Office of the President, Shirley Strum Kenny

Online commentaries from President Shirley Strum Kenny

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What does it mean to be a flagship?

Governor Eliot Spitzer, in his State of the State Address, pledged that New York must have the finest higher education system in the nation, headed by two flagship campuses, Stony Brook and the University of Buffalo:

UB will become an economic engine for Buffalo, and a flagship institution for a world class public university system. We will also create a flagship at the other end of our state, as well. We will help bring together the University at Stony Brook, and the world renowned Brookhaven and Cold Spring Harbor laboratories. The result will be a peerless cross-disciplinary research engine in the areas of cancer, neurobiology, plant genetics and bioinformatics. The economic benefit for Long Island will be tremendous. The chance for New York to lead the world will be unparalleled.

The concept of one or more flagship campuses is common to great state universities. Many states have one central public university campus responsible for research, professional schools, and often agricultural education and extension. A few have more than one.

For 60 years SUNY has never recognized flagships or even used the word although it did acknowledge University Centers—Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, and Stony Brook, all of which offer doctoral degrees.

But Governor Spitzer has spoken of a larger vision for state education. Now the state needs to support this most important goal.

Robert M. Berdahl, now President of the AAU, wrote 10 years ago, when he was Chancellor of Berkeley, about the importance of flagships to state systems. In part he said:

There must be a recognition that flagship campuses cost more than other kinds of institutions. To build a flagship campus, you must have faculty who are internationally recognized and competitive. That requires substantial salary differentials, and salary differentials that are not merely made possible by the herding of undergraduates into large classes with graduate instructors. It requires student-teacher ratios that are comparable to those at the best universities in the country, and that costs money.

Now the trick is to get the funding necessary for our flagship campus. The Governor envisions a collaborative process in which a public endowment and private donations would buttress state allocations. This would allow us to have sufficient funding for our educational and research missions and to plan long-term rather than relying too heavily on an annual process.

Stony Brook is doing its part. We have already raised about $250 million of our $300 million capital campaign. We have also spearheaded the Alliance with Brookhaven and Cold Spring Harbor Labs. This Alliance is something entirely new—a state university, federal laboratory and private institution, all geographically proximate, combining their extraordinary faculties and facilities for research in areas in which all three have particularly strong resources. The Governor is right—the Alliance will be unparalleled.

Our fiftieth anniversary has proven to be a defining moment in many ways. Our being designated by the Governor as a flagship is one of the very best.

Shirley.Kenny@stonybrook.edu