As I contemplate my final academic year as Chancellor of Syracuse University, I look forward to making further progress in the three areas that are critical to the institution’s future: the Academic Plan, the Space Plan, and fund raising.

Announced three years ago, the Academic Plan challenges us to excel in several disciplines that the University community collectively regards as key to future success. Through the SPIREs (Strategic Partnerships for Innovative Research and Education), the Academic Plan identified four areas in which Syracuse is uniquely strong: information management and technology, environmental systems and quality, collaborative design, and citizenship and governance. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, we hope to leverage these strengths to help us further our goal of becoming the nation’s leading student-centered research university. In addition, the Academic Plan requires us to enrich the undergraduate experience by integrating theory and practice, blending liberal arts and professional studies, emphasizing internationalization and inclusion, and stressing excellent writing. We are making headway in all these areas, stimulating unprecedented collaboration among faculty and staff and increasing the number of students who persist through graduation, among other milestones.

The Space Plan calls on us to reconfigure the campus with new construction and substantive renovations to meet current and future needs. The first of the new academic buildings—a home for the Martin J. Whitman School of Management—is expected to be completed by January 2005. Other projects are the renovation of Hinds Hall for the School of Information Studies (completed by winter 2005), the design and construction of the third S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications building (completed by 2006), the design and construction of the life sciences addition to the Center for Science and Technology (completed by summer 2007), and the renovation of Slocum Hall for the School of Architecture (completed by 2009).

Supporting all of these achievements and many more for the future will require a fund-raising effort like nothing the University has ever seen. It will be difficult and demanding, of course, but we must raise the funds that will make our aspirations a reality. I am confident of success because I know it’s possible. This past fiscal year is a case in point: For the first time, we posted more than $70 million in gifts and pledges in a single year. Thanks to very generous donors—some of whom made gifts in seven- and eight-figure amounts—and to the significant increase in corporate matching gifts, we look to a future that is bright indeed.

Kenneth A. Shaw
Chancellor and President