STONY BROOK SOUTHAMPTON
Drawing Big Dreams on Blank Slate
New college starts to sow the seeds of a ‘sustainable’ interdisciplinary program

By Kate Maier

Kate Maier Shirley Strum Kenny, the president of the State University at Stony Brook, and Martin Schoonen, the interim dean at Stony Brook Southampton, on Monday discussed plans to make the college a leader in environmental sustainability studies.

(03/22/2007)    The State University at Stony Brook’s new sibling in Southampton is growing quickly under the guidance of a group of educators ready to take full advantage of the school’s blank-slate status.

    “Stony Brook Southampton has no past, and the creative juices are flowing very strongly on campus,” said Stony Brook’s president, Shirley Strum Kenny, on Monday at one of the media updates that are becoming regular business at the Southampton campus.

    According to Dr. Kenny, the school’s interim dean, Martin Schoonen, and a host of other officials at Monday’s lunch, starting from the ground up will allow the school to form a “sustainability” program surpassing that at Arizona State University, which Dr. Kenny described as the only other college in the country that has embraced the concept.

    According to Dr. Schoonen, global warming, population explosions, and the depletion of natural resources are problems that will become a tremendous focus for this generation of students, whether they pursue careers in business, politics, nonprofit work, architecture, or teaching.

    “These are the kinds of problems students should look at from a larger perspective,” he said. Ideally, the new college’s interdisciplinary design will “create an institute without departments,” in which five majors will be developed over the next two years “under the umbrella of sustainability.”

    For instance, the developing “art, culture, and theories” program will include “a blend of courses that you might find in a traditional art B.A. program,” he said, along with classes like “theories of human settlement.”

    Stony Brook Southampton will start out by offering an environmental studies major in the fall 2007 semester, Dr. Schoonen said, and that major will then branch out into the five new majors as they gain State Education Department and college approval. They include Bachelor of Arts programs in sustainability studies, environmental design, policy, and planning, ecological studies and human impact, and art, culture, and theories, as well as a Bachelor of Science program in environmental science.

    “In a way, they are new to higher education, in that they are so highly interdisciplinary,” Dr. Kenny said of the new majors. “We’re not copying what people do, we’re inventing it.”

    Although plans are only at the initial discussion stage, Dr. Kenny added that she is toying with the idea of a five-year program in architecture that would incorporate green building principles. “There are a lot of people who would be interested in an architecture program here,” she said. “We’d like to see that happen.”

    A college without rigorously divided departments, she said, “that is going to be the way students learn. They’re going to learn differently than in those boxes. We can do that here, because it is a new campus.”

    According to its Web site, Stony Brook Southampton is seeking “students filled with a Peace Corps attitude, who, in addition to their academic studies, are willing to landscape the campus and plant a garden to provide a kitchen with organic fruits and vegetables.”

    As the campus is renovated, Dr. Kenny hopes to see “green building” wherever possible, although she admitted that it is not always feasible to achieve with older buildings. The Web site says that the campus’s windmill will be just one way the campus will incorporate alternative energy into learning.

    Dr. Schoonen envisions the school’s soon-to-be-redesigned library as a modern “information commons” where students can work and socialize at a central campus hub. He announced that three residence halls will be fully outfitted by the fall 2007 semester. They will be called Southold, Mattituck, and Shelter Island.

    Peter Baigent, the university’s associate vice president for student affairs, wants to attract a student population that will “develop its own culture,” in a “contemporary learning scene” that is “more organic, with less structure” than other institutes of higher learning

    “We want to have the students plan out, and really be involved in developing the campus,” he said.

    Matthew Whelan, the university’s assistant provost for admissions and financial aid, acknowledged that “we were admittedly below the curve on the recruitment process” because the campus did not actually change hands until last October. However, he said, “the reception we’re getting from local and regional guidance offices is phenomenal.”

    John Noonen, the school’s new head of admissions, was recently hired from a national pool of applicants. He is a resident of Southampton, and his résumé includes a 20-year stint as the dean of admissions at Quinnipiac Law School in Connecticut. He said that so far, 35 students have been accepted from a pool of 100 applicants hailing from California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, with SAT scores in the 1,200-to-1,300 range.

    A freshman class of around 100 students is expected this fall, and Mr. Noonen hopes to attract around 300 transfer students from the State University at Stony Brook and other schools by then as well. By the fall of 2008, he hopes to see an incoming class of “three to four hundred freshman from around the country.”

    The college is expected to have a total of 2,000 to 2,500 students when it is operating at full capacity.

    Within the State University of New York system, Dr. Kenny has envisioned an innovative curriculum that will attract visiting students from other schools, something of a “junior year at Southampton” instead of the traditional “junior year abroad.”

    Meanwhile, the search continues for a dean of students during what Mr. Baigent described as “a high season for hiring.”

    “It’s probably one of the plum jobs this year,” he said. “Where else would you be able to walk in and design” a curriculum from the ground up? He said the university has already had some “strong applicants from across the Northeast” express interest in the position.

    At the graduate level, the writing program is flourishing, much to the delight of Robert Reeves and Roger Rosenblatt, who ran the program under the auspices of Southampton College in years past. At this point, “we can pretty much attract any writer we want” for the annual writers conference, Mr. Reeves said.

    This year, Joyce Carol Oates will be the keynote speaker. The department’s literary magazine has been renamed The Southampton Review as a result of a contest among the students who are presently enrolled. A student reading is scheduled for April 25, and a faculty reading will take place on May 2.

    “Essentially, it’s the same program” as it was under Long Island University, Mr. Rosenblatt said. “But now it’s in the context of a first-rate university, with this first-rate person who cares about us,” he said of Dr. Kenny.

    Mr. Rosenblatt said he was optimistic that “there will be a constellation of arts programs arising here within the next three years.”

    The campus will play a significant role in the region, whether by attracting students from East End high schools or providing continuing education opportunities for adults. Lectures such as this springs marine science series will continue at the college, and the school’s food and wine institute will continue to offer courses to the public.   

    A summer vocal concert series is in the works as well. “A number of arts programs that will say something about the quality of what we will be doing for the community as well as the students here” are planned, said Dr. Kenny. “There will be a lot of activity for people who are here in the summer.”

    As a satellite of Stony Brook, Dr. Kenny said that Stony Brook Southampton will continue the university’s commitment to working with local schools, possibly even providing internships for high school students through Brookhaven National Laboratory, which the university now has a stake in.

    “There are more Intel science competition winners on Long Island than anywhere else,” she reminded the group. “That’s because of our faculty mentoring” programs, like the Long Island Group Advancing Science Education, which operates out of the university.

    For those with a more global take on environmental sciences, there will be the option of studying in Madagascar or Kenya through Stony Brook’s pre-established study-abroad programs.

    One thing is certain, according to Dr. Kenny. “We’re going to build a special curriculum,” she said, “on a new campus, with a new concept, for a new century.”