On January 30, Chancellor Nancy Zimpher kicked off the first in a series of regional discussions on shared services called “Harnessing Systemness: Regional Discussions on Efficiency and Effectiveness.” The event, held in the SUNY Cortland Corey Union, was an opportunity for regional institutions to share stories, celebrate successes, and discuss opportunities for further collaboration on shared services.
This event brought together representatives from ten regional campuses – Binghamton University, Broome Community College, Cayuga Community College, SUNY Cortland, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Oneonta, Onondaga Community College, Oswego, Tompkins Cortland Community College, Upstate Medical University – the opportunity to highlight some of the academic and student support services that have been enhanced as a result of sharing services. The theme of many of the initiatives discussed related to increased academic offerings for students, including:
- STAR-NY, an online tutoring program that links SUNY Cortland, SUNY Delhi, University of Buffalo, Tompkins-Cortland Community College, Alfred State, SUNY Oswego, and SUNY Ulster, enabling students to have access to tutors at any of those campuses.
- A pilot program between SUNY Cortland and Upstate Medical University in which the observation rooms and program SUNY Upstate uses to train prospective doctors in communicating with patients are made available to SUNY Cortland for training prospective teachers on how to deal with difficult interactions with parents or struggling students.
- A joint offering of foreign language courses between SUNY Cortland and TC3, piloted last fall with Arabic 101, in which campuses split the cost of one instructor and offer the course to students at both campuses via video.
- SUNY Oneonta and SUNY Cobleskill have collaborated on a pilot project to reduce reliance on external printing vendors. SUNY Cobleskill has begun submitting selected print orders to SUNY Oneonta’s print shop, increasing the work volume there, while lowering the cost of production.
- Broome and Cayuga Community Colleges have convened SUNY Engine (Education Network to Grown Innovation and Entrepreneurship), a group of 11 SUNY colleges and other partners to pool resources and share best practices to support campus entrepreneurs.
- SUNY Delhi and TC3 have launched a partnership to facilitate baccalaureate degree attainment, using a combination of face-to-face and distance learning courses.
- Onondaga and Broome Community Colleges developed a partnership to jointly provide the required coursework to train Clinical Laboratory Technicians and Histological Technicians. For example, Onondaga students now could take their required liberal arts courses at Onondaga and the discipline-specific courses online with Broome.
- A memorandum of understanding between SUNY Oswego and SUNY ESF articulating a process for facilitating admission of ESF undergraduates into graduate-level initial teacher certification programs in biology and chemistry at Oswego.
- The Binghamton Advantage Program is a unique joint admissions program between Broome Community College and Binghamton University in which Broome students can live on the BU campus, participate in student life, involvement, and other campus activities while taking courses at Broome for one or two years.
“By sharing services with other campuses in the region over the past year, every SUNY college and university in New York has put itself in a better position to do more for its students,” said Chancellor Zimpher. “From sharing online tutoring programs and clinical training facilities to collaborating on purchases and course offerings, SUNY campuses in Central New York have embraced this initiative with commendable action.”
In addition to Chancellor Zimpher, SUNY Board of Trustees Member Henrik Dullea was also on hand to listen to how campuses are sharing services with one another.
This event comes just weeks after the Chancellor’s 3rd State of the University Address where she announced that in the first year of sharing services, campuses were able to save $20 million dollars, 20% of the $100 million dollar savings goal.
Four more regional meetings are being planned over the coming months. See a recap of this event courtesy of SUNY Cortland below:
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