Chancellor Syverud Updates Senate on University Finances, Enrollment, Leaders and Shared Governance

Good afternoon. Welcome to a new year of University Senate. This is my last “first” 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’s the right thing to do, I can explain it at another time.

Today I’m going to provide brief updates. I have four slides on University finances, enrollment, and fundraising. I’m going to say a little bit about new leadership and shared governance, and then I’m going to talk a little bit about the academic portfolio. I’ve got one point of personal privilege at the end. I’ll 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’d 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’s basketball team. A lot of us saw her play and watched her joy in playing. She was a double alumnus. She earned her master’s 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’s 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’s not a happy story entirely here either. It would be hubris to say that we’re doing better than them because we’re smarter or better.

What’s 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’m 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, Syracuse University’s fundraising always drops dramatically once a campaign ends. Our campaign ended on Dec. 31, 2024. It’s really important given the challenges we’re facing for that not to happen this time, and it hasn’t happened so far. We closed FY25 at 107% of our new business goals and 106% of our cashflow goals.

We’ve been running well ahead of last year, this year as well, FY26. We’re 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 Syracuse University. Our traditionally measured enrollment is falling by about 3.5% this year. It’s driven largely by declines in international and master’s 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’s enrollment. We’re about 41 students below goal overall in our master’s enrollment, and that’s largely because international students, especially from China, had trouble getting visas in the United States. It is not likely to change. We haven’t 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’re 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’s best interest to remove the word “interim” from Lois Agnew’s 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’ 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’ve answered a lot of tough questions from the University Senate over the past 12 years. I’m 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’m grateful because it means you care about this place.

That’s one thing I’ve 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’t 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’d 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’s plans to provide further recommendations this year. I am grateful for the committee’s commitment to advancing free speech on campus. I appreciate the Senate’s 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 Syracuse University 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—emphasis 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’s 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’re 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—and 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’m 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’s 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’ll 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’s 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 Syracuse University. 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.