Getting Serious About Internationalizing SUNY

SUNY System Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher is convening a strategic planning session to "set priorities for internationalization systemwide, with a focus on how SUNY can help New York's economy." We can't find anything about this right now except for this brief Chronicle piece by Karen Fischer, but it sounds interesting. We hope someone inside the process will report out, both on the process and how integrated it will be. "The daylong session will yield two or three measurable outcomes for international success, Ms. Zimpher said, including targets for international-student recruitment, study abroad, or scholarly exchanges. Having clear gauges for success will hold SUNY officials accountable, she said."

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

So How Do We Get to Berkeley? Spend Big on SUNY, Panel Says

Karen W. Arenson, writing in The New York Times about an early copy of a report of the New York State Commission on Higher Education, says that the report calls for an additional 2,000 faculty in the SUNY System, as well as a $3B "innovation fund for research grants in fields that can fuel economic development." May require registration and log-in for access. This report, which we will link to in the SCUP Links Blog as soon as it is public, may be the biggest statement yet of a future that relies on universities and colleges as major economic forces. Here is a link to the commission's website, where PDFs of much of the public testimony are available.

Robert G. Shibley, a Buffalo architecture and planning professor who is advising the president, described the Amherst campus as “a monument to blank walls” and said, “Building soul back into the campus is a major mission of mine.”

All this takes money. Dr. Simpson’s plan for growth does not carry dollar amounts. But a memorandum for the governor’s office said that implementing the blueprint over 13 years would require a one-time investment of $1.6 billion for new faculty members, new residence halls and other capital improvements, and infusions of $226 million a year for additional faculty members.

Mr. Constantine said that the numbers may seem large if seen as only for higher education, but that they are “more realistic” if also viewed as investments in economic development, work force development, urban revitalization and the future of western New York.

The Difference Between "Budget Total" and "Total Budget" Apparently Matters for Community Colleges

This article, "Who Controls Community College Budgets," is from Inside Higher Education by Doug Lederman.

The state’s highest court ruled last week that the SUNY system’s Board of Regents was within its rights in 2003 when it issued regulations that limited county governments to approving the “budget total” rather than the “total budget” of their local community colleges. In New York’s higher education governance structure, county and local governments “sponsor” two-year colleges and have final say over their budgets, which are set and administered by the state university system.