Chancellor Syverud Addresses March 27 University Senate Meeting

Chancellor Kent Syverud gave brief updates at Wednesday’s meeting of the University Senate. He addressed the remaining shared governance tasks for the year; the Chief Diversity Officer search; the newly dedicated Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement; and Invest Syracuse.

Below are the Chancellor’s remarks given at the meeting:

Good afternoon. This is a hurried time of the semester. I know we are all feeling it. We conduct a great deal of business in the last six weeks of the semester. We have a number of shared governance tasks to accomplish in the remaining time we have. I have four brief updates.

First, I want to update you on the search for a Chief Diversity Officer. The search committee has produced an outstanding group of candidates, and we hope to have an announcement soon—my intention is that this will be before the end of the semester. I want to thank the students, staff and faculty that have served on the committee. As I have mentioned before, our goal is to have this key leader in place by July 1.

Next, I’d like to mention the Syracuse Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement, now known as the SOURCE. I used to think that it was impossible to create a new program with lots of input and also proceed at warp speed. We have done it. In less than six months, we stood up and dedicated the SOURCE—you can read about it in SU News. This is a combined effort of so many people in our campus community—I want to recognize all of the people in this room who participated. This is going to dramatically increase support for and involvement in undergraduate research across all schools and colleges. The SOURCE has already received over 130 proposals for undergraduate student research projects. I’d like to congratulate the students, faculty and staff for a successful launch, and I look forward to seeing what our undergraduate students will achieve with this support.

Third, the One University Awards will be presented on April 12. I hope that you will plan to come. We will be recognizing a lot of people who are devoted to this university, including in the area of shared governance.

Finally, when we raised tuition as part of Invest Syracuse we were determined to ensure that we can maintain socioeconomic diversity. To do that, we needed to raise $40 million for student financial aid in two years. We have surpassed that goal more than six months ahead of schedule.

Thank you. This concludes my remarks. I will take questions after the Provost’s presentation.