And just as we face this holiday season with a spirit of hope and excitement about our future, so too does The State University of New York stand at the threshold of a inspiring period – one of unparalleled performance, promise and possibilities.

First, I want to thank Governor George E. Pataki for his leadership, his commitment to higher education and for his strong support of the University, our Board of Trustees, and to its Chancellor!

Today, I am honored to stand before you proudly as Chancellor of this superb University. We are the nation's largest, most comprehensive system of public Higher Education. From our community colleges, to our colleges of technology, specialized colleges, the statutory colleges at Cornell and Alfred, our health science centers, our four-year colleges, and our university research centers, we link sixty-four remarkable institutions located across our state into New York's public University.

I intend this afternoon to offer reflections on my first year in office and review the great strides the University has made in recent years. And then to envision where we – working collaboratively – can take this great University.

I will also set forth a program of bold steps that will build upon the vision and vitality that has been infused into the State University in recent years, steps that will help propel us into a position of increased prominence among America's leading public universities.

With quality as our lodestar, we have the opportunity for remarkable advancement.

When our University celebrated its 50th anniversary two years ago, we realized just how young we were for a major system of higher education. Consider that this great Empire State, so often first in the nation in so many areas, was nearly last in the nation to create a State University System.

Consider also, as young as we are, we have already been recognized internationally for our accomplishments, with long-standing relationships with leading educational institutions, from the Sorbonne in Paris to Russia's top institution of higher education, Moscow State University.

It is my view that The State University of New York can become THE finest public university system in the nation. Implementing the proposals I will outline today, we can lead our University to become the best of the best.

Consider some of the proof points of our recent performance, rather than rely on the rhetoric of a charged-up Chancellor:

• In 1999, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was bestowed upon our Brooklyn Health Science Center Professor, Robert Furchgott.
• Professor Edward Alcamo at our College at Farmingdale was honored by his national peers as the finest microbiology professor in America.
• Just three weeks ago, Professor and Associate Provost Steve Padalino of Geneseo was named the premier Physics professor in all of New York State and one of the top fifty in America.
• And last year, Stony Brook generated more patent royalty income than Harvard. This year, we stayed ahead of Harvard and passed Johns Hopkins!

Our graduates are filling the highest positions of accomplishment in business, government, law, science, the arts and education:

• One of the world's leading fashion designers, Calvin Klein, is a graduate of our host, the Fashion Institute of Technology.
• Renee Fleming, the leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera, is a graduate of our Crane School of Music at Potsdam.
• The newly appointed President of Stanford, John Hennessy, holds two degrees from Stony Brook.

Clearly, in recent years, many in this room have helped construct a solid foundation upon which to build an even greater university. Consider the indicators describing our upward momentum:

• Our enrollment has grown for the fifth consecutive year, this fall topping 373,000 students. This includes the highest number of graduate students in the history of the University. Our record as a State system for broad-based, diverse access remains unsurpassed.
• More high performing high school seniors are choosing the State University. The number of applicants with grade point averages in excess of 95 has increased by 10% over the past two years.
• The SUNY Learning Network, the University's distance education entity, is among the largest and most comprehensive distance learning networks in the U.S.
• Just this past week, we were selected with Price Waterhouse Coopers to become a partner in providing distance learning to the United States Army – worldwide.

We are on the verge of completing a System-wide Mission Review process that has been recognized as one of the best higher education practices in America by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Mission Review will result in a campus-by-campus roadmap setting new enrollment and selectivity targets, and enhancing program and degree offerings.

It will strengthen access, and elevate overall academic quality through increased intellectual rigor, aggressive growth of new and exciting research, and an integrated plan for investing of campus financial resources.

And while I have the high honor of boasting about these initiatives coming to completion on my watch, you must recognize who deserves the real credit: our campus presidents, our faculty and administrators, and the most dedicated group of volunteers I have ever worked with, our Board of Trustees led by our Chairman, Tom Egan.

An impressive yesterday. A continually improving today. Now let us envision tomorrow.

As our relatively young University matures, we must be poised to meet the challenges of a new century and a truly global economy.

When I was first asked to consider the position of Chancellor, I asked Tom Egan about the Board's goals for the University.

Without hesitation he explained "We want the State University to be in the front rank of American Public Higher Education. We want to be thought of in the same company, and with the same esteem, as the elite of America's public universities - Cal Berkeley, Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina."

As attractive a goal as being among the very best sounds, some might ask, "Does it really matter?"

Absolutely, and let me tell you why:

First, New York deserves, and more importantly, NEEDS, a strong, first rate, high performing university sector, public and private.

New York's economy is dependent upon the research and skilled workforce being produced in our State University.

Our citizens are vitally dependent upon our State University for the advanced education they need to be productive men and women.

Being recognized as the best maximizes our University's educational quality, enabling it to attract top faculty, researchers, and campus presidents to our system.

And graduating from the best public universities enhances the employability and earning power of our students because their degrees command the highest level of academic prestige.

Having established this ambitious goal, the question becomes, "How do we

achieve it?"

First, we need to understand the State University will only be a premier institution to the extent which it comprises premier individual colleges and university centers.

Being in the front rank means that our community colleges – the state's most open, convenient, affordable and flexible higher education gateways – will be at the cutting edge of career training for the state's skilled workforce and spearhead the state's economic revitalization.

Being in the front rank means that our comprehensive liberal arts and technical colleges will turn out the nation's most capable graduates, especially in such critical areas as teacher education, basic sciences and business management. Their innovative curricula, strong teaching faculties, solid general education foundations and high graduation rates will make them national peer models.

Being in the front rank means that our health science centers and specialized colleges will consistently be at the frontier of education, research and community service in biomedicine, the environment, technology and international commerce. And, while our statutory colleges at Cornell and Alfred Universities are already recognized as the very best in agriculture, veterinary science, ceramic fine arts and ceramic engineering, we have to work hard to keep them there!

Being in the front rank means that our four university centers, the system's most academically advanced and comprehensive institutions, will truly be the peers of national public flagship institutions. Our centers will rival the country's best research institutions in the importance and volume of their research, the number of their Nobel recipients and other awardees, their patents and their technological breakthroughs. Their graduates will be among the nation's most distinguished scientists, engineers, artists, writers, executives, attorneys and civic leaders.

Being in the front rank means that, going forward, the State University will, far more than now, be the first choice of college-bound New Yorkers and the residents of other states.

Being in the front rank requires ongoing support of structural changes now in place.

Today, our budget process is unrivaled among state universities in allowing each campus to retain its tuition and campus-generated revenue, and in the performance-based incentives. We have been successful in making our campuses more autonomous and more responsible for achieving results.

Mission Review – the initiative I mentioned earlier – provides a roadmap for the achievement of high academic goals on every campus.

Our forthcoming assessment initiative, shaped by a University-wide task force, leaves to each campus the development of its own assessment plan.

At the same time, the System Administration has scaled back its personnel, reduced its central budget and streamlined the procedures by which it oversees campus financial plans and reviews campus academic program proposals.

And the System as a whole is supporting its campuses by investing in leading edge technology. Examples include: our new electronic library initiative, SUNYConnect; the expansion of online education through the SUNY Learning Network; and, the launching this coming spring of our University-wide telecommunications infrastructure initiative.

To enable the achievement of these ambitious goals, however, we are going to need new financial resources.

The competition to attract and keep the very brightest people working as faculty and researchers is intense. We must be able to offer employment packages to ensure access to the world's most talented people.

We need to fund scholarships to ensure access and attract the most capable undergraduate and graduate students.

We will need to purchase sophisticated equipment to facilitate leading edge research and instruction, and to erect the complex buildings to house these activities.

All of this will require increasingly more powerful computing and telecommunications capabilities.

And finally, we will need to recruit the most talented campus leaders to assure that all of these elements work effectively together.

We are enormously thankful to Governor Pataki and the Legislature for their ongoing operating support. Later today the Board of Trustees will consider a budget request which seeks to continue the trend of reasonable increases in state support for faculty contracts, to recognize enrollment growth, to stimulate sponsored research growth and to support our community colleges.

And while we trust state support will continue, that support alone will not provide enough dollars to move this University where we want it to go.

Today, I present to you a bold plan of initiatives that will increase the financial resources of the University to achieve our agreed-upon goal of moving The State University of New York into the front rank of American public higher education.

Fully implemented, the plan I propose will bring $5 billion in new resources into the University over the next five years, above and beyond annual State operating aid.

This $5 billion resource infusion will come from:

• $1.5 billion in new sponsored research funding;
• $1.0 billion in fundraising from private sources;
• $2.0 billion in new physical plant investments in the form of a new capital program upon expiration of our current program; and,
• $500 million in new campus generated revenues.

Impossibly ambitious? I think not.

Let me outline the plan's four initiatives:

FIRST, we intend to increase the total amount of sponsored research we will receive at the University over the next five years by $1.5B. This means setting a goal of increasing our annual sponsored research support from today's $500 million a year to $1 billion a year by 2004.

The fact is that New York's colleges and universities have not been as effective as those in other states at securing federal research dollars over the last several decades. According to a Rand corporation study, New York ranks eighth nationally. This, despite being third in population, and - I would argue - being first in terms of the number of superb research institutions, public and private. Our collective weakness and lack of vision in this regard has deprived our campuses of resources and prestige – and impaired the growth of the state's economy.

While I cannot speak for our private institutions, The State University must do better for itself and for New York.

We will succeed in this endeavor for three reasons.

The Congress and our new President are committed to increasing federal appropriations for university-based research across the country. From the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation and other federal agencies that award research grants, billions of new dollars are going to be made available.

Our System Administration and the Research Foundation are gearing up to make sure that our campuses and their faculty succeed in securing an increased share of national research funds. We are using our budget process and academic initiatives like Mission Review to stimulate efforts on individual campuses.

We are also hiring what I believe is the premier law firm in Washington to help the University's faculty and research centers identify and secure federal grants, and to help place our faculty on national panels peer reviewing grant applications and advising the President and Congress.

New York State is investing – and may substantially increase its investment – in the research infrastructure that will enable all the state's universities to become national leaders in key research fields. Our emerging efforts gain strong support from ongoing state initiatives:

We are hopeful that new proposals will emerge to help further our efforts to secure additional federal dollars.

SECOND, we intend to raise $1 billion over the next four years – across the University – from private sources, including alumni, corporations, foundations, and State University supporters.

The work has already begun. Last week I met with presidents of our community colleges who took part in a fundraising workshop organized by our Institute for Community College Development.

Earlier this fall, the University at Buffalo launched a trail-blazing capital campaign to raise $250 million. Not that long ago such an effort would have been unthinkable. For too long, we have limited our financial resources to annual State funding and student tuition. Those days are over!

I am committed to the proposition that when it comes to seeking private support, all of our campuses – from University Centers to Community Colleges – are going to behave like nearly every other college and university in the United States. I will be calling upon our campus Presidents, alumni associations, and campus foundations to formulate, and then execute, campaigns like that at UB to bring new, private financial resources to our University.

In the past, state budgetary practices and University policies actually discouraged private philanthropic support. As a result, very little in the way of fundraising was attempted, and our alumni and the business community saw little purpose in giving private money to a public University. As with sponsored research, we have fallen far behind our peers. But, that is about to change!

Let me start by making an important commitment to our campuses and to their donors – a commitment supported by Governor Pataki:

To assist campuses in their fundraising, we are creating a new office in the Research Foundation to share best practices and develop major multi-campus and University-wide fundraising proposals.

We are organizing a System-wide group of chief advancement officers to assist us in this endeavor. Our senior officers and I will be making fundraising calls with our Presidents, and I know our Trustees will help, as well.

THIRD, it is our intention to further upgrade the State University's physical facilities. We want to build upon the remarkable initiative begun two years ago. In 1998, Governor Pataki proposed, and the Legislature approved the historic $2 billion capital program.

That $2 billion commitment has transformed the University. Not only have we built and renovated classrooms and dormitories, laboratories and gymnasiums, roadways and heating plants, but this program has breathed new energy into our campuses.

Going forward, our hope is to continue this tremendous success and over the next two years to work with the Governor and the Legislature to generate a second capital plan of $2 billion when the current initiative expires in 2003.

FOURTH, it is our intention that campus-generated revenues increase by more than $500 million over the next four years. This new income is based on the projected growth and diversification of our student body, and the increase in revenues generated by campus services and operations.

Not only will more New Yorkers be attending our ever more prestigious campuses, we expect to attract increasing numbers of out-of-state and international students as well. Broadening access, this will also diversify our student body, add more bright, young people to the pool of New York's highly educated workforce, and help prepare our graduates to participate in the new, truly global economy.

To boost entrepreneurial opportunities and generate new revenues, we plan to submit to the State Legislature a legislative package that will eliminate existing barriers to the utilization of campus facilities by non-University owned entities. This will enable us to enhance the quality and convenience of campus services available to our students. It also will enable many of our campuses to make land available for uses compatible with the University's mission, such as affordable student and faculty residences, and business incubators that can link research findings into applied commercial ventures.

A good example of this kind of venture is the remarkable East Campus development of the University at Albany.

The East Campus contains a wonderful combination of university enhancing activities: classrooms for its School of Public Health, two incubating companies, a mature for-profit pharmaceutical firm, and a state laboratory of the Department of Environmental Conservation.

The synergy of having all these activities in one place is enormous, benefiting our students and faculty, the resident companies, and the larger economy of the Capital region. Unique circumstances made the East Campus project a reality. But we will need new statutory authority to more broadly develop East Campus-like projects across the university.

These four initiatives, taken together, will provide the financial foundation for our University’s future.

Our mission is to provide higher education to every citizen in New York who seeks it, from our community colleges through our doctoral-granting research centers. We offer more than 5,000 different programs of study on campus, and more than 1,500 courses are available on-line.

Unlike any other institution of higher learning in New York, the State University is literally everywhere. We are in every corner of this large and diverse State. Here in New York City, for example, we have four campuses – FIT, the College of Optometry in its new home on 42^nd Street, the Downstate Health Science Center in Brooklyn, and our Maritime College at Fort Schuyler in the Bronx.

Now, we are eager to take these next vital steps on our journey toward greatness. The initiatives I have proposed today may seem daunting, but I am confident they are achievable.

Our success in this effort will ensure the attainment of the goal espoused by Tom Egan which we all share. To move to the very front rank of American higher education. In so doing, it will dramatically improve the learning and teaching environments on our campuses, and through our superbly educated graduates, improve the lives and communities of the people of our great Empire State.

What I ask of you , and all those concerned with The State University of New York, is the commitment to join us in embracing change.

In being emboldened by our challenges.

And in embarking on a bold new course toward a brilliant future.

Thank you.