By GREGORY ZELLER //
Twenty months since she was announced by the SUNY Board of Trustees – and more than 16 since she actually assumed the office – Maurie McInnis has finally been inaugurated as Stony Brook University president.
The “new” president – who succeeded Acting President Michael Bernstein, who followed the 10-year tenure of former SBU President Samuel Stanley Jr. – is officially the sixth president in the university’s 64-year history (not including Bernstein, who filled in for roughly 12 months). She’s the second woman to fill the office, following the 15-year tenure (1994-2009) of Shirley Strum Kenny.
Delayed by COVID and other factors, McInnis’ Oct. 23 inauguration drew a crowd of faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends to SBU’s Island Federal Arena, where the author and cultural historian – who most recently served as executive vice president and provost of the University of Texas at Austin – looked back before looking forward.
Specifically, McInnis harkened back to 1962, when SBU – known first as State University College on Long Island – relocated from Oyster Bay to Stony Brook.
Jim Malatras: Bright future for SBU under “steadfast” McInnis.
That modest institution – just a handful of buildings built on old potato fields, with a student body barely eclipsing 800 – eventually became “an educational powerhouse,” according to the freshly minted president, with a “luminous, ambitious future” that will define the next generation of discovery.
“That is my goal, and my honor as the president of one of the most innovative public research universities in the world: to ensure that Stony Brook University is leading the way, serving our community and tackling the global challenges that face us in the coming century,” McInnis said. “This is the work that we’ll set out to do, together, in the next decade.
“I look forward to seeing all we can achieve,” she added. “The moment is upon us … let’s answer the call to greatness.”
McInnis’ 2020 appointment followed a 10-month search for a successor to Stanley, who left to become the 21st president of Michigan State University.
Bernstein, SBU provost since 2016, filled in while a high-wattage search committee – including Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons and Kevin Law, then the president of the Long Island Association, now nominated by Gov. Kathy Hochul to head up the powerful Empire State Development Corp. – sought a permanent replacement.
The search committee ultimately chose McInnis, a Yale University-educated art historian with a long record of executive leadership, primarily at the University of Virginia.
Law, a member of SBU’s Class of 1982 and chairman of the campus-overseeing Stony Brook Council, was among several dignitaries fêting McInnis during the Oct. 23 inauguration, along with State University of New York Chancellor Jim Malatras, SBU Alumni Association President Ahmed Belazi, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and others.
“Dr. Maurie McInnis is the right leader at the right time,” Malatras said during the ceremony, noting the new president is “well-positioned to take this university to new levels of excellence.”
“Today, the entire SUNY family celebrates the inauguration of President McInnis,” the chancellor added. “Under her focused and steadfast leadership, we look forward to the future of this university community.”
