Access, completion and success were the key themes of the 2015 State of the University Address, held Friday, Jan. 23, at Lewis A. Swyer Theater, The Egg, Albany.

SUNY Empire State College students were center stage.

H. Carl McCall, chairman of the board of trustees, opened the event and introduced student Trustee Lori Mould ’14, a current graduate student with the college and president of the State University Student Assembly, as the first nontraditional student ever to serve as SUNYSA president and student trustee.

Mould, a 56-year-old grandmother and former business owner, who came back to college after 28 years, then introduced Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher and thanked the chancellor for her increased support of nontraditional students, a growing population within the SUNY system.

The chancellor began the address with a 2014 year-in-review video featuring a “SUNYselfie” with alumna and graduate student Sandra Barkevich ’14 and her mother, Midgdalia Crego, an undergraduate student with the college, and Barkevich’s two children, who are Crego’s grandchildren.

Jamal Arabaty, an undergraduate student from the Cheektowaga location, attended the address as the college’s representative to the SUNYSA.

As he does at all college events, Arabaty took a number of photographs. Many of his images of have appeared on the college’s website, including one from the 2014 Student Academic Conference, which made it to the homepage.

More images from this year’s address can be found on the college’s Facebook page.

The chancellor’s call for increased investment in the system, which will enable SUNY to scale evidence-based best practices to drive a higher degree of access, completion and success for SUNY’s current students and future graduates, highlighted the address.

The chancellor introduced other initiatives, which will further drive access, completion and success, including:

• launching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in college readiness for all high school students and their families that promotes every aspect of college preparedness, not just academic skills, but also admissions, career placement, pursuit of grants and scholarships and financial aid
• building on last year’s groundbreaking launch of its systemwide online learning platform Open SUNY, SUNY will seek an investment to make critical online support and advising services available to every online student and to maintain quality assurance in online education
• advancing the governor’s Master Researchers program to recruit and retain highly successful research faculty, who will not only drive billions of dollars in sponsored research expenditures throughout upstate New York, but also provide invaluable research opportunities for students.