I want to start with an exercise. Imagine you're a visitor from another planet who has landed on Earth. In the United States. Maybe even in New York State.
Let's just say you're a glass-half-empty sort of alien. What are some things you might notice?
You might see swelling seas and eroded coastlines, floods, heat waves, and raging wildfires. You might notice the lives lost and loved ones' hearts shattered by cancers and degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
Someone tells you to visit the biggest and brightest city in America; you go into Manhattan. There, you learn about the largest attack on U.S. soil, which killed and injured thousands of Americans on September 11th, 2001. You learn about the legions of heroes who sifted through the rubble, cleared debris, rescued survivors, and looked for remains. And although this event took place more than two decades earlier, these heroes are still suffering and dying from the toxic exposure and need specialized medical care.
Meanwhile, there's transformative technology available more capable and powerful than anything that came before. It promises treatments for the cancers we once thought incurable, solutions to the environmental challenges we once thought overwhelming, salves for the social problems we once thought intractable, tools for tasks we once found inefficient, knowledge we once found unknowable. Yet, the alien would be horrified to see those advances drifting out of reach.
For 75 years, since the end of World War II, America's most monumental challenges have been tackled by a compact between universities and the federal government—one rooted in the notion that American colleges and universities are ideal engines of investment and ingenuity. This tradition created the world's greatest innovation infrastructure, driving advancements we take for granted: everything from the phone in your pocket, to treatments you and your family members receive from your doctor.
For 75 years, this has made American universities the envy of higher education around the world. And for 75 years, New York State, and SUNY, have made remarkable contributions to this history: playing a part in the creation of the MRI, the first implantable heart pacemaker, the evolution of Lithium-ion battery technology, the Hepatitis B vaccine, and the rapid COVID saliva test.
In recent months, we've watched leaders in Washington, D.C., walk back from this promise. Critical research conducted at public universities stands on an existential precipice. If the headlines are to be believed, that alien's vision is teetering closer and closer to reality.
But I do not believe for a second that this is our destiny.
So today, I stand before you for my third State of the University address, more confident than ever that strength, excellence, and progress are the SUNY brand. We are pressing forward, guided by our values, delivering for our students, our communities, and our state.
It is thanks to this strength we can see so clearly the scope and stakes of what some seek to tear down.
The sturdiness of our success is only possible thanks to our supporters and partners. From the extraordinary vision and steadfast support of our Board of Trustees under the leadership of Chairman Merryl Tisch, to the bold leadership of Governor Kathy Hochul—who has never wavered in her ambitions and support for public higher education. I want to thank Secretary to the Governor Karen Keogh for being with us today… and for being a champion for SUNY every day. It would be all too easy to cower and capitulate in the face of brazen attempts to undermine our mission; Governor Hochul and our legislative leaders have not: Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Heastie, along with our Higher Education Committee Chairs, Toby Stavisky in the Senate and Alicia Hyndman in the Assembly. And every member of our New York Congressional delegation, across party lines, who knows SUNY and understands the essential need for federal investment to serve their constituents. And finally, our collaborative partnerships—with local, state, and federal officials—continue to fuel SUNY's strength and momentum.
Last year, I reported that "SUNY is on the move." Today, I proudly share that we've continued to refuel our engines and recharge our batteries, hurtling forward in our quest for excellence in each one of the four key pillars we use to define it: student success; research and scholarship; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and economic development and upward mobility.
I want to be extremely clear: the threats to higher education research budgets at the federal level strike at the heart of lifesaving innovation. SUNY's groundbreaking work is not immune—everything from cures for Alzheimer's and new early detection methods for cancers and brain aneurysms, to our work studying treatments for 9/11 first responders, and so much more—is at risk.
And despite these attacks, our resolve is unwavering.
SUNY's outstanding research and scholarship is helping to fuel New York State's 21st century manufacturing renaissance. Battery innovation at Binghamton. The microelectronics hub at Albany. The New York Climate Exchange on Governors Island anchored by Stony Brook. SUNY Poly's Semiconductor Center.
We're making steady progress towards Governor Hochul's goal to double SUNY research—with $1.2 billion in SUNY-wide sponsored research expenditures across the system. Our ongoing leadership in the use of AI for the public good is booming, thanks to Governor Hochul's Empire AI initiative, hosted at the University at Buffalo.
Empire AI is making it possible for SUNY researchers to help us better understand everything from antisemitism on social media to climate change. Binghamton University Associate Professor Jeremy Blackburn's work with AI aims to—in his words—"understand jerks on the internet." His research uses AI applications that comb massive troves of social media data to help us understand how social media is used to spread extremist ideologies. The computing horsepower offered through Empire AI allows him to probe data deeper and ask more sophisticated questions.
Jeremy recently heard that a grant he received from the National Science Foundation, for studying misinformation and disinformation online, was terminated. While this is a huge loss, he's grateful to be at SUNY, and in New York State, where he's hopeful Empire AI and the support of Binghamton University will allow him to continue his work, and bring in more students to be part of it.
Jeremy is here with us today.
Even as work gets underway to build the permanent home of Empire AI on UB's campus, we are not stopping there. Last year, we announced eight new departments and centers of AI and Society across our campuses. This year, we will build partnerships between our research-intensive University Centers and other two- and four-year campuses to engage more students in AI-powered research and in AI workforce readiness.
And we will launch the SUNY Brain Institute, a multi-campus effort that applies our strength in collaborative neuroscience research and innovation to address brain health challenges like aging and mental health with new neurotechnologies.
We are fortunate to have world-class expertise and state leadership that believes wholeheartedly in helping us grow the reach and scope of SUNY research, at a time when backing down looks to some like the path of least resistance.
Similarly, SUNY persists in continued investments in student success and excellence, even as those with big megaphones and sledgehammers try to undermine the value of public higher education.
The unique power of public higher education is deeply personal to me. I have seen it fulfill countless American dreams in my own life, starting with my mother, who came to New York City from Puerto Rico as a child, learned English in New York City public schools, and became the first in her family to graduate from college. And I see it happening every day across our 64 campuses—they uplift the lives of students and families, strengthen New York's economy, and contribute to the health of our democracy.
For two consecutive years, we've grown enrollment in every sector of the system—from doctoral-granting institutions to community colleges, to our colleges of technology, to comprehensive campuses.
But this power and potential can't be fully realized if higher education isn't affordable and accessible. I believe SUNY's unique strength in making the American dream possible for students across New York State rests, in part, on its affordable tuition. With the help of state and federal financial aid, more than half of our in-state undergraduate students attend our campuses entirely tuition-free.
There is a place at SUNY for every New Yorker, and it's our job to help every student find the campus where they will thrive. This year, we launched Governor Hochul's Top Ten Percent Promise to guarantee a spot for top high school seniors at our selective campuses, and next fall, we'll bring the Promise to even more high schools across the state.
Students must also be given tools and support to complete their degrees. Since we implemented the nation's leading retention and completion programs—ASAP and ACE—at 25 of our campuses, more than 4,200 students have received access to personalized advising services, financial support, flexible course schedules, career advising, and a more connected campus community. ASAP and ACE participants are more likely to stay in school, and earn more credits towards graduation.
When Shaqueta Small, a 41-year-old mother of six, first enrolled at Cayuga Community College, she was ready to make a change. Twenty years working in a hair salon and raising kids had been fulfilling, but it was a lot of time to spend on her feet. She felt excited to go back to school and pursue child psychology. But even with her determination and can-do spirit, the first semesters were tough. She still had a 5-year-old at home and another child on the way. She juggled seven courses over Zoom her first semester and finished with a 1.8 GPA. Then, Shaqueta's ASAP mentor helped her sign up for childcare assistance so she could attend classes in person. Shaqueta didn't even know she qualified, but her mentor told her, "I got you." She helped Shaqueta take advantage of other supports offered through ASAP—classes on time management and extra tutors. Shaqueta brought her GPA up to a 3.5 and she graduated just last week. She plans to go on to get her bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in psychology. Shaqueta: I know you're still waiting to hear back from schools, but I am absolutely confident we'll see "doctor" by your name before we know it.
I'm so thrilled Shaqueta is here with us today.
With the additional investment from this year's state budget, SUNY is now on a path to expand ASAP and ACE to 7,000 students this fall and 10,000 students in the next two years. Our academic momentum campaign will scale research-backed interventions systemwide. And we're also piloting evening and weekend childcare at community colleges to serve more students like Shaqueta.
I am equally proud of SUNY's place at the heart of New York's economic renaissance—from advanced manufacturing to AI to the future of health care. In a time of economic contraction across the globe, opportunity is blooming in the Empire State—and SUNY is everywhere that expansion is happening.
It is our job to unlock doors to careers that change life trajectories for first-generation students like my mom. It is our job to provide opportunities for career advancement in the workforce of today and tomorrow.
We're rising to meet this moment with ambitious goals. One of the greatest areas of opportunity in New York state is in health care. SUNY produces 1 in 3 of the state's MD graduates, one-third of its nursing graduates, 20 percent of its dentists, and ALL of its new optometrists. Yet, as proud as we are of these numbers, we know the gaps in the healthcare workforce field in the years ahead are so incredibly vast. We're setting the standard for how to bridge them: from more investment in our community college nursing and allied health programs… to a big bet on nursing simulation labs… to programs designed to grow the pipeline for nursing educators.
We also want every student to participate in a high-quality internship or other experiential learning opportunity before they earn their degree. Because we know: whether you're an English major or a budding engineer or a student in a new PTECH early college high school partnering with a SUNY campus—these experiences are essential to upward mobility. Thanks to our historic increases in operating aid, we have been able to provide $14.5 million in annual recurring funding to campuses to expand paid internships and wraparound support. We've also launched several incredible internship programs, including the Chancellor's Summer Research Excellence Fund, Veterans Enrollment and Support Internships, and the SUNY Climate Corps. This year, we will continue to scale our internship programs—starting with a pledge that 100% of students who enroll in our Educational Opportunity Program will have access to an internship before they graduate.
And we will establish a network of regional coordinators to connect students and campuses with employers for high-quality internships.
We are absolutely thrilled that these commitments can grow as we implement Governor Hochul's Free Community College initiative for adults to earn associate's degrees in high-demand fields like renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, and cybersecurity. SUNY Reconnect will change the lives of New Yorkers ages 25-55 without a college degree. It means their tuition, fees, books, and supplies will be covered. It means they'll get access to advising, support, and other tools to help them realize their potential and transform their lives.
We know that these are the kinds of experiences that not only pave pathways to future careers for students but illuminate new roads that may have once been invisible—particularly for students who are first-generation or come from underrepresented or nontraditional backgrounds. This includes our men and women in uniform. As a civilian, Gabe Cerda is an expert explosive detection canine handler—which is pretty impressive on its own. But he also serves honorably in the New York Army National Guard, and was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Military Veteran Opportunity Program at SUNY Empire. SUNY's credit for prior learning policy made sure Gabe's vast expertise and experience counted toward his coursework, where he's earning a 3.6 GPA and hopes to graduate with a bachelor's in criminal justice next year.
Gabe wasn't able to make it to Albany today because he's on active duty status, serving our state. Let's take a moment and give some applause for all those who study and serve at the same time.
The support for servicemembers and veterans is one of many ways we demonstrate our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
At SUNY, DEI is not only one of our pillars; it's in our DNA. Our enabling statute, written more than 75 years ago, promises that SUNY "will provide to the people of New York educational services of the highest quality, with the broadest possible access, fully representative of all segments of the population…."
Often, I think there's confusion about what DEI means—so I'd like to talk about how we do this at SUNY, and then, more importantly, about why we do it.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion means that our general education curriculum exposes every SUNY undergraduate to a range of ideas and experiences. This means if you're pre-med, perhaps you're learning about the persistent racial disparities in maternal health. It means if you're getting a business degree, you should learn about the racial wealth gap and systems that have excluded people of color from opportunity. If you're an English major, you should read a wide, diverse range of authors.
DEI means continuing to make absolutely clear that there is no place for antisemitism on our campuses, just as there is no place for racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, or any other form of hatred or bigotry. To help create safe, inclusive campus environments, starting this fall we will ensure that all student organization leaders are trained in federal Title VI civil rights protections. This builds on our requirements that all faculty and staff complete Title VI training, and that every campus appoints a Title VI coordinator.
DEI means supporting students with disabilities and making sure our faculty and staff have the resources they need to help neurodiverse students, for example, thrive in all parts of their lives and in their campus communities.
DEI means continuing to build pipelines for leaders from all backgrounds committed to supporting our diverse students. In the next year, we'll launch our Disability Support Leadership Institute, following the success of our Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Leadership Institute, Hispanic Leadership Institute, and Black Leadership Institute.
And it means continuing to recruit faculty dedicated to advancing the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion who can excel in tenure-track positions through our PRODiG+ postdoctoral fellowship.
For Stony Brook PRODiG+ fellow Daniene Byrne—whose work on technology and social justice includes everything from AI to the policy challenges of getting self-driving vehicles on our streets safely—becoming a PRODiG+ fellow expanded her belief in what was possible. And, in Daniene, Stony Brook gets a scholar who is not only doing rigorous, novel work—but who is thinking big about encouraging non-traditional students to get into engineering, to expand their definition of what STEM can be.
I'm thrilled Daniene could make it today.
DEI is the secret sauce that gives universities the unique power to bring Americans together across all lines of difference—geography and race, religion and income, politics and nationality. It is our responsibility to give our students the chance to understand each other and find commonalities within those differences.
That's why we launched our Civics and Service agenda… why we focus on recruiting AmeriCorps alumni to our campuses… why we inaugurated Civic Education & Engagement and Civil Discourse Faculty Fellows… and why we will soon require all SUNY undergraduates to build constructive dialogue skills as part of our general education framework.
It is all too easy to fall for divisive rhetoric, or to believe we're so hopelessly fractured that civil discourse isn't worth trying. But I think this is one of the highest callings of public higher education: that it summons our wisest minds and most generous selves, teaches us to listen openly, embrace arguments informed by nuance, disagree respectfully, and probe not only our opponents' assumptions but also our own.
I've seen its power in my own life. In 2016, while I was serving as U.S. Secretary of Education for President Obama, I had the rare opportunity to uncover some family history. I was asked to give the commencement address at University of Maryland Eastern Shore, the Maryland HBCU from which my grandmother graduated in 1894. I started doing some family history research to prepare for the speech. A family friend who had done genealogical research at the Schomburg Center at the New York Public Library offered to help. One night, I got an email telling me that the place where my great-grandfather was enslaved was just 25 miles from my then-home, in Silver Spring, Maryland. Not only that, the cabin where my great-grandfather and his family lived as enslaved people was still standing on the property—and it was still owned by the family that are direct-line descendants of the family that enslaved our family.
After some awkward family conversations about how to proceed (How do you first reach out? Do you email? Do you call? Do you just show up?), my wife and daughters and I were invited to tour the property by the Becker family, who still live in the main house of the plantation constructed in the 1700s, whose forebears owned mine.
Over the years and despite these unusual circumstances, we have become, in some sense, friends—the Beckers and the Kings. I have only praise for the way the Beckers welcomed us, for their honest desire to explore this relationship and shared past with us.
They were open to learning, and so were we. We have had hard conversations as we've confronted our shared history together.
One of these conversations happened after that initial visit. We had invited the Beckers to our own home for brunch. This was during a time of growing demands for local governments to remove Confederate symbols. Frances Becker explained that she had been upset that a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier modeled after her relative had been removed. They wanted to know what I thought.
Now, the Beckers are truly nice people. Not only do they mean no harm, they actively wish my family well. I know they believed they were merely honoring their ancestors for their military service, not for the cause they were defending.
Three generations after their family had owned ours, it fell to us to explain that a Confederate statue should be taken down because of what it celebrates and glorifies. It fell to us to explain that so many of those statues were constructed not as memorials in the immediate aftermath of the war, but decades later, as symbols of hostility to civil rights progress.
I reflected on this conversation several weeks ago when I attended the unveiling of the Harriet Tubman statue at Binghamton University. We're lucky to have this rich part of civil rights history—key pieces of the iconic Underground Railroad—in Binghamton, New York, and we're proud to honor that history at SUNY. The statue itself, by an incredible artist named Zoe Dufour, is a beautiful and stunning tribute. You should all go see it.
But I asked myself why it mattered so much that we had all taken time out to be there. We all know Harriet Tubman. We know this history. And I thought about the ways in which physical markers like statues had been used to distort our history for so long. I thought about the ways many of our leaders today want to erase complicated and painful parts of our history, going so far as to remove books about civil rights from libraries, demonizing anything that might be deemed "too woke." In contrast, I thought about how the Harriet Tubman statue and the freedom trail stand as symbols of "an America always becoming," a nation conceived in liberty but marked by the cruelty of slavery, a nation with a complicated but profoundly hopeful history of expanding the circle of opportunity in fits and starts.
And I thought about how these hard, uncomfortable conversations with people in our lives—like the Beckers, who may have been taught to see history through tinted lenses but are kind and well-intentioned—are so expansive, so important, and on a large scale—so crucial to a thriving democracy.
And I believe in my bones that's what we're doing at SUNY. Expanding knowledge, opening up new worlds, conducting innovative research that explores answers to tough questions, forging connections through exposure to diverse experiences, backgrounds, and new ideas. Giving our students the tools to succeed in a complex, fast-changing world.
You don't have to believe me. Take it from Destiny Hopkinson, a University at Buffalo student in the Empire State Service Corps who I met earlier this year. We launched this program last fall at more than 40 campuses with 500 students in paid service internships. Empire State Service Corps members work to better their communities in all kinds of ways—tutoring kids in high-need schools, providing peer mental health support, helping connect students to food benefits. Destiny just graduated with a degree in political science. She received the Dorothy M. Haas Community Engagement Award for her work in the corps, earned a community engagement microcredential, and hopes to become an attorney advocating for children.
I'm so grateful Destiny could make it today.
I asked Destiny what the best part of this work was, about why it matters.
She said: "SUNY students need to learn about the world around them so we can better understand it, and better contribute to it. You need to learn about people. You need to learn how your community works. You need to learn what people actually think."
Destiny gets it!
So I leave here filled with optimism that's grounded in our progress, our results, and our strength—that not only can we meet this moment—we already are. We're clear-eyed about the stakes. We can hold that worst-case scenario alien's vision as a risk that motivates us—but it won't be our reality.
The vision we are realizing every day, at SUNY, is one where we are unlocking medical mysteries, taking action on climate change, and caring for our heroes. One where we are harnessing technological power for the public good. One where students from all walks of life receive an excellent and affordable education and gain skills and experiences to be thoughtful citizens and stewards of our democracy.
The state of SUNY is strong. And it's getting stronger. Our strength is undaunted by the headlines and the enormity of the threats we face. And together, we'll continue to create stronger communities, a stronger New York, a stronger tomorrow.
Thank you.
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