Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny is the first woman and first humanist to serve as President of Stony Brook University. After a distinguished career as a literary scholar, teacher, and academic administrator, she came to Stony Brook as its fourth President in 1994. Since then, she has worked to strengthen the core academic and research operations of the University, fostered close links with business and industry, and established new working relationships with the Long Island community.

Concerned about the state of undergraduate education at major research universities, Dr. Kenny headed a national initiative to address the issue. She launched and chaired the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University with funding from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The Commission's report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (1998), advocated a model of education that would engage students with the resources unique to such institutions and lead them to conduct research themselves. Stony Brook is currently reorganizing its undergraduate curriculum along the lines recommended by the Boyer Report.

Total enrollment at Stony Brook University has increased from 17,500 to more than 23,000 during Dr. Kenny’s presidency; faculty numbers are up 8 percent. In 2006, the average SAT score of incoming freshmen was 1215. More »