Spreading Our Wings

President Maurie McInnis highlights how Stony Brook
is ready to fly high toward an ambitious future
in her first State of the University Address

Resilient undergraduate and graduate students. Dedicated faculty and staff. Transformative healthcare. A community that has shown that by uniting together, it can face any challenge, including a global pandemic.

Telling the inspirational stories of how many of our students, researchers, professors and medical professionals overcame obstacles to succeed the past year, President McInnis illustrated how our community is poised to tackle an exciting, new challenge: determining where SBU goes next.

During her presentation, the president marveled at how SBU emerged from COVID stronger and more united than ever, sharing details on the many ways that 2022 has been a year of incredible milestones and major firsts for our scholars and researchers (see below for just a few of those accomplishments).

In looking ahead, the president drew inspiration from an essay she read by novelist and critic Arundhati Roy titled “The Pandemic is a Portal.”

In it, the author writes that “historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”  

President McInnis said it was very clear — through the continued dedication and focused drive of SBU’s faculty, students and staff — that our community is ready to walk through the portal to begin our next journey. And where that journey goes will be entirely up to all of us.

Click below to watch the State of the University Address: