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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chancellor outlines view of SUNY system
ALBANY — The State University of New York is planning for the next academic year, and Chancellor John B. King Jr. said that the system is ready to realize another year of growth, development and scholarship despite what he described as a hostile environment for academic freedom and the principles that undergird the SUNY system. In his annual 'State of the University' address in Albany on Wednesday, King said the university system is building on four 'pillars' — research, student success, economic development and diversity. King said that despite federal attacks on the premise of diversity, equity and inclusion, SUNY is doubling down on it. 'DEI is not only one of our pillars, it's in our DNA,' King said from a podium in The Egg, a theater complex attached to the state Capitol. 'Our enabling statute, written more than 75 years ago, promises that SUNY will provide to the people of New York educational services of the highest quality, with the broadest possible access, fully representative of all segments of the population.' King said DEI is a foundational principle, guiding SUNY college curriculums, campus codes of conduct and commitments to protecting disabled and disadvantaged communities. 'DEI means continuing to make absolutely clear that there is no place for antisemitism on campuses, just as there is no place for racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia or any other form of hatred or bigotry,' he said. To combat racial, religious or other bigotry, King said SUNY will start requiring all students who run clubs on campuses to undertake federal Title VI civil rights training next semester. King said SUNY will also push back on the federal push to defund research on college and university campuses — which he said has put SUNY-led research on Alzheimer's disease, cancer detection, the health effects of the 9/11 attacks and more at risk. 'We're making steady progress toward Gov. Hochul's goal to double SUNY research, with $1.2 billion in SUNY-wide sponsored research expenditures across the system,' King said. And he noted that SUNY is leading a novel approach to artificial generative intelligence research, continuing to implement a multi-billion dollar Empire AI project that will connect the SUNY University at Buffalo with the other colleges, universities and research organizations for a publicly-led AI research and development program. 'Empire AI is making it possible for SUNY researchers to help us better understand everything from antisemitism on social media to climate change,' King said. 'Binghamton University associate professor Jeremy Blackburn's work with AI aims to, in his words, 'understand jerks on the internet.' His research uses AI applications that comb massive troves of social media data to help us understand how social media is used to spread extremist ideologies.' King proudly noted that SUNY has reversed the decade-plus-long trend of dropping enrollment across its 64 campuses, a trend that has left a handful of campuses with structural deficits and has required them to make difficult downsizing plans, including at SUNY Potsdam. King noted that for the last two years, SUNY has grown enrollment in every corner of its offerings, adding students in doctoral programs, associate degree programs and every level in between. The system has not yet returned to its peak enrollment headcount from 2008, when it served 471,184 students. Total enrollment for fall 2024, the latest semester with available data, shows the system served 376,534 students. And SUNY is on track to add many more students to its community colleges next year, as the state opens up the SUNY Reconnect program meant to offer free associate degrees to full-time students ages 25 to 55, seeking a degree in an in-demand field. King said SUNY is also expanding it's 'Ten Percent Promise,' which guarantees that 10% of select high school seniors will have guaranteed admission to the competitive SUNY universities with lower acceptance rates. The system is also expanding its ASAP and ACE programs, which connect students at risk of dropping out of college with academic, financial and personal support systems. SUNY is also rolling out a pilot program to offer evening and weekend child care on community college campuses for students. Overall, King outlined a positive view of the future of the SUNY system, keeping with the policies and priorities the system has held for decades. 'I leave here filled with optimism that's grounded in our progress, our results and our strength — that not only can we meet this moment, we already are,' King said.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Teachers Saved My Life. Why Do We Treat Them So Poorly?
I have attended commencements of all kinds throughout my career, and I can tell you that some of the best are in prisons. Over and over, I have spoken at these commencements with incarcerated men and women who acknowledge the awful choices or stupid mistakes they made, the strangers or loved ones they hurt, yet emerge from prison renewed through higher education. While 95 percent of the people incarcerated will come home one day, they often return to the same cycles that led them to prison in the first place. Through college coursework, they are able to reflect on their past, develop a clearer vision for their future and gain the skills to contribute to their families and communities. One student told me that pursuing college while incarcerated was the first time he had moral and academic credibility with his family. The potential for higher education in prison to change lives is the reason that I worked to expand these programs when I was the U.S. secretary of education and president of a national education civil rights organization, and do so now as chancellor of the State University of New York. I believe so deeply in the transformative power of education because teachers saved my life. When I was 8 years old, in October of 1983, my mother died suddenly from a heart attack. It was indescribably devastating. I then lived alone with my father, who was struggling with Alzheimer's until he died when I was 12. During those years with my father, no one outside our home knew he was sick, and I didn't know why he acted the way he did. Some nights he would talk to me; some nights he wouldn't say a word. Other nights he would be sad or angry, or even violent. Home was scary and unstable, but I was blessed to have New York City public schoolteachers who made school a place that was safe, nurturing, academically rigorous and engaging. If not for Allan Osterweil, my teacher in fourth, fifth and sixth grade at P.S. 276 in Canarsie, Brooklyn, I would be in prison or dead. Amid the darkness of my home life, Mr. Osterweil gave me a sense of hope and purpose. In his classroom, we read The New York Times every day. We learned the capital and leader of every country in the world. We did productions of Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll. The language of both plays was incredibly difficult, but the joy of learning our roles and staging the productions helped us not only to enlarge our vocabularies and hone our public speaking skills, but also to fall in love with the arts. Field trips to the American Museum of Natural History, the ballet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden adjacent to Prospect Park exposed us to a world beyond our own. But what made Mr. Osterweil's classroom magical wasn't just the content, it was also the relationships. He was genuinely curious about what 8- and 9-year-olds had to say about the Cold War or famine in Africa and engaged us in serious conversations, asking probing questions, listening carefully. He brought in fantastically elaborate seashells he had collected with his wife on beaches around the world because he wanted to help us appreciate the beauty of nature and to share his passions with us. It was very unusual in the New York City schools of the time for a teacher to stay with a single class for multiple years, but Mr. Osterweil's decision to 'loop' with us helped deepen our bonds. When I didn't feel love or security at home, I found them in Mr. Osterweil's classroom: It was a place I could be a kid, full of joy and wonder, when I couldn't be a kid at home. After my father died, I moved around between schools and family members. Thanks to great teachers, I always found solace in my schoolwork. They would help me find an escape through a novel, push me to make my way through a seemingly impossible math problem or captivate my curiosity with a pig dissection or a debate about American foreign policy in the Caribbean and Central America. And more than that, they were the adults who provided stability, the source of encouragement and reassurance that things might be OK. Even with all that support, I struggled as a teenager, as do many students who have experienced trauma, oscillating between intense sadness and seething anger. I got in so much trouble that I was kicked out of high school. It would have been easy for others to have looked at me — a Black and Latino young man with a family in crisis and no respect for authority — and given up, but I was lucky that teachers and a school counselor were willing to give me a second chance. In fact, I benefited from much the same kind of second chance prison higher education programs seek to offer: the classroom as a place of rebirth. If not for the role teachers played in my life, I would never have become a teacher, a principal or a member of President Barack Obama's cabinet. Teachers had more faith in me than I had in myself; they changed my trajectory. But my story is not unique. From our earliest days as a country, America has believed in public education as a vehicle for upward mobility. From the one-room schoolhouses of 18th century New England to the ambitious vision for public higher education in Lincoln's Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 to President George W. Bush and Senator Ted Kennedy's bipartisan No Child Left Behind law, America has sought with each successive generation to expand the circle of educational opportunity. The poor student, the immigrant, the first-generation college student, the veteran or the single mother working her way through community college: We have tried to make space for them all, because we know access to education will enrich their lives, expand our economy and strengthen our democracy. Yet now the Trump administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are seeking to abandon education as a national imperative. Whether it is purging half of the staff at the U.S. Department of Education, threatening to eliminate the Head Start early childhood education program, telling teachers to stop teaching the hard parts of our history or slashing funding for research at our universities, the Trump administration is trying to unravel one of our greatest national achievements. This isn't a debate about efficiency; it is a debate about what kind of country we want to live in. Should schools be improved? Of course. Are there federal education programs that haven't worked as intended that should be redesigned or eliminated? Of course. But the Trump administration's goal is to destroy, not to improve. In the face of student performance stuck below where it was before the Covid pandemic began, a national crisis of chronic absenteeism, spiking depression and anxiety among kids and teens, and yawning gaps in achievement between low-income students and their more affluent peers, we ought to be having a national conversation about how we find and keep more teachers like the ones I had. We ought to be talking not about dismantling the Department of Education but about making teaching degrees free for people who commit to working in low-income urban and rural communities or in hard-to-staff subjects. We ought to be raising teacher pay and improving working conditions, ensuring that there are enough counselors, especially in schools serving neighborhoods afflicted by poverty and violence. We ought to be figuring out how to create more space for inspiring teachers who want to create new programs or school models — focused on arts, career and technical education, learning multiple languages and more — that will spark students' passion for learning and make school a place they want to be. After all, protecting and accelerating the transformative power of education is what's essential — and irreplaceable — about the federal role. Without the funding for vulnerable students the federal government provides, teachers in schools serving low-income students will be laid off and enrichment programs will be eliminated. Without the Pell Grants and student loans the federal government administers, low- and middle-income students will be locked out of higher education. And without federal leadership safeguarding students' civil rights, identifying schools that are succeeding (so their practices can be scaled) and shining a spotlight on places that are struggling (to ensure states and districts intervene), performance gaps will never close. At a time when we desperately need leadership and innovation that values and lifts up great teaching, the Trump administration's campaign of destruction is going to make it harder to find and keep the Mr. Osterweils of the world.
Boston Globe
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
James Foley, who directed ‘Glengarry Glen Ross,' ‘House of Cards,' and music videos, dies at 71
Mr. Foley went on to build a distinguished career as the director of movies, television shows and music videos. Advertisement Among his most celebrated works is the 1992 film adaptation of 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1984 play about real estate salesmen trying to make ends meet in a tough economy. The movie, with an all-star cast that included Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Kevin Spacey, was critically acclaimed but did not do well at the box office. (A revival of the play is currently on Broadway.) Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mr. Foley was also known for directing 'Fifty Shades Darker' (2017) and 'Fifty Shades Freed' (2018), the final two installments of the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' franchise, adapted from the second and third books of the E.L. James trilogy and starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Mr. Foley said he was pleased that he had not been pigeonholed as a filmmaker. Advertisement 'I think in terms of what fascinates me and what intrigues me and what I feel is engaging for the year that you spend making the movie, what's personally engaging, not adhering to any kind of conventions,' he said. James Foley was born Dec. 28, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, Frances, managed the home; his father, James Vincent Foley, was a lawyer. Mr. Foley grew up on Staten Island. He studied psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and graduated in 1974. He planned to attend medical school, but he changed his mind and decided to pursue directing instead after taking a six-week film production course at New York University. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in 1979. Speaking to film and media studies students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in 2013, he recalled screening the short film he had made as part of that production course in New York. 'That was the first time that something I had done got a reaction out of a lot of people,' Mr. Foley said. 'From that moment on, I decided I wanted to do that again.' His films also included 'At Close Range,' a 1986 crime drama starring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken; the 1990 film adaptation of Jim Thompson's crime novel 'After Dark, My Sweet,' starring Jason Patric, Rachel Ward and Bruce Dern, which he also co-wrote; 'Fear' (1996), starring Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon; 'The Chamber' (1996), with Chris O'Donnell and Gene Hackman; and 'Perfect Stranger' (2007), with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis. Advertisement Mr. Foley's credits as a music video director included Madonna's 'Live to Tell,' 'True Blue' and 'Papa Don't Preach.' His first foray into television was an episode of 'Twin Peaks' in 1991. He later directed 12 episodes in the first three seasons of 'House of Cards,' the hit Netflix series, originally starring Spacey, about the underbelly of American government, adapted from a BBC series of the same name. He also directed episodes of 'Wayward Pines' and 'Billions.' Mr. Foley is survived by a brother, Kevin; two sisters, Eileen and Jo Ann Foley; and a nephew, Quinn Foley. Another brother, Gerard, died before him. 'I've had a very fluid career of ups and downs and lefts and rights, and I always just responded to what I was interested in at the moment,' Mr. Foley told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. 'I've always just followed my nose, for better or for worse, sometimes for worse.' This article originally appeared in
Straits Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
James Foley, director of Fifty Shades Of Grey sequels and House Of Cards, dies at 71
James Foley, director of Fifty Shades Of Grey sequels and House Of Cards, dies at 71 LOS ANGELES - American veteran director James Foley, whose films included Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and the Fifty Shades Of Grey sequels (2017 and 2018), and who also worked on the hit television series House Of Cards (2013 to 2018), died this week at his home in Los Angeles. He was 71. His death came after a year-long battle with brain cancer, according to Mr Taylor Lomax of ID, the firm that represents Foley. Foley made his directorial debut with the film Reckless (1984), a drama about a high school romance between a rebellious, motorcycle-driving football player and a cheerleader. In the decades that followed, he built a career directing movies, television shows and music videos, working with some of Hollywood's biggest stars. Among his most celebrated works is the film adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross, the play by American playwright David Mamet that won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1984. The movie, about real estate salesmen trying to make ends meet in a tough economy, starred Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris and Alan Arkin. Foley also directed Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and Fifty Shades Freed (2018), the final two instalments of the Fifty Shades Of Grey franchise (2015 to 2018). Those films were adapted from the second and third books of the Fifty Shades trilogy by British author E. L. James. James Foley's directorial credits include Fifty Shades Freed, which starred Dakota Johnson (right) and Jamie Dornan. PHOTO: UIP Foley told the The Hollywood Reporter in 2017 that he was pleased that his career had not been pigeonholed. 'I think in terms of what fascinates me and what intrigues me and what I feel is engaging for the year that you spend making the movie, what's personally engaging, not adhering to any kind of conventions,' he said. Foley was born on Dec 28, 1953, in New York City and grew up on Staten Island. He studied psychology and graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1974. He planned to attend medical school, but he decided instead to pursue directing after taking a six-week film production course at New York University. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in 1979. Foley recalled screening the short film he made during the six-week course in New York while speaking to film and media studies students at Johns Hopkins University in 2013. 'That was the first time that something I had done got a reaction out of a lot of people,' Foley said. 'From that moment on, I decided I wanted to do that again.' Foley directed At Close Range (1986), the crime drama starring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken. Several years later, he directed and co-wrote the film adaptation of After Dark, My Sweet (1990), the crime novel by late American novelist Jim Thompson. Foley's directorial credits also include Fear (1996), starring Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon; The Chamber (1996), with Chris O'Donnell and Gene Hackman; and Perfect Stranger (2007), with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis. Foley also directed several music videos for American pop diva Madonna, including Live To Tell (1986), True Blue (1986) and Papa Don't Preach (1986). Foley made his foray into television directing an episode of Twin Peaks in 1991. He later directed 12 episodes across Seasons 1, 2 and 3 of House Of Cards, the hit Netflix series about the underbelly of American government that was adapted from a BBC series of the same name. He also directed episodes of Wayward Pines (2015 to 2016) and Billions (2016 to 2023). Foley is survived by a brother, Kevin Foley; two sisters, Eileen and Jo Ann Foley; and a nephew, Quinn Foley. He was predeceased by his brother, Gerard Foley. 'I've had a very fluid career of ups and downs and lefts and rights, and I always just responded to what I was interested in at the moment,' James Foley said in the 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. 'I've always just followed my nose, for better or for worse, sometimes for worse.' NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship Program launched
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways ALBANY — SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship, an innovative pilot program designed to expand SUNY's capacity to educate future nurses is part of Gov. Kathy Hochul's healthcare workforce agenda. The scholarship will cover tuition and fees and provide a stipend to baccalaureate-prepared nurses pursuing a master's degree in nursing. In return, recipients will commit to a three-year faculty position at a SUNY associate-level nursing program, helping strengthen the future nursing workforce in New York State. The SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship will cover up to $25,000 per academic year, including up to $20,000 for tuition and fees toward a qualifying master's in nursing degree program at SUNY, plus a $5,000 annual stipend for each year of eligible enrollment. The pilot program is slated to support two cohorts of approximately 35 students each. Eligible students are encouraged to apply here. 'The SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship Program will help ensure more skilled nurses are ready to enter the workforce and improve the quality of healthcare throughout New York State,' State University of New York Chancellor John B. King Jr. King said. 'With a projected shortage of 40,000 registered nurses in New York State within the next five years, we must take bold steps to address this problem. That is why SUNY is stepping up with this innovative scholarship program that will invest in the next generation of nursing educators and thereby help expand and strengthen the healthcare workforce. SUNY Board Trustee Eric Corngold said, 'As New York faces a major shortfall in high-quality nursing professionals in the coming years, SUNY is stepping up to address this looming crisis. The innovative SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship Program will help empower more nurses to become educators, and more New Yorkers to become nurses. This commonsense investment is part of SUNY's ongoing efforts to ensure New York State has the educated, dedicated workforce we will need to succeed in the new economy.' The SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship pilot program was created based on recommendations from the SUNY Future of Healthcare Workforce Task Force, a group convened to guide SUNY in addressing the critical healthcare workforce shortage, which identified enhancing SUNY's healthcare educator pipeline as one of its four priority areas for short-term action and investment. The pilot was first announced in the 2024 State of the University Address as a way to address the shortage of nursing educators, which has created a significant barrier to expanding SUNY's nursing programs. Upon receiving the scholarship, recipients must secure a faculty position at a SUNY associate-level nursing program within three months. Faculty training and professional development will be provided to all recipients to equip them with effective teaching skills, enhance their instructional techniques, and ensure a successful transition into their faculty roles. Teaching responsibilities must begin by January 2026, with recipients committing to a minimum of 18 academic credit hours per year for three years. 'I'm proud to join my colleagues in helping secure funding for the SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship Program. This will help our eminently qualified nurses obtain their Master's degree. We need to teach the next generation of healthcare workers and prepare them for careers in these much-needed fields. In return, these new educators will serve New Yorkers in nursing. I thank Chancellor King for developing this program to meet our State's nursing shortage,' Senate Higher Education Chair Toby Ann Stavisky said. Assembly Higher Education Chair Alicia Hyndman said, 'Today is an exciting moment for SUNY and for the future of healthcare in New York State! As Chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee — and as someone who believes deeply in the power of education to change lives — I am thrilled to see this bold investment in our nursing workforce. The SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship is about breaking barriers: it's about giving talented nurses the support they need to advance their education and step into leadership as the educators our communities so urgently need. I want to thank Chancellor King and everyone at SUNY for their vision and commitment to strengthening healthcare from the classroom to the bedside. Our future nurses — and all New Yorkers — will be better because of it.' Assemblymember Amy Paulin said, 'The SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship is a forward-thinking investment in both our students and our state's healthcare future. By supporting aspiring nursing educators, we're not only addressing the shortage of faculty that limits program capacity—we're also ensuring that future nurses receive the high-quality training they need to provide exceptional care. This initiative is a win for SUNY, a win for our healthcare system, and most importantly, a win for patients across New York.' Assemblymember Karines Reyes, R.N., Chair of the NYS Assembly and Senate's Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, said, 'I applaud SUNY and the institution's leadership for making this pivotal investment in a critical part of New York State's workforce. Our state is facing a shortage of nurses in the coming years and decades. This investment in the SUNY Healthcare Educator Scholarship Program will make sure that our practitioners can afford to improve their skill set, while giving back to our state's public higher education system and students, with the three-year residency. I thank SUNY Chancellor John King and his administration for their leadership on this initiative, and look forward to seeing the positive fruits that are born from it.' Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest said, 'As a proud CUNY and SUNY alum, a nurse, and a mom, I know firsthand the power of public education to transform lives. The Healthcare Educator Scholarship Program is a crucial investment in building the healthcare workforce New Yorkers need — and making sure the people teaching our future nurses, doctors, and caregivers actually reflect the communities they'll serve. This is how we strengthen our hospitals, our neighborhoods, and our state — by believing in our people and giving them the tools to thrive.' For more information about the program, eligibility requirements, and to access the application, visit Applications are due May 30.
