Stony Brook expands support for non-STEM disciplines
At the undergraduate level, accounting is only offered as a minor at Stony Brook.
However, Dean of the College of Business Haresh Gurnani acknowledged an increase in undergraduate enrollment in the department.
In an email to The Statesman, he reported that the Master of Science in Accounting and Analytics Program has 28 undergraduates, 20 graduates going for a Master of Business Administration in Accounting, 157 undergraduates minoring in accounting and 74 undergraduates specializing in accounting.
“Since we are classified as an area rather than a department, funding for the activities is provided at the college level. There has been enrollment growth especially at the [undergraduate] level,” Gurnani wrote.
Gurnani also discussed the growth of the department over time.
“The College of Business, established relatively recently, initially offered no majors within specialized areas like accounting, finance, or marketing,” he wrote.
Accounting was first introduced as a minor about a decade ago. Gurnani noted that a proposal to elevate the program to a major has been approved by the University and is currently awaiting final approval from SUNY.
“We are optimistic that a major in accounting will soon be a reality, and we anticipate enrollment growth due to this addition and international partnerships in relation to our graduate STEM degree. The accounting area has an established Advisory Board that not only provides industry feedback on program-specific initiatives but also employment opportunities for our students.”
Stony Brook has faced criticism for budget cuts that have disproportionately affected the humanities. In 2017, the theatre arts major experienced significant reductions in funding. By 2020, further cuts led to the discontinuation of the major entirely. It was absorbed into the English department, resulting in faculty layoffs and an indefinite pause on theatrical productions.
Professor Benedict Robinson, who chairs both the English and Theatre Arts Departments, reflected on the loss of the theatre major and the current state of the department, expressing that there is “a lot of interest in bringing the theatre major [back] and restoring it into a robust center again.”
He noted that both faculty and administration have shared ideas for revival. According to him, there are a lot of great ideas among the theatre faculty and from the administration. However, he emphasized that key decisions — such as projections for enrollment and plans for faculty distribution — still need to be made before any announcements can be finalized.
Prior to the 2017 cuts, around 40-50 undergraduate students were enrolled in the theatre major. Enrollment dropped sharply after the cuts, with just 14 students in fall 2018 and only four the following year. The program saw no further enrollment until one student registered for the theatre arts minor in fall 2024.
Robinson acknowledged that there are evident social differences between STEM and non-STEM majors, partly due to the differences in funding from the University. Regardless, he cited that there is an uptick in enrollment expansion for the social sciences and liberal sciences.
Rami Gorovoi-Abu Hashish is a senior majoring in technological systems management with a humanities minor in Filmmaking.
“I definitely see more support for STEM than non-STEM majors,” he wrote in an email to The Statesman. “In general, [Stony Brook] is a school focused mostly towards computer science, biology, and pre-med. Even my major, Technological Systems Management (TSM), a STEM major in [the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences], does not receive nearly the same amount of support as majors like [Computer Science] and [Information Systems].”
Hashish described the profound impact the humanities had on his life.
“I wasn’t much of a movie guy at all before my filmmaking,” he wrote. “It’s a small program but it completely changed my outlook on movies and my interests in just a few years.”
He added that the University does offer spaces for students to explore their passions outside their primary major.
“I’ve only gotten more passionate about [filmmaking] the more classes I take, and now that I’m doing my final film class (capstone) I’m really happy that I decided to do it,” he wrote. “Student filmmaking is exhausting, difficult, and time-consuming but I loved those classes more than any class I’ve taken for my major.”
According to Robinson, the University has been a big supporter of the liberal arts and is actively seeking ways to expand all the departments and take faculty members’ concerns to heart. He expressed that the issue for support is not from the University or administration, but rather from the differences in the structure of departments.
“The model for funding research for big STEM grants goes to external sources and the federal government. This largely makes scientific research [accessible and possible]. [There are] no big grants for humanities,” Robinson wrote.
He explained that usually, faculty get “small grants that give you one year off, which doesn’t bring in a lot of revenue for the [University].” Furthermore, these grants are not given often and are incredibly competitive. “Tuition revenue is mainly from faculty teaching,” he added.
In terms of student interest, Robinson pointed to a national decline in social science enrollment since 2008, a trend not unique to Stony Brook. Still, he affirmed that the administration is supportive of expanding humanities programs and is engaged in conversations about departmental growth.
“This is a national phenomenon and not just a Stony Brook one. A lot of administration supports growing humanities degrees and departments,” he said.
The Statesman talked about these statistics with Executive Vice President and Provost Carl Lejuez.
“When we compare [Stony Brook] to other flagships, we actually aren’t more of a STEM school to them,” Lejuez said. “We’re smaller. This makes the STEM and arts divide appear large at institutions such as Stony Brook and fuels [this divide] more because this is a smaller school.”
For context, the University at Buffalo had 20,463 undergraduates in the fall of 2023, while Stony Brook had 17,549 students in that same term. In spring 2022, the University at Buffalo had 535 major graduates, while Stony Brook had 549. In the 2021-2022 academic year, 56 undergraduates at Buffalo earned a bachelor’s degree in English, while Stony Brook reported 94.
Lejuez expressed his goal to gradually expand the student body, explaining that growth would lead to increased funding and support for the arts. He explained that the 2024-2025 freshman class consists of 700 more students than the past two admissions cycles and has had “reduced capacity problems and many of these students admitted as humanities-intentional majors.”
He also spoke about how departmental budgets are determined.
“Universities have to be strategic and thoughtful about who [they] want to be,” Lejuez said. “We don’t wait for applicants to define us. We directly reach out to students in the state, across the nation, and internationally, advertising our programs and showcasing all of our great opportunities.”
Stony Brook’s budget is set after the incoming class is finalized. Funds are based on student demand and the administration being “strong believers in the arts,” said Lejuez.
He explained that the University evaluates where student interest is increasing or declining based on enrollment across majors. The administration then considers budget capacity and associated costs — such as hiring faculty or purchasing lab equipment — before deciding on what the budget will be and what it will be used for.
One of the University’s core priorities, Lejuez emphasized, is to ensure students have access to foundational disciplines. “We always want to have a strong English program, history program … even if [there is] no or declining interest,” he said.
However, Lejuz noted that interest in the University’s humanities department is increasing. According to him, the University is responding to this growth by hiring more diverse faculty, expanding course offerings and providing more flexible scheduling options for students pursuing the arts.
Lejuez acknowledged that while the administration is actively rethinking its approach to budgeting, it remains challenging to allocate resources fairly across all programs, especially with so many majors and fluctuating enrollment each year. He explained that when one department sees a rise in enrollment while another declines, the administration may adjust the budget accordingly, often reallocating funds from the shrinking area.
Regardless, Lejuez emphasized that Stony Brook must uphold “who we are as a university.”
He discussed how some programs would never change and that the University intends to always have strong core programs across all majors.
According to him, the administration has full confidence that enrollment in the arts will continue to increase, and expressed how the University is encouraging the rise in arts by hiring more diverse faculty, expanding course offerings and ensuring a wide range of opportunities for students pursuing the humanities.
When asked about expanding majors and minors, such as reinstating the theatre program, Lejuez said the administration is “certainly open to being as comprehensive as students want. [However,] we also want to be careful not to offer what students can’t take advantage of.”
According to Lejuez, expanding access to research opportunities is a major initiative, particularly for underrepresented disciplines. He linked research to performance and scholarship, saying that the “Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URECA) [is] one of the largest on-campus promoters for all majors, STEM and arts.”
Research looks very different today than it did in the past.
In both arts and sciences labs, “there were many paid undergraduate students and big labs that were hands-on,” he added.
Currently, Stony Brook offers a mix of paid internships, credit-bearing positions and volunteer roles. However, with so many first-generation and economically vulnerable students, unpaid opportunities can limit access.
“Economically vulnerable students have to choose between a job or research experience,” Lejuez said.
To help close that gap, the University is working with the Career Center and URECA to increase the number of paid research opportunities, with the goal of expanding access for students across all majors.
Lejuez noted that this effort is particularly important for students in the humanities and social sciences, where external research funding is harder to secure. While the administration does provide internal support for research, he explained that it makes up only a small percentage of the University’s overall funding.
Most research funding, whether for the sciences or the humanities, comes from competitive external sources like grants and fellowships, which often require time-intensive application processes such as grant writing.
“It is important that we understand how hard it is for students who are passionate in the arts and social sciences to feel that the world, their campus — this campus even — isn’t sufficient or interested in harboring their passions,” Lejuez said.
Still, he emphasized that the University is working to align with student interests through faculty hires, class expansion and programs like the Humanities Institute.
“We want Stony Brook to be a destination for student passions,” he said, “and a place that has always supported and nurtured those passions.”
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