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Kenny looks back — and ahead
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| | | Kenny in front of floor-to-ceiling, 20-plus feet long bookshelves in her SBU office holding photos, books and mementos of a lifetime in higher education. Photo by Lee Lutz (click for larger version) | |
June 17, 2009 | 03:50 PM
Proud accomplishments, fond memories and humor — "Have some fun every day" — were just part of what retiring Stony Brook University President Shirley Strum Kenny spoke about during a lengthy interview last week. Kenny expressed excitement over her next position: mother and grandmother living close to her four children and four grandchildren just outside Washington, D.C.
The Kennys will soon move out of Sunwood, the SBU presidential residence in Old Field, making way for the university's fifth president, Dr. Samuel Stanley Jr. and his family, to take up residence in July. Officially Kenny's last day at SBU will be June 30.
But the president is not exactly retiring. "I have several projects in mind," Kenny said, "and another connected to education." Although she would not address specifics, Kenny said her career in higher education is not over yet. High energy has been a hallmark of the Texan's style since she began her life in higher education at the University of Texas in the early 1950s.
Looking back on her 15 years at Stony Brook, Kenny noted the achievements for which she is most proud. "Admission to [Association of American Universities] was a goal since I came to the campus," she said. SBU was admitted to the prestigious organization of only 62 research universities in North America in 2001. Kenny described admittance to AAU as a "very important piece of what's happened" at Stony Brook.
Assuming management responsibilities for Brookhaven National Laboratory came next on Kenny's list. "BNL had a lot of problems then," she said, referring to issues including radioactive leaks at the Upton facility and more. Kenny said the decision to seek the management contract from the U.S. Department of Energy was "a hard sell" but, "to me it was worth the risk." She said the lab was "a good fit" with SBU's physics and mathematics programs and its research capabilities.
Also on the list was "making this a great place for undergraduates to study," she said. Although much has been said on Kenny's transformation of the "mud hole" that was SBU when she arrived into an attractive, livable campus, Kenny pointed toward the results garnered from her work on the Boyer Report on undergraduate studies at research universities. That report, published in 1998, endowed by the Carnegie Foundation and chaired by Kenny, is widely credited with changing the way curricula at major universities are designed and implemented.
Kenny thought long and hard about disappointments she has encountered in her stint as Stony Brook's president. Finally she said, "State support for SUNY. This could be the best system in the country." Kenny noted that California budgets about $11 billion for its state higher education system, while New York, only slightly smaller in size, spends about $5.9 billion.
"During this year's state budget cycle, I have gone through denial and anger and grief for higher education as I have known and practiced it." Kenny smiled when she was reminded of that quote from her Inaugural Address, delivered on April 28, 1995.
The goals she set for herself in that speech, delivered just eight months after assuming leadership of SBU, included a list of targets she has largely achieved: "Stony Brook will have doubled the number of programs nationally ranked in the top 20 and in the top 30 ... become the national model for undergraduate education at research universities ... increase sponsored research by 60 percent ... at least double annual external fundraising ... the Health Sciences Center will both build its research programs and continue to
improve the quality of medical care."
Kenny said the research and development park now in operation on the former Gyrodyne property west of Stony Brook Road "will be enormously important to Long Island and the state." She said research done there will create new products and many jobs, eventually growing in size to 10 buildings "important to New York and the new economy."
Kenny expressed surprise — "Who would have thought LIU would sell its Southampton campus?" — and confidence — "It will be a jewel" for SBU — on the acquisition of the former Long Island University campus. She is excited about the new journalism school at SBU, saying the "good leadership" being provided by Dean Howard Schneider will lead to a "top program." Kenny said moving Stony Brook's athletic programs up to Division I was "important to overall growth" and "brings the university community
together. The Staller Center does too."
On a current issue her successor will have to deal with, Kenny called the state legislature's recent approval of the so-called UB2020 bill a back-of-the-hand to SBU. The SUNY universities at Buffalo and Stony Brook have been dubbed the "flagship" campuses for the system, and Kenny thinks granting more fiscal autonomy and flexibility to SUNY Buffalo but not to Stony Brook is "absurd."
"We definitely need greater flexibility," she said, citing as an example the new Campus Recreation Center. The $37.5 million, 85,000 square-foot facility took "10 years to get to groundbreaking," finally reaching that milestone on June 5. Kenny has participated in 28 groundbreaking ceremonies in her 15 years at Stony Brook.
On her longevity at SBU, Kenny said, "I've stayed everywhere longer than expected." Everywhere included teaching positions at Gallaudet College and Catholic University, a professorship, then department chairmanship and then provost at the University of Maryland, and president of Queens College for nine years before coming to Stony Brook.
Any advice for her successor? "State is different from private," she replied, noting that Dr. Stanley is coming from the private Washington University in St. Louis and will have to learn how to deal with Albany. Anything else? "Have some fun every day," Kenny advised.
Moving for the Kennys, Shirley and husband Robert, will not be nearly as disrupting as it is for many. Kenny said they are moving back to the home they have owned since 1976. "It's the house we raised our kids in," she said. Some of the four Kenny children who live in the D.C. area have resided there since Mom and Dad moved to Sunwood. She said new carpeting and renovated bathrooms are being installed in the familiar space.
Robert Kenny is an accomplished painter and author. The retiring president said with a smile that one idea they are kicking around is "writing a detective novel together."
One thing is for sure: Shirley Strum Kenny won't be rocking on the front porch much. It is likely the education community has not heard the last of the woman who has been a mover and shaker in the field since she edited The Daily Texan at UT in 1954.
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