The Chancellor presented the report s major recommendations to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees. The chair of the steering committee met with the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees, several groups of student leaders, and with the Senate Committee on Academic Affairs to receive their comments and suggestions. Finally, the chair of the steering committee requested approximately twenty members of the staff and administration to review portions of the draft to correct any factual errors that may have crept in. The responses to these requests together with other commentary, notably from the Board of Graduate Studies and the Division of Student Affairs, provided constructive assistance to the steering committee. The resulting document, this final version, is considerably different from the discussion draft of October 1.
Refinements appear throughout the document, on almost every page.
The greatest change was to give more explicit attention to the role of the University staff and to strengthen the recommendations in the conclusion regarding the staff. The authors of this report, the Middle States Steering Committee, gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the many members of the study groups who did the research and wrote the first drafts and the conscientious efforts of the many people who read the report and discussed it thoroughly. Their efforts made this document a report that reflects the views of all segments of the Syracuse University community. Individual readers may differ regarding its interpretations and conclusions, but the document reflects the community s best collective judgment regarding the present state of the University and its prospects for the future. The study groups and steering committee drew heavily upon the many task force reports, planning documents, and statistical analyses that various offices of the University had produced over the previous decade.