- Thank you, thank you. Please be seated. Let's give Austin a warm round of applause for that wonderful, kind introduction.
I also want to acknowledge our Student Jazz Group and our student who just sang the national anthem. Let's give them a round of applause as well.
And I wanna say good morning everyone and thank you for taking the time to be with us this morning. It is wonderful to see some faces. I hope I can get a chance to meet you in person at the end of this morning's event and others I'd like to extend a warm welcome to this institution, to many distinguished guests and representatives from our community partners. I also welcome you for joining us this morning. Senator Charles Schumer's office. I understand that there's staff members from that office. Assembly minority leader, William Barclays. Both of these legislators have had a chance to meet for the last few weeks.
The mayor of our city, Bill Barlow, who is also here with us this morning. CenterState CEO and its president and chief executive officer, Rob Simpson. Want to say thank you for coming. Colleagues and folks from Central New York Regional Planning and Development Board, Empire State Development Cooperation, Manufacturers Association of Central New York, MACNY, Onondaga Small Business Development Center at Onondaga Community College. I had the pleasure of meeting the president of that wonderful institution just last week. Constellation, which is an electricity provider and gas supplier in our region. Operation Oswego County, Richard S. Shineman Foundation, Oswego City County, and Oswego City School District representatives, Oswego YMCA, and a group of folks that I care deeply about, SUNY College Council, that are members of the Oswego College Council, the College Foundation that I also had a chance to meet members of that board along with our college counselor alumni. And I've met so many of our alumni and I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us this morning. Our faculty. Our faculty who care deeply about this work, our staff who care deeply about our students, and certainly many of our students who have taken time to join us this morning. In addition to many others that are watching streaming in, I want to thank you deeply for taking the time to be here this morning as we speak about our institution and all of the protocols I want to observe as well.
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And I wanna say again a wonderful welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining me this morning for what I expect to become a new annual tradition of our institution, the State of the University address. It seemed very fitting to deliver this inaugural State of the University address as a kickoff of our Founders Weekend, which begins of course today, and the celebration of the 200th birthday of the founder of this storied institution, Edward Austin Sheldon.
And although I am only a month and a half into my tenure as the 11th president of this institution, I can confidently say that this university, this university remains committed to Sheldon's vision of access and opportunity for all. Thus the State of the University address is an opportunity for us to take stock of our institution's work and progress in this regard during the last year even as we emerge from the Covid 19 pandemic, and to paint a portrait of how we plan to continue Sheldon's vision in a post-pandemic world.
What's clear to me in the short time that I have been here is that SUNY Oswego, our institution is a vibrant community of learners and scholars whose passion drives new discoveries, whose passion pushes the boundaries of what is known and what is unknown, questions traditional business, social, and scientific assumptions, and advances the world by graduating individuals, young men and women, with a more humanistic perspective and an inclusive approach to problem solving.
Consider just a few highlights of how this has manifested from the past year. Our students and their research continue to make waves on a global scale. Professor Shashi Kanbur, a SUNY-distinguished faculty from our campus, a SUNY-distinguished professor from our institution, led a group of physics students in a summer research project at the world renowned Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. Criminal justice major Gabrielle Roubanian presented her research at an international conference in Lisbon, Portugal. And biochemistry major Fathima Raviya Careem presented her research on tuberculosis at this year's World Congress on Undergraduate Research in the United Kingdom, becoming the first Laker to do so. Let's give all of them a warm round of applause.
SUNY Oswego Lakers raise our institutional profile by taking home awards and earning recognitions at this year's International Technology and Engineering Educators Association Conference at the New York State Broadcast Association Excellence Awards, at the New York State Business Competition Event, and at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Awards, among many others.
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Our students and faculty members seek out opportunities all the time to put the education into action. In keeping with our university's motto of learning by doing. The dozens of students across all majors, for example, who participated in the annual Launch It Student Entrepreneur Competition is one such example. The students who were working in paid internships with Kestas Bendinskas, a distinguished professor of chemistry through the recently opened startup Stress Bioanalytics to meet the demand for a distinctive type of biotech testing in Oswego. And the School of Business students who opened the Rich and Poor Cafe in Rich Hall. It was one of those places I visited when I came in April for the interview and I was so excited to see those students. Those students were guided by our alumni mentor and entrepreneur, Ed Alberts, along with staff from our auxiliary services unit. Remarkable work when you see students learning by doing and running a business even before they graduate from the institution. Again, a warm round of applause for all of them.
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Last year the university brought in a Fall 2022 incoming class of nearly 2,400 new students, 1,472 first year students, 528 transfer students, and 390 graduate students. And those students represent our largest class since the pandemic and of course the second largest class at the institution in the past 20 years. Our admissions and enrollment management team continued the hard work of attracting new students to the shores of Lake Ontario in the aftermath of Covid-19.
Our faculty brought in $7 million in funding for 18 new grants and contracts which represents a 70% increase over the previous year. These grants will enable
We are committed as an institution to the wellbeing and support of all our students and last year we took major steps toward fulfilling this commitment by joining the American Association of State Colleges and Universities as Students Success Equity Intensive Initiative. This initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is designed to help institutions improve learning outcomes through the implementation of intervention programs such as the redesign of pedagogy in ways that help close the equity gaps for black, Latinx, indigenous, and low-income students at our institution. And we also connected our students to tutoring and support services and infused career education readiness and competencies, core competencies into the curriculum.
These efforts are working as a class of 2022 graduate survey indicates that 99% of our graduates were employed or continue their education upon leaving our institution. A round of applause for this remarkable accomplishment. And what is even more exciting is that 91% of those graduates are working full-time. Full-time. And they're also working in the field of their choice. And 87% of them chose to stay in New York state, while another 39% reside in Central New York upon graduation. This again is thanks to the tremendous work of our faculty and staff.
Our James A. Triandiflou, a graduate of our institution, with his really generous donation, helped to create the James Triandiflou Institute for Equity Diversity Inclusion and Transformative Practice and we have an event later on this evening at the institute's office. The institute has served as a central hub to support a range of activities and programs that speak to our commitment to diversity and equity and inclusion, to promote cultural humility, to promote civil discourse, and active engagement on our campus. The institute is helping to ensure that our institution is an inclusive community whose members are committed to making positive change in the world, and working in tandem with the institute, groups such as the Bias Prevention and Response Team and the LGBTQIA+ Working Group helped to provide education, support, and guidance to make all campus members feel welcome and valued.
Being considerate of others also means that we must be responsible stewards. We must be responsible stewards of the earth for future generations and embrace sustainable practices. I'm happy to report that campus-wide efforts and continuous improvement earned SUNY Oswego the coveted gold stars sustainability tracking assessment and rating system status from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education and this achievement, this singular achievement, establishes our institution as a leader in higher education with sustainable practices. And I'll ask you to give everyone a round of applause.
As you read in my message to the campus community last week, SUNY Oswego climbed 15 sports to number 39 on the US News and World Reports list of best regional universities in the north, and number 18 in the region on the social mobility index for our role in moving large numbers of first-generation students into the middle class. And this affirms our vital role as an engine of upward mobility. These are just a few of your accomplishments, our accomplishments, and they reflect the dedication and care each one of you placed in advancing our mission.
In my remarks at the opening breakfast five weeks ago to mark the beginning of a new academic year, I spoke about the founding of our university 162 years ago on a simple and powerful promise to light the torch of learning, transform lives and ignite new possibilities. It is a promise encapsulated in the motto that I referred to, our motto, learning by doing, a testament to the power of applied learning. It is one that distinguishes us from other institutions. It is at the core of our founding.
I'd also shared the story of my work, the story of my work around the presidential residence. Shady Shore. Many of you know the location following my arrival on campus and as you've heard me say that what struck me was the vision of this man, Edward Austin Sheldon. And if you come to the president's residence, you'll see his picture hanging on the wall. The foundation that he laid to center Oswego, our institution, as a pillar in American education. That house, that is today the president's residence, was built in 1857. In 1860, early part of it, he founded our institution five years later.
I've always wondered, what is selfless service? That he wasn't establishing the institution for himself. He was a man of means. He was establishing an institution for the future, and that institution, thanks to the work of all of you, all of us, that institution has withstood the times.
As you recall at that opening breakfast remarks, I had noted that I was reading two books, by the late professor Dorothy Rogers, a highly regarded faculty member who passed away in 1986, it's by the time I came to the United States, if you do the math. First book titled "Oswego: Fountainhead of Teacher Education." "Teacher Education" focuses on the college's centennial history, and Oswego's role in shaping American education. I'd also mentioned the second book, "SUNY College at Oswego: Its second century unfolds." And that particular book by Professor Rogers speaks about the college's rich history. Also speaks about the college's alumni who carry, as that book mentions the Oswego message, and that message was carried to students at home but also to students around the world and it began all the way, it went as far as Japan.
I've since finished reading those books and I recommend them to anyone who wants to understand this university's history and the progress the university has continued to make to expand access and opportunity. And that progress is encapsulated in the accomplishments of this institution that I've shared with you, and there's lots, I just shared some highlights.
And since the announcement of my selection as your president, I've engaged members, my leadership team have engaged members of the campus community. And I've asked the simple question, what do we do to advance the promise that Sheldon handed over to us? What do we do further to advance that promise?
I've engaged distinguished alumni, members of our college council. Last week the chancellor and I spoke, had a meeting. I've engaged our external partners, including our elected officials, on that vision to expand what you've heard me refer to as the Oswego Promise. It is a promise dedicated to meeting the needs of Central New York. But even as we respond to this question I was posing to my colleagues, I was mindful that this is also a time when the enrollment cliff is real. When as a consequence of Covid-19, our enrollment numbers did take a slide like many other institutions in this region and beyond.
Mindful of the number of high school graduates, it's also in decline. Mindful of the challenges we face as an institution, just this morning my leadership team and I had a robust discussion about the emerging trends. We looked at S and E, social, economic, and environmental. We looked at the demographics. We looked at technology. We looked at the mobility, not only in the United States but beyond, the sense of mobility, but also what is impacting us domestically. We look at affordability. We look at the purpose, not only of higher education, but the purpose of a college degree. And we look at these with the mindset of what do we do to advance the promise.
We also look at this with the sense of a community because Oswego, as I mentioned, our commitment to learning by doing, this community is vibrant. It's vibrant. It is an intellectual community, but it's also a global community. And I'm asking all of us to look at the promise with the world in mind, as it was 162 years ago. As we strive to continue our transformative work, we cannot sit still. We cannot wait for things to happen to us. We cannot be isolated and insular, but we need to be bold and inventive as Oswego has always been. It is what Sheldon was doing. He was being inventive.
And it's important that we remember that the promise that was made and how important it is to meet this promise. Sheldon, as he moved toward the founding of this institution, had a dream of a teacher's college in which teachers, college students would be educated as specialists, as specialists in their chosen fields of education. It was something that was not done then. It was not done then. And it required effort, his effort. And today, his institution, our institution, has an unmatched legacy for preparing teachers for excellence in the classroom. It's something I'm very proud of and I've shared this with my colleagues at other SUNY institutions that we continue to be leaders in teacher education.
The broader education that is offered at this institution in liberal arts, sciences, engineering, business, communications, and the fine arts is second to none. As we look forward and looking at our promise and being bold and inventive, there's no doubt that the future holds great promise for our institution. I'm confident in what I see as I travel this country and internationally and speak about Oswego. I see the future and I'm confident. But to make that future even brighter, it requires all of us to work together, to work collaboratively, to put our students first, our students' success first.
I'm happy to say that there is no shortage of enthusiasm on this campus. I see it in the way faculty and staff contribute their time and energy to create a warm and welcoming environment. I see it in the way our students are dedicated to their studies and to making a difference in the world. I see it in the way our alumni support their alma mater. I see it in the way our community partners collaborate with us to achieve our shared goals. And I see it in the way our leadership team, our SUNY colleagues, our board, our council, our foundation, our campus leadership, all of us, are dedicated to the success of this institution.
Together, we are making great progress. Together, we are living the promise that Sheldon envisioned over 160 years ago. Together, we are building a brighter future for SUNY Oswego. And together, we will continue to light the torch of learning, transform lives, and ignite new possibilities. Thank you all for your dedication to this great institution. And thank you for being part of the Oswego family. I look forward to working with all of you in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. Thank you and have a great academic year.
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Note: This transcript is based on the spoken words of the speaker, and there may be minor discrepancies between this transcript and the actual speech.