Q. In 1994 when you first came to Stony Brook, what were the most apparent issues and problems that you had to address?

A. During that year we discovered a very serious budgetary situation in which we had significant debt every year. So now as we look at the state budget situation we thought that we’d handled it then but here we go.

Q. What was one of the biggest changes that has occurred?

A. We became members of the associations of American Universities. That is the top 62 private and public research universities in North America and that really puts us in a very special league. Just the fact that we are members of that says this is was one of the best institutions in the country. Connected with that is the fact that we bid for and took over co-management of Brookhaven national lab with Memorial institute. There are very few universities in the country that run national labs so that also put us in a new category.

Q. In the surrounding community, what are your responsibilities outside the university?

A.When I first came here I said; “to be a great national university we must be a great local university”. In 1994 that was a very strange thing to say because at that time people were looking for national and international fame but they really didn’t talk about the connections with the community. Now that has changed and that doesn’t seem so strange anymore. But we immediately connected not only because of the healthcare which is enormously important our hospital is the only tertiary care hospital in Suffolk county which is a million and a