Advancing our Distinction: A Bold Vision for Geneseo

2022 Opening Convocation Address by President Denise A. Battles, August 26, 2022

I appreciate your being here for this Opening Convocation. For those who are new or haven’t participated previously, this event serves as my annual State of the College address. This is the eighth such presentation, marking the culmination of Geneseo’s sesquicentennial year celebrations and - in many ways - launching our next chapter. I say that for several reasons.

For one, this represents the first time in three years when - happily! - we have been able to gather, in person, in our traditional meeting space absent the required wearing of a mask. For another, we face a pivotal and dynamic time for higher education and SUNY institutions.

We are, of course, emerging from a prolonged pandemic, an event that exacerbated known challenges to higher education, including demographic changes that have led to a sustained diminishment in the number of traditional-aged high school graduates. Both factors have negatively impacted higher education enrollment generally, and significantly in our state.

Added to that are difficult economic conditions, characterized by worrisome inflation and challenges in recruiting and retaining a well-qualified workforce.

We have also experienced leadership transition within the SUNY System, and the international search for our next Chancellor is well underway and expected to yield the successful candidate imminently. We have a recently appointed Governor - a proud Geneseo parent, by the way - who in her first State of the State address articulated an ambitious and exciting vision for the SUNY System.

As a campus, it’s essential that we respond thoughtfully and effectively to our dynamic landscape. To set the stage for our actions going forward, I’ll start by outlining - in video format - key selected campus accomplishments in a momentous year.

Selected Successes

Our undergraduate curriculum is central to Geneseo’s identity as one of this country’s premier public liberal arts colleges. Over the past several years, individuals across campus have been deeply engaged in reconceiving that curriculum, first by developing a set of robust student learning outcomes - the Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education, or GLOBE - and then designing the undergraduate curriculum aligned with those outcomes. This essential work - the first significant revision in roughly 40 years - was undertaken against the backdrop of a SUNY System reconsideration of its General Education Requirements, a set of expectations with which all SUNY institutions, including Geneseo, will comply. The result, A Geneseo Education for a Connected World, represents a tremendous accomplishment:  a curriculum that assures our students’ acquisition of broad and specialized knowledge, intellectual and practical skills, and which supports transformational learning through integrative and applied learning experiences.  Importantly, the inclusion of required coursework in diversity, pluralism, and power; world cultures and values; and contemporary global challenges among others will equip our graduates to be better informed and engaged participants in our global society. In doing so, the curriculum supports our mission and values and our Community Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Notably, its alignment with the SUNY General Education framework will foster our transfer friendliness, an aim that is also central to our mission and values. I want to express my deep appreciation to all who undertook this critical work; we should take pride in the quality of the outcome.

As substantial as it was, our curriculum development work was not limited to the undergraduate curriculum redesign; the past year also saw the creation or launch of multiple new majors. As we seek to stabilize our enrollment, I can’t overstate the importance of refining our academic program portfolio to ensure we’re offering high-quality mission-aligned programs that respond to student interest and employer demand.  Among the additions are new majors in Sustainability Studies, Data Analytics, and Finance as well as seven minors.    We also expanded our academic program-related partnerships, easing pathways for students seeking professional degrees. For example, we signed a historic three-way articulation agreement with Corning Community College and the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, the country’s largest medical school, in support of students seeking admission to dental or osteopathic medicine programs. We also established 11 articulation program agreements with the Northeast College of Health Sciences, which will facilitate our students’ pursuit of the Doctor of Chiropractic degree.

Our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and - as articulated in our recently revised values - belonging - is unwavering, and we made tangible strides in this regard as well. Among them was the establishment of a dedicated Multicultural Center through renovating the former Blake Hall Knight Spot. The Center represents a noteworthy partnership with Student Association, who informed its design and sponsored its furnishings. Also, in partnership with student leaders as well as College Senate, we effected a change to our academic calendar to formalize a class-free day for future Diversity Summits. We successfully launched Umoja House, a new living learning community where students of diverse backgrounds can come together in a supportive environment, and we elevated what had been a part-time LGBTQ+ Programs and Services Coordinator position to become a full-time Associate Director of Multicultural Affairs for LGBTQ+ Life. Reflecting the strong commitment to DEIB by our faculty and staff, nearly 200 of us, including all members of the Cabinet, have now completed the Advancing Cultural Competency Certificate program.

We continue to receive affirmation of our efficacy in delivering on our mission by multiple external entities. One should not place too much stock in a specific numerical ranking among the several thousands of U.S. higher education institutions; however, the consistency of our appearance in the upper tiers of many such lists is a heartening indicator. U.S. News and World Report once again placed Geneseo third of the “Top Public Schools” among the regional northern universities, and second in the “Best Undergraduate Teaching” category.  We were featured again in the Princeton Review’s Best 387 Colleges in 2022 as well as the Fiske Guide to Colleges 2023, which praised the personalized attention offered by our faculty.  

As much as we appreciate our annual placement on those lists, more satisfying are acknowledgements of our commitment to equity and advancing the social good. For example, Washington Monthly uses a quantitative methodology to rank higher education institutions’ contribution to the public good based on three dimensions: social mobility, research, and promoting public service. For the ninth consecutive year, our college was included in the top five U.S. Master’s institutions, this time placing number one. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports regularly on U.S. higher education institutions’ 6-year graduation rates for students receiving a Pell grant, the federal program established to support low-income undergraduates.  
Notably, SUNY Geneseo not only placed fifteenth on the Chronicle’s 2021 list, but the graduation rate for Pell students slightly exceeded that for all students.

And our reputation for providing an exceptional education at great value is amply validated, such as through our inclusion in Washington Monthly’s Best Bang for the Buck rankings, where we appeared among the top 50 northeast institutions, and the Princeton Review’s Best Value Colleges for 2022. Those accolades no doubt reflect our strong four-year graduation rates, which landed Geneseo in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s top ten public highly residential institutions, alongside the College of William and Mary, UNC - Chapel Hill, and UCLA.

The past year was another stellar one in terms of achievement by our students and recent graduates. Many of those individuals pursue federally supported international study opportunities. Last year’s national competitions for the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, which “enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad,” saw a record-setting 12 students receive awards, supporting planned experiences to countries across the globe, including Austria, France, Ghana, Iceland, Japan, Senegal, and South Korea. In all, for the 2021-22 application cycle, a remarkable 25 students or alumni received international scholarships and fellowships for study abroad, internships, and teaching.  

Geneseo is distinguished by its dual status as a top-achieving institution in both our academic and athletic pursuits, and the past year was no exception. Our return to a full year of intercollegiate competition was highlighted by 11 SUNYAC championships among our 19 eligible sports, including our Ice Knights, who advanced to the NCAA Division III national championship game in Lake Placid. As well, the 2021-22 season saw Geneseo’s receipt of the sixth consecutive Patrick R. Damore SUNYAC Commissioner’s Cup, awarded for aggregate success across the athletic conference’s 20 sports. Even more impressive, the Learfield Directors’ Cup ranks the overall success of the nation’s intercollegiate athletics programs by NCAA division. Once again, and for the fifth consecutive time, Geneseo placed in the top 20 institutions in NCAA Division III, finishing at number 19 of the 443 schools, and fourth among the public institutions.

As we know, our exceptional students go on to become equally outstanding alumni, and the passion our graduates feel for Geneseo is unequalled. That spirit was reflected in the 2022 Reunion Weekend, our first such in-person convening since 2019. Through the hard work of our Alumni Relations staff, the College saw an astonishing - and record-busting - 1,881 registered participants at this year’s event. The outpouring of interest was such that, for the first time, we had to cap pre-registration to ensure we could serve attendees well. It was a wonderful capstone to our year-long sesquicentennial celebration.

Geneseo also experienced key successes in our efforts to secure outside funds, both in the form of grants and contracts as well as funds raised through advancement. In the first case, in 2021-22 we received 13 grant awards totaling nearly $2.7 million, and our grant expenditures through the Research Foundation for SUNY exceeded the $2 million mark for the first time, at more than $2.38 million. In the latter instance, the final tally of $5.3 million raised in new gifts and pledges in fiscal year 2022 exceeded our goal, a 15% increase from the prior year and our second highest dollar amount ever. Some of that success arose from Geneseo’s stellar participation in the New York State Charitable Tax Credit program, an initiative to incentivize charitable giving with the aim of improving public education in our state. Remarkably, and belying our small size, Geneseo raised $1.1M through this program, which was the third-highest total among the 64 SUNY institutions. We were only surpassed by two University Centers, which speaks to the efficacy of our College Advancement colleagues as well as the aforementioned passion for Geneseo. Faculty and staff were among the donors who participated in the program, some of whom lent their expertise to champion the program to others, and I want to extend my sincere gratitude to them.

We are rightly proud of our strong relationship with the community that shares our name, and the past year saw achievements in that respect as well. The refreshing of the Geneseo Village-College Relations Compact and the continuation under a new Mayor of the Community Chat program, a community outreach event hosted jointly by the leadership of both entities, evidence a healthy town-gown partnership.

As we all recognize, accreditation is among the foremost indicators of programmatic or institutional quality and efficacy, and in this respect too, Geneseo had impressive success. Our School of Business colleagues deserve kudos for earning reaffirmation of accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, or AACSB, a distinction earned by less than five percent of the world’s 16,000 business schools. And we all should find much satisfaction in the reaffirmation of institutional accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Notably, not only did the College emerge from the process with no recommendations nor requirements, but the Site Team’s final report to the Commission contained an impressive eight formal Recognitions of Accomplishments, Progress, or Exemplary/Innovative Practices. Among those eight Recognitions was one of which we should all be proud, as it highlights the value Geneseo places on consultative leadership. Specifically, the Site Team applauded our College’s receipt of the SUNY Shared Governance Award, “a system-level honor and recognition…conferred annually upon one SUNY campus in recognition of outstanding contributions to the advancement of shared governance.” The award “underscores SUNY’s commitment to academic excellence and public good through collaborative models of governance.” I want to thank my colleagues on the College Senate leadership, our student leaders, and all who contributed to our application for this deeply gratifying recognition for our institution.

In short, we should be very proud of our many accomplishments during our sesquicentennial year. What a fitting start to our next 150 years! 

Challenges and Opportunities for Improvement

While it is fitting and important to celebrate our achievements, building on those successes requires an understanding of our key challenges and opportunities for improvement, and so I will now turn our attention to them.

As I mentioned at the start of my address, one of the most significant issues we face is central to our operations:  sustaining enrollment. The nation more broadly and our state have experienced profound demographic changes that have substantially affected the pool of traditional-aged prospective college students.

New York’s production of high school graduates plateaued a dozen years ago, following a sustained period of growth that enabled Geneseo to become increasingly selective in shaping its student body. Projections through academic year 2037 show a sizable decline in this pool of traditional-age prospective students - more than 15% - translating to heightened competition for fewer individuals among institutions who have largely relied on this population for their recruitment, Geneseo among them.

The racial and ethnic makeup of that same pool of individuals is also shifting rapidly, becoming increasingly diverse. In that Geneseo - a Predominantly White Institution - has regrettably lagged the state with respect to student racial and ethnic demographics, our attentiveness to closing these gaps is essential, from both an ethical standpoint and an enrollment perspective.

A related issue is that the pool of potential transfer students - many of which, for Geneseo, arrive from SUNY community colleges - is also diminishing. Indeed, over the past decade, the SUNY community college enrollment has plummeted by over 35%, with our top feeder community college falling by more than 50%. A self-inflicted issue for Geneseo was that our prior baccalaureate curriculum and associated practices presented obstacles to seamless transfer. That’s among the reasons I’m so enthused that our new curriculum addresses that undue barrier, positioning us to reverse our sustained decrease in transfer student enrollment.

It’s worth noting that the drop in transfer students has heightened the pressure to recruit first-time full-time students to fill out our entering class, a tall order in this market. Of course, enrollment is not merely a function of recruitment. When we admit students, it’s with the expectation that they will achieve the desired outcome of their Geneseo journey, typically by earning their baccalaureate degree from our college. In other words, we seek to support their success, by retaining and ultimately seeing them cross the stage at commencement. Regrettably, our student retention numbers have slipped, which further impedes our ability to maintain enrollment. For that reason, I’m excited about the ongoing implementation of our Navigate Student Success Management System, among many other retention-directed initiatives.

In sum, the intersection of the factors I have outlined, compounded by pandemic-related disruptions in typical college-going patterns and our institutional decision to prioritize student academic profile over headcount, have negatively affected our ability to achieve stable enrollment. While that institutional prioritization of academic profile over headcount is easily enough stated, the implications for our financial health and sustainability are serious. That’s because the vast majority of our campus operating budget is directly tied to enrollment.

So, while we are grateful for the direct state support that we receive as a public institution, a diminishment in enrollment prompts commensurate drops in tuition, room rents, and other fees, not to mention revenues associated with campus auxiliary services such as meal plans, vending, and laundry. This phenomenon is layered on top of our college’s pre-existing multimillion dollar structural budget gap - that is, insufficient revenues relative to our expenses - which has been the focus of multiple campus presentations, communications, and actions. It also comes at a time when pandemic relief funding is being discontinued.

To be sure, our engagement in initiatives such as the Voluntary Incentivized Separation Program, the on-going hiring freeze, expense controls, revenue generation, Program Analysis and Alignment, and funding advocacy have yielded positive impacts. Our work to stem financial loss and create one-time bridge funding, such as through the sales of McClellan House and the Big Tree Inn by Campus Auxiliary Services, has also been fruitful. However, the persistence and indeed the expansion of our budget gap call for heightened action, especially given our enrollment challenges.

And while we won’t know our fall enrollment numbers for several weeks, the continuation of our pattern of graduating large classes while welcoming more modestly sized ones will assuredly result in a smaller student body this fall, with projections hovering around 4,150. In short, we are down 1,500 students from pre-pandemic averages, meaning we have roughly $30 million less annually to cover our core operation expenses at a time when we are experiencing inflation of expenses.
For clarity, that $30 million estimate does not represent our structural budget gap, which is a distinct concept and is on the order of several million dollars. These daunting numbers, however, highlight the importance and urgency of our community’s strategic and bold response, a response I know we’re capable of and which is sought today.

Our college’s expressed commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, affirmation of “belonging” as a core value, and intention to become an antiracist college are important manifestations of our public liberal arts mission. While articulations of our commitments and values are important, they ring hollow unless our campus community is broadly diverse, welcoming, and supportive of all. Last year we initiated a check on our efforts to achieve that end, as we engaged our students in a campus climate survey. That survey, which was developed and implemented by colleagues on the Campus Climate Analysis subcommittee of the Commission on Diversity and Community, provides us with vital information on our strengths and areas for improvement as well as a much-needed baseline against which we can measure our progress. Indeed, that study reveals disparities in our students’ experiences and perceptions of our campus climate, particularly among specific underserved populations, that we must and will address.

A continued challenge is the condition of our college’s physical plant. While the SUNY System struggles with deferred maintenance, by the System’s own metrics, Geneseo is an outlier in terms of the criticality of our facilities needs, which we know all too well. Accordingly, my team and I advocated strongly for deferred maintenance funding.

We are deeply grateful for the robust partnership with the State University Construction Fund, which has worked with our facilities team to enable much-needed upgrades to the Union Ballroom and Ira S. Wilson Arena; the ongoing renovation of Milne which remains on time, scope, and budget; and the anticipated renovations of, or enhancements to, Sturges and Fraser Halls and College Circle. As these projects move forward, we will see exciting and tangible progress in upgrading our facilities to reflect the evolving needs of higher education.

Notably, the Construction Fund is also supporting the development of our Master Plan, the document that charts a long-term vision for our college’s physical plant. In all, these and other projects represent a state investment on the order of 100M in just three years - during the pandemic! This is a remarkable level of support, even as we acknowledge that addressing our deferred maintenance will be an ongoing effort.

An emerging item that is not inherently problematic, but which merits our attention, pertains to an action earlier this year by the New York State Education Department’s Board of Regents. For decades, our state has been a national outlier in the strictness of its definition of “university” status, requiring doctoral programs in at least three academic fields among its eligibility criteria. That meant, for example, that New York institutions with a broad involvement in master’s programming were designated as “colleges,” a term that in other states generally connotes schools whose highest degree is the associate’s or perhaps bachelor’s degree. Moreover, in some countries, “college” designates an entity focused on secondary rather than higher education.

Acknowledging the potential for confusion and enrollment disadvantages in a competitive market, the Board of Regents revised the doctoral criterion such that institutions offering graduate programs in at least three specified discipline areas may now be eligible to secure university status. Not surprisingly, multiple institutions promptly sought and secured that designation, including Daemen, Dominican, D’Youville, Houghton, Iona, Medaille, Molloy, St. John Fisher, St. Joseph’s, and Utica.

While no redesignations have occurred yet within SUNY, a sizable number of currently designated colleges meet the eligibility requirement. Geneseo, with master’s programming in two of the designated discipline areas, falls just short of eligibility. Again, while not clearly problematic, the prospect of competitor and sister institutions securing the university designation while Geneseo remains a college may make it advisable to engage in focused marketing about our status. It might even provide an opportunity to highlight our liberal arts college mission.

As I have outlined, Geneseo made exemplary strides during our sesquicentennial year, even as we grappled with critical challenges and opportunities for improvement. I’d now like to take a step back and share an experience that I hope will provide some useful context for our work going forward.

A Vignette – Encountering the Unexpected Journeys

As we all know, student recruitment is vitally important to Geneseo’s operations, and in April 2022, the College’s Admitted Knights Days were in full swing. These are the yield events in which we welcome prospective students to our campus, hoping to confirm their interest in Geneseo and see them commit to enroll.

I always enjoy my engagement with prospective students, their families, and other supporters; the excitement as they consider this significant step in their lives’ journeys is palpable and contagious. I take my role in Admitted Knights Days seriously, as I know that, on many campuses, prospective students - and sometimes even enrolled students! - rarely if ever encounter their institution’s president. I prioritize these events and hope my presence signals something about Geneseo’s culture and values; students should have every expectation that they will regularly see and interact with me on campus.  

As I am wont to do, I showed up early for a mid-April Admitted Knights Day, so that I could interact with attendees as they joined us for breakfast, in advance of my formal welcome and introduction to SUNY Geneseo. On the day in question, our region was experiencing a late winter weather event which was a cause for concern, given the large number of expected attendees, worrisome travel conditions, and potential for cancellations or delayed arrivals. Intrepid attendees trickled in to Kuhl Gym on their campus arrival, many delayed by the inclement weather, and headed to the opening breakfast buffet.  

Clusters of participants collected their meals and claimed one of the many small table-rounds that populated the gym and ate while awaiting the formal program’s start. I decided to “work the room” and visit individual tables, greeting our visitors, identifying the prospective students, and asking them about their higher education goals and how Geneseo might support their achievement.  

I started at the room’s front, where I saw a single occupant - a man who appeared to be substantially older than I am. I assumed that he was accompanying his student - perhaps a grandchild - who was no doubt in the buffet line. I decided to return to the table once it was fully occupied and moved on to others. In completing my “circuit,” I re-encountered the table at the front. The single occupant remained, and there was no sign of any companions. I belatedly allowed my Advancing Cultural Competency Certificate training to kick in and wondered - had I made a flawed assumption about the individual at the table?  

I approached the man, extended a hearty Geneseo welcome, and asked: “Are you our prospective student?” He beamed at me and responded proudly, “Yes, I am!” I sensed that there was far more behind that simple three-word declaration than it might appear to convey. Even as I internally scolded myself for my erroneous initial speculation about his identity, his answer delighted me. “How very cool - and unexpected,” I thought, that Geneseo would attract a “seasoned” student prospect.  

I asked if there was a particular program that had drawn his interest, and he immediately identified a lab-based STEM discipline, which was also entirely unexpected. He was well-aware of the exceptional quality of the program of interest; when I highlighted that fact, he said it was why he was here, pursuing a welcome second chance to secure a desired degree.

Even though months have passed, I can’t think about that interaction without feeling inspired once again, and frankly, somewhat emotional. For me, that and other such experiences - when I encounter the unexpected journeys that Geneseo enables - encapsulate the transformative power of our college.

I felt that power when I attended a first-generation student reception, where an undocumented student shared his story with me, leaving me awed by his fortitude in pursuing his educational goals despite formidable personal circumstances. I experienced it in speaking with a student who had landed a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, the U.S. State Department program that “enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad.” Through that program she was headed to Ghana, a trip that will support her interest in studying infectious diseases and her career aspirations focusing on the public health of underserved communities. I felt it again when I attended GREAT Day and heard a confident, budding researcher, a proud AOP participant and recent U.S. immigrant, describe his collaborative research, work that aligns with his goal to be a physician. And I perceived it once more at a McNair Student Scholar event, where a non-traditional student who had navigated the foster care system spoke with me about her passion for prison reform.

These are the kinds of unexpected journeys fostered by our College that “fill my cup” - and perhaps yours as well. They are a key reason I am so proud to be affiliated with this fine institution. And I recognize that those journeys are made possible by the dedication of our talented campus community members, you among them. Thank you so much for that.

In sharing these encounters, I recognize that the reason they have stayed with me is that they are unexpected and unusual. Stories such as these should not and cannot be outliers. We know that Geneseo is a tremendously impactful institution, enabling profound, transformative, positive change among its members. As the state’s premier public liberal arts institution, our college’s opportunities should be as widely available and accessible as possible to qualified individuals who expand our largely traditional - and frankly, rather homogeneous - student body. The demographic trends I have outlined today demonstrate palpably the wisdom of broadening our reach. More compellingly, it’s the right thing to do. We cannot simply delight in encountering the occasional unexpected journeys; we must be purposeful in making them our norm. It’s with this context that I’m excited to share with you today a bold new vision for Geneseo. It’s one I sincerely hope you’ll embrace, as its achievement is only possible through campus-wide support and engagement.

Our Work Ahead

Over the past many months, my team and I have been working with key partners, including SUNY System leaders, to garner support for a future that highlights Geneseo’s distinctiveness. Accordingly, we were thrilled with Governor Hochul’s 2022 State of the State proposal to help individual SUNY campuses establish distinct identities which identified Geneseo as a candidate for the formal Honors College designation. Advancing that case has been a continuing focus of our team’s attention.

Now, some of you with a lengthy Geneseo tenure may recall past efforts to achieve Honors College status. The Honors College vision that I share here is a bold new approach, one that aligns fully with our mission and values and is responsive to the dynamic higher education landscape we have explored today. Specifically, while we seek to attain at the earliest possible opportunity the formal Honors College designation, a status we believe accurately captures our existing qualities and outstanding outcomes, our greater ambition is to build on our public-serving mission to become the nation’s first equity-minded Honors College.

The equity-centered approach builds on our work to enhance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging; is mindful of higher education’s demographic dynamism; differentiates the institution in a way that will support our enrollment efforts; and is consistent with being a preeminent public liberal arts college for the 21st century. And, by the way, it also provides a wonderful platform for leaning into our designation as a college - an honors college - as opposed to a university.

You may wonder - what will the equity-minded honors college model entail?

In many respects, it’s a natural extension of our strengths, values, and aspirations:  providing an honors experience to every student; eliminating to the extent possible the financial and structural barriers to joining our community; offering appropriate supports to help all students reach their potential and thrive; engaging students with critical issues of power, justice, and global connections through the new curriculum; and setting them up for success after graduation. 

If we can garner the needed support, both conceptually and financially, we believe we can work together to merit that equity-minded honors college designation within the next few years, which is to say, within the period of our new strategic plan. And as strategic planning guides all we do, let me now turn to that topic.

Over the past two years, as we successfully completed our prior plan, the Strategic Planning Group (or SPG) has been engaging the campus community in developing its successor. At last year’s Opening Convocation, I announced our new mission and values, and we turned our attention to developing the plan and accompanying vision. I want to applaud the SPG’s dedication to broad community involvement in those activities, which resulted in participation by more than 630 students, staff, and faculty. That impressive engagement supported the SPG and campus leadership in its development work.

That effort was undertaken in the absence of knowledge of our honors college aspirations, the nascent nature of which impeded our ability to share until now. Given the interest from Albany in our ambition to attain the formal honors college designation and its implications for all that we do, it’s essential for our vision statement and strategic plan to reflect that aim. For that reason, I am asking the SPG to oversee an expedited consultative process, to be concluded no later than October 1, to recommend to the Cabinet and me a statement that fully, succinctly, and memorably captures our bold and distinctive vision. I’m also charging the SPG to build on its foundational planning efforts to infuse the work implied by an equity-minded honors college into our strategic plan by December 1. As that important work is completed, we will be guided this fall by a set of Critical Priorities that will be incorporated into our five-year strategic plan.

This afternoon, I’ll highlight selected elements.

Our five Critical Priorities call for agility in responding to the dynamism and challenges we face and acknowledge the imperative of ensuring financial and institutional stability. The vision for Geneseo I have shared with you today is at the heart of our first priority:  to expand student access and success by becoming an equity-minded honors college. This will require the kind of purposeful, communal approach I have called for, as we continue to advance a culture of learning, engagement, action, and belonging consistent with that aim. A key element is the implementation of our new curriculum, including the integrative and applied learning requirement. It will entail dedicated efforts to secure the formal honors college designation.  And while our commitment to becoming an equity-minded institution is unwavering, we recognize that securing additional resources will accelerate our progress. Therefore, we will advocate for dedicated resources, focusing on need-based student financial aid and student support, in keeping with our equity-driven approach.

As equity is central to our vision, we will continue to advance the College’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (or DEIB), our second Critical Priority. We will further improve campus climate and community wellbeing, drawing on the findings of the Campus Climate Survey of students among other relevant resources to inform our actions. We’ll additionally recruit an ongoing Director of Multicultural Affairs and leverage the unit-level entities that are engaged in DEIB strategic actions, providing an infrastructure that connects them and strengthens the impact of their work.

A third priority reinforces our commitment to support student success and mission-aligned financially-sustainable enrollment through strategic programs and initiatives. We know that the quality and dedication of Geneseo’s faculty and staff represent a true point of distinction for the high-ability students we seek, one we haven’t fully tapped in our admissions and yield activities. Accordingly, our Enrollment Management colleagues will partner with units across campus in identifying ways we can highlight that quality to support our student recruitment efforts. This and other campus-wide recruitment and retention efforts, the latter supported by a new Director of Student Retention, will help strengthen our enrollments.

We will heighten our focus on transfer students, a population we have tremendous potential to better engage and serve. Actions to support that aim include enhancements to our transfer-focused marketing, outreach, and financial aid models as well as expanded partnerships with community colleges.

The continued development of new, mission-aligned, and market-responsive undergraduate and graduate academic programs is essential. Academic Affairs will lead the effort to offer programming that is responsive to changing learner demographics and consistent with our primarily residential character.

As I have noted today, we must also broaden our reach and expand access to a Geneseo education. Accordingly, we’ll diversify learning opportunities, especially for audiences beyond our typical 18-22-year-old demographic, including through enhanced delivery to learners online and in a Rochester location, and delivery of non-credit programming that reaches our alumni and community partners.

The aforementioned efforts will support our work to enhance Geneseo’s financial health and sustainability, a fourth Critical Priority. As I have described, we have done much to reduce our expenses, including through some actions that I know have been challenging and keenly felt. While we must continue to be vigilant about that cost-reduction work, it is insufficient to address our structural budget gap; revenue-generation activities are vital. Therefore, additional core actions include developing a self-sustaining long-term financial model built upon new revenue-generating programming, making progress toward the public launch of a comprehensive fundraising campaign, and engaging in targeted advocacy to increase funding.
Throughout, we are committed to supporting our community members in effecting this transformational change.

Finally, I have highlighted our need to improve campus infrastructure, which we will do through planning and prioritization of our greatest needs. We will embrace the opportunity presented by campus master planning, making progress on current or planned projects in Milne, Sturges, and College Circle, advocating for funding to improve our IT systems and networks, and ensuring a holistic updating of our space plan in alignment with exemplary teaching, learning, scholarly activity, and outreach.

Concluding Remarks

In closing, as we conclude our sesquicentennial year and start our next chapter, we’re at a key juncture. We are one of the country’s leading public liberal arts colleges and have made impressive strides, modeling continuous quality improvement. We know, though, that higher education - and Geneseo - face daunting challenges, the magnitude and pace of which demand a conscious choice. Do we deem ourselves “satisfied” with making incremental enhancements, hewing strongly to our comfortable past practices despite clear indictors of their unsustainability? Or do we take bold actions and risk dreaming big, advancing our distinction in a profound way that will align with our values and serve students - and our state - so very well?  Make no mistake, pursuing the vision of becoming the nation’s first public equity-minded honors college is a risk - yes, a bit of a moonshot. But as Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon said, “There can be no great accomplishment without risk.” I believe strongly that we must choose the bold path for our College to achieve greatness.

The vision I’ve shared can only be possible if you and the rest of the Geneseo community embrace it as well and commit to the work needed to get us there. I truly hope you’ll accept that opportunity. And if you’ll indulge me with a final quote, one perhaps appropriate for a school with our ice hockey tradition - The NHL’s “Great One,” Wayne Gretzky, once asserted, “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” Let’s take the shot. Thank you.