SUNY Brockport President Heidi Macpherson created two individual task forces last Fall to help increase features of campus life, based on student feedback from the 2023-2024 Campus Climate Survey. These two task forces would focus on food and transportation respectively, as they were the most common themes from the survey.

The task forces, each made up of staff and faculty from different departments around campus, have clear objectives to accomplish. Both forces are tasked with creating a final report to submit to the president, which will share their findings and recommendations to improve these two areas in the future. The final report will be presented on March,14. 2025.  

SUNY Brockport Professor Amy Guptill is serving as the chair of the transportation task force. 

“As we move the report towards finalization, it’s about having conversations with people who are closer to the action, really checking those facts, making sure that the resource we produce is going to be useful to people,” Guptill said. 

The transportation task force used data collecting to spearhead their findings. They conducted environmental scans, heard directly from students and looked into stakeholder programs via surveys and conversations. Their findings included things such as students not being aware of transportation options, RTS on demand being insufficient and transportation being a large determinant in terms of student autonomy. The force then drafted nine different recommendations for the president and the campus.  

SUNY Brockport Instructor Amy Shema has taken on the role of chair of the food task force. 

“It’s the president who creates the task force and identifies the members. Then [she] asked if I would be willing to chair and she officially presented us with the charge,” Shema said.  

The areas of focus for the food task force were food quality, availability, cultural options, dining locations and hours, student experiences related to belonging and engagement and Garnishes Catering. Each of these areas was expanded upon with unique findings that came from data collection via surveys and other feedback.  

“These [findings] are important to have as input to make the recommendations, but, we also need to see the actions and the results of those,” Shema said.  

Each focus area for the food task force had numerous recommendations based on the collected data with many small changes already being put in place this semester to increase the student and campus experience.  

The final reports and findings of each task force will be presented to President Macpherson in the middle of March, with further changes and recommendations expected to be implemented shortly after.