March 4, 2019: University Senate Report

Office of the Provost

Arthur Lee Appointed Provost and Vice President of SUNY Korea

Dr. Arthur Lee has been appointed Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs of SUNY Korea, effective 1 March 2019. Dr. Lee joined SUNY Korea in 2016 as Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department. He has served as Interim Provost at SUNY
Korea for the past seven months.

Dr. Lee received his BS from the University of Utah, MS from Stanford University, and Ph.D. from the University of Utah, all in Computer Science. He has held academic appointments at Korea University, the University of Utah, and Claremont McKenna College, where he served in an endowed chair position. Dr. Lee also has more than 15 years of experience working in laboratory and industry settings. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society for three years. Dr. Lee is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Dr. Lee’s research interests are in programming languages, database systems, distributed systems, and big data. He is particularly interested in object-oriented and dynamic languages, main-memory database management systems dealing with big data support in a distributed environment, and supporting data science needs for data management. Government agencies and industry leaders in both Korea and the United States have sponsored his research.

March Provost’s Lecture Series

Diversity, Faculty Retention, and Institutional Practices: A Dialogue (Part of the #MeToo Stony Brook Series)

Patricia A. Matthew, Associate Professor of English at Montclair State University, is the editor of Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure. She has given lectures on Written/Unwritten at various colleges and universities. She has also published essays and books reviews on diversity in higher education in PMLA, The ADE Bulletin, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, The New Inquiry, and The Atlantic. Her work on faculty diversity has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a specialist in the history of the novel and British abolitionist literature. She has published articles on these subjects in European Romantic Review, Women’s Writing, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, and the Keats-Shelley Journal. Her essays on race, popular culture, and British literature have been published in Lapham’s Quarterly and The Atlantic. She is currently writing a book on sugar, gender, and political protests in nineteenth-century England.

Abstract: Based on Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure and discussions Dr. Matthew has had with faculty and administrators from around the country, this lecture and dialogue will focus on three interlocking questions. How useful is the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion in this moment when terms like “diversity” are almost meaningless? What does productive allyship between white academics and faculty of color look like at the departmental and administrative level? How can personnel processes be restructured at a time when institutions need and seek the expertise and perspective of faculty of color in response to national conversations and debates?

This event will take place on Thursday, March 14 at 4:30 PM in Humanities 1006. It is cosponsored by Concerned Women of College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for the Study of Inequality, Social Justice and Policy, the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Department of Sociology, the Department of History, and the Humanities Institute.

The Entrepreneur’s Edge 2019: Company Culture and Its Impact on Growth

Dawn Zier is President and Chief Executive Officer of Nutrisystem, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRI), an innovative provider of weight loss programs offering a wide variety of home-delivered, nutritionally balanced meal plans, retail products, and advanced digital tools. Since taking the helm in late 2012, Zier has embarked on an ambitious 4-point turnaround and growth plan for Nutrisystem. This plan encompassed bringing in a new management team, enhancing the Company’s integrated ecommerce/marketing capabilities, and introducing several new product lines, including a breakthrough digital weight loss tool and industry-first retail offerings. Under her leadership, the company launched its game-changing Fast 5, Turbo 10 and Lean13 campaigns. She has championed a strategic vision that centers on building a multi-brand and multi-channel approach to capture a more significant share of the weight loss market and to expand into the broader health and wellness space. The strategic acquisition of the South Beach Diet brand and the launch of DNA Body Blueprint are two examples that illustrate bringing this strategy to life. A sought-after speaker and industry expert, Dawn regularly attends business conferences, meets with analysts and investors, appears on CBS, CNBC, FOX Business News,
and Bloomberg TV, and commentates on radio stations in major markets throughout the U.S. She also contributes to FORTUNE, The Huffington Post, and Philadelphia Business Journal. She has been written about in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune.

Abstract: Dawn Zier ’86, native of Port Jefferson and President & CEO of Nutrisystem, Inc., will be interviewed by Joe Campolo Esq. ’94, Past President of the Alumni Association and Board Chairman of Protegrity Advisors. Find out how in just two years after joining
Nutrisystem in 2012, Dawn led the company to its first year of revenue growth in seven years.

Through a heavy emphasis on changing the culture, the company revenues have doubled and profits have increased six fold within her tenure.

This event will take place on Thursday, March 28 at 7:00 PM in Wang Center Theater. It is cosponsored by the College of Business and Alumni Relations.

Provost’s Lecture Series and Quantum Immersion Workshop Joint Event

The Provost’s Lecture Series hosted two lectures on Monday, February 25 as part of the Quantum Immersion Workshop.

Barry Sanders gave the first lecture, entitled “Building a Quantum Computer.” Sanders is Director of the Institute for Quantum Science and Technology at the University of Calgary. He also holds Visiting Chair positions at the University of Science and Technology of China and at the Raman Research Institute in India. He is well known for seminal contributions to quantumlimited measurement, highly nonclassical light, practical quantum cryptography, and optical
implementations of quantum information tasks.

In this lecture, Sanders presented a high-level overview of the current state of the art and aspirations for building quantum computers. Various types such as universal quantum computers, quantum simulators, and quantum annealers were discussed.

Seth Lloyd gave the second lecture, entitled “Quantum Machine Learning.” Lloyd is Nam P. Suh Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Physics at MIT. His research focuses on problems of information and complexity in the universe. He was the first person to develop a realizable model for quantum computation and is working with a variety of groups to construct and operate quantum computers and quantum communication systems. Lloyd has worked to establish fundamental physical limits to precision measurement and to develop algorithms for quantum computers for pattern recognition and machine learning. His work on complex systems currently focuses on transitions between stability and instability in complex dynamical systems.

This lecture reviewed recent advances in quantum machine learning, including quantum data fitting, quantum support vector machines, and deep quantum learning. Lloyd also outlined the technological steps that need to be taken to implement useful quantum machine learning devices.

SUNY Provost Campus Visit

SUNY Provost Tod Laursen visited Stony Brook campus on Thursday, February 21. He met with a variety of constituents, including executive leadership, academic leadership, and student leadership. He spoke on his upcoming plans and initiatives, including the future of online education in the SUNY system. Dr. Laursen’s visit was part of a tour of Long Island’s SUNY campuses.

Tod Laursen was appointed Senior Vice Chancellor and Provost in September 2018. Prior to serving in this role, he was the Founding President of Khalifa Unviersity in Abu Dhabi. He received his doctorate and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford
University.

New BFA Degree in Creative Writing

Stony Brook has announced a new Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. The Creative Writing major offers a wide selection of writing workshops gathered under broadly defined course numbers, so that students can build their own BFA, specializing in the kind of writing they most yearn to master. In their senior year, they write a book-length manuscript under the one-on-one mentorship of a faculty member. Throughout, they are part of a tightly knit community of rigorous but supportive fellow majors. Courses specific to the major will be available for current and future Stony Brook students starting in Fall 2019. The first cohort of majors will graduate as BFAs in Spring 2021.