Spring 2024 University Address

Good afternoon. Muy buenas tardes. Thank you for being here today.

As we mark our 180th anniversary, I am enjoying the opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come. 180 years ago, the founders of the New York State Normal School could not have imagined the University we would become.

The 29 students and two instructors who founded the Normal School could not have imagined a university with almost 17,000 students, 1,200 faculty, 2,300 staff, and more than 200,000 living alumni changing the world every day.

The work we do in areas like AI, nanotechnology, cybersecurity, emergency preparedness, RNA, social and health welfare, climate and weather, and public policy would be unfathomable to our founders.

Our commitment to diversity and equity would also have been unimaginable in 1844. Our founders would not have imagined an institution in which more than 40% of our students are from underrepresented communities.

And yet, the UAlbany of today grew from the seeds planted in 1844. Without that small group of educators and students coming together to start a college, we would not be here today.

The seeds they planted were nurtured by successive generations. Growing and expanding to meet the needs of their community.

And they are still being nurtured today, by all of you, as the University at Albany continues to evolve to meet today’s challenges and tap tomorrow’s potential.

Let’s take a few moments to look back at how far we’ve come.

Today, there are so many reasons to be proud to be a UAlbany Great Dane.

We are opening new facilities and investing in our city.

We are investing in research and making the Capital Region a top destination for high-tech companies.

UAlbany is defining what it means to be a public university conducting research that benefits the public good.

We are adding programs in diverse fields like AI, nursing, cybersecurity, and business.

We are having tremendous success in athletics and growing to add a new sport to our roster.

We are building our relationships with donors – this year we received the largest gift in university history.

We are educating more and more first-generation students and those from underrepresented backgrounds. And we are making sure they succeed at UAlbany.

We are fostering an environment where our students – and all members of our community – are encouraged to thoughtfully discuss and debate challenging issues.

And at every turn, we are responding to the needs of our community.

When the terrible news about our neighbor, The College of Saint Rose, was announced last fall, UAlbany answered the call. We became the main teach-out partner and have worked to provide a local option for Saint Rose students to complete their degrees.

So far, nearly 230 undergraduates and nearly 70 graduate students have applied to complete their degrees at UAlbany.

We established three new undergraduate teacher certification programs to provide a reliable, diverse pipeline of educators for our region and state. Filling a gap that will be left when Saint Rose, the largest supplier of teachers in the state, closes its doors.

Kudos to our Provost Carol Kim, our Dean of Undergraduate Education JoAnne Malatesta, and our Dean of the School of Education Ginny Goatley and their teams for taking these programs from proposal to approval in record time. This is an incredible accomplishment.

We are also investing in our community with new facilities and infrastructure including our new Downtown Campus Welcome Center in Husted Hall, the CDTA Purple Line that connects our campuses, and the new CNSE Building we will open next month in the building that used to house the Albany High School.

We are developing solutions for community college students who far too often hit roadblocks that stop them from continuing their higher education.

We have signed dual admission agreements with 3 community colleges – and soon, a 4th – that remove the barriers that prevent students from continuing their education.

With academic advising, financial aid counseling, and access to programs like our First Year Experience courses, the dual-admitted students will be enmeshed in our UAlbany community from the moment they start their education.

At Fulton-Montgomery and Hudson Valley Community Colleges we have established physical offices staffed by UAlbany advisors who can support students throughout their academic journey.   

Kudos to our Vice President for Student Affairs, Mike Christakis, our Provost Carol Kim, Dean of Undergraduate Education JoAnne Malatesta, Vice President for Communications and Marketing Melissa Connolly, and their amazing teams for leading this impactful effort.

Our success is more important than ever because higher education is facing challenges on many fronts.

We’ve all seen the headlines: colleges are closing, cutting, and consolidating all around us.

Saint Rose’s closure will come after 104 years in operation. They will join four other private colleges in New York that have closed since 2021 and dozens more nationally.

Within SUNY, our colleagues at Fredonia, Potsdam, and Clinton Community College are experiencing painful cuts and consolidations.

Unfortunately, demographics, especially in the Northeast, are not in our favor. There will simply be fewer students graduating from high school in the years to come.

While UAlbany is not immune to these challenges, our situation is more optimistic. Our overall enrollment increased by 1.3% last year – more than any other SUNY University Center.

Applications for first year and transfer students are already up over last year.

Succeeding in this challenging environment will require creativity and flexibility. We will have to be nimble as competition for students becomes increasingly fierce.

Many of our academic departments are already taking important steps to ensure UAlbany remains relevant to students today and in the future.

Over the next several years we will launch new programs in climate science, game design, environmental studies, and Africana studies, among many others.

This fall we will also launch online programs in criminal justice, psychology, sociology, communication, history, and human development.

Thank you all for your hard work to serve our community and future-proof our enrollment.

We are doing everything possible to increase enrollment:

• Signing innovative agreements with community colleges
• Adding new academic programs
• Building state-of-the-art research programs
• Launching creative new marketing campaigns
• Focusing on student success
• And investing in scholarships, thanks in part to gifts from the UAlbany Foundation which have increased to more than $5 million over the past 6 years.

We must also focus on increasing yield and retention – ensuring that the students we admit opt to enroll and that they persist to graduation. We are already developing and executing great initiatives in these areas.

But “yield” and “retention” are the work of everyone inside and outside of this auditorium. Let’s make a commitment to do everything possible to increase those yield and retention rates.

We have phenomenal teams, and we are doing what we need to do…let’s continue to move onward and forward.

While colleges grapple with enrollment and demographic challenges, politicians and pundits have set their sights on DEI programs.

In Florida, spending on DEI Programs at all 28 state colleges has been outlawed and similar stories are playing out across the country.

As of today, 81 pieces of anti-DEI legislation have been introduced across the country and 9 states have banned or severely restricted DEI programs.

Against this backdrop, New York State, SUNY, and the University at Albany remain more committed than ever to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We are one of the nation’s most diverse R1 institutions. We all should be incredibly proud of that.

We will continue to lean into this important work – not because we’re trying to make a political statement or check a box, but because it is the right thing to do. It is a moral imperative.

Building and nurturing a diverse community of scholars on this campus benefits each of us, our individual work, and ultimately, our community.

Our commitment to this work has been particularly important in the last year as global conflicts and humanitarian crises significantly impact members of our community.

But we have more work to do to convince the American public of higher education’s benefits to society.

A June 2023 Gallup poll showed a significant decline in Americans’ confidence in higher education. In 2015, 57% of respondents reported confidence in higher education. By 2023, that number had fallen to 36%.

This gap in confidence is troubling. Not just because we have all devoted our careers to higher education, but because we know, without a doubt, that individuals, and society, significantly benefit from higher education.

There is no question that higher education is at a crossroads. It would be understandable to react to these challenges with pessimism.

But I am optimistic about the future of higher education.

Yes, there is work to do. Reckoning with these challenges will not be easy.

I am optimistic we will succeed because we have already identified the path forward in our strategic plan.

This plan is more than just words on a page, it is our north star as we guide the UAlbany community into the future.

So, how will we do it? How will we – together – ensure that the University at Albany continues to be a success story, despite the many challenges confronting higher education? We’re already heading in the right direction.

In the face of skepticism about the value of college and population shifts that threaten enrollment, the University at Albany will be the nation’s leading student-ready research university. We will empower our diverse student body for a lifetime of achievement.

That starts before they even arrive by helping students and families navigate the challenges of this year’s delayed FAFSA rollout.

Once they are on campus, we work to make sure every student has their basic needs met through programs like our food pantry, emergency fund, and Purple Threads, which provides free professional clothing to students.

We center student health and wellbeing to build resilience through our clinical services and programs offered through our Office of Health Promotion.

 And we are working hard to ensure our students succeed long after they leave our campus by providing robust career resources, beginning during summer orientation before they even set foot in a classroom. This continues with internships and job opportunities that build career skills.

In the face of serious global challenges including climate change, cyberattacks, and health inequality, UAlbany will be internationally known for our research and creative works. We will continue to make important, measurable impacts to society’s biggest challenges.

Through our AI Plus initiative and our engagement with the proposed Empire AI Consortium, UAlbany is defining the future of artificial intelligence and making sure that future benefits the public good.

We have partnered with IBM to install a first-of-its-kind prototype computing cluster on our campus. We are the first university in the world to have this type of computing power on campus.

Beginning this fall, every UAlbany student will have access to courses in AI. Whether they are studying engineering, Public Health or English, we will make sure every Great Dane has a grounding in this world-changing technology.

We have established a new partnership between UAlbany and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that will give researchers at both institutions access to cutting-edge computing and AI technology. Tomorrow, I will join RPI President Schmidt for the ribbon cutting of RPI’s new IBM Quantum System One computing installation.

This regional higher education partnership will expand the reach and impact of both institutions’ research and innovation. As always, we are committed to using our access to these technologies on research that advances the public good.

UAlbany’s research renown goes well beyond AI.

In climate and weather, we are harnessing technology to improve forecasting and real-time response to extreme weather. The new State Weather Risk Communication Center is already providing invaluable actionable information to state, regional, and local leaders who are responding to extreme weather events.

Thanks to our College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering, the Capital Region is a leading candidate to serve as the “anchor hub” in the National Semiconductor Technology Center established through the federal CHIPS Act.

In January, a UAlbany delegation met with the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. At this government agency half a world away, officials knew UAlbany as the first college of nanotechnology in the U.S. They admired our deep relationships with partners like NY CREATES, IBM, Tokyo Electron, and Micron.

In our English Department, Department Chair Eric Keenaghan’s research into queer poet-activist Muriel Rukeyser has uncovered poetry and other writings that might otherwise have been lost to history.

Our new Institute for Social and Health Equity is the embodiment of our commitment to research that serves the public good. The Institute was born out of UAlbany’s work to identify racial and ethnic disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic. That Institute will facilitate research collaborations and interdisciplinary approaches to addressing social and health equity issues in our region and beyond.

As one of the nation’s most diverse public Research 1 institutions, we are called to action. We must live up to that distinction every day by fostering diversity of all kinds and conducting groundbreaking research that serves the public good.

At UAlbany, we are not shying away from this challenging work, we are leaning in. We are not just talking about diversity; we are prioritizing it in all our actions.  

Our efforts have been recognized nationally with several awards from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine for our programs, culture, and initiatives that support diversity and inclusion. Another recognition in this area will be announced in the coming weeks.

We are using a $1 million ADVANCE grant from the National Science Foundation to support recruitment and retention of women faculty in STEM fields. So far, the programs funded through this grant have resulted in 7 research proposals led by female assistant or associate professors being funded for a total of nearly $1.1 million.

In addition, 11 female faculty members in STEM fields have received seed funding through Project SAGES – Striving to Achieve Gender Equity in STEM.

Over the past three years, we have increased the percentage of our faculty and leadership who are women.

It is important to highlight that one of our colleagues, Dr. DeeDee Bennett Gayle, an associate professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, was one of the first seven people named to the inaugural class of SUNY’s Black Leadership Institute.

Another colleague, Dr. Angie Chung, a professor of Sociology, was one of ten fellows named to SUNY’s inaugural Civic Education and Engagement and Civil Discourse Fellowship.

At UAlbany, our efforts to reclaim history and rename spaces will continue this spring when we officially unveil new signage for Parker Pond and Parker Pond Lane.

Previously known as “Indian Pond” and “Indian Pond Lane,” the new name honors the important contributions of the Parker family. Siblings Caroline, Nicholson, and Isaac Newton Parker all attended what was then known as the Normal School in the 1850s. The Parkers, Caroline in particular, made incredible contributions to the Haudenosaunee nations by recording history, building relationships, and framing public perceptions of indigenous people.

The University at Albany’s impact extends beyond the Capital Region. We are infusing international perspectives across our research, teaching, learning and service to promote the global common good.

Our success in this area was recently recognized by the U.S. Department of State. UAlbany was named among the top 10 institutions for producing Fulbright Scholars.

Not the top 10 within SUNY or the top 10 within New York. We are among the top 10 institutions in the country for producing Fulbright scholars. I am so proud of our faculty for this incredible achievement.

While in India recently, I met with the leaders of four institutions, including two Indian Institutes of Technology. These institutions are truly the best of the best – admitting just 1% of the students who apply each year. We signed MOUs with each of them beginning or continuing relationships that I am confident will lead to robust academic and research partnerships.

You have heard me mention partnerships several times throughout this presentation. Our partners – from industry, government, non-profits, or academia – are critical to our ability to achieve our goals.

We are building transformational partnerships that strengthen the University and our local and global communities.

You can see this in our new international agreements and our regional dual-admission agreements.

You can see this in our research collaborations with state and local governments and community organizations.

Two UAlbany-led projects aimed at monitoring and improving air quality recently received $1 million in funding from the EPA. These projects use sensors to measure indoor and outdoor air quality, including at local K-12 schools.

The projects, led by Jie Zang in the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center and Md Aynul Bari in CNSE, are designed to empower stakeholders with data about their community’s exposure to pollutants.

So far this year, more than 2,100 members of the UAlbany community have collectively volunteered 58,900 hours of service to our community. This service runs the gamut from volunteering with after-school programs, to providing Spanish interpretation for asylum seekers, to running clothing and food drives.

Our largest fundraisers have broken records over the past year. Citizen Laureate raised $350,000 for student scholarships.

And over just 8 days last month, March Matchness raised $625,000 to support our academic, athletic, and student life programs. This total is a combination of 1,188 individual gifts from members of the UAlbany community plus matching funds including $150,000 donated by Pepsi to support student scholarships.

Thank you for supporting these important initiatives. Together we are unleashing greatness.

Speaking of greatness, I would like to acknowledge a few of our outstanding students who will be honored next week as recipients of the 2024 Chancellor’s Awards for Student Excellence.

• Alexis Weber
• Biancamaria Scricco 
• Shannon Morgan
• Jude Klein
• Chai Kam
• Michael Bratslavsky
• Jillian Benedict, and
• Eva Alvarez Ero

Please join me in applauding these outstanding scholars.

In Athletics, I would like to acknowledge our football coach, Greg Gattuso. Coach, please stand.

Coach Gattuso was named the National Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association after he led UAlbany to our first CAA Championship and first appearance in the NCAA football national semifinals.

UAlbany also won the Men’s and Women’s America East Indoor Track and Field Championship this spring and our women’s basketball team ended the regular season in second place.

In the fall, we will add women’s rowing, our 19th sport, to the UAlbany Athletics family. Welcome Chris Chase, who has been named our first women’s rowing coach.

Congratulations to all our talented and hard-working Great Dane athletes and coaches and kudos to our Athletic team.

Led by our Vice President for University Advancement, Fardin Sanai, and his team, UAlbany has made a concerted effort to establish new endowed faculty and administrative positions to support the incredible work you all do.

Today I am pleased to announce that we have established our 13th endowed professorship.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Andrew Berglund, director of the RNA Institute, who has just been named the first Keith Hynes Endowed Professor in STEM.

This appointment will support the important work that Dr. Berglund and his colleagues and students are doing in pursuit of therapeutics for patients with Myotonic Dystrophy. MD is a devastating disease that is the most common type of adult-onset muscular dystrophy.

Congratulations, Dr. Berglund.

I would like to invite our Provost, Carol Kim, Vice President for Research and Economic Development Kesh Kesavadas, and Dean of our College of Arts and Sciences, Jeanette Altarriba, to the stage to present Dr. Berglund with the Endowed Professor medal.

I would also like to highlight the winners of this year’s Torch and Spark Awards for transformational teaching. Professors Searle and Greenhill, would you please stand?

The Spark Award is given to a faculty member who is nominated by a first-year student. This year’s recipient is Brian D. Greenhill, Professor of Political Science. In a nominating essay, a student praised Dr. Greenhill’s ability to facilitate political discussions between people with vastly different opinions, empowering students to listen and make their voices heard.  

The Torch Award is given to a faculty member who is nominated by a senior. This year’s recipient is James H. Searle, Professor of English. In nominating essays, students praised Dr. Searle’s passion for literature and connection with students. One student wrote that Dr. Searle’s insight “unlocked an appreciation of literature that I will carry for the rest of my life.”

Congratulations Professors Greenhill and Searle!

And please join me in welcoming our new Director of Nursing, Dr. Cassandra Marshall. Dr. Marshall comes to UAlbany from the College of Saint Rose and began this role just last week.

She will lead our nursing program as it expands to accommodate Saint Rose students completing their degrees and to meet the regional and statewide demand for nurses now and into the future.

There are many exciting events to look forward to during the rest of the semester.

On April 19, the annual Massry Lecture will feature a conversation with Kristin Dolan, class of 1988, and CEO of AMC Networks. The event, in the newly named Massry School of Business, will also celebrate the Massry family’s immense contributions to the university and the School.  

On April 21, The BIG Event will bring UAlbany students, faculty, and staff into the community to give back. It is the culmination celebration of the many volunteer and community service activities we have undertaken over this academic year.

On April 30, I hope you are planning to attend – or participate in – our second annual UAlbany Showcase. This event was a huge success last year and I am excited to see how much it will grow this year. During the event, student-led research and creative works from every department in the university will be on display.

And, of course, during Commencement on May 9-12, we will graduate the newest class of Great Danes.

Before we move into the award portion of today’s program, I want to leave you with a closing thought.

We have accomplished so much together, and we have a clear direction for our future, as laid out in our Strategic Plan. But it can be easy to lose sight of the grand plans in the day-to-day hustle of answering emails, attending meetings, teaching courses, and meeting deadlines.

I challenge each of you – no matter your title or job description – to seek out opportunities to align your work with our strategic goals. Achieving the lofty goals we have set for ourselves necessitates that we are all-in.

We can only do this together. Juntos venceremos.

Today we will honor 21 faculty and staff members who have achieved greatness in their work with the President’s Awards.

Excellence in Professional Service

• Angelina Díaz-Myers, Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS)
• Sheena Loughlin, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy
• Debernee Privott, College of Arts and Sciences
• Kristen Swaney, Undergraduate Education
• Stacey Zyskowski, School of Criminal Justice

Excellence in Academic Service

• Edmund Stazyk, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy

Excellence in Teaching

• Susanna Fessler, Department of East Asian Studies
• Federica Francesconi, Department of History
• Paul Stasi, Department of English
• Allison Craig, Writing and Critical Inquiry Program
• Mary Avery, Department of Psychology
• Arzana Myderrizi, Department of Public Administration and Policy

Excellence in Librarianship

• Amanda Lowe, University Libraries

Excellence in Classified Service

• Heide Horan, Residential Life
• Sandra Peterson, Office of the Vice President for Finance and Administration

Excellence in Research and Creative Activities

• Fangqun Yu, Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC)
• Julia Hormes, Department of Psychology and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Research, College of Arts and Sciences
• Justin Pickett, School of Criminal Justice
• Matthew Szydagis, Department of Physics
• Meredith Weiss, Department of Political Science
• Ryan Torn, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences

Congratulations to all the award winners. Your contributions to this university are immense and I am so proud to count you among our Great Dane community.

Now I am very pleased and honored to present the University at Albany’s highest honor, the Medallion of the University, to a scholar, writer, and leader who has been making a positive impact on our university and our community for decades.

William Kennedy is an Albany native who built an incredible career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He then came to the University at Albany where he became the founding director of the New York State Writers Institute and a professor of creative writing and journalism.

He has always been a storyteller. He began his career in journalism at the Glens Falls Post Star as a sports reporter. When he was drafted in the U.S. Army in 1950, he worked for an Army newspaper. When he returned home, he wrote for the Albany Times Union.

William Kennedy and I have a connection beyond UAlbany and being veterans – we both spent early parts of our professional careers in Puerto Rico. In 1956, he accepted a job with a newspaper in Puerto Rico. He went on to become the founding managing editor of the San Juan Star.

While he was living and writing in Puerto Rico, Kennedy met his beloved wife and life partner, Dana Sosa, a member of the Joffrey Ballet and a dancer on Broadway. They enjoyed a beautiful life together, married for 66 years and raising three children, before she passed last year.

By 1963, Kennedy was drawn back to Albany, the city that would become a character in so many of his novels.

He returned to the Times Union as an investigative journalist specializing in telling the stories of the city’s poorest residents. In 1965 he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

His experiences as a journalist inspired his first novel, The Ink Truck, published in 1969.

In the 1970s, Kennedy began teaching at UAlbany. He lectured in creative writing and journalism and became a full professor in 1983. All the while he was writing. He published the first two of his “Albany Cycle” novels, Legs in 1975 and Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game in 1978.

Then came 1983, which he has referred to as his “miraculous year” – and the beginning of a new era for William Kennedy. His novel, Ironweed, was published and then awarded a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Award. That same year, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Known as the MacArthur “genius” award, the award included funds that Kennedy used to found the New York State Writers Institute.

In 1984, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, signed into law the legislation establishing the New York State Writers Institute and named Kennedy the founding director.

The next year, Gov. Cuomo signed legislation giving the Writers Institute the authority to the New York State Author and New York State Poet every two years.

Under Kennedy’s leadership, the New York State Writers Institute became a place to celebrate writers of all stripes.

Such literary luminaries as Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer, Audre Lorde, Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Sonia Sotomayor, Colson Whitehead, and scores of other writers, poets, playwrights, and filmmakers have come to Albany because of the Writers Institute’s programming.

Thanks to Kennedy’s hard work and accomplishments leading the Writers Institute, which has continued under Paul Grondahl, the Opalka Endowed Director of the Institute, UAlbany continues to host more than 70 Writers Institute events each year, bringing Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning writers, poets, journalists, newsmakers, and filmmakers to campus.

This Saturday, the Writers Institute will host the Albany Film Festival for the 4th year right here in the Campus Center.

All of this is a testament to William Kennedy’s vision, leadership, and philanthropy.

As much as the City of Albany means to William Kennedy, he means to the University at Albany. He is a part of the very fabric of this university and emblematic of everything that makes us great.

As he wrote in Ironweed, “One never knows the potential within the human breast.” Could any of us have known the incredible potential of that young journalist working at the San Juan Star?

Today, it is more than evident that William Kennedy has realized his incredible potential. And in doing so, he has helped the University at Albany realize ours.

Again, I am so proud and honored to present William J. Kennedy with the Medallion of the University at Albany.

That brings us to the end of this Spring Address. Thank you all for being here today to celebrate all we have achieved together.

I would like to thank the many people who made today’s event possible including:

• Christy Doyle and the University Events team,
• Matthew Pothier and Ben Perrault and the Campus Center Events and AV team
• The Sodexo team who has put together a great reception for us this afternoon,
• The Office of Communications and Marketing staff,
• My Executive Leadership team,
• And the staff of my office including Claudia Hernández, Emily Morgese, Kristen Marlow, and Bonnie Davis.

I hope you will now join us for a reception just outside this room to continue the celebration.

Today, like every day, is truly a great day to be a Great Dane.

Go Great Danes!

Muchísimas gracias.