Editorial: Stony Brook U. on the ascent
![Students walk along the Academic Mall on the campus of...](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AYzBmNGM1NjQtNzYyMS00%3ANjQtNzYyMS00NzNiMWY4%2F0lt2xblc-jpg.jpg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D770%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80)
Students walk along the Academic Mall on the campus of Stony Brook University (Sept. 21, 2010). Credit: NEWSDAY/John Paraskevas
In the State University of New York, the forbidden word is flagship. SUNY has four large university centers, and naming any one of them the system's flagship ruffles feathers. Still, Stony Brook University is our region's flagship. Here are two more reasons why:
Minghua Zhang, an atmospheric scientist who shares in the Nobel Prize given to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is now the dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. He's been at Stony Brook for 23 years.
And the Department of Chemistry has passed such powerhouses as Harvard and UCLA in research and development spending at universities. It rose from 46th in 2006 to ninth in 2009, the latest available data. Both bits of news affirm the rising excellence of -- dare we say it again -- our flagship. hN