Convocation 2024

On August 29, the New York Tech community celebrated the start of the 2024-2025 academic year at the university’s annual faculty and staff convocation—as well as the presentation of the Presidential Excellence Awards.

President Henry C. Foley, Ph.D., opened the event with a welcome to new and returning faculty and staff. He spoke about the university’s focus on improving the student experience as well as the quest to achieve Research 2 (R2) status. “From the feedback I get from our students, which I get often, we’re doing better by them each year as they seek to attain their goals through us,” he said, and also highlighted New York Tech’s multicultural student body. “Every time we graduate a young person, and they start a career by entering a profession, we change their lives and sometimes the lives of their whole family. That creates tremendous equity,” he said.

He said to continue to create a better sense of inclusion and belonging, faculty and staff need to be open to meeting with students informally before and after class, mentor them on research projects and creative works, and establish an intramural sports program. “All of these and other actions will help us to achieve the goals of fostering inclusion and belonging.”

Jerry Balentine, D.O., provost and executive vice president, spoke about the university’s goal of becoming an R2 university as well as an R+, meaning increasing the retention of students. “How fortunate are we at New York Tech where we have the degrees that our students want, degrees that will change their lives, how we have a vision to go somewhere to become an R2 for us, for our faculty, for our staff to increase our academic capacity,” he said. Balentine then presented a few examples of changes happening at the university, including the newly launched Honors College; new residence halls on the Long Island and New York City campuses; and Tech Threads, where students can pick up clothing for job interviews. He also announced the first Administrative Scholar, Pamela Karp, associate professor and chair of occupational therapy. The Administrative Scholar is a new program for faculty where for one year one faculty member can learn about administrative aspects of higher education by being fully immersed in Academic Affairs.

Other speakers included Donald Booth (B.S. ’91), vice president for capital planning and facilities, who gave an update on the capital upgrades to the university, including the installation of FLOCK license plate readers on the Long Island campus to make the campus more secure; the completion of phase one of the restoration of NYIT de Seversky Mansion; and the upgrades to the athletics facilities. Pennie Turgeon, M.B.A., vice president for information technology and chief information officer, highlighted the completion of phase one of the website redesign, security and infrastructure improvements, and the ways the university is building capacity to accommodate newer technologies such as cloud computing and AI. Joseph Posillico, Ed.D., vice president for enrollment and strategic communications, gave an update on enrollment and admissions trends, noting that the university is on solid footing with enrollment.

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Following the presentations, the annual Presidential Excellence Awards were given to the following faculty and staff by the president and provost:

• Diversity and Inclusion: Felipe Henao, Ed.D., Dean of Students
• Full-time Excellence in Teaching: Nathan Thompson, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Anatomy
• Part-time Excellence in Teaching: Ute Broedje, Adjunct Instructor, Marketing and Management
• Innovator: Stephanie Wolcott, Senior Academic Advisor
• Staff Excellence: Joanne West (M.S. ’10), Director, Student Engagement and Development, Admin and Operations
• Student Engagement in Research: Michael Granatosky, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Anatomy

Team Award Individual Awards

Achieving Collegiate Excellence Team:

• Rocio Morello, Associate Director, Student Success Programs, Student Success and Advising
• Monika Rohde, M.A., Senior Associate Dean, Undergraduate Student Success and Advising
• Mohammed Moizuddin, Director, Institutional Research
• Erikka Vaughn, Ph.D., Planning Support Specialist, Academic Affairs