Spring break is behind us. Winter obviously is not, but we do just have over seven weeks to Commencement at this point. There’s a lot to accomplish between now and then and a lot happening.

This is my 119th and second-to-last Senate meeting. I expect to make some valedictory remarks on Syracuse and shared governance at our last Senate meeting in April.

I also expect to step down as Chancellor sometime after Commencement.

I want to join in congratulating our new Chancellor-elect, Mike Haynie. I want to record that I have asked a lot of Mike over the last 12 years, and he has consistently delivered for our university. Chancellor-elect Haynie’s two decades of extraordinary experience and commitment at Syracuse, I think, make him an ideal leader for 网爆门 at this moment. I know the University is going to thrive under his guidance.

I want to extend my gratitude as well to everybody from the University Senate, the faculty, the staff, and the students who served on the Chancellor Search Committee.

It’s clear to me from the outside that this was a thoughtful, deliberate, collaborative, and exhausting process. And I thank you for all the time put into it. I am committed to doing everything in my power to position the University and Chancellor-elect Haynie for success in these last weeks of the semester. I believe the best way the Senate can help is to give Chancellor-elect Haynie some grace through the transition, which I can testify is somewhat overwhelming at Syracuse. And just please be prepared to help when called upon.

His first official order of business was helping select and announce Bryan Blair as the University’s new athletics director. Bryan joins Syracuse from the University of Toledo, where he served as the vice president and director of athletics since 2022. Bryan has earned national claim as an innovator in the changing athletics landscape, while achieving both competitive and academic success. He co-chaired the search process for Toledo’s executive vice president and provost. His experience includes leadership roles at Washington State, at Rice University, and at the University of South Carolina, where he earned a law degree. He completed his undergraduate studies at Wofford College, where he was also a D-1 student athlete on the football team. In its January report, the Senate Athletics Policy Committee outlined many challenges for Syracuse and Syracuse Athletics. That now includes a new one, which is the search for a new men’s basketball coach. From everything I’ve learned about him, Bryan Blair is the right person to lead Orange Athletics forward at this moment.

I want to follow up with two shared governance matters. First, I am meeting with the Senate’s Athletic Policy Committee Friday to go over the recommendations in their January 2026 report. There’s been a lot that’s happened this semester in the intercollegiate athletics landscape.

And second, I want to report that, assuming the Senate approves the resolution on parking at its April meeting, I intend to move forward with all four operational recommendations outlined in the report and with the governance recommendation to establish a permanent standing advisory council on parking. If appropriate, I’d like to get that done and established prior to the end of the semester, but certainly working with Chancellor-elect Haynie to have that up and running at the beginning of the fall semester.

I’m grateful for all the work of the folks on that parking council. I know it was a long project.

Thank you, everybody. I will take questions following Provost Agnew’s remarks.

It’s been a long winter. I suspect I’m not the only one on this [Senate meeting] Zoom call who is ready for spring break to start at the end of next week.

I think I should start by just saying thank you to everybody for all the work getting the University to this point of the semester, including the work in this Senate meeting. I’m very grateful. I realize it’s on top of many other obligations to our students and our research and our service. I say that because I know that March 1 is Sunday, and I do not expect it realistic that all of our units are going to pick their senators by March 1 and have elections.

I do want to report on the chancellor’s search and remind you I’m recused and have recused from that process. I know the search committee has been very active recently. I thank the Senators who serve on that committee. My understanding is that we can expect an announcement of the new chancellor next month. I do want to reiterate that I expect the new chancellor to take office no later than the end of June.

I know for all of us, there’s a lot of planes to land between now and the end of June, including getting 6,000 students successfully graduated. I just want to assure you that I’m committed to doing everything in my power in the next couple months to get those things done and to set up the University and the new chancellor for success in the years ahead.

We also have a search now for a new athletics director. Earlier this month Athletics Director John Wildhack announced his retirement effective July 1. John has been an outstanding partner through a sea of change in intercollegiate athletics. I point out that he’s been a particularly excellent leader in focusing on the academic achievement of our student athletes鈥攚hich has never been better鈥攁nd the cooperation between athletics and the academic units, which I think has never been better. He has also had to help transform our athletics facilities and lead us through a myriad of changes in intercollegiate athletics in the country, including countless challenges facing the ACC, in which he’s been a leader. I am very grateful to him.

The search committee has been appointed. I am recused from that as well because of my new position that I will be assuming in July. They’ve hired a search consultant. I know that process has to go quickly, given the market for athletic directors, but also has to be coordinated with the chancellor search, so the new chancellor is involved.

I also, by the way, expect that there will be a search for a new dean of Hendricks Chapel announced shortly, with the goal there being to have a new dean for Hendricks Chapel in place at the start of the academic year in fall 2026.

I guess the other thing to say is just that I’m aware and Senator Van Gulick mentioned the vote of the arts and sciences faculty around portfolio review and program closure. I’m aware of that. I do believe deeply that, as part of shared governance, we need to listen to each other as issues arise, including the issues that we talked about today. I also believe it’s not also the case that no program can be closed if the faculty in that program vote against it or the faculty in some unit vote against it, because as a practical matter, that would be quite a problem for the University as a whole and historically hasn’t been how it’s worked.

I think we have to recognize that we have a very thorough portfolio review process. We have a lot of confidence in the Academic Affairs team that’s been working on that, and the many faculty who have been working on it. I do believe the best approach is to engage in good faith on the merits of the program closure issues and portfolio review issues that are raised in that process. Thanks.

Thanks to the Athletics Policy Committee for their report. If there’s any Power-Four-Conference university in the country that claims all the money for athletics is coming from within athletics efforts, I think they’re not being transparent. I will tell you; the answer is some of the money is coming from the university, and most athletic departments are running deficits because of this spiral we’re in. But we’ll be more transparent than that. I think that’s the least surprising thing I can say today. I’ll explain my apparently unique position that collective bargaining ought to be part of the toolkit available in figuring out a global solution to college sports, which I believe, but apparently is controversial. I couldn’t agree more that the solution has to consider the interests of all student-athletes, including all Olympic and women’s sports.

Let me just say thanks for all the work of the committees. It sounds like there’s a lot of work to come, especially from curriculum, which is the core of what the Senate does in many ways. Thank you to those folks, and thank you for the intersectional equity report. We have been working hard on getting the Title VI office up and running, and I think [Associate Vice President and Dean of Students] Sheriah Dixon will be coming to report to that committee too. There’s a lot of shared governance work to do in the next five months this semester. I’m fully full-time, all-the-time focused on Syracuse during that period.

I want to recognize the tragic passing of Kayla Corrigan on Christmas Eve. She was a senior in the Whitman School, a marketing management major, a member of Sigma Delta Tau sorority, and deeply engaged in so much campus life. I thank Dean McKelvie of Whitman and the folks at Hendricks Chapel and the Corrigan family who are preparing a memorial service later this semester.

I also want to thank Rebecca Reed Kantrowitz for stepping up as the interim dean of Hendricks Chapel as Brian Konkol has become the president of Valparaiso University. She’s been associate dean since 2018 and helping this university in so many ways for decades. Thank you, Rebecca, who is a senator by the way.

Athletics Policy Committee Co-Chair John Wolohan referenced the Economic Impact Report. It came out earlier this month. It was completed by the same independent firm that did this study in 2017. Some quick highlights:

• The University now contributes $1.8 billion annually to the Syracuse and Central New York economy. That’s up from $1.1 billion the last time we studied in 2017.
• We now support 35,132 jobs directly attributable to the University in Central New York, which is one of every 13 jobs in the region.
• Our startup and spinoff companies also generate nearly $1 billion in annual regional economic impact.

From my point of view, those numbers are important, but the most important thing about these numbers is that the University really continues to thrive in interesting times, and it’s really helping Central New York to thrive in these times.

When I started here 12 years ago, I explained my view that the greatest contribution the University could make to the community and the region was to be a thriving, engaged international research university. I think that’s happened and continues to happen. What I mean by that is when we’re thriving, we recruit and we retain amazing, engaged people who contribute in a million ways to the community here. Today that’s more than 30,000 people in this region who live here and contribute economically and in civic engagement.

Two quick examples to celebrate. One is, to embarrass him, Brice Nordquist, who is the immediate past agenda committee chair and who, of course, is a beloved writing teacher, dean’s professor of community engagement, and Senate leader, but also helped found the Engage Humanities Network and has chaired the board of the Northside Learning Center, which provides incredible services to refugees here.

The other one to point out is that our new mayor, the new leader of Syracuse, is Sharon Owens. She’s an SU graduate, and we’re so proud of her. Community outreach is what she learned as a student here, and the value of servant leadership. Our partnership with the new mayor and her team is strong and will yield, I think, great things for the city and the region.

I also want to quickly comment on parking. We had some reports from the Parking and Transportation Advisory Council just before Christmas to the Senate. I want to emphasize there’s more issues to address, but there’s some things we can implement from that report quickly, including the recommendation on creating an established standing group to advise on parking issues, like the Employee Benefits Assessment Council. We do need that to be reviewed and adopted by the Senate, but I’m ready to implement it as soon as the Senate’s reviewed and any revisions have occurred. I would like to get that done this semester, and I think the agenda committee is working on that.

Lastly, I’ll just say this is my final semester as Chancellor. I’m very committed to this place, especially full-time for the next five months, but also very committed to helping Syracuse in any way I can thereafter. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Professor Coleman. I’m just going to quickly reflect on the fall semester and what’s coming at us in the spring semester.

First, I want to acknowledge the passing of architecture professor Fei Wang, who directed the School of Architecture’s China program for more than a decade and recruited hundreds of wonderful students to study at Syracuse. Professor Wang was a great mentor, prolific writer, creator, and passionate contributor to the global debate on architecture. I know that they’re planning a campus memorial event for early spring semester. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, colleagues, and students.

Also, we read the resolution fairly quickly for Brian Konkol. I just wanted to personally comment that I think almost everyone who’s worked with him thinks Valparaiso University is very fortunate in its new president. This university, not just Hendricks Chapel, but this whole university is a better and stronger place than he found it when he came here more than nine years ago. He’s done so much in that time for so many people. I wish him well, and I know that all of you feel the same, if you’ve had a chance to work with him, I’m grateful.

The fall semester is over. This is the first day of the holiday break for our students. I noticed that Reed and Logan and Qeti [students], among others, are still working. Thank you for participating. I know that many of our faculty and our graduate teaching assistants and staff have a lot of work to do to get grades in by Dec. 30. I know that many folks here are working full tilt right through Orange Appreciation Days, especially in facilities and in advancement, and I thank everybody for the semester.

Just to shout out some specific successes to end the semester feeling good about some things.

• The Falk College of Sport officially launched. It was the first of its kind in the country, and that took a lot of effort from people not only in Falk but in Maxwell, Arts and Sciences, and Education. I’m grateful to all of them.
• We opened the Center for the Creator of Economy, drawing on strengths in entrepreneurship, media and communications, athletics, and digital infrastructure. I’m particularly grateful to the Whitman and Newhouse folks for pioneering that.
• We became one of the first universities in the country to provide Claude AI access to every student, faculty, and staff member. It’s become the fastest adopted software licensed in the history of the University with more than 5,200 active users today.
• Construction is now underway on three new residence halls and a new hotel. Lots of cranes are going up, even today. All four facilities are expected to be operational by fall of 2027 and will very positively, I believe, transform our campus experience and our student experience.

I also want to thank the Parking and Transportation Advisory Council for today’s report and recommendation. I believe that shared governance can be slow, but it does produce results. I just want to say again, it will produce results this academic year because I want it to get results before I step down as chancellor in June.

On the budget, folks need to know that we stand pretty well currently. The FY26 budget remains balanced. FY26 ends on June 30, and I think we’ll remain balanced until then. That sounds like a little thing, but it is not, particularly given what’s happening in the world and with our peers. It’s required a lot of nimble leadership by schools and colleges and deans and department chairs and unit leaders and many others. I’m very grateful for that work that has left us not in the position that so many of our peers are experiencing. I do believe the next chancellor will take the helm with a fairly sound fiscal foundation and a lot of positive momentum on various fronts.

I wanted to talk about what’s coming at us next semester that we haven’t talked about. At some point in the next semester, the search committee will be announcing a new chancellor. I know many of you are nervous about this. I certainly hear the anxiety from various fronts. I want to say one last thing to you about what it’s like to be announced as a new chancellor at 网爆门 because I remember that vividly from 12 years ago. It involves suddenly and abruptly a huge number of one-on-one conversations with all sorts of folks, including those on this screen, about the University and what you should know about the University.

It’s a lot of three-to-five-minute meetings that feel like speed dating, except you’re the only one on one side of the table and everybody in the University is on the other. And it’s interspersed with frequent requests to speak to all kinds of audiences about your profound thoughts about the University. So, speed date, speed date, speed date. Speak to the chemistry department about chemistry. Speed date, speed date, speed date. Speak to the community about Syracuse in the community. Speed date, speed date. Surprise! You’re at the inauguration of the mayor, and it’s outdoors in January. It is overwhelming.

And it’s made a little more overwhelming by one unique thing to Syracuse that is not true anywhere else I’ve ever been, which is that you lose your first name when you become president of this university. Even people you’ve known for 20 years, like the dean of the law school, you’ll say to her, “Hannah, I’ve known you for 20 years. I’m Kent.” And she will respond, “Yes, Chancellor,” and then call you chancellor forevermore. That seems to be true, not just for people working or being within the University, but everybody within a 50-mile radius, which is somewhat depersonalizing on an interesting level.

All I’d ask you is be aware that this new person, when announced, is going to be overwhelmed. I’d ask you to give grace to this person for at least a couple weeks and to realize that it would be good for you to prepare a little bit how you can help this person in micro things as well as major things. Someday I hope the Chancellor at 网爆门 will be known by their first name here, like they are at every other university on the planet that I’ve experienced.

I look forward to the last semester stewarding this place, alongside so many of you who I know care so much about this place. I wish you happy holidays and a break filled with peace and joy. Thanks a lot.

Today I will share brief updates. First, just some gratitude to folks who helped make both Orange Central and Family Weekend very successful. We had 1,000 alumni and their families here on campus for Homecoming events all over the University. Our family weekend was the largest in recent years, with 6,100 parents and families on campus. You all really showcased our people and our campus, and I thank you.

I wanted to update you on employee benefits. Open Enrollment begins on Monday, Nov. 3. We continue to offer very highly competitive, comprehensive health benefits. Health care costs continue to rise. The University has been absorbing and continues to absorb the majority of these increases. Human Resources has been working diligently to balance the rising costs with affordability for people. The good news is that there will be no increases to deductibles, co-pays, or coinsurance for any benefit plan. The bad news is that employee health care contributions will increase by 9% across all coverage tiers. Those increases are lower than national trends, lower than at peer institutions and other local employers, though still significant. I鈥檇 like to point out that employees with lower household incomes may qualify for Schedule B, which offers lower employee contributions. The University is going to hold costs steady for all other benefit plans, including dental and vision.

I thank the Employee Benefits Assessment Council, which worked hard on this. It was created through University Senate recommendations. It coordinated with the Human Resources team. The council has reviewed and is in support of these changes.

The second update is on parking. The Parking and Transportation Services Advisory Group has been meeting weekly. It鈥檚 been making good progress since the last Senate meeting. Co-chair and Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala and his team have been providing a lot of data, budget, and operational details to educate the group. The focus right now has been on developing parking solutions for the University鈥檚 lowest earners, including part-time and adjunct faculty. I think they are making meaningful progress on that. I want to thank Pete, co-chair Deirdre Joyce, and all the members that have been making that rapid progress.聽 Both an undergraduate and a graduate student have been added to the group and will attend the next meeting.

Third, I want to address AI. Last month, we became one of the first universities in the nation to provide every student, faculty, and staff member with AI access through Claude by Anthropic. Claude has the fastest-adopted software that the University has ever licensed. We had more than 3,500 members of our community register and now have access to Claude. People are using this AI platform in very different and some innovative ways to work faster. Our community is benefiting from some new AI features too. Last week, there was an update that allows users to integrate Microsoft 365 tools, including Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint, directly into Claude. We had 350 attendees participating in Information Technology Services鈥� AI at Work session on Oct. 9, which featured a discussion on how to safely, ethically, and effectively use AI at work. I believe our community needs to embrace this opportunity to be on the leading edge of how we teach, learn, and work in this area. I urge you to create your account and explore Claude. You can register by going to .

I also want to say that the Chancellor鈥檚 search, I鈥檓 informed, is well underway. The position description has been finalized and is available on the Chancellor Search website. It was created based on the input received through all the community engagement sessions earlier this semester and in response to a campus survey. The search committee, in partnership with search firm Spencer Stuart, has begun reviewing candidates. They tell me that work will carry them into the new year. Again, I鈥檓 recused from this.

Finally, I want to close with a reminder that this is Remembrance Week when we honor those lost in Pan Am Flight 103. We are now this week welcoming 10 students from the Lockerbie Academy in Scotland. They spent the weekend in New York City, and they arrived on campus on Monday. They are accompanied by Headteacher Brian Asher and Deputy Headteacher Kerry Currie, who was a Lockerbie Scholar here many years ago. Just earlier today the Lockerbie Scholars joined the Remembrance Scholars for the 鈥淪itting in Solidarity鈥� event on the Quad. There are a lot more events this week, but I especially encourage everybody to attend the Rose-Laying Ceremony and Convocation on Friday at the Place of Remembrance in front of the Hall of Languages. That starts at 2 p.m.

I am going to answer questions after provost鈥檚 remarks. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Welcome to a new year of University Senate. This is my last 鈥渇irst鈥� senate meeting of the year as chancellor. I had to miss the last Senate meeting of this past year, which I regret. I have now attended and taken questions at 95 full Senate meetings and lots of committee meetings, and I intend to do that during my last year, with one exception, which I want to alert you to. I have recused myself from the chancellor search process, and I intend to recuse myself from Senate discussions of the search as well, where appropriate. Heather will alert me when it’s appropriate for me to step out. If anybody needs to understand why that鈥檚 the right thing to do, I can explain it at another time.

Today I鈥檓 going to provide brief updates. I have four slides on University finances, enrollment, and fundraising. I鈥檓 going to say a little bit about new leadership and shared governance, and then I鈥檓 going to talk a little bit about the academic portfolio. I鈥檝e got one point of personal privilege at the end. I鈥檒l try and do this within my timeframe.

Remembering Community Members

Before all that, we lost three people I knew well, and they should be recognized in the Senate. I鈥檇 like to say a little bit about each of them.

• First, iSchool Dean Emeritus Liz Liddy devoted 44 years to Syracuse as a student, faculty member, dean, and interim provost. She really was a wonderful teacher, a wonderful mentor, so essential to the iSchool, a scholar. Her life and her contributions will be honored at a Celebration of Life on Monday, Sept. 29, in Hendricks Chapel at 4 p.m.
• Second, Professor Deborah Pellow, who was my friend but, much more importantly, was a passionate anthropologist and educator who spent 40 years on our faculty as a scholar and a teacher. She passed away. There was a beautiful memorial service last week in Hendricks Chapel for Deborah to celebrate her life and her career. I want to thank a lot of people who worked to make that happen. I cannot name them all, but I know Lori Brown was one of the ring leaders. I just say thanks to those who captured her accurately.
• Finally, Tiana Mangakahia, who was most well known for being a player on the women鈥檚 basketball team. A lot of us saw her play and watched her joy in playing. She was a double alumnus. She earned her master鈥檚 in sport venue and event management from the Falk College. She was a remarkable student, athlete, and person, and she passed away last week after a struggle with breast cancer that started while she was a student here.

Please join me in keeping Liz, Deborah, Tiana, their family, friends, and everyone who knew and loved them in your thoughts.

I know a lot of you are following closely the financial news coming from across higher education, and it鈥檚 grim. Many of our peers are running serious deficits and are experiencing deep budget cuts and large-scale layoffs. That is not the story here, although it鈥檚 not a happy story entirely here either. It would be hubris to say that we鈥檙e doing better than them because we鈥檙e smarter or better.

What鈥檚 important to understand is that we are at the moment so far as a whole is weathering storms pretty well here, even though some of our schools, colleges, and units are facing more challenging circumstances than others and more than usual. This is in part due to missed enrollment targets, shifts in discount rates, and other factors. I recognize that some of our deans are navigating difficult financial realities. That underscores why we have been making, and are continuing to make, tough choices to shore up our financial position. We really have to continue to take the necessary steps to insulate ourselves from whatever comes our way. I think that kind of discipline has so far left us in a better position than many of our peers.

To reflect on that, I鈥檓 showing the budget on this slide. The University closed FY25 with a $2.9 million surplus in its operating budget. That’s a very small percentage of our total budget, less than two-tenths of one percent. For FY26, we are projecting a balanced budget with a very small surplus of $100,000 on a $1.9 billion budget. It was extremely difficult to get to a balanced result in FY25. It will be more difficult to keep it balanced in FY26.

Very, very few R-1 universities are running a genuinely balanced operating budget this year. I think there’s much more volatility in the budget than in previous years, and we must remain alert and nimble.

Our endowment grew by more than 9% last year, reaching $2.266 billion as of July 31, 2025. We worried a lot about federal laws governing endowments, and particularly taxation of endowments. We monitored that closely, but the so-called Big Beautiful Bill does not apply to Syracuse in this area as our endowment per student remains below the threshold.

If we go to fundraising for this past year, it went well. Historically, 网爆门鈥檚 fundraising always drops dramatically once a campaign ends. Our campaign ended on Dec. 31, 2024. It鈥檚 really important given the challenges we鈥檙e facing for that not to happen this time, and it hasn鈥檛 happened so far. We closed FY25 at 107% of our new business goals and 106% of our cashflow goals.

We鈥檝e been running well ahead of last year, this year as well, FY26. We鈥檙e just one quarter into it.

The fundraising and advancement team is focused on four bridge initiatives that will make sure we maintain our fundraising during this period between campaigns. They focus on financial aid, STEM, entrepreneurial leadership, and athletics. In particular, the financial aid initiative has been going well. Since April, the Syracuse Promise effort has already created 14 new endowed scholarships and made a dozen major gifts to existing scholarship funds.

Turning to enrollment: for the fifth consecutive year, the University had record undergraduate applications, with 47,169 to be precise. The Fall Census will be finalized later this month, but preliminary data shows our total enrollment is going to settle this year probably around 21,820 students. That includes undergraduate, graduate, and professional enrollment. It does not include the tens of thousands of students in non-degree programs at 网爆门. Our traditionally measured enrollment is falling by about 3.5% this year. It鈥檚 driven largely by declines in international and master鈥檚 enrollment.

Overall undergraduate enrollment exceeded our goals. Law and doctoral enrollments are on track. Our new undergraduate class includes 3,945 undergraduates, which is 195 above goal. They are academically accomplished, with a 3.7 average GPA and mean SAT of 1351.

The percentage of international enrollment in the entering undergraduate class has decreased to 5%. Two years ago, it was 12%, to give you a sense of the change.

The decline in international students studying in the U.S. also impacted our master鈥檚 enrollment. We鈥檙e about 41 students below goal overall in our master鈥檚 enrollment, and that鈥檚 largely because international students, especially from China, had trouble getting visas in the United States. It is not likely to change. We haven鈥檛 seen much changing about that this year.

This fall the Academic Affairs team, the deans, the faculty welcomed 68 new full-time and 83 new part-time faculty. I met most of them, and they are incredible. We鈥檙e pretty unique in welcoming a large class of incoming new faculty because of so many hiring freezes or slowdowns elsewhere. I urge you to get to know them and their work.

We also welcomed Michael Bunker as our new associate vice president and chief of campus safety and emergency management services. He is a Coast Guard veteran with more than 20 years of leadership experience in public safety, most recently at the University of Denver.

Chief Human Resources Officer Andy Gordon has moved into a new role as senior advisor to me on priority strategic initiatives. I am grateful to Andy for his more than 10 years of service and for his outstanding work, particularly with the Senate to establish the Employee Benefits Advisory Council. Alex Dietrich, a Navy veteran, who most recently served as associate vice president for talent strategy and human resources operations, is serving as interim chief human resources officer.

I shared with the community today, and I want to share again with you, my decision regarding the role of Provost Lois Agnew. After I received a lot of thoughtful feedback from this community, I concluded that it is in the University鈥檚 best interest to remove the word 鈥渋nterim鈥� from Lois Agnew鈥檚 title and to extend her service as provost through December 2026, or at most June 2027, at the discretion of my successor. This allows the next chancellor to participate in the selection of a long-term provost this coming year.

The feedback was overwhelmingly supportive of this course of action. I heard about Lois鈥� outstanding leadership, character, and effectiveness, as well as the importance of continuity at this time. I recognize, however, that some have raised valid concerns about precedent and process.

I want to underscore that this is an exceptional circumstance, tied directly to the timing of my own transition. The next provost search will fully follow our shared governance practices.

In the meantime, I am really confident that Lois will continue to guide our academic mission with the integrity and dedication she has demonstrated so far. So, I congratulate her on that.

On shared governance, I always talk about shared governance at the first Senate meeting of the year because there’s new senators, people who haven’t experienced shared governance, and fewer people who come to this university from elsewhere have experienced shared governance.

I鈥檝e answered a lot of tough questions from the University Senate over the past 12 years. I鈥檓 grateful to you for asking them, for probing, for challenging, for not accepting the status quo, and for being an active participant in shared governance at this university. I鈥檓 grateful because it means you care about this place.

That鈥檚 one thing I鈥檝e experienced in this body, that everyone in this room, everyone who participates, actually cares about this place and wants it to be better. So, I again urge us to approach our work this year with the assumption that each of us is acting in good faith and trying to make the University better.

It has been a brutal year for shared governance at schools in the United States, and that warns us that leadership at Syracuse means that we need to make it visibly work this year here and show it can work. We won鈥檛 always agree on exactly how to do that, but I believe discussion even of those disagreements on how to do that is healthy, and marks a healthy institution.

In that spirit, I鈥檇 like to share updates on three shared governance topics that came out of the Senate last year that I was involved in or advised about: parking, free speech, and academic affairs.

On parking, we just had a report, and I thank Deirdre [Joyce] for that. I think I followed the counsel of the Senate in helping set up and charge the working group and giving the authority. I really thank Deirdre and Pete and the whole group on their first report, and their willingness to do this work.

I think we all know the reason this group was created and this charge. I really look forward to receiving a report and recommendations, and I know they’ll be presented to the University Senate. My one worry here, as with many issues in the Senate, is how long it takes for things to be resolved. I do urge us to realize that while all parking issues may be interrelated, it’s okay to break off some of them and make recommendations on something along the way. I say that just because my ability to implement has a timeline.

On free speech, I have received a report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Free Speech and understand the committee鈥檚 plans to provide further recommendations this year. I am grateful for the committee鈥檚 commitment to advancing free speech on campus. I appreciate the Senate鈥檚 advisory role in this.

I will carefully consider any recommendations as the University makes policy decisions around free expression in the future. In the meantime, I assure you, for a bunch of reasons, that these issues have my full attention and concern right now.

I want to address the current environment we are living in. Let me just say that since October of 2023, when the world changed in dramatic ways, our approach at this university has been to try and make sure that we meet three necessary conditions for 网爆门 to thrive. Not sufficient conditions, but necessary ones. A lot of the sufficient conditions are what people working out there every day work at, but the necessary conditions are these:

• First, we have to maintain safety for all our students and all our community鈥攅mphasis on all.
• Second, as an institution, we have to comply with the law, and that includes Title VI, the First Amendment, and due process.
• And third, we must uphold the longstanding values of this institution, which go back more than a century. These have remained our values even as the world changes and as law changes.

I recognize that it has gotten harder each month since October 2023 to meet all three of these conditions and walk that tight rope. Many of you have made sacrifices to determine the right individual steps to keep this place safe and consistent with our values. I am acutely aware of how hard it’s been for each of us, and I don’t think it’s going to get easier.

All that said, ethical judgment calls come up a lot. I think they come up for some of you. They certainly come up for me most days now. What I can tell you is that I call them as I see them in the interest of the whole University, not according to anyone’s party line and not based on my own personal interests. That’s what I have tried to do over the past 12 years, and that鈥檚 certainly what I intend to do as long as I am chancellor.

Last week I attended the Senate Academic Affairs Committee meeting. I got questions about academic budgets, portfolio review, the honors program, diversity and inclusion, and the Chancellor search. Thanks to chairs Matt Huber and Peggy Thompson for including me in their meeting. I encouraged the committee to keep focused on the academic freedom and free speech issues, and not just the ones I just discussed with you.

Just a few words about Portfolio Review because I think you鈥檙e going to hear about it from Provost Agnew shortly on this. I just need to provide a little context.

Higher education faces federal funding disruptions, lawsuits, and declining international enrollment鈥攁nd new challenges are emerging. At many peer institutions, the responses have been rushed and reactive. I do think at Syracuse, we have the chance to be proactive and deliberate about this. Syracuse is financially stable today, but I鈥檓 not complacent about that.

The one purpose of the Academic Portfolio Review is to strengthen high-quality, high-demand programs and take a hard look at those that may be falling short. Our people are best positioned to guide these choices. I believe that. I encourage students, faculty, and staff to be active participants in the process, including at the school and college level.

Finally, my point of personal privilege. Many of you have reached out to me in recent weeks. I appreciate your support and words of encouragement. I got lots of these interesting queries about why I am choosing to finish up now, this year.

It鈥檚 just this: I now have served two full five-year terms and a two-year extension, and after fulfilling those commitments and one additional semester in the spring, I felt the time was right to conclude my tenure in this role.

I love this university. And I believe it is in reasonably good shape to select and recruit a new chancellor. While I鈥檒l no longer be chancellor, after a sabbatical, I am excited to continue teaching courses here, as I have been doing every semester since I was announced as chancellor 12 years ago.

That鈥檚 because the students here are amazing.

For the rest of this year, we still have a lot to accomplish. This will be an important year for 网爆门. The Board of Trustees will lead the process to select our next leader, while we still have to navigate everything going on in higher education. I think you all received an email from the co-chairs of the search committee earlier this week announcing various ways to engage with the search. All I can say is, please participate in the process. This is not a good time to be a free rider. This is a good time to participate in the process.

I thank everybody for your involvement in shared governance. I thank you for your ongoing commitment to our university, to the students, and to our future. I look forward to working with you in my final year stewarding this great university. Thank you.

I want to show you the National Championship Women’s Ice Hockey Club team [shows photo], which won the AAU championship last week. We’re proud of them. And we have some good news to start this report.

I also wanted to join in thanking the ESFAO [Employee Services, Fiscal Affairs, and Operations Committee] members and Doug [Yung] for their work. We did meet with them at length just before spring break, and we’re going to be meeting with them again before we submit the FY26 budget to the Board of Trustees for final approval. The reason for that is it’s a more intense process this year than past years.

I want to emphasize some of the points that Doug made. We ran a balanced budget in FY24, which ended nine months ago. We are running a balanced budget in FY25, which will end in three months. It’s pretty late in the year, so it’s pretty easy to see we’re going to be fine. We’re going to propose a balanced budget for FY26, and I’m not worried about that. I was worried about it in August, which is why I said what I said to the Senate in August and what I said to the University leadership team and to the deans, because of some of the foreseeable forces, which Doug illustrated in his report. If we’d done nothing since last August, we’d be facing a 3% budget deficit. By the way, 3% translates into millions of dollars. But if we can’t handle a 3% budget deficit humanely as managers and as a community, we’re not a very effective financial community, I believe.

Actually, we have been planning for months how to handle this. Obviously, there’s been additional wrenches thrown in the work by what’s happened with the federal government the last 60 days. Those have been remarkable wrenches for almost all our peers. That’s why you’re seeing these sharp announcements of Johns Hopkins laying off thousands of staff, of freezes of faculty hiring, freezes of graduate admissions. Really, I think you’ll see more of them, since a lot of academic institutions like to behave in a herd, and think behaving in a herd is the safe thing. I think you’ll see lots of institutions, including most of the AAU [Association of American Universities] doing things like this in the next couple of weeks.

My point to the ESFAO Committee and to you all is that we are in a different position because, let’s say, we’re fortunate in the sense that we don’t have an academic medical center heavily dependent on federal grants and the other agencies of the federal government that are looking closely at universities. We are fortunate, in a way that I never thought I would say, that our grants and contracts are heavily shifted away compared to our peers from NIH [National Institutes of Health] and NSF [National Science Foundation], which have been the most strongly acting so far.

That’s put us in a stronger position, but we’re also in a stronger position because we’ve been planning for this for a long time. Actually, we have been financially responsible for a long time, and that means that, I just need to say it again, we are not going to do some of the things you’re seeing elsewhere. We’re not going to have large-scale layoffs. We’re not going to have across-the-board hiring freezes. We’re not going to have deep budget cuts or other drastic measures in graduate programs. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have to be responsible as we’ve been all year in making a plane land with a balanced budget. Basically, what we’ve been doing since August is asking every unit, school, and college to identify efficiencies and realign their resources in ways that really make sense. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any changes, but they’ll be more consistent with the changes we do every year at 网爆门 in landing the plane or at least have been doing for recent times.

I think that calls for people to have a little bit of confidence. We are going to come back to the ESFAO with more concreteness as the plane nears landing in the next couple of weeks. The key moment, of course, is the presentation to the Board of Trustees committees going into the May full board meetings. Basically, it’s a boring headline for The Daily Orange and everybody else, but we’re going to propose a balanced 聽budget for FY26. It’s going to be both sensible and humane, and there’s going to be opportunities to talk about it before it’s finalized. That’s basically the way it is, and I feel pretty blessed to be in that situation.

What I don’t feel blessed to be in is 60 days into this raft of changes coming in policies from the federal government. I don’t want to communicate complacency in what I’ve said already. In particular since we last met, the Department of Education has both lost half its workforce and has launched investigations related to antisemitism and racism into dozens of higher education institutions. It’s not the only part of the federal government that’s doing that, but the most significant one. 网爆门 is not one of the institutions being investigated, but our peers are, and we’re watching those other institutions closely. We’re watching what’s going on at Columbia with particular attention and concern because it’s not just the scale of what’s being asked of Columbia, but the substance, including the academic substance, that’s being requested of Columbia in order to benefit from federal funding. So, we’re paying attention to that.

On March 6, the faculty, students, and staff received a communication from [Provost] Lois [Agnew] and me and others regarding new guidance from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Broadly speaking, that guidance took the position that consideration of race in any aspect of student academic or campus life is discrimination and a violation of Title XI, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That new policy went into effect on Feb. 28, two weeks after it was first communicated. This broad interpretation is being challenged in the courts, and we’re following that closely.

I just want to emphasize two things. 网爆门 will comply with the law as it develops, but we strongly believe all of our university programs do not discriminate against any group. We strongly believe none of our university programs discriminate against any group. That means we need to be careful and thoughtful in responding. We are working through our Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Mary Grace Almandrez in a Universitywide effort to determine our path forward under the new guidance. Rather than kind of knee-jerk responses, like we’re seeing Columbia forced to do, this includes a process by which we’re actually outreaching and consulting with faculty, staff, and students whose work has helped hold this place together as a university welcoming to all over the last years. That’s going to guide our long-term strategy.

It’s not something I can get done in a week. We have time to look at this closely. We are looking at it closely. We are consulting appropriately, but we’re doing it against, once again, a belief that at our core and at our best, which we have not always been at, we’re a university that welcomes all. How we do that in each era and under each administration has had to be savvy and has had to be wise. We’re in a situation where we have to figure out how to continue doing that now. I believe this community really wants us to continue doing that in the right way, and that’s what we’re feeling our way through.

I do expect, again, that there will be more changes coming from Washington in the next 40 days. It’s 53 days to Commencement. I expect in the next 40 days we’ll see more.

Dean Chandler-Olcott referred to “those persnickety accreditors.” I believe we will come to respect and need to defend our persnickety accreditors before the next 40 days are out. I say that as someone who chaired an accrediting body and was on the Middle States Commission as well. As persnickety as they are, they are largely driven by our peers looking closely at what it takes to deliver a great education to our students and to every student, not just some favored group. So, I think there’ll be more changes coming.

I think we’ll have to report more at the April 19 Senate meeting on the progress, both on the budget and on the response to federal issues. I’m very grateful to a really wide range of people with a wide range of views who’ve been helping us in the last two months. And I hope you keep hanging in there. Thank you.

Good Afternoon. These are interesting times for American higher education. Since the last meeting of the University Senate on Jan. 22, there have been almost daily developments coming from Washington concerning law, regulation, and policy applying to colleges and universities. I fully expect there will be more such developments between now and the next meeting of the University Senate, which is after our spring break. I expect those further developments may well concern accreditation policy and practices, student loans, and the taxation of university endowments, among other things.

Like some of you, I have been getting calls and messages every day from people in our community鈥揻aculty, students, staff, alumni, and parents. They usually are some variant of the question from reading about or reading rumors or news reports or social media about these developments, 鈥淗ow is this latest announcement going to affect me and people I care about at 网爆门.鈥� The subtext of each call is often: 鈥淧lease reassure me and everyone that the University and its people are going to be OK, and you鈥檙e going to make that happen.鈥�

So here it is: I, unfortunately, cannot guarantee certainty in this very uncertain environment. What I can do is assure you that the University and many people here are working hard every day and at night and on weekends to keep this University on course, true to its longstanding values, and welcoming to all people. How we do that this semester calls for thoughtful and wise strategy, not for knee-jerk abrupt responses. We are being thoughtful and careful; we are listening to the concerns we are hearing, including but not exclusively though the University Senate. A lot of people are doing their best to make sure the university and all its people will continue to thrive

In terms of one aspect of this, some of you may be aware that many of our peer universities are facing serious budget challenges due to changes in federal funding or suggested changes in federal funding that are being proposed or implemented. This week I am seeing other universities impose freezes on hiring and significant budget cuts. I know others are considering freezes on salaries.

As I reported at the January Senate meeting, our finances at Syracuse remain strong. Our budget for this fiscal year, FY25, remains in balance, and I expect we will run a very small surplus when our year closes on June 30. Our budget planning is more difficult this year because of uncertainties and changes coming at us, but I also expect we will propose and approve a balanced budget for FY26, which starts on July 1 this summer. As I sit here today, I do not expect to impose blanket hiring freezes. I do not expect to freeze salaries or benefits. I do expect that we will be investing in key opportunities and initiatives that the University and its schools and colleges are pursuing. I believe there are relatively few universities that can confidently say those things right now, so that should be somewhat reassuring to all.

But all that said, our budgets are foreseeably going to be tighter in the coming year than they have been, and we need to be prudent in managing our expenses if we hope to continue investing in our people. We need to look carefully for opportunities to reduce expenses without sacrificing the quality of the experience for our students. University leaders across the board are working hard on this now, and will continue to do this right through the May board meeting, which culminates when the budget for FY26 is approved. Please understand that this is, therefore, not a normal year, including in budgeting, and that each of us have to contribute in working through this.

I will be coming to a meeting of the Senate鈥檚 Employee Services, Fiscal Affairs, and Operations Committee as soon as possible in the coming weeks to share data and talk through these budget issues with greater care. At the same time, I have asked that this committee help in conducting a study of parking and transportation services here at Syracuse, working with our chief facilities officer and all stakeholders including those who expressed concern about this, to assess how our parking policies should be revised given changes in our housing, in our facilities, and in practices in the city and at other universities.

I know some of you are thinking it is odd for me to be talking about parking when so much more important is happening in the world. Yet many in our community have raised parking concerns, including through the University Senate. I think we have the bandwidth, including in the Senate, to move forward on this while also responding fairly to actionable changes from all directions, including from Washington.

I also need to share some news quickly. The Department of Public Safety Chief Craig Stone will be retiring at the end of July, and we鈥檒l have a search starting quite soon for a successor. He鈥檚 been here three years and culminates a 40-year career in public safety service. While he鈥檚 been here, our DPS has achieved [CALEA] 鈥渁dvanced鈥� accreditation. That鈥檚 very rare at universities or police departments and requires DPS to meet the highest standards for best practices, transparency, and accountability. I want to thank Chief Stone for his service. I assure you a search for a successor will commence shortly and want to hear from people interested in that search.

The University is hosting Micron Day next Tuesday [Feb. 25] in the Schine Student Center from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. I encourage you to come and learn more about what鈥檚 going on, including related to the University鈥檚 partnership with Micron. That includes a fireside chat with the chief people officer from Micron and with the corporate vice president of front-end U.S. expansion. This event will highlight opportunities for partnerships for students, faculty, staff, and the community. I encourage you to participate.

And since I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 been acknowledged, I want to acknowledge that we lost a student this week. We lost first-year undergraduate student Christina Wobbe, who many knew as Elise. She was pursuing a bachelor鈥檚 degree in musical theater in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. She spent her first semester on campus assisting with the Drama Department鈥檚 production of 鈥淧ippin.鈥� I want to both extend my condolences to her family, friends, and all who knew her, and especially to thank everybody who stepped up this weekend, students, faculty, staff to support her family and her friends in this very tough time.

Thank you. I will take questions after the provost鈥檚 remarks.

Thank you, Professor Nordquist. I鈥檒l be brief. I will provide updates on budget, enrollment, and on the successful close of the Forever Orange Campaign, a little bit on Los Angeles, and then I鈥檒l take questions after the provost as usual.

On the budget front, the good news is we are running a balanced budget in FY25. We鈥檙e six months into that, almost seven. The challenge is that it is going to be difficult to do the same thing for FY26, which starts on July 1, 2025. It is going to be difficult because of significant headwinds, including health care costs, labor costs, the changing landscape in athletics, and master鈥檚 and international enrollment. I think producing a balanced budget for FY26, which we are required to do over the course of this semester, will require or really mandate some tough choices to keep our university strong, but we鈥檙e working through it.

On enrollment, I am pleased to report that both new first-year and transfer undergraduate enrollment for spring 2025 exceeded goals, with wonderful groups of students This semester Syracuse received 35 new starting first-year students in January. Our goal was 30. And we received 90 new transfer students. Our goal was 75.

Looking toward next year, this past Jan. 5 was the deadline for fall 2025 undergraduate first-year applications. Once again, for the fifth consecutive year, 网爆门 received a record number of first-year undergraduate applications. More than 46,000 have applied to be part of our academic community.

Undergraduate transfer applications for fall 2025 also are trending up from last year at this time.

There is a lot of work still to do before we welcome our first-year undergraduate class in August. But these are really good signs that we have a strong pool of applicants. It鈥檚 at a time where a growing number of our peers do not, and are facing undergraduate enrollment shortfalls and much more budget uncertainty as a result.

Turning to the fundraising campaign, the Forever Orange Campaign, which we launched publicly in November 2019, the campaign closed on Dec. 31, 2024, a couple weeks ago. The campaign exceeded its goals in every category. The total raised was $1.59 billion, $90 million dollars beyond our goal. We reached this milestone with support from 125,699 unique donors, which was nearly 700 donors above our goal. And alumni engagement in the University over the course of the campaign increased to 20.5%. That鈥檚 roughly a doubling of alumni engagement over where we were at the start of the campaign, and half a percent above our goal. Most importantly, it means thousands of alumni from every school and college are now more involved and invested in the future of 网爆门.

I am really grateful to a lot of people who helped us get to this point. That includes Chief Advancement Officer Tracy Barlok and all the hardworking team in Advancement, but also the deans in the schools and colleges and their teams. Thanks also to all the faculty and staff across the University who shared their groundbreaking work, their stories, their teaching, who helped and mentored students, who inspired alumni, parents, friends, and a very substantial number of current students, to give. I also have to acknowledge the hard work of so many of our students who let us tell their stories and who helped us in reaching out to donors, alumni, and friends. I think the campaign has changed the University significantly, not just in state-of-the-art new facilities that advance our academic goals, but also in real improvements to the student experience and lots of initiatives to support the faculty, including new chairs and research funds. We鈥檙e going talk more later in the spring about what comes next for fundraising. But for now, it seems like a good time to just celebrate what was by far the most successful fundraising campaign in the University鈥檚 history.

The last thing I want to say is I think it鈥檚 important for all of us to acknowledge not just the horrible fires that have devastated the Los Angeles area, but how many members of our community have been involved. We had many students in our SULA center a week prior to classes starting here on campus, at the height of the fires. Fortunately, the new SULA center, and the areas where our students reside, were never in evacuation zones. But many of our alumni, many of our students from the LA area, and some of our staff were very seriously affected. It was a lot of work to ensure we had plans for taking care of our students and our alumni and friends in case we needed to move quickly.

I want to thank the academic affairs team, public safety team, and communications team, who worked closely with the people on the ground in Los Angeles for 网爆门, and especially the dedicated faculty and staff in the center, who focused on our students when they had their own serious worries. We are very fortunate to have that team in Los Angeles.

I wish everyone a successful spring semester. I am looking forward to questions after the provost鈥檚 remarks. Thank you.

First of all, on the athletic report, I think Senators Tucker and Upton did a really great job of giving you a sense of the terrain that we’re dealing with and how much of it is undecided and uncertain. There is a lot of change coming, and there’s more change every day, including related to this [House vs. NCAA] settlement. There are states passing statutes that change the terms of the NIL rules. I wouldn’t count on even the description just given about how this settlement is going to work necessarily being how it actually works five months from now.

I’d say what is clear to me, and I wanted folks to be clear that are in the Senate, is that the two clear changes that are coming is consolidation is continuing. It’s largely driven by media and where the money is, but conference realignment and consolidating into smaller numbers of schools that are receiving large amounts of revenue is continuing to occur.And if you want to compete at the highest level in intercollegiate sports, it’s going to cost a lot more money. What’s undecided and what’s really up for grabs is where that money is coming from, who it’s spent on and how it’s going to be spent. Those are issues that if this was just a professional sport league would be decided by the owners and the managers and the commissioners. That’s largely where this discussion has been occurring at colleges so far. But there are stakeholders that need to be at the table in that discussion, and those are the students themselves, and not just the student-athletes, but the students who come to college partly for this as part of the experience. It has to be the faculty that are responsible for teaching and curriculum related to these students. And a little more, it has to be the presidents owning up to responsibility for these decisions.

I’ve been trying to get that to happen, to get Syracuse to be at the table nationally for these discussions and here, to get all the University stakeholders at the table. I’m thrilled about this discussion and the involvement of this committee and these issues going forward. I have strong views on a lot of the questions that have been raised, including the role of collective bargaining going forward, including Title IX, including other things. But it’s not just my decision; it’s not the athletic director’s decision; it’s not athletics’ decision鈥攐n 聽whether to impose a student fee, for example. It’s a more general discussion, and this is just the beginning of that discussion, but it’s going to be fairly active all year. That’s pretty much all I can say at the moment about the uncertainty.

I can give three other quick updates and then take questions. On benefits, open enrollment ended. WellNow has reached an agreement with Excellus, so that urgent care provider is now in network. Negotiation is still going on with FamilyCare Medical Group and St. Joseph’s Health. So we’ll keep you informed as that goes forward. I’m still hopeful that those agreements will happen by Jan. 1.

I do want to let people know that we are transitioning the management of the bookstore, University Campus Store, to Barnes & Noble, and that includes books and course materials. As part of that transition, Associate Provost for Academic Programs Julie Hasenwinkel and Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer John Papazoglou have created and convened and are leading a Textbook Affordability Working Group. That’s formed in response to student concerns, including from the Student Association, about the high cost of textbooks and the lack of advanced notice on what textbooks are required in particular courses. The group’s goals include getting faculty to disclose their textbook requirements before students register for classes if possible, giving students more time to seek affordable options like used books or rentals, exploring options for supporting faculty to select lower cost textbooks and streamlining the textbook adoption process. This has been requested by the students multiple times, including the Student Association leadership. The group is going to share its recommendations once it concludes his work and will be reported out in some way through the Senate.

And the last thing to say is, with all the changes in athletics, I’d also like to notice that some of our teams are having good success, including in football and basketball. And, I hope women’s basketball again tonight. We are opening formally for the first time to the public, the Miron Victory Court for the football game on Saturday. It is a new event space that stretches the length of the space between the Barnes Center and the JMA Wireless Dome. This is a fairly large space that is useful for all kinds of things, indoor tailgating, student events, public events, job fairs. It opens both into the Barnes Center and into the JMA Dome so it can be an adjunct space to either one or both, or neither. If you think of it as a space that could be used for all sorts of things, including things that have currently been restricted to using the Goldstein Auditorium because of size. It has good acoustics and good technology. I thank everybody in Campus Planning, Design and Construction, in Advancement, everybody, who helped get that open, and I encourage you to take a look at it this weekend and buy tickets for the Connecticut game.

I’m just going to quickly update on two things from the last meeting. One is benefits and just to say that two situations we were facing that were mentioned at the last meeting are still true. The first one, health care costs have risen by a lot this last year. I looked more into exactly why. It’s greater demand coming out of COVID. It’s the dramatic increase in drug prices, and it’s general inflation. But also there’s an acute shortage of supply of health care providers in the region. I think lots of you know that if you tried to find a primary care provider for somebody moving here. When supply is really tight and demand is really great, costs go up.

We’ve been working with the Employee Benefits Assessment Council, which was created in part on the recommendation of the University Senate, that Tom Dennison chairs, who spoke at the last meeting. In response to what that rise in cost has done, we’ve done two things bearing on open enrollment, which starts Monday morning.

First, we decided that the University should absorb a greater percentage of the cost increases this year, a greater percentage than has been our part in the past. Then separately we also paid very careful attention to the parameters of the separate employee contribution schedule for those folks at the lowest family incomes. Those changes are reflected in the announcements that HR, I think, is going to get out in connection with the open enrollment that starts Monday. So, you’ll be getting a lot more details on that part of it in the next couple of days.

The second issue is what we also talked about, which is this set of high-stakes down-to-the-wire negotiations between the largest local health care providers and Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. That has been challenging. Just to remind folks who weren’t at the last Senate meeting, some area hospitals and large physician practices are not happy with what they perceive as the low rates of increase in reimbursement that Excellus is proposing, given the circumstances they’re operating under. Excellus, in the meantime, is bargaining for perceived lower rates, and they say they’re doing so to help keep health care costs down for employers and employees, like 网爆门. If Excellus and the providers don’t reach agreement, here’s what’s going to happen sometime after Jan. 1:

• For those of you in SU Blue or SU Pro, you’ll be covered by health insurance at those providers, but you’ll be out of network, which practically means a lot more out-of-pocket costs when you visit them. This includes the private hospitals in the area and some of the largest physician practices.
• For employees who have SU Orange insurance from Excellus, they will not be covered if they go to those providers. They will have to pay the full cost then of visiting those providers. The only certain way to hedge against that risk at the moment is to switch to SU Blue or SU Pro, which are more expensive, in open enrollment that starts Oct. 28 and ends Nov. 8.

I want people to know, I think it’s likely that the providers and Excellus will reach agreements by Jan. 1. One of the providers, which is FamilyCare Medical Group, issued a joint statement with Excellus last week that said they were close to an agreement. I do want you to know that based on what I heard in the Senate and as the largest private employer in the region, and Excellus’ largest customer here, we’re doing everything we can to get Excellus and the providers to come to agreement before Jan. 1. But in the meantime, we just have to acknowledge this creates greater difficulty for people in making health care choices during open enrollment. I’m not happy about this. I’m doing everything I can to get things clarified sooner. If there are agreements for some of them before open enrollment ends, we’ll telegraph that right away. You should know, lots of folks, especially in Human Resources, are working hard on this.

Then the other thing is just to tell you about athletics. The next wave of change is coming to intercollegiate athletics. It is going to have wide-range implications, including for academics, for budget, for operations, for students, for the student-athlete experience. I am trying to see around corners and be involved in figuring out how to position Syracuse for this.

The athletic experience here is pretty important to us. It’s part of our defining experience that recruits students, and not just student-athletes. It’s part of our academic programming, it’s part of our brand nationally. It’s very important to why we’ve had fairly significant enrollment success, I believe, in a year when enrollment is down dramatically in many places.

I have been a strong proponent of a plan to unite all 136 Football Bowl Subdivision schools into a single college football league with the National Players Association. It’s called the College Student Football League. It was profiled since the last Senate meeting in The Wall Street Journal and in an op-ed I co-wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

It outlines why I think it’s worth considering and why academics and presidents should step up because of what otherwise may likely happen with athletics.

It’s supported by a significant group of people, but I don’t think that means it’s likely to be the final plan. I’m just hoping it will move the needle from where things are going by default, which is the direction that the SEC and the Big10 athletic directors and commissioners are driving things. That’s a higher education athletics model fueled by billion-dollar contracts from Disney and News Corp, with a relatively small number of large public universities pouring unlimited funds into developing professional football teams. I think the consequences to that are pretty severe, and not just for academics at those universities, but for women’s sports and Olympic sports across all universities in the United States. I think we should be trying to preserve a vibrant athletics culture, a competitive one, that remembers academic priorities of students, that values women’s and Olympic sports, that helps bind alumni to schools and creates rivalries and idiosyncrasies that define college sports right now.

I think that you should realize this is rapidly changing. We are facing right now the settlement of a massive antitrust case. One aspect of it is to create the probability that schools in the major conferences will be paying directly $20 million a year to student athletes, mostly to football players.

I think it’s important for Syracuse to be competitive, but it’s important also to understand the budget implications of that, and the values implication of that. I’ve been trying to get groups to focus on this early and often. We’ve worked through it with the Board of Trustees recently. Faculty Athletic Representative Mary Graham has convened two meetings with stakeholders this week, including faculty, student-athletes, student leaders, and leadership from around the University, including especially the co-chairs of the Senate Athletic Policy Committee. I think the next step, learning from some of our experiences recently, is working through the Senate Athletic Policy Committee to focus on it promptly this year in the Senate and to figure out what other stakeholder groups need to be briefed and discuss the implications of it. We made some progress on that this week.

It’s not a thing that we can spend two years debating because, unfortunately, the landscape might be quite dramatically changed before we can reach a universal consensus in two years. But if the Senate wants to play a meaningful role in this, I need the Senate Athletic Policy Committee to be moving on it fairly soon, reporting on it and information sessions, including for senators who are interested. I need that as well, for student-athletes, for student leaders, and, believe me, there’s plenty of alumni very interested in this as well.

We have a long way to go before this is all going to settle down. Like everything else, it could be affected by the elections. I’m just saying this because if shared governance is going to mean something in this area, we actually have to do the work in this area, and we have to do it soon. Thank you.

Greetings, everybody. I should say that I had Tom鈥檚 [Dennison] job [chair of the Employee Benefits Advisory Council] in another life at the University of Michigan. I was the chair of a similar body there. I’m aware of the [health care benefits] issues that have been discussed. Tom is so much more aware of the current system and how it works, but I’ll make the observation that we do occasionally change our third-party administrator. We used to have a company called POMCO, and we changed to Excellus largely because of the complaints we were getting from our employees then. These things seem to go in cycles. What seems to be happening right now from my 50,000-foot level is that the pricing of insurance benefits was largely based on estimates that occurred during COVID when nobody was getting elective treatments and surgery. And suddenly they’ve experienced a bubble of people getting health care, and the hardball tactics that were being described with providers have led many of the providers to say, “We can’t make this work. We’re just going to drop out of dealing with you.”

Excellus has a huge fraction of the third-party administrative market in upstate New York. The other choices aren’t numerous. Excellus is also being very aggressive with the employers in terms of what they want to charge employers. That’s the next concern coming up soon as we go toward open enrollment. All I can say is that I am aware that people need doctors and need access to urgent care. I’m aware of that. There’s a little bit of brinksmanship going on with the health care providers and with the employers right now. I think what Tom said is it’s new to Syracuse, but it is what’s been going on for more than a decade in other markets. So, we’re playing catch up and learning how you win these brinkmanship games for our employees. That’s a little more than you needed to know, and Tom can tell you if I got that wrong, but that’s how it feels to me.

One reason for this [Employee Benefits Advisory] council is because how this worked in the past was kind of this black box and suddenly whatever emerged was, 鈥淪urprise! You don’t have a doctor, and you’re going to pay a hundred percent more for it.鈥� And then we had a Senate meeting, and it was too late to do much about it or even talk about it. We’ve been trying to get more integration with this council earlier in the year so that people representing all the constituencies affected have input and not the day open enrollment occurs. We’ll see how that works. From my perspective, folks, it’s worked really well in some of these early issues like the retirement fees and the dental [insurance]. I think facing the problems with Delta Dental that Professor Gray raised in this body was very helpful, but health benefits is such a bigger thing. So, it’s going to be harder in the year ahead.

The University overall, notwithstanding what I’ve just said, is in good shape right now, particularly in terms of finances, advancement, and enrollment. That’s kind of back-office stuff, but that’s pretty important for all our lives. We finished FY24, which ended on June 30 with a small surplus of $1.5 million on a budget of more than $1.7 billion. We are three months into a FY25, and we’re running a still smaller surplus鈥揵ut still surplus, not a deficit鈥揻or this year. Our endowment has been steadily growing. By the end of this calendar year on Dec. 31, I expect we will achieve the very ambitious goals we set in 2019 when we launched the Forever Orange $1.5 Billion Campaign. And we’ll finish it on schedule, and we’ll close the campaign at the end of December.

We received this past year just under 45,000 undergraduate applications, the most in our history. We’ve enrolled a very strong undergraduate and transfer class despite historic changes from the Supreme Court and the truly unbelievable meltdown of the federal financial aid system. Many of our peers, I think, wish their news on finances and advancement and enrollment was like ours. So that’s good news. I thank a lot of people in this room who helped with all the aspects of that.

This is the first University Senate meeting for Lois Agnew as our interim provost and vice chancellor. She’s doing a fabulous job, in my humble view, and I’m very grateful to her. We have onboarded 94 new full-time faculty and 90 new part-time faculty this fall.

We last night formally opened our new D.C. center, which is on New Hampshire Avenue on DuPont Circle. That follows the successful opening of the new center in North Hollywood in Los Angeles. The new D.C. center provides home to academic programs for many schools and colleges and for students, a large group of whom are there this semester. It’s also where our Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is based. It has offices for federal government relations, for alumni advancement, and for a local office for the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families. I just saw it for the first time last night. It has outstanding classroom space and event space for the whole university. I thank a lot of people who came together to pull that off.

We also opened two new residence halls this fall primarily for sophomores on the main campus. Orange Hall was transformed from the Sheraton, and it now houses 390 students. Milton Hall, the apartment complex that was called the Marshall just behind Marshall Street, also opened. It was brought under the University’s housing umbrella. It has 270 students in it. That’s been a lot of work. That’s been the first stage of the strategic housing plan implementation.

Ten days ago, we hosted the largest Coming Back Together Reunion of our Black and Latino alumni ever. Fifteen hundred Black and Latino alumni and friends were here. There were events in every school and college, in the Dome, and in Hendricks Chapel. We dedicated the Barner-McDuffie house on 119 Euclid. And just lots of people came together to make that a very engaging experience. I’m really grateful to everybody, especially to the team in advancement for that. So, that’s all good news.

I thought I would conclude with a caution about what’s coming at us, what’s coming at higher education, including at selective, private institutions like 网爆门. We’ve watched what’s been happening to our neighbors, including Cazenovia College and Wells College that closed. The finances are getting tougher in the sector every year. Several of our peer institutions, including distinguished R1 research universities, are facing severe budget restrictions. Lately, that includes American University and Penn State University as well as West Virginia University. They’re abruptly dealing with layoffs, elimination of programs, and repeated deficits. And a lot of other schools also are facing highly fraught labor relations that are impacting the daily experience of students and faculty, as well as the staff that really keeps those schools running and intact.

A lot of schools like us are facing a dramatically changing and more expensive landscape in intercollegiate athletics. That’s a topic on which I want to work with the newly named committees in charge of the Senate. I’ll say it’s an environment that’s highly unstable and that is at times quite problematic, including from an academic standpoint. Some work through the Senate Committee, through the AAUP, through the full Senate on that probably has to happen this semester if there’s going to be meaningful involvement in the decision making ahead.

My point of all this is it’s stressful. I think we’re in pretty good shape to face all this, but I’m also not surprised that, given all this going on and given the politics of the world, I’m seeing attacks on traditions of shared governance continue and become exacerbated from various directions. I talked about this at the first Senate meeting last year, and I’ve seen it accelerate. By shared governance, what I mean is that at this institution, it is still the case under our bylaws and our practices that the Senate, through its constituent stakeholders has authority over the curriculum and the granting of degrees. That’s not advisory, that’s authority. Everything else is advisory to the chancellor, but the chancellor actually occasionally asks for advice and provides information so that that advice can be given on a timely basis. That’s in theory how it’s supposed to work.

I’ve been seeing that model either vanish or be lost faith in it at other institutions. I’m saying to you that I haven’t lost faith in it here. It does, though, require that when we have challenges coming at us, that we do the work. By doing the work, I mean your job as senators, humbly, and my job as an administrator is not to show up and be entertained once a month at these meetings. Our job is actually to show up for the committees, to read the reports, to write the reports, to give the information, to get the information that’s necessary. So that when we make tough decisions, they are decisions that people have had an opportunity to advise on or, where the authority over, to decide. And, that’s work. I know that everybody complains about meetings and committees, but I guess given what we’re going into, the alternative of not doing the work is seeing some of the things happening that we’ve seen on other campuses. What most troubles me about other campuses is a lack of valuing all of the university, and all parts of the university. So I’m going to do the work, or try to do the work, encourage others to, and I hope you do, too. I’m sure you’ll have many questions when we get to that point.

Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Reed. Can we all clap for the professor?

Twenty-five days to Commencement. It’s hard to believe and package it. Today I’m going to be very brief. I do want to note with great sorrow the passing last week of two of our Life Trustees, Mike Falcone and Bernie Kossar, and the passing in the line of duty of two local law enforcement officers. They were Onondaga County Sheriff’s Deputy Lt. Michael Hoosock and Syracuse Police Officer Michael Jensen. They’re both graduates of our sister school, Le Moyne College.

I’m just going to provide quick updates on four shared governance issues.

The first is honorary degrees. I have confirmed honorary degree recipients for the May 12 Commencement, all from the list approved by the Senate. The awarding and revocation of honorary degrees, like all degrees, is solely by the Board of Trustees and solely upon the recommendation of the Senate.

At the March 20 Senate meeting, the Senate voted to recommend the University revoke an honorary degree. In doing so, the Senate filed a new procedure approved a little more than a year ago by both the Board and the Senate. In accordance with that procedure, I referred the Senate’s recommendation to the Board of Trustees for consideration at their May meetings.

The second issue is staff and faculty benefits. In September at the University Senate meeting, I shared with you that, at the recommendation of a faculty and staff working group, I’d be creating a new employee Benefits Assessment Council. That group includes University Senators. The new council began meeting this year as a new experiment in furtherance of shared governance. It includes faculty and staff recommended by the Senate. Professor Tom Dennison chaired the council, and Professor Eric Kingson also helped a lot.

The council met all year. It worked well. In particular, they received a crash course on University benefits and plans, and they reviewed and approved recommendations for a more equitable and transparent payment of retirement plan fees that TIAA charges the faculty and staff plan.

I think the experiment has been a success. I, therefore, ask that the council in the future continue to work and provide updates to and through the Senate Committee on Employee Services, Fiscal Affairs and Operations. That’s one of the new Senate committees, and one of the issues that we left hanging was exactly how it would integrate with the Senate. That seems like the right committee to do that for next year.

I want to say that the only major issue I currently foresee in employee benefits is our dental plans, which have challenges and need to be reevaluated and I expect to be reevaluated in part by a survey of faculty and staff. And that is one of the issues that will go to this council.

The third issue of the shared governance is sustainability, pursuant to recommendations of the Student Association and the Graduate Student Organization. After briefing the full Senate, I last year appointed a Sustainability Oversight Council and, again following the recommendations, set the goal of 网爆门 reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2032.

Earlier this month, after review and approval by the council, the University released an updated Climate Action Plan. It can be founded on SU News among other places. I am happy to send the full report to anybody who emails me. The plan has two main goals:

1. To say precisely how we鈥檙e going to get to net zero emissions by 2032; and how we鈥檙e going to measure metrics and progress each year; and also
2. To dramatically reducing single-use plastics by the 2027-28 academic year through a phased approach.

The revised plan provides a phase structure and specific projects that are going to get us to these goals. I鈥檓 really grateful to the Sustainability Oversight Council. It is small. It鈥檚 one trustee, one faculty member, one student and me. The council is going to continue to work with the Sustainability Management staff on new ways to reduce emissions, and we’re going to be reporting to the Senate and the University each year. While 2032 may not sound ambitious, it’s considerably more ambitious than most other universities I’m aware of. So keeping track of being on track each year is pretty important for shared governance.

The last shared governance area this year is athletics. I think you all know that it鈥檚 been sweeping and turbulent change for the last three years in intercollegiate athletics. I hope you all realize that much more dramatic changes are coming fast at us. I鈥檓 part of a working group, which includes some university presidents and leaders in sports working on new solutions, some of which have been featured recently in The New York Times and The Athletic. I believe colleges and universities must work together fast to create sustainable models that ensure the future success of collegiate athletics and especially includes preserving women’s sports and Olympic sports. I’ve been vocal on this issue because Syracuse’s strong athletic tradition is so important to our students and our alumni, to our brand, and to Central New York.

So far there has been little shared governance involvement in planning for the changes coming at us. This has to be different next academic year. I鈥檝e reached out to the Senate Agenda Committee, to AAUP leadership, and to the academic deans to discuss over the summer how we approach these issues in the next year. I鈥檓 sure they will involve consultation and counsel with and from the Senate Committee on Athletic Policy. I think there’s going to be more action in that committee for the coming year as well.

So those are my updates. Thanks to everybody for the hard work all year.

Thank you, Professor Reed. I鈥檒l be very brief. I鈥檒l just share three developments.

Just before spring break, the University announced plans to build two new residence halls. These will be the first new construction residence halls in at least 15 years. The first will be a new residence hall located on Ostrom Avenue across the street from Thornden Park on what are currently vacant lots. This project is currently in design, and construction will begin later this year. The second project will start with the demolition of Marion and Kimmel residence halls and the Kimmel Dining Center. On that site, a modern new residence hall will be built. The size and timeline for the Marion Kimmel site is still under evaluation.

The student experience division has already hosted listening sessions to ensure the Ostrom Avenue facility meets students鈥� needs. These sessions have included first and second-year students, peer educators, LLC students, Student Living staff and student leaders, and the Student Advisory Council.

These two new planned residence halls are in addition to previously announced plans to convert the Sheraton Hotel to a residence hall, and fully incorporating 727 South Crouse, which used to be known as The Marshall, into our housing stock. Conversion of the Sheraton will begin just after Commencement in May. Both that building and the building at 727 South Crouse will be part of our residence halls for the Fall 2024 semester.

The other update is that most saw the announcement that two-time Syracuse graduate and longtime iSchool Professor Jeff Rubin is taking on a new role as the University鈥檚 inaugural senior vice president for digital transformation and chief digital officer. His responsibilities will include establishing a Universitywide artificial intelligence strategy, overseeing data management and security, and leading the information technology team, among other key priorities. Jeff has been serving as a special advisor to me on SU Global and Digital Transformation for the last couple of years part-time. Now full-time he鈥檚 going to be helping in this new role. His extraordinary history of success includes planning and implementing high-speed connectivity at the JMA Wireless Dome. He鈥檚 the founder of SIDEARM Sports, which is the company that鈥檚 the nation鈥檚 leading digital provider for college athletics. I am confident that under his leadership the University is on course to be a digital and technology leader.

Finally, I鈥檇 like to recognize ACC Women鈥檚 Basketball Coach of the Year, Syracuse鈥檚 Felisha Legette-Jack. She was one of 10 semifinalist coaches for National Coach of the Year as well. In her second season, she鈥檚 really been an inspiring leader here. And, the women鈥檚 team heads to the NCAA Tournament. They play Saturday at 3:30 p.m. the winner of the Auburn/Arizona game, and I鈥檓 very proud of that.

I also want to recognize our men鈥檚 basketball Coach Adrian Autry. This year鈥檚 team won 20 games, the first time that鈥檚 been achieved in a decade. In his first season, Coach Autry has proven he鈥檚 a devoted coach who puts character front and center of what he does.

That鈥檚 my report. Thank you.

Thank you, Professor Reed.

My only remark today is to answer Senator Van Gulick’s question from the Jan. 24 meeting. To remind folks, he asked about reseating the JMA Wireless Dome this summer, which will make it much more accessible and more comfortable, but also reduces the number of seats and moves almost everybody’s seats. As part of that, they’re repricing the Dome seats, and that’s been public. Senator Van Gulick’s question was, in the repricing, there’s a charge for a donation and a charge for the ticket price combined. Although he phrased it much more tactically, I think his question was really: Is the new pricing intended to avoid taxes under our RCM budget model?

I looked into that and the short answer is: No, it’s not intended to do that. Actually, it’s been the case since 1980 that there’s been for many, if not most seats, a separate ticket charge for the donation and for the ticket price, and that’s handled differently under RCM. That’s continuing now. Because people’s seats have moved, they’re seeing different percentage allocations. The intention is not to change what’s been the system since the 1980s. But because of Senator Van Gulick’s apt question, I’m going to closely monitor whether the RCM taxes on Dome ticket revenue as a percentage of total ticket revenue remain consistent under the new pricing. I know that’s pretty arcane, but I’m going to watch it closely.

Thank you.