Student Awardees to be Recognized Via Virtual Celebrations by Campuses

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Contact: Holly Liapis; Holly.Liapis@suny.edu; 518-320-1311

ALBANY – State University of New York Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson today honors 213 students from across the state with the 2020 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence. In place of the annual in-person ceremony, Chancellor Johnson and campuses will recognize their achievements via a virtual video celebration to be shared with families, campus presidents, staff, and faculty.

“SUNY’s Chancellor’s Award for Excellence winners are the champions of their campuses, each showing a tireless devotion to their academics and extracurricular pursuits, as well as their care for their fellow students as mentors and leaders,” said SUNY Chancellor Johnson. “They are inspiring, and I have high expectations for how they will contribute to our society as we rebound from this current pandemic that separates us today.”

The Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence was created in 1997 to recognize students who have best demonstrated, and have been recognized for, the integration of academic excellence with accomplishments in the areas of leadership, athletics, community service, creative and performing arts, campus involvement, or career achievement.

Each year, SUNY campus presidents establish a selection committee, which reviews the accomplishments of exemplary students. Nominees are then forwarded to the Chancellor’s Office for a second round of review. Finalists are then recommended to the Chancellor to become recipients of the award.

A complete listing of student recipients is available online along with videos from Chancellor Johnson and the awardees.

About The State University of New York

The State University of New York is the largest comprehensive system of higher education in the United States, and more than 95 percent of all New Yorkers live within 30 miles of any one of SUNY’s 64 colleges and universities. Across the system, SUNY has four academic health centers, five hospitals, four medical schools, two dental schools, the state’s only college of optometry, and manages one US Department of Energy National Laboratory. As of Fall 2019, more than 415,500 students were enrolled in a degree-granting program at a SUNY campus. In total, SUNY serves about 1.3 million students in credit-bearing courses and programs, continuing education, and community outreach programs. SUNY oversees nearly a quarter of academic research in New York. Research expenditures system-wide exceeded $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2019, including significant contributions from students and faculty. There are three million SUNY alumni worldwide, and one in three New Yorkers with a college degree is a SUNY alum. To learn more about how SUNY creates opportunity, visit www.suny.edu, and for more information about additional COVID-19 fundraising efforts, visit #SUNYTogether.

###