SUNY Report Card to be released on May 17, unprecedented step in higher education

The State University of New York is releasing the SUNY Report Card on Tuesday, May 17, 2011.

The report card is unique in higher education, and will evaluate and track the progress of SUNY across a spectrum of critical areas, assessing the performance of its educational system.

SUNY will measure various issues starting from teaching and research, and ranging to alternative energy, cradle-to-career education, globalization, diversity, research and innovation, health and wellness, and the impact of SUNY community upon the statewide communities, according to SUNY official website.

The SUNY websites states that it about accountability, and that the State University of New York has never put its goals out on the table and asked New Yorks to hold us to it, until now.

The Report Card is introduced as a part of The Power of SUNY , a five-year strategic plan led by Chancellor Nancy Zimpher. The card will use both internally and externally validated metrics to track the progress in the above areas, and it will begin to allow the public to assess where we succeed and where we may fall short, Zimpher said.

The SUNY Report Card will include two sections of metrics; a competitive SUNY and a competitive New York.

In the first section, the metrics will include:

- Total research expenditures

- The number of license agreements executed in the past year

- The number of faculty and students joining on sponsored program grants.

The second section will include the following metrics:

- Total research expenditures by economic development region

- The number of jobs created from sponsored program funds

- Technology transfer and commercialization metrics.

Furthermore, the following will be measured every two years from 2012.

- SUNY's entrepreneurial support of New York firms

- Entrepreneurial curriculum (the number of entrepreneurial campus activities or programs.