Welcome Back!
Dear Colleagues:
The fall 2024 semester, my first at FSC, flew by in what seemed like the blink of
an eye. As we begin the spring 2025 semester, I’m even more enthused for what promises
to be a term of excitement about what is possible.
First, thank you all once again for a tremendous fall semester. You gave me the opportunity
to contribute, partner, and learn. As we enter the new semester, Provost Joseph and
I will continue to make our rounds of academic departments, and I’ll wrap up my visits
to nonacademic departments as well. These meetings have been great learning opportunities for me, and I appreciate the thoughts, ideas, and concerns
that you’ve shared.
Separately I would like to thank the President’s Transition Team for their outstanding
work in helping me better understand the areas where our campus wants us to focus.
Some of these will be discussed at our upcoming town hall on February 4. Looking forward,
we’ll have important administrative additions as we wind up our searches for the vice
president for student affairs and the provost and senior vice president for academic
affairs. Both of these searches are well underway, and I am hopeful that both positions
will be filled in the next few months. I also look forward to recommendations from
our Public Art team as we look to expand our outdoor exhibits and find new ways for
our campus to become a go-to venue for the the greater Farmingdale community. I would
also like to thank our Inauguration Committee for their careful work planning a week’s
worth of celebratory campus events in April.
We’ve now launched the Visiting Scholars Program (thanks to those of you already participating)
and the Proposal Incentive Program to grow our efforts to secure more external support
for our research and creative activities. This past fall we shared ice cream scooped
by members of our Cabinet (who looked dashing in their FSC green aprons), and many
of you joined me to learn about the dastardly invasive bivalve Corbicula fluminea, a small but mighty clam continuing to infiltrate our waterways. We held a memorable
and very successful gala and an array of recognition programs that appropriately laud
our outstanding faculty, staff, and students. Our faculty have worked tirelessly to
produce new courses, certificates, and degrees; our facilities team has done amazing
work keeping our campus both operational and beautiful; our University Police Department
has kept us safe and secure; and we continue to generate outstanding scholarly works.
On the athletics front, our Rams continue to rack up wins and records, with the majority
of our teams holding admirable academic GPAs. We’re also preparing for a single spring
commencement ceremony to be held at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Our enrollment
is strong, but we will be broadly discussing looming threats that could emerge in
the not-too-distant future.
As we look to the future, there are some long-recognized and newly emerging issues
we’ll need to consider as we move to grow our excellent reputation and status. We
are collectively strong, well-prepared, and determined as we focus on our priorities,
our short- and long-term initiatives, and, at the top of the list, our students. For
now, my continued best wishes as we move into the spring 2025 semester.
As always, thank you for all you do on behalf of our students.
Robert S. Prezant, PhD
President
Professor of Biology
