks to all of you, to deal with COVID, although we do realize that the pandemic is not over yet and that we must remain vigilant.”

The president noted that about 98 percent of students are at least partially vaccinated, and over 90 percent of faculty and staff are fully vaccinated.

In his highlights, he pointed out that the University won a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity award for the fourth consecutive year, recently received a $1 million grant to focus on gender equity among STEM faculty, and hired six new faculty members with the help of SUNY PRODiG funds.

 Major goals of the University continue to be increasing enrollment, with a focus on increasing graduate enrollment as well as the retention and persistence rates of students, and focusing on growing the University’s research enterprise. The president referred to the Signature Strengths framework, which emphasizes interdisciplinarity and diversity and inclusion while promoting some of the University’s major strengths — cybersecurity, climate science, emergency preparedness and health sciences, including minority health disparities.

“To be successful in these areas, we need to work collectively and collaboratively with our schools, our colleges, our centers, our institutes and especially our faculty in order to move this university forward,” Rodríguez said, emphasizing that the approach must be inclusive and interdisciplinary.

To showcase some of the ways the University is working in these fields, Provost Carol Kim introduced a panel of four faculty members: Kara Sulia, a researcher at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center and director of the xCITE Lab; Julia Hastings, associate professor in the schools of Public Health and Social Welfare; DeeDee Bennett Gayle, associate professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity; and Danny Goodwin, a professor in the Department of Art and Art History.

All four pointed out how their work involves multiple disciplines. Sulia’s presentation focused on climate science, noting that the field includes biology, physics and chemistry and that researchers collaborate across the University as well as with other institutions and companies worldwide. Hastings discussed the multidisciplinary approach to research into minority health disparities and the goal of achieving health equity. Bennett Gayle discussed equity and technology during extreme events, and Goodwin talked about the intersection of art and science in funded collaborations, including the exhibition “Future Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene.”

“Today is about getting together to think about new ways to collaborate, and new pathways for funded research,” Kim said.

You can watch the entire meeting, including the faculty presentations, and hear the Q&A session that followed.