Further include SUNY in march of progress

“A plea to promote UAlbany,” Jan. 21, has regional state lawmakers asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to include the University at Albany and Binghamton University as well as the already named University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University as flagship schools in the State University of New York system.

Although all four universities are listed at the highest research level in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, not designating UAlbany as a flagship could keep it from receiving the highest funding and research flexibility given only to such schools. As one of the four state university centers, all four should be treated equally.

UAlbany lost its nano college to a now scandal-ridden separate entity, SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. CNSE should be folded back under the UAlbany tent, joining the university’s new College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and its new Emerging Technology and Entrepreneurship Complex.

On May 7, 1844, the state Legislature created the New York State Normal School in Albany, the first state-administered institution of higher learning in the state. UAlbany is the oldest school of higher learning in the state and deserves an equal footing with the other three university centers of our state.

As an Albany native and UAlbany grad, I think it is incumbent on the powers that be to further include, not exclude, this institution in the hopeful march of progress to increase the economic and community viability of this area and the entire state in general.

Ray Starman

Niskayuna