Diversity

True diversity implies a pluralistic campus, one that provides students, faculty, and staff the opportunities to learn about respect and appreciate each other’s cultures and backgrounds. While the term “diversity” often refers to race, culture, and ethnicity (in both their domestic and international contexts) Stony Brook uses the term to include physical disabilities, gender, age, class, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and marital status.

With Stony Brook's local Long Island and New York State roots and International reputation., you are certain to find people who share your background and interests no matter where you come from. But Stony Brook can offer you far more than familiar faces. In this diverse community, you are just as certain to be stimulated by people who don't look, talk, think, or create the way you do. In finding a home at Stony Brook, you'll be better prepared to feel at home wherever you find yourself later in life.

Stony Brook’s diversity really reflects the diversity of the world outside the campus, including a strong international perspective. Yet, more importantly, Stony Brook’s approach to diversity encourages all individuals and groups to be at home in the University. The University at Stony Brook has a strong foundation on which to build a diverse campus, one that promotes intellectual inquiry and dialogue, learning in the classroom, professional development of staff members, and other activities central to a civilized, democratic society. A truly diverse campus requires the support and vision of the President and a commitment on the part of the communities of scholars, students, and staff that comprise Stony Brook. To ensure that proactive steps toward true diversity are indeed taken, we employ an incentive-based system to reward progress in developing diverse curricula, and recruiting and retaining diverse populations of faculty, staff, and students. In the last ten years, the student body at Stony Brook has become increasingly diverse in its racial and ethnic composition, as the children of the post-1965 wave of immigration have come of college age. Our student body is now almost fifty percent non-Anglo-European. We have high proportions of Asian American, Caribbean American, and Latino American students.