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Perhaps only in America could a high school social studies teacher eventually become Secretary of Education, but only at the State University of New York (SUNY) can students benefit from that teacher’s wealth of experience.
The teacher in question is John B King Jr, who served for two years under President Barack Obama and currently serves as the 15th Chancellor of SUNY. He has spent his career working to improve the state of education for students from preschool and kindergarten through to tertiary.
As King tells The CEO Magazine, this lifelong passion had an appropriate point of origin.
“I was inspired by my own experience with school,” he reveals. “I grew up in New York City in Brooklyn, and both my parents were public school educators. They died when I was quite young and the thing that saved me was school.”
King’s teachers at PS 276 Louis Marshall and Mark Twain Junior High School gave the lost young student a sense of hope and purpose.
“If not for them, I don’t know that I’d be alive today,” he says.
For King, school was a safe, consistent, nurturing, interesting and challenging environment. His years as a student left him determined to do for others what those teachers did for him. Straight out of college, King became a social studies teacher and put his passion into practice.
Today, as SUNY Chancellor, King oversees 64 separate campuses around New York State, with 30 of those being community colleges. Alfred University, Buffalo State, Stony Brook University and Upstate Medical University are just a few of the higher education institutions in the SUNY portfolio.
“It’s a huge enterprise. We serve about 385,000 students in degree programs, but we see more than a million students a year because we do a lot of workforce development,” he says.
“Our research institutions are driving expansion of the New York economy in areas such as the semiconductor industry, AI and healthcare.”
“We also play a key role in economic development for the state; our research institutions are driving expansion of the New York economy in areas such as the semiconductor industry, AI and healthcare.
“We say there’s a place for every New Yorker at SUNY. Some higher education institutions are mostly focused on who they exclude, but our focus is making sure we include everybody.”
That’s not something that SUNY can do alone, even with its employee count of more than 87,000. A network of trusted partners are on hand to assist with everything from construction to cybersecurity.
“We work with companies like Sodexo to make sure meals are delivered on campuses, and we have a CrowdStrike contract so that campuses can access that cybersecurity platform,” King explains.
SUNY has partnered with a collective of contractors, architects and design firms for the huge amount of construction work it requires each year.
“We’re increasingly looking for opportunities for system-wide partnerships so we can deliver more affordability to our campuses,” King confirms.
“You do have to approach this role thinking of SUNY as a large business entity with a very clear mission we have to deliver on.”
In the top job since 2023, King has instilled in the university four core pillars: student success; research and scholarship; diversity, equity and inclusion; and economic development and upward mobility. At the same time, he’s worked to modernize the institution in his own way.
“One of the first things I did was create a Chief Sustainability Officer role,” he says. “We worked on a system-wide climate action and sustainability plan, and now we’ve got a network of sustainability leads on all our campuses, all working together toward our goals.”
“We see more than a million students a year because we do a lot of workforce development.”
Thanks to this development, SUNY is on track for a 40 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, in line with state goals.
“We’ve also got a set of faculty fellows for sustainability helping their colleagues think about how to integrate sustainability across the curriculum,” he adds.
It’s just one way King is preparing SUNY for a future where he envisions a student head count of close to 500,000.
“Growing enrollment is a top commitment. Our completion rates are about the national average, but we think we can get even better,” he says.
“We want to have the best completion rates among public higher education systems, and we’re working toward that by improving advising and course design so that more students who start also finish.”
While King’s classroom days are behind him, he’s never lost touch with the power of education. Now, as Chancellor, he’s reshaping that power in a way that will last for years to come.
“Look across the country and you’ll see a number of private and public colleges are closing, and that often happens when staffing and programming fall out of sync with enrollment,” he points out.
“You’ve got to think about what student interests are going to be five or 10 years from now and build programming that matches those interests. We’ve just announced a new slate of AI courses, because we know that’s where the future is. Our automotive programs at community college are retooling to focus on EVs and hybrids, because that’s how the industry is evolving.”
However, even with his big-picture vision, King hasn’t lost sight of the day-to-day learning experience and the kind of inspiration that’s possible in the classroom.
“You have to find great mentors. Whether you’re a PhD student or a junior faculty member, it’s incredibly valuable to have someone who’s a mentor, has more experience, can share their insights or talk tough if necessary,” he says.
“We work hard to make sure that when students come to our campuses they feel a sense of belonging, whatever their background. We want every student to know that they belong on our campuses and that we’re going to support them to be successful.”
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