The Griffin’s lunch with President Stoute: Stoute commits to student success

By: Hannah Wiley, Features Editor and Kaitlin O’Meara, Copy Editor

On Friday, Sept. 19, The Griffin had our annual lunch with President Steve K. Stoute to start the academic year. We had a very open and informative conversation, ranging topics such as the State of the University addresses, the task force and changes to campus safety, the bookstore and the Student Success Center. We talked through what’s changing, what's staying and what’s getting revamped to better our student experience and the campus community. 

The Griffin began our conversation by talking about the most recent State of the University address on May 21 that was recorded and published to the Canisius portal over the summer. The recording is a “change in practice,” Stoute stated. While it was recorded this time around, President Stoute stated that “being in [a] community is important. It's important to who we are and as a Jesuit institution,” which is why he emphasizes the in-person talks, to ensure it can be an up-front conversation between Stoute and the faculty. “And we want people to feel free to be open, honest, candid, transparent and authentically themselves, and sometimes people are less inclined to do that when the cameras are rolling,” Stoute said. 

The Griffin also asked about the attendance of students at the State of the University. Stoute was clear that these conversations were going to stay student-free to ensure the faculty could have an open conversation. In the past, The Griffin has attended State of the University addresses, but our conversation with President Stoute shed light on the intentions of these addresses. President Stoute noted that the State of the University is intended to be an open forum between administration and faculty, but welcomed the idea of a student-centered version of the address, remarking, “to the extent students want a conversation about the university and the State of the University, we'll do one for students to address student interests and student concerns, student ideas and issues.” During the last academic year, Stoute attended a United Students Association (USA) meeting where students could voice their concerns, but the meeting was not highly publicized which led to low student engagement and attendance, despite a desire for a conversation of this nature. While The Griffin is a voice for the students, it is not the voice of the majority or a governing body like USA, and we cannot address all of the concerns students may have. We are very grateful for the opportunity Stoute gives us each year to sit down with him and have an open conversation. However, we hope that in the future it will be possible to have a State of the University-style talk so the larger student body can hear from him directly. 

In addition to the two State of the Universities held last year, Stoute noted that he and the faculty had four forums to talk about more specific topics. While The Griffin didn’t dive into what the forums were about, it was discussed that one of them was centered around athletics and upcoming changes to collegiate athletics as a whole.

In discussing athletics, Stoute brought up the SCORE Act, which ensures the protection of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights of student athletes and is currently working its way through Congress. Given the size of Canisius, Stoute mentioned the difficulties an institution like Canisius faces when it comes to the compensation of student-athletes. He continued on to say though “all the Division I institutions now have the ability to pay student athletes to the tune of $20.5 million, [it] is not prudent. It's not sustainable.” Stoute emphasized that student-athletes at Canisius are students first, and that academics will be prioritized, as they are “pursuing their education and a degree and athletics [is] complementary to that.” As of right now, there is not a concrete plan to begin compensating Canisius student athletes. Title IX was also discussed in relation to the addition of a women’s acrobatics and tumbling team and the different ways to satisfy its requirements. An institution can either have an equal number of men’s and women’s teams, or by demonstrating that there is equal interest in athletics, meaning, “if we have more women who are interested in athletics, we could satisfy Title IX by saying we have the data that shows this percentage of women are interested in athletics, this percentage of men,” Stoute explained. For more on athletics, refer to page nine of this edition of The Griffin. 

In discussing last year’s State of the University, he also talked about his plans for the upcoming academic year. The current plan is to have one State of the University address and around four forums throughout the year. He said these plans are subject to change based on how the faculty and administration feel, and that more can be added as deemed necessary. Stoute emphasized that these forums are a more informal opportunity for the administration, faculty and staff to have “dialogue [and] conversation” surrounding the mission of the institution, and they would be held as necessary to discuss what is going on around campus.

Stoute discussed the Institutional Sustainability Task Force that was put together following last year’s State of the University address, which had a goal of identifying ways to decrease the operating deficit and find ways to reinvest in the university. For more on the Task Force, please refer to the Dec. 6 article titled, “The task force says their charge is ‘to support the strategic direction of Canisius University.’” Stoute told The Griffin that the task force was disbanded at the end of the 2024-25 academic year, and many of their recommendations have either been implemented or will be implemented soon. Some programs, like the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program, were already put into practice, but others “will be incorporated into our strategic initiatives over the course of time,” Stoute said. It was not possible to implement all of their recommendations, but Stoute highlighted that the work of the task force and its recommendations are “important steps for the institution, because they continue to support really robust shared governance, or sharing the work of governing the institution with the faculty and staff and students right there.” There is not currently a plan to either reunite the task force or put anything similar in place, but Stoute discussed this as something that the faculty senate could take on moving forward to continue advancing the institution.

In our conversation last year, we talked about the faculty senate and their ambitions in further supporting their fellow faculty. This year, Stoute informed The Griffin that it is fully staffed, meaning all 13 seats are filled in comparison to last year’s seven members. “It speaks volumes for our faculty and their willingness to engage in the work of leading the institution, governing the institution, so that I'm looking forward to, we have a new Faculty Senate chair, Graham Stowe,” Stoute said. For more information on this year’s faculty senate, keep an eye out for next week’s edition of The Griffin. 

As covered extensively in prior issues of The Griffin, there have been a lot of changes to Canisius’ campus safety force over the past year. Most recently, it transitioned from an armed, sworn police force to a more general public safety force. Stoute informed us that, “[Canisius was] the last private college in the region to have a sworn, armed public safety force on campus, and so that matters, what our peer institutions are doing that helps inform some decisions.” He also emphasized the risks of having anyone armed on campus, especially when “the most significant responsibility [public safety officers] were addressing were lockouts.” Stoute said that it has been a positive transition from the prior force to the current one, especially in seeing how the officers have been engaging with students and their families on campus. 

Much of the conversation centered on discussing the future of the bookstore. Stoute talked about how, similarly to what happened with Chartwells before resigning a contract with them, he and his administration looked into options that would work better for us now. Stoute continued on to say “we’re transitioning from Follett to Barnes and Noble College (BNC), and BNC, in their proposal, really put forward an interesting vision for how they can support your academic needs, but also marketing, branding, some other commercial elements [and] technology that are now somewhat standard in bookstores.” He ensured that the space would be up and running by the beginning of the spring semester at the latest. He also talked in depth about possible changes to how the bookstore handles and distributes textbooks. Stoute talked about a more digitized bookstore in which students order their course materials online and can pick it up at the bookstore, basically “the bookstore in a box,” as described by layout director Liz Shingler. 

In addition to the changes at the bookstore, the Student Success Center is changing simultaneously. Construction started over the summer on a new space on the top floor of the library that will be called the Golisano Center for Student Success, which was covered in the Sept. 12 issue of The Griffin. While construction is still ongoing, “ultimately, the Golisano Center will be done and online in January, when you come back from winter break, then we have to build out the structures and the teams that will support our students in that space,” said Stoute. In restructuring the success center, Stoute mentioned that they are still in the process of figuring out the best process, acknowledging that “it's also hard to create a system that is so bespoke that it fits every individual's needs. We have 2,500 individuals who are students, and so a system that fits, that works perfectly for every student, [is] also really complicated, but building in flexibility that allows students to get the support they need to be successful.” 

The Griffin is very grateful for the opportunity to talk with President Stoute about his plans for the year and learn more about recent and upcoming changes to the student experience. If you have any questions regarding our conversation, please direct them to either wileyh@my.canisius.edu or omeara2@my.canisius.edu.