Academic News

The SUNY senior system administration is working on a deal with the state government that will ensure money generated from special revenue funds – which will be frozen under a recent state-mandated expenditure cap – will not be tapped by the state at the end of 2008-09 fiscal year, a Stony Brook University official said today.

Stony Brook University’s academic programs could face an unprecedented $20 million state budget cut, according to university officials at yesterday’s town hall meeting. The cut would come from both taxes and—for the first time—a state spending cap on special university revenues.

An online petition criticizing the leadership of Stony Brook President Shirley Strum Kenny has received 90 electronic signatures of tenured and tenure-track faculty at the university.

The petition, at least a week old, reads as follows:

Erwin and Freddie Staller started a $1.7 million fund for Stony Brook's graduate music program so it can compete against top-name music schools for the most talented students. The endowment will go toward scholarships and fellowships awarded to incoming graduate music students majoring in performance. The move seeks to increase the school’s competitive grasp on an incentive some music schools are moving toward: no tuition.

Forget traditional Greek life and sports clubs. A new movement has emerged among a few college campuses across the nation: students are choosing to forgo sex.

The SUNY Board of Trustees recently approved a $2.38 billion budget request for the 2008-09 school year, which will include a five percent tuition increase for all students, according to a SUNY press release.

In a visit to Stony Brook University on Oct. 25, New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin spoke to journalism students about changes in his reporting due to the internet, and later to a larger group in the SAC auditorium about “scientific integrity in a political climate.”

On Sept. 26, Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism announced its intentions to create the country’s first Center for News Literacy. The main goal of the initiative is to make the public “become discriminating news consumers,” said Howard Schneider, Dean of the School of Journalism and executive director of the center.

Marcy McGinnis was named the new associate dean at Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism on Sept. 6. A petite woman with large ambitions, McGinnis has gone from the boss of Dan Rather at CBS News to overseeing the development of a brand new school of journalism – the first in the SUNY system. Before the promotion McGinnis directed the broadcast journalism program, although she will still be holding this position.

London-- about ten years ago. Innocently resting atop a colleague’s bookshelf, an anthropologist discovered a priceless relic—an evolutionary emblem—the Hofmeyr skull.

It’s not often that a university plays a role in saving a professor’s life. This was the case, however, with Stony Brook University’s new visiting professor Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, an Iraqi. He was president of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and internationally known for recovering thousands of priceless relics for the National Museum of Baghdad.

Marcy McGinnis, formerly senior vice president of CBS News, has taken a position as the interim director of the broadcast journalism program at Stony Brook University for the new School of Journalism that was started this fall.

Wireless microchips monitoring biochemical changes in tissue cells may become the future of cancer prevention.

Researchers at Stony Brook University, including physicians from the Health Sciences Center and engineers and computer scientists from CEWIT - the popular acronym for the Center for Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology - are collaborating on developing the new devices.

Stony Brook finally joined its college counterparts when its journalism major was approved by SUNY in July. For incoming freshman and high school seniors looking at Stony Brook, the journalism program offers a major that is one of the most popular in colleges now. But where does that leave the students at Stony Brook that are already journalism minors in hopes of choosing a career in journalism when they graduate?

Conquering pre-med requirements, battling stubborn grade-point averages, and trudging through grueling seven-hour MCATS: This is the typical life of a pre-med student. But another aspect of their busy lives may be just as important: volunteer work.

According to medical schools, it’s essential.