Community Updates - January 19, 2026
Dear Colleagues,
I want to take time to thank everyone who has offered me words of encouragement, support, advice, or all of the above as I’ve begun my tenure as president. I appreciate this more than you can know.
Among the commitments I will make to you – and you should expect of me – for my presidency is creating an environment for consistent, open, and effective sharing of information. This commitment will take many forms. As one very small way of doing this, I will be connecting with you each week, in writing or other formats, to share news, highlight achievements, and update you on the progress of various initiatives underway or coming soon. Today, I want to follow up on a topic I introduced last week during the Community Conversation.
On December 15, I delivered to the Board of Trustees what I’m calling my 100-day action plan. (For anyone wondering, that 100-day period ends April 10.) This plan identifies what I’ve committed to doing either personally or with your help in the first 100 days of my presidency. I will detail individual elements in upcoming communications, but I wanted to outline the full plan for you here.
- Develop a Three-Year Strategic Plan – The No. 1 thing we’re going to do is develop a Strategic Plan. I want to thank Provost Ann Damiano for cultivating a group of faculty, professional staff, and senior leadership to participate in this effort. The work is well underway, and it is going to go incredibly quickly. I will present the Strategic Plan to the Board of Trustees in February. I know many people will ask: how can we complete the strategic planning process in a month’s time? We are in a unique situation right now. The self-study process replicates much of the investigative work you would do to understand what you need for strategic planning. In essence, we are not hurrying this process. Rather, we have spent the past 19 months completing it.
- Complete the Endowment Liberation Application – While “endowment liberation” is an unfamiliar term to many, it is a mechanism that many private institutions – ranging from the most heavily endowed to the most highly tuition dependent – have used judiciously to seek to access and redeploy restricted funds. Specifically, we are awaiting response from the Office of the New York Attorney General to access funds within the University’s endowment that are under $100,000, older than twenty years, and that were given originally by donors who are now deceased. There is a second component to this process where we would similarly seek permission to access funds where the donors are either still living or unknown. In this instance, we are required to notify the original donors. The goal of having access to these funds is to have the flexibility to use them very prudently if we need to, but ideally to not spend any of the money. At a later time, we do intend to borrow from the endowment and spend those funds strategically on necessary capital improvements that we have put off for a number of years. These funds will be paid back to our endowment with interest over a period not exceeding twenty years.
- Finalize the Long-Term Financial Structures – This includes, but is not limited to, continued review of contracts and vendor relationships, operating costs, and measures we are currently discussing with the faculty bargaining unit, AAUP Utica.
- Articulate a Clear Plan for Addressing Issues Affecting Morale Identified in the Recent Campus Climate Survey – It is important to note here that the analysis, response, and recommendations to that survey will come to me from a group of professional staff and faculty who volunteered to review the survey results and do this work. This group, which is self-directed and does not include any member of either the President’s or Provost’s Cabinets, will be delivering recommendations to me and Provost Damiano later this semester, from which we will develop a responsive plan and present it to the Board by April.
- Assemble a Community Member Cabinet – I will bring together a council of individuals from the community, including industry, government, and not-for-profit leaders, to meet with me on a regular basis to discuss regional and work force needs and to help inform planning for the ongoing and future success of the University.
- Reorganize University Leadership Structures – This is not to cast aspersions on any aspects of the current leadership and management structures. Rather, I simply want to make our structures look more like private institutions of our size and profile. As part of this effort, I will be establishing a new group called Campus Leadership that will meet on a quarterly basis and will consist of directors-level and assistant director-level professional staff, depending of departmental structures, as well as deans and vice presidents, PSAC leadership, and faculty leadership. The purpose of these meetings will be to conduct planning, exchange information, conduct necessary training, and gather feedback.
- Develop a Presidential Communication Plan – The goal of this multi-year, multi-platform plan to better identify gaps in information sharing, to better and more intentionally focus on positive stories, and to be more planned and intentional in how we are approaching communicating about the University.
- Refine the Budget Process – I will be working with Senior Vice President Kristin Haag and budget managers to develop a process that delivers balanced or slightly surplus budgets for FY2026 and FY2027.
- Finalize the Academic Program Portfolio – I started this work with the faculty as Provost, and Ann Damiano, who has been heavily involved in the process, will complete it. Ann and I have been grateful for the structure and communication touchpoints the process, which was mutually developed by the University and AAUP, has provided. These decisions are difficult and impactful, and the numerous conversations we have had with faculty are invaluable.
- Complete Engagement Visits with Key Benefactors – I will travel throughout Florida in late-February to engage with several of the University’s leadership donors as well as prospective donors and communicate with them about the future vision for the University.
- Complete Self-Study Draft Report in Preparation for Middle States Chair’s Preliminary Visit – As Provost Damiano previously announced, Dr. Walter Iwanenko, the President of Gannon University, was assigned by Middle States to lead our accreditation evaluation team, and we look forward to his initial visit to our campus on April 10.
- Initiate Leadership Succession Planning – Succession planning to ensure operational continuity and success is a critical component of any large organization. The University has not completed any formal succession plans in several years. It is important that we begin the process as we prepare for the future we are working hard to deliver.
That’s a summary of the first hundred days. It’s a lot, but it’s just the start. I’ll need help from all of you to get this done, and I appreciate so much the work that you continue do to help move the University forward.
Sincerely,
Stephanie R. Nesbitt
President
