President Goldsmith Talks About Stony Brook, Higher Education on WUSB

Stony Brook University President Andrea Goldsmith sat down for an interview with Kate Valerio on WUSB-FM, and spoke about her first three months at Stony Brook, her career in higher education and her vision for the future of Stony Brook.

The 30-minute interview on “Health Matters” aired Saturday, October 18, and included Vice President of Student Affairs Rick Gatteau.

Goldsmith talked about the warm welcome she received when she arrived at Stony Brook, from students to faculty and staff, and how in her first State of the University Address on September 29, she described Stony Brook as “a place where I could come in and craft, together with everybody here, a vision for the future and then achieve it.”

She detailed how that strategic vision has three pillars, A-B-C: accelerate, build and catalyze.

A to accelerate Stony Brook’s excellence in research, education, service and healthcare. B to build better facilities on campus and beyond — pointing to The New York Climate Exchange on Governors Island and Stony Brook Southampton as examples — as well as building our student body “to educate more New Yorkers.” And C, to catalyze what happens at the university and take it out to the world by fostering more innovation, entrepreneurship and ties with industry, “to have a real significant impact.”

Gatteau talked about how Stony Brook University is expanding to support increased student residency, from the new Seawolf Village, opening in January with 492 beds, to a new hall in Tabler community that will open in a few years. He also noted that the Student Support team now includes members embedded in residence halls to provide immediate support, and mentioned the addition of the SBU letters outside the Stony Brook Union, providing another opportunity, along with the Wolfie statue, to enhance the student experience and increase Stony Brook pride.

Goldsmith and Gatteau also discussed their paths to higher education, with Valerio asking what they wanted to be when they were seven years old. Gatteau, who has been at Stony Brook for 24 years and helped launch the master’s degree program in higher education administration, said his parents were both elementary school teachers, and so education as a career was a natural choice.

Goldsmith said she had no idea at age seven what she wanted to be, adding that “at most inflection points in my career, I didn’t know.”

She added that while her mother was a cartoonist on the “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show,” she couldn’t draw at all. And while her father was an engineer, she had no idea what an engineer did. While she did end up studying engineering at Berkeley, she ended up “falling in love with wireless communication” in her first job, went to graduate school, became a professor, and also worked in industry.

“I said, I’m going to explore all of them and see which one ends up being the most appealing,” Goldsmith said. “So one of the things I like to tell young people is explore all your options. Don’t settle on one thing. Because there’s so many paths to professional success and satisfaction.”

The interview will be rebroadcast on WUSB-FM 90.1 and 107.3 on October 20 and again during Homecoming on Saturday, October 25, both days at 11 am.

At the interview, Goldsmith and Gatteau helped WUSB and the New York Blood Center accept the New York State Broadcasters Association’s “Community Partnership” award for their 20+ year collaboration resulting in the collection of over 35,000 pints, potentially saving over 105,000 lives.