Draft B of 
February 25, 2010
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

Town Hall Conversation #6:
Quality of Place
SUNY Plattsburgh
February 19, 2010

Summary

John Ettling, President, SUNY Plattsburgh
1.	Most of us, as SUNY institutions, wear the names of the cities and towns in which 
we reside.  We have a special relationship with or surrounding communities.
2.	As institutions of higher education, we attract the young, talented and creative.  It 
must be part of our job to keep them here as well.

Ira Harkavy
1.	Although many individual institutions of higher education are thinking about their 
roles in and relationships with their surrounding communities, there is no other 
example of a system-wide conversation around quality of place.  We should be 
asking, "What can our campuses do?" "What can the System do?" and in the 
aggregate, "What can we do for the State of New York?"
2.	Even in a flattened, internet world, we live in localities.  John Dewey called these 
"enabling communities."  We have a powerful attachment to place.
3.	Universities are local, national and international institutions.  No other type of 
institution is so connected at all three levels.
4.	Why is place so central for colleges & universities?  Multiple reasons:
*	No other type of institution has so much impact on its community.  Colleges & 
universities are magnets for talent, intellectual firepower, culture and creativity.
*	They provide jobs in great quantities and, more importantly, at many levels, 
creating a ladder of economic opportunity.
*	Their purchasing power and financial impact are enormous.
*	Colleges and universities contain unique and diverse human resources in the form 
of students, faculty and staff.
5.	The futures of our institutions and our communities are intertwined.  There is mutual 
benefit to our cooperation - we will enhance the reputations of our institutions of 
higher education by working to advance our communities, our cities and our regions.
6.	There is recognition among most community institutions that working with their local 
colleges and universities is essential.  Schools, local governments, other local 
organizations look not to government but to their nearby institutions of higher 
education for economic revitalization.  But, there is also strong public discontent with 
colleges and universities.  The public is convinced we're more concerned with our 
bottom lines than with our students or our local communities.  To counter this obvious 
vote of no confidence, it is more important than ever that we pursue the strategies 
we're discussing today.
7.	Service to the community is rooted in the history of higher education.  The colleges 
established in colonial times were nearly all religiously affiliated; service was based on 
an ethical rationale.  However, they also realized it was essential for economic 
revitalization, to bring money, commerce, employment into their communities.
8.	The Morrell Act, which established the land-grant colleges, was rooted in the belief 
that it was necessary to improve the life of the farmer to improve the life of the 
community.  The boundaries of the land-grant colleges were conceived of as the 
boundaries of the state.
9.	The founding of the American research university was based on the belief that it 
could solve the pressing social problems of the day.  William Rainey Harper, who 
founded University of Chicago, considered the university "the messiah of 
democracy," committed to public engagement and saw a particular responsibility on 
its part toward the public schools.
10.	Based on the work done by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships 
(http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/index.php) at University of Pennsylvania (of which Dr. 
Harkavy is the founder), there are two concepts critical to the engagement of 
universities with their communities.
*	Academically-based community service - a kind of "problem-solving service 
learning" that goes beyond the simple direct service that most service learning 
comprises.  It is based on the assumption that colleges and universities are 
uniquely problem-solving institutions.  Students may tutor kids in the community, 
but it's more important that their universities work with the community to improve 
the local schools.  It's not sufficient for students and faculty to build homes 
through Habitat for Humanity; their institutions should work on community 
development.
William Lebov, a linguist at Penn known as the father of sociolinguistics, has 
created a program of courses that use local history, neighborhood narratives, to 
teach English and reading in the schools.  "Though renowned as a linguist, this has 
become his new intellectual life."
*	Engagement with the community around the real problems it faces is a powerful 
way to bring the university community together.  At Penn, we posed the question, 
"What can we do to address our community's health problems?" and encouraged 
multiple schools of the university to address this question, collectively bringing to 
bear their particular expertise and problem-solving skills and establish a 
community health center within a public school.  
o	There are other school-based community health centers; however, in this one 
the students learn their curriculum by studying problems of health, by focusing 
on real problems drawn from a real place - their community.
o	At the same time, by bringing to bear the expertise of many of its schools, 
Penn was creating one university, an end that is extraordinarily difficult to 
achieve by dint of administrative force alone.
11.	The problems faced by our communities are universal problems; therefore, this 
approach is replicable: university-assisted community schools; schools as the hubs of 
neighborhoods, where students learn by solving their problems - the problems of their 
communities and their schools.  And where universities - their students and their 
faculties - benefit by connecting their academic research and learning with 
community problems.
12.	But we have a long way to go.  We need a network, a national collective enterprise.  
This is why exploring how this approach might be implemented across a system of 
institutions, as SUNY offers the opportunity to do, is so important.
13.	A Modest Proposal: SUNY makes academically-based community service as we have 
described it today a major goal of its strategic plan.  Every SUNY institution has a 
person or office that focuses on such civic engagement.  The unique opportunity 
SUNY offers is to share the results of the experiments done by individual campuses 
across a huge network of different types of institutions.
14.	Whether implemented by SUNY or across a large number of other institutions 
nationally, the result would be a realization of the mission of American higher 
education envisioned by John Dewey.  Dewey said that democracy must begin at 
home, and home is the neighborhood community.  We would paraphrase this today 
as: Democracy begins at home, and home is the democratic, neighborly university 
working in collaboration with its school and community partners.
Question & Answer Session
1.	How do you counter historical town-gown conflict and build trust with potential 
community partners?  How do you become a good neighbor without overpowering 
the community?
*	Work with the community to identify the most pressing problems they face, and 
develop real projects around them, not the college's or university's agenda.  Work 
to avoid being seen as "doing research on people," instead, "working with people" 
in the community.
*	Use a truly democratic process with the community.  Pushing too hard, you'll only 
sabotage yourself.
*	"Be there; be there; be there!"  In answer to the question of song, "Will you still 
love me tomorrow?" don't answer, "We'll love you as long as we have grants."  
Rather, build your involvement into your curricula.  Do this, and you'll always be 
in the community.
*	Avoid being the benevolent "big brother" - look for important local opportunities, 
real problems.
2.	What are some of the failures you've seen at Penn?  What lessons have you learned?
*	Initially, we didn't sufficiently emphasize the integration of community work into 
our curricula; we overemphasized research.  The result was that we didn't leave 
enough "tracks on the ground" - measurable effects for the community to see and 
for us to use as evidence.
*	Recognize the "power of the Principal."  Initially, we focused too much on school 
superintendents rather than principals, who were closer to the front lines.
*	Aggregate your impact for greater demonstrable success.  Don't just point to 
individual projects and their individual results.  Instead study your overall, 
collective impact locally.  This responds strongly to what grant makers really want 
to see.
*	Bridge the gap between the university and the medical center.  Ask them, "How 
would you solve this problem?" (As opposed to telling them the role you want 
them to play).
2.	How will this benefit communities that don't have one of SUNY's 64 campuses 
nearby?
*	No simple answer; that's what makes this an important question for SUNY to take 
on.  It will be important to figure out how to make this kind of work radiate 
outward, beyond the communities immediately surrounding SUNY institutions.  
It will be important to look for ways the System, as a network, to encourage this.
3.	How do you promote a particular vision for the community in a community resistant 
to that vision?
*	Have some quick victories, clearly evident "on the ground," that the local 
community truly cares about.
*	Demonstrate clearly that the benefits are not just to the university but are things 
the community cares about as well.
*	Patience, patience, patience.  Be persistent and patient.  Remember that people 
learn best when the problems are the most difficult.  We will still benefit our 
students if not everything is immediately successful.
Four Provocative Ideas: Results of the Advance Homework Assignment

Karen Benker, Downstate Medical University
We are working with NYC planners on designing buildings that (a) promote physical 
activity, and (b) bring together people (make their paths cross, literally) from various 
different backgrounds to interact and hopefully create synergies.  We're in the process of 
constructing a pubic health building with these ideas in mind.

The diseases of the 19th century were largely infectious diseases, and buildings were built 
to segment people, to prevent the spread of disease.  As antibiotics have largely reduced 
infectious disease in the 20th century, our illnesses have become largely "illnesses of 
energy," or more truly, of lack of energy, of inaction.  Calories are cheap, and physical 
activity is inconvenient.  We need to change our built environment to encourage physical 
activity.

Shari Prussin, FIT
We are trying to create quality of place internally and externally.  We want to be a place 
where people want to come to visit, to work.  Two initiatives, one internal; one external:
*	Putting Starbucks on campus has created a familiar meeting spot.  Warm and familiar 
to many different types of people, who mingle there.
*	The FIT museum infuses us into the world of NYC arts and culture - student 
curators; street-level windows.

Juliette Price, SUNY Oswego
Our student union is not in the middle of campus, where it should be, but instead on the 
fringe - a result of the campus growing in ways that weren't anticipated when the union 
was built.  This is a problem; however, the result has been that the library has become, in 
effect, our student union.

From its large windows on the second floor, one can see the activity of the entire campus 
going on before you - from athletics to academic buildings.  It stimulates thinking, mind-
wandering, creativity.  Sometimes you need to stare out into space and draw inspiration 
from all of the facets of life you see in front of you.  When I need to bear down and 
study for an exam, I head for the third floor, which is windowless and has cubicles in 
which to focus.  But when I need inspiration, to come up with a paper topic or look at an 
argument differently, I head for the second floor.

Steve Perta, SUNY Institute of Technology
I'm a small-plane pilot, and thinking about the view of NY State I get when I fly from 
Utica over the mountains and cities of the State, I second what Juliette said about the 
inspiration of vistas.

Two thoughts:
*	We are promoting our campus as a place of wellness - safe, secure, promoting activity 
and health awareness, as well as a place in which to learn.
*	Wouldn't it be extraordinary if the new high-speed rail planned for NY State came 
near to every SUNY campus?



Response from Ira Harkavy
Several common things are clearly in these ideas:
*	The love of place, or their campuses, expressed by everyone who's spoken today.  
There is clearly great value placed on where we are.
*	It's important to create places for people to interact, particularly with individuals who 
are quite different from each other.
*	How do these things connect to intellectual progress?  They stimulate creativity.  They 
stimulate physical activity.
*	The campus should be a healthy place - build this into your design.  Use your faculty 
and your students to look at these ideas comprehensively.
*	We desire a connectedness, both with the world outside and among our far-flung 
campuses and colleagues.

Selected Points from the Reports of the Small Group Discussions
1.	As we consider how SUNY can promote initiatives that contribute to creating quality 
of place, we should look at both regional and thematic approaches.  It might be the 
case that there are similarities among communities in a given region that would make 
us consider similar approaches to them.  On the other hand, we might consider 
thematic approaches, such as things we could do in terms of community arts & culture 
programming, and then examine which SUNY institutions should be involved.
2.	Part of our efforts should be directed toward initiatives that would keep SUNY 
graduates not only in NY State but to some extent in the communities surrounding 
the institutions from which they graduate.  Building connections between our 
students and the communities in which they attend school will contribute toward this 
goal.
3.	We must begin now to figure out how to create a sense of campus "place" among 
virtual learners, as they are a growing segment of our students.
4.	A BHAG would be for us to agree that every SUNY campus will set as a five-year 
goal that it will engage with its community in one transformative project that will 
address a mutually-agreed upon community need and will be built into the 
institution's curricula.  The aggregate impact of 64 such projects would be enormous, 
and even if several failed, we would have a critical mass of "experiments" upon which 
we could build for future initiatives, learning from both successful and unsuccessful 
initiatives.
5.	We should explore means to encourage more of our faculty and staff to live within 
our immediate campus communities or at least how to engage those who live at a 
distance more in the community and campus.
6.	We must orient and educate our students about the communities in which they will 
live during their college years, as well as about individuals who live in it.  If we want 
the community to believe we have a stake in its well-being, we need to convince it 
that our students are more than "transients."  Similarly, we need to create both reasons 
for community members to come onto our campuses and a more welcoming 
environment, which means sweating details as mundane as parking, security, outdoor 
space, and the like.
7.	While it would be controversial, it would go a long way to demonstrating SUNY's 
genuine commitment to its communities if we made community involvement both a 
hiring criterion and a consideration, to some extent, for promotion and tenure.
8.	Alfred State University is building a new student union.  One of the institution's 
goals is to use the space to encourage civic engagement, building on the energy of the 
University's existing clubs and organizations.  They have solicited proposals from 
student organizations to build student leadership through civic engagement.  The 
organizations submitting the 20 best proposals will receive prime "storefront" space in 
the new building, leased to them for several years, during which time the group's 
project will be evaluated regularly.
Chancellor Zimpher's Response
*	These Town Hall Conversations are, in a manner, practice for what we need to be 
doing as a system and as individual campuses.  We can be "conveners" at both a state 
and local level.
*	A theme of this planning process has been to identify and attach ourselves to real 
challenges faced by NY State and to commit to "moving the dial" on them - making 
real impact in addressing the problems.  The same commitment is required for each of 
us in terms of our local civic engagement.
*	If we are outwardly oriented in our efforts, focus on real challenges, and demonstrate 
we can produce measurable outcomes, I believe our work is fundable from 
constituencies we have not even begun to tap.
President Ettling's Response
*	At one point, the City of Plattsburgh sought to obtain from us a PILOT (payment in 
lieu of taxes).  SUNY objected to the precedent this would set, and so we began 
looking for other ways to aid the city financially to demonstrate our commitment, for 
example, agreeing to help pay for a new ladder truck because the College has the 
majority of tall buildings in the town.  Such efforts have helped us make clear to the 
community that we see ourselves as a committed member of it.
*	It is critical that we acculturate our students to the communities in which they will 
spend four or five years.  We must help them to perceive themselves as members of 
the community.
Ira Harkavy's Response
*	One thing that comes across clearly in the responses of the small-group discussions is 
the importance of esthetics, of beauty, the best of design.
*	From the Chancellor to individual campus presidents, the kind of community 
engagement we're talking about needs to become part of SUNY's mission.
*	What we're discussing offers tremendous opportunities for faculty.
*	If SUNY is able to align the System and the individual campuses in a mission-driven 
effort toward genuine civic engagement such as we've been discussing, SUNY might 
become the institution nationally for which this is the "elevator speech," that is, what 
SUNY is known for, recognized for, more than anything else.
*	SUNY should think in terms of "lead projects" - and cutting-edge experiments done 
system wide though not in a cookie-cutter fashion and made demonstrably more 
effective by virtue of System-wide coordination.
*	I agree with the Chancellor's assessment that there will be many and multiple sources 
of funding available for such projects.
*	We should end today's conversation reflecting on E.M. Forster's words, in Howard's 
End, "Only connect!...Live in fragments no longer." 
  The full text of the Forster quote is: "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the 
prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in 
fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to 
either, will die."
 
 
 
 


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ANTHONY KNERR & ASSOCIATES
ANTHONY KNERR & ASSOCIATES