Welcome back! I hope that you had a restful and restorative summer, and are as excited and energized by the start of the fall term as I am! I write with updates and information that you may find of interest. This week, we welcomed more than 11,000 students to our campus: and why wouldn’t students want to attend the College of Staten Island? For the third consecutive year Forbes magazine ranked CSI as a “Top 25” school for return on investment, acknowledging the transformative power of public higher education and of CUNY! In addition to meeting our ambitious and aspirational fall enrollment goal—and my sincere thanks to the teams in the Office of Recruitment and Admissions, CAAS, and other advising units, and the staff in many other offices who worked so hard to get us here—we also welcomed many new faculty and staff to CSI. At a time when institutions of higher education are collapsing programs and eliminating positions, we proudly introduced 18 new full-time faculty members to our team! It was wonderful to meet so many of them at Monday’s new faculty orientation and welcome back BBQ, and I look forward to their many years of service to our institution!
In the months since Commencement, the campus has been a veritable beehive of activity, as I am sure those who were present can confirm. This summer saw the return of community theater to our Center for the Arts, with a four-night run of Fiddler on the Roof. The production was amazing, and was nearly sold out for each performance, with more than 1,500 purchasing tickets to the show! Not to be outdone, our partnership with UAU for a summer sports camp brought over 200 young persons to campus for an eight-week camp focused on athletics and arts-and-crafts. No doubt many of these visitors will one day enroll as future CSI students! Activities such as these demonstrate the role and impact our campus has on our community.
The campus also witnessed a number of important capital improvements since my last communication: a long overdue refresh of the Library’s third floor, new exterior staircases for buildings 1A and 2A, a beautiful tranquility garden outside of Dolphin Cove, new water-filling stations throughout campus (an ongoing project generously funded through Student Government), new technology upgrades in several labs (as announced in the recent IT newsletter), overhauls to our softball and baseball complexes (to be finished in the coming weeks), the completion of our MakerSpace, and various other projects. The campus certainly looks different—and better—since the last time many of our students and staff were last here.
As we begin the new academic year, I am sure you will join me in congratulating two members of our administrative team who are moving on. Mr. Keith Pisons is retiring this week, after nearly eight years of service to CSI, including the last three as Director of Facilities Management, Planning, and Operations. Keith’s calm demeanor and “get it done” mentality have allowed us to make this campus more beautiful and inviting than ever, as many have attested and as evidenced by the completion of several of the aforementioned projects. Similarly, please join me in wishing Dr. Michel Hodge—who had served as interim Vice President for Student Affairs and Strategic Initiatives since 2022—best wishes as he assumes his new role as University Dean of Special Programs, effective September 8. It is gratifying to know we will have another friend and advocate at the Central Office, and I am sure that Michel will do incredible and impactful things in this new capacity.
As a reminder, the campus will be closed on Monday, September 1, in observance of Labor Day. I hope you enjoy the long holiday weekend and I look forward to seeing many of you around campus, or perhaps at next Thursday’s CSI Night at the FerryHawks game (tickets available here). I am excited for what the semester holds, and I thank you for your ongoing commitment to our mission and, especially, to the students we serve.
Until next time,
Timothy G. Lynch, Ph.D. (he/him/his)
