2020 SUNY Oswego Annual Report
2020 SUNY Oswego Annual Report
The State University of New York at Oswego’s 2019 - 2020 Annual Report shines a light on our high-achieving students, faculty and staff; innovative initiatives; insightful practices; and deep commitment and resolve our institution displayed throughout the past year.
I am incredibly proud of the ways in which members of our campus community have shown devotion to teaching, fortitude to learn, and an inherent desire to support one another as we moved Oswego forward. We accomplished a great deal in 2019 - 2020, while also managing our response to an unprecedented global pandemic to ensure the health and safety of members of our community while striving to maintain and extend excellence in teaching and learning. Our Laker spirit has been truly inspiring!
Our faculty and staff have shown tremendous resourcefulness in implementing the unforeseen and rapid change to remote teaching and learning. They successfully negotiated a long roster of unplanned circumstances and delivered in their full capacities to support our students and our college – they were unwavering in their dedication to student success. Our students adapted to unanticipated needs and urgent challenges as well, continuing to show the tenacity and grit needed to continue their path forward. It is through this #TogetherOz mentality and renewed focus that I am certain the SUNY Oswego community will demonstrate its resiliency and continue to face and surmount lingering uncertainty ahead.
Many of the projects and initiatives listed throughout this report highlight SUNY Oswego’s commitment to increasing academic and student success, sustaining our institution, and positioning our graduates to live ethical and meaningful lives and build a better world for future generations. These accomplishments are evidenced by SUNY Oswego’s rising academic reputation and impressive rankings, which continue to reverberate across the state of New York, throughout our nation and around the globe.
Our college also rightly refunded millions of dollars to our students without existential harm by looking across our operations to do and be better and smarter in financial matters. We built the virtual fortress of Oswego Forward: our plan to restart this new semester and we are nimble every day retooling and reshaping it given new information, circumstances and regulations. We mustered a platoon of volunteers from faculty, staff, administrators, alumni and friends to augment our admissions and enrollment operations to bring in our fall class of new and returning students.
Throughout the past academic year, great numbers of this campus community acted immediately with deep support in response to the Black Lives Matter protests and calls for social justice. Many students, faculty and staff mobilized for racial justice with protests and programs and preparation for the fall semester. As I have shared with our students and employees, we must be agents of a vastly better future. We must step forward and join the many others at Oswego who have worked tirelessly, with deep commitment and understanding, to, without rest, lift up the culture on this campus that is taking deep root—the unending quest for justice, equality and peace.
SUNY Oswego has the record of resilience in the face of great odds, of employing thoughtful study and response, and of the will, strength and endurance to bring our plans to fruition. This is more than surviving—this is finding the means and the character of thriving through adversity.
We have important work to do. Higher education is under enormous scrutiny and there are current circumstantial burdens that present real barriers to student participation. In this Annual Report, we tell SUNY Oswego’s story of a strong identity tied to finding shared vision and amassing collective commitment. I am convinced we will prevail; that through our record of successful work together you read of here, we will be inspired to refocus our purpose and reinvigorate our mission.
Deborah F. Stanley
President
