By Eric Kelderman, New York.
When Candace S. Vancko was introduced last year as the officer in charge of the State University of New York at Cobleskill, state lawmakers who represented the area around the campus promised to fight her appointment, she said.
The problem for the elected officials and many of the faculty members and administrators in attendance that day in August 2011 was that Ms. Vancko was also president of the SUNY campus at Delhi and would be leading both colleges. The shared presidency was part of a broad and sometimes controversial plan by SUNY administrators to make the 64-campus system more efficient so they could spend more on student support and academic programs.
More important, the plan represented the beginning of a new effort by the chancellor, Nancy L. Zimpher, to use the system’s central authority to focus the campuses on the educational and economic needs of the state. In addition to encouraging campuses to share administrative functions and personnel, Ms. Zimpher’s goal is to manage the academic programs and enrollment on the campuses from the system offices, in Albany.
That “systemness”—a term coined by Ms. Zimpher to describe what she sees as the unifying value of a central governance system—is the topic of a conference being held here this week by the chancellor. Only through cooperation and innovation, she says, can university systems finally make progress toward solving big societal problems that are beyond the scope of individual colleges.
“Why wouldn’t that be a model for 49 other states?” she asked rhetorically during the conference on Thursday.
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