State University of New York
The State University of New York is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. Led by chancellor John B. King, the SUNY system has 91,182 employees, including 32,496 faculty members, and some 7,660 degree and certificate programs overall and a $13.37 billion budget. Its flagship universities are Stony Brook University on Long Island in southeastern New York and University at Buffalo in the west. Its research university centers also include Binghamton University and the University at Albany.
With 25,000 acres of land, SUNY's largest campus is SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which neighbors the State University of New York Upstate Medical University—the largest employer in the SUNY system with over 10,959 employees.
The State University of New York was established in 1948 by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, through legislative implementation of recommendations made by the Temporary Commission on the Need for a State University. The commission was chaired by Owen D. Young, who was at the time Chairman of General Electric. The system was greatly expanded during the administration of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, who took a personal interest in design and construction of new SUNY facilities across the state. Since 1978, its primary administrative offices have been located at SUNY Plaza in Albany with satellite offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C.
Apart from units of the institutionally separate City University of New York, SUNY comprises all New York state-supported institutions of higher education.
History
was one of the last US states to set up a state college and university system. The first colleges were established privately, with some arising from local seminaries, and New York State had a long history of supporting higher education before the creation of the SUNY system. The oldest college that is part of the SUNY System is SUNY Potsdam, established in 1816 as the St. Lawrence Academy.In 1835, the State Legislature acted to establish stronger programs for public school teacher preparation and designated one academy in each senatorial district to receive money for a special teacher-training department. St. Lawrence Academy received this distinction, and it later designated Potsdam as the site of the Normal School in 1867.
On May 7, 1844, the New York General Assembly voted to establish Normal School in Albany as the first college for teacher education. In 1865, the privately endowed Cornell University, one of eight Ivy League universities in the nation, was designated as New York's land grant college. In 1894, the state began direct financial support of four of Cornell's colleges.
Between 1889 and 1903, Cornell operated the New York State College of Forestry, until the governor vetoed its annual appropriation. The school was moved to Syracuse University in Syracuse in 1911, where it is now the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. In 1908, the State legislature began the New York State College of Agriculture at Alfred University.
Between 1946 and 1948, the Temporary Commission on the Need for a State University, chaired by Owen D. Young, chairman of General Electric Company, studied New York's existing higher education institutions. It was known New York's private institutions of higher education were highly discriminatory and failed to provide for many New Yorkers. Noting this need, the commission recommended the creation of a public state university system. In 1948, legislation was passed establishing SUNY on the foundation of the teacher-training schools established in the 19th century. Most of them had already developed curricula similar to those found at four-year liberal arts schools long before the creation of SUNY, as evidenced by the fact they had become known as "Colleges for Teachers" rather than "Teachers' Colleges".
On October 8, 1953, SUNY took a historic step of banning all national fraternities and sororities from its 33 campuses, a ban that lasted until 1977. The resolution was passed as an attempt to combat discrimination based on race or religion in many national organizations at the time. Various fraternities challenged this rule in court since it did not distinguish between those with discriminatory clauses in their by-laws and those who did not. The SUNY resolution was upheld in court as being within a state's authority to supervise and control its educational institutions.
In 1986, L. Eudora Pettigrew became the first African-American college president in the SUNY system when she was named president of SUNY Old Westbury.
Despite being one of the last states in the nation to establish a state university, the system was quickly expanded during the chancellorship of Samuel B. Gould and the administration of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, who took a personal interest in the design and construction of new SUNY facilities across the state. Rockefeller championed the acquisition of the private University of Buffalo into the SUNY system, making the public State University of New York at Buffalo.
Organization
SUNY is governed by the State University of New York Board of Trustees, which consists of eighteen members, fifteen of whom are appointed by the Governor, with consent of the New York State Senate. The sixteenth member is the president of The State University of New York Student Assembly. The last two members are the presidents of the University Faculty Senate and Faculty Council of Community Colleges, both of whom are non-voting. The board of trustees appoints the chancellor who serves as SUNY Chief Executive Officer.The state of New York assists in financing the SUNY system, which, along with CUNY, provides lower-cost college-level education to residents of the state. SUNY students also come from out-of-state and 171 foreign countries, though tuition is higher for these students.
There is a large variety of colleges in the SUNY system with some overlap in specialties between sites. SUNY divides its campuses into four distinct categories: university centers/doctoral-granting institutions, comprehensive colleges, technology colleges, and community colleges. SUNY also includes statutory colleges, state-funded colleges within other institutions such as Cornell University and Alfred University. Students at the statutory colleges who are residents of New York state receive the benefit of state-subsidized tuition while enjoying all of the campus life amenities of the host institutions.
The SUNY Charter Schools Institute was established by the Board of Trustees in 1999 to assist with their authority as one of New York's charter school authorizers. The Institute reviews applications, monitors academic and fiscal performance, and reports to the Trustees' Charter Schools Committee. It is based within SUNY System Administration but operates with administrative independence.
The Rockefeller Institute of Government is the public policy research arm.
SUNY and the City University of New York are different university systems, both receiving funding from New York State. Also, SUNY is not to be confused with the University of the State of New York, which is the governmental umbrella organization for most education-related institutions and many education-related personnel in New York State, and which includes, as components, the New York State Education Department and the New York State University Police.
Student representation
The SUNY Board of Trustees has a voting student member on the board. The student trustee serves a dual role as the President of the Student Assembly of the State University of New York. SUNYSA is the recognized student government of the SUNY system.In the 1970s, students pressed for voting representation on the governing board of SUNY colleges. In 1971, the State Legislature added five student voting members to Cornell's board of trustees. However, at that time, all members of a board must be over the age of 21 for a corporation to hold a liquor license, so to allow Cornell to retain its license, the legislature had to go back to amend NYS Alcoholic Beverage Control Law § 126 to require half the board must be 21.
In 1975, the legislature added a non-voting student seat to the boards of all SUNY units. Two Attorney General of the State of New York opinion letters reduced the parliamentary rights of the student members to participate at meetings and indicated they were not in fact Public Officers, and arguably subject to personal liability from lawsuits. In 1977, another statutory amendment made student members of SUNY councils and boards subject to the NYS Public Officers Law or NYS General Municipal Law and granted student representatives parliamentary powers of moving or seconding motions and of placing items on the agendas of the bodies. Finally, the legislature gave full voting rights to the student members in 1979, resulting in the students of all SUNY units having voting representatives, except for the NYS College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Finally, in 1986, the legislature gave the student representative of that college voting rights as well.
Libraries
The SUNY Libraries Consortium is an independent organization which supports its members, the libraries of SUNY.Campuses
All SUNY colleges are in New York State, except for one extension center of Jamestown Community College and SUNY Korea.Jamestown Community College operates its Warren Center in Pennsylvania under a contract with the Warren-Forest Higher Education Council and the center is licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The Warren Center is 25 miles south of Jamestown, New York on the grounds of Warren State Hospital, in North Warren, Pennsylvania.
SUNY Korea was opened by the government of South Korea in Incheon, South Korea in 2012, in conjunction with SUNY. As of 2023, it offers undergraduate and graduate programs, with faculty from Stony Brook University and the Fashion Institute of Technology.
SUNY's sole law school is the University at Buffalo School of Law.