President Maurie McInnis

Maurie McInnis is the sixth president of Stony Brook University, an internationally recognized public research institution and center of academic excellence designated as a  flagship  university in New York State and ranked as the number one public university in the state under her leadership.

Appointed in July 2020, President McInnis also oversees Stony Brook Medicine, Long Island’s premier academic medical center, which encompasses five health sciences schools, four hospitals, and 200 community-based healthcare settings. She is a key player in furthering economic development on Long Island and in Stony Brook’s role as part of the management team of nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility.

Advancing Access, Opportunities and Social Mobility For All Students

As an administrator, President McInnis is focused on providing a high-quality, affordable education for all students, which has resulted in a diverse student population that includes twenty percent underrepresented minority students, more than one-third of students who are Pell Grant-eligible, and one-third who are the first in their families to go to college.  Stony Brook University is ranked #1 on the College.net Social Mobility Index—ahead of all 65 members of the American Association of Universities (AAU). It has an 80-percent six-year graduation rate for Pell Grant recipients, compared to 77 percent for non-Pell Grant students, and four-year graduation rates continue to increase. 

To promote excellence through equity and diversity in STEM fields, President McInnis  announced the Stony Brook Simons STEM Scholars Program in May 2022, supported by a  $56.6 million gift from the Simons Foundation and the Simons Foundation International, to improve pathways to STEM careers and doctoral degrees for under-represented students. 

Achieving Financial Sustainability and Pursuing Bold Opportunities 

President McInnis initiated a university-wide Strategic Budget Initiative shortly after taking office in 2020 to enhance research, academic program development and opportunities in the health sciences while reducing administrative burdens and building new revenue sources. Notable resulting  accomplishments to date include a 22-percent increase in research expenditures attributed to investments in additional support for research administration and new seed grant programs, human resources-focused technology and support services enhancements and improvements in graduate tuition revenue sharing.  A results-oriented leader, President McInnis strategically moved the campus to a multi-year all-funds budgeting model to invest in strategic priorities and enable the university to identify areas for new revenue-increasing opportunities and new growth.

To propel Stony Brook University to even higher levels of excellence, President McInnis continues to make significant investments that put bold opportunities within reach. In late 2021, she launched the $75 million-dollar President’s Innovation and Excellence Fund, which is fully supported by philanthropic gifts, to enhance externally funded research on campus. This fund has supported Stony Brook’s efforts to compete and advance as a finalist as the City of New York and the Trust for Governors Island look to reimagine Governors Island as a global hub for climate science research and innovation.  

Leading a Top Public Research University

A renowned cultural historian and author, President McInnis’ academic scholarship has focused on race, slavery, and power in the 19th century American South. She brings to Stony Brook her humanist values , among them her conviction that institutes of higher learning should use their expertise and influence to address major societal problems. As such, she is deeply committed to the mission of public research universities.

Before coming to Stony Brook, she served four years as executive vice president and provost at the University of Texas at Austin and spent nearly 20 years at the University of Virginia in various academic and administrative appointments.

Along with her leadership team, President McInnis continues to embrace and advance opportunities to recruit accomplished faculty to improve teaching and learning, conduct groundbreaking research, provide the best clinical care for patients, and boost the socioeconomic mobility of all students at Stony Brook University. 

• Authored Publications and Commentaries

  Books

  Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s University 
  by Maurie D. McInnis , Kirt von von Daacke, et al.
  Published August 13, 2019
  In Educated in Tyranny, Maurie McInnis, Louis Nelson, and a group of contributing authors tell the largely unknown story of slavery at the University of Virginia. While UVA has long been celebrated as fulfilling Jefferson’s desire to educate citizens to lead and govern, McInnis and Nelson document the burgeoning political rift over slavery as Jefferson tried to protect southern men from anti-slavery ideas in northern institutions. In uncovering this history, Educated in Tyranny changes how we see the university during its first fifty years and understand its history hereafter.
  
  Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade 
  by Maurie D. McInnis
  Published April 11, 2013
  In 1853, Eyre Crowe, a young British artist, visited a slave auction in Richmond, Virginia. Harrowed by what he witnessed, he captured the scene in sketches that he would later develop into a series of illustrations and paintings, including the culminating painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia. This innovative book uses Crowe’s paintings to explore the texture of the slave trade in Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans, the evolving iconography of abolitionist art, and the role of visual culture in the transatlantic world of abolitionism. Tracing Crowe’s trajectory from Richmond across the American South and back to London—where his paintings were exhibited just a few weeks after the start of the Civil War—Maurie D. McInnis illuminates not only how his abolitionist art was inspired and made, but also how it influenced the international public’s grasp of slavery in America. With almost 140 illustrations, Slaves Waiting for Sale brings a fresh perspective to the American slave trade and abolitionism as we enter the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.
  
  Shaping the Body Politic: Art and Political Formation in Early America (Thomas Jefferson Foundation Distinguished Lecture Series)
  by Maurie D. McInnis (Editor), Louis P. Nelson (Editor)
  Published May 20, 2011
  Traditional narratives imply that art in early America was severely limited in scope. By contrast, these essays collectively argue that visual arts played a critical role in shaping an early American understanding of the body politic. American artists in the late colonial and early national periods enlisted the arts to explore and exploit their visions of the relationship of the American colonies to the mother country and, later, to give material shape to the ideals of modern republican nationhood. Taking a uniquely broad view of both politics and art, Shaping the Body Politic ranges in topic from national politics to the politics of national identity, and from presidential portraits to the architectures of the ordinary.
  
  The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston 
  by Maurie Dee McInnis
  Published June 27, 2005 - textbook
  At the close of the American Revolution, Charleston, South Carolina, was the wealthiest city in the new nation, with the highest per-capita wealth among whites and the largest number of enslaved residents. Maurie D. McInnis explores the social, political, and material culture of the city to learn how--and at what human cost--Charleston came to be regarded as one of the most refined cities in antebellum America.
  
  In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860 
  by Maurie Dee McInnis (Author, Editor)
  Published January 1, 1999
  An illustrated art catalogue, exemplifying the Charlestonians' fascination with European culture. It focuses on the portraits, paintings, decorative arts and other artifacts that document this allure, and delves into the issues surrounding American patronage.

  Contributor and Co-Editor

  "Virginian Luxuries" at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. In Intimate Interiors Sex, Politics, and Material Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Bedroom and Boudoir, ed. Tara Zanardi and Christopher M.S. Johns (Great Britain: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2023) 245-263.

   

  A Jeffersonian Ideal: Selections from the Dr. and Mrs. Henry C. Landon III Collection of Fine and Decorative Arts
  January 1, 2005, by Jill Hartz

  Other Publications

  Slate Magazine: “Richmond Reoccupied by the Men Who Wore the Gray," July 1, 2015
  
  Slate Magazine:  “The First Attack on Charleston’s AME Church,” June 19, 2015
  
  New York Times: (Opinion Pages): "How the Slave Trade Built America," April 3, 2015
  
  Dictionary of American History: American in the World, 1776 to the Present: encyclopedia entry: “Eyre Crowe,” 2015 (supplement)
  
  American Material Culture and the Texas Experience: The David B. Warren Symposium, Volume 2: “Tara, Gone with the Wind, and the Southern Landscape Tradition,” for Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, January 6, 2011.
  
  World of a Slave:  encyclopedia entry, “Slave Markets/Jails/Pens,” 2010
  
  Grove Dictionary of American Art: “Thomas Coram,” and “Henry Benbridge” encyclopedia entries, 2011.
  
  What Should I Read Next? 70 University Professors Recommend Readings in History, Politics, Literature, Math, Science, Technology, the Arts, and More: “American Art and Material Culture,” 2008.
  
  The Magazine Antiques 171.1: “Transatlantic Currents: Paintings at MESDA,” (Jan. 2007), pages 176-83.

  The Colonial Williamsburg Collection: “Review of Southern Furniture 1680-1830” (1999), pages 65-70.
  
  The Vernacular Architecture of Charleston and the Lowcountry, 1670-1990: Selected entries, 1994

  Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals, Edited Volumes, and Exhibition Catalogs

  “The Liberty and Tyranny of Jefferson’s Academical Village,” in The Founding of Mr. Jefferson’s University, edited by John A. Ragosta, Peter S. Onuf, and Andrew  J. O’Shaughnessy, Charlottesville:    University of Virginia Press, 2019
  
  ‘To Strike Terror’: Equestrian Monuments and Southern Power,” The Civil War in Art and Memory, edited by Kirk Savage (Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts; Yale University Press), 2016
  
  “Mapping the Slave Trade in Richmond and New Orleans,” Buildings and Landscape 20.2, Fall 2013, pages 102-125
  
  “George Washington: Cincinnatus or Marcus Aurelius?” in Thomas Jefferson, The Classical World, and Early America, edited by Peter S. Onuf, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011
  
  “Raphaelle Peale’s Still Life with Oranges: Status, Ritual, and the Illusion of Mastery,” in Material World in Anglo-America: Regional Identity and Urbanity in the Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean, edited by Davis S. Shields, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009
  
  “The Most Famous Plantation of All: The Politics of Painting Mount Vernon,” in Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, edited by Angela D. Mack and Stephen G. Hoffius. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008. Mary Ellen LoPresti Book Award, Art Libraries Society of North America, Southeast Chapter
  
  “Little of Artistic Merit? The Problem and Promise of Southern Art History,” American Art 19.2, Summer 2005, pages 11-18
  
  “Conflating Past and Present in the Reconstruction of Charleston’s St. Philip’s Church,” in Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art, Alison K. Hoagland and Kenneth A. Breisch, eds. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003
  
  “Cultural Politics, Colonial Crisis, and Ancient Metaphor in John Singleton Copley’s Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard,” Winterthur Portfolio 34., 1999, pages 85-108
  
  “‘An Idea of Grandeur’: Furnishing the Classical Interior in Charleston, 1815-1840,” Historical Archeology 33.3, 1999, pages 32-47
  
  “Beautiful Specimens, Elegant Patterns: New York Furniture for the Charleston Market, 1815-1840.” Co-authored with Robert Leath. American Furniture 4, 1996, page 137-174
  
  “Allegorizing on Their Own Hooks: The Book Illustrations of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Hughes,” in Pocket Cathedrals: Pre-Raphaelite Book Illustration. Susan Casteras, ed. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1991

   

Maurie McInnis' CV