Bulletin News

03/23/2010 

The Alumni Association at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Calif., will present SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum with an Alumni Seal Award for Professional Achievement during the annual Alumni Weekend June 11-13 on the campus.

A 1975 Occidental graduate, he joins four other alumni and one retiring faculty member being honored during a 4 p.m. awards assembly on Saturday, June 12, in the college’s Samuelson Pavilion. Other awards being presented include: Alumnus of the Year, Young Alumnus, Service to the Community, Service to the College and Honorary Faculty Emeritus.

“What attracted the Occidental Alumni Association Board of Governors was that he oversees a major university in New York state and has a great track record in education,” observed Jim Jacobs, Occidental’s director of alumni relations. “I’m sure our college’s new president, Jonathan Veitch, will want to make a connection with him.”

In 2003, the State University of New York Board of Trustees appointed Bitterbaum as SUNY Cortland’s 10th president since the College’s founding in 1868.

Under Bitterbaum, SUNY Cortland has gained the reputation of being among the most competitive four-year, comprehensive colleges in the SUNY system, with approximately 13,000 prospective students vying annually for 1,000 freshman openings.

He has shepherded the institution to a number of national recognitions in higher education.Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine recently ranked SUNY Cortland among its 100 Best Values in Public Colleges for a fourth consecutive year. Students pursuing education-related degrees find themselves in the classrooms of the East Coast’s largest teacher education program accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).

As state monies have become more scarce, since 2003 Bitterbaum has encouraged faculty and staff to obtain a total of roughly $19,366,742 million in external funding to support faculty research and scholarship as well as major, long-term community outreach programs. The sponsored awards were $3.4 million in 2009-10.

Bitterbaum enthusiastically supports the institution’s tradition of athletic excellence. In his seven years, Cortland has annually ranked among the nation’s top 13 intercollegiate athletic programs out of the 430-plus NCAA Division III colleges and universities. He recently completed a three-year term on the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Financial Aid Committee and has accepted membership to its Division III Chancellors/Presidents Advisory Group through January 2013.

Last year, Bitterbaum led SUNY Cortland’s efforts to successfully attract the New York Jets of the National Football League to relocate their summer training camp on campus, a move that attracted 34,000 spectators and generated $4.26 million in economic activity in Cortland County in 2009.

Bitterbaum has exhorted faculty and staff to roll up their sleeves for community service. In response, the campus has been honored many times nationally for civic engagement, including with a President’s Higher Education Honor Roll for Community Service and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s 2008 Community Engagement Classification.

In recent years, the College received a $247,000 federal grant to help prepare tomorrow’s community leaders and to keep young college graduates in New York state. The College also obtained a total of $248,000 in funding to launch a chapter of the national AmeriCorps Program, a program of community service volunteers that is administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). A downtown Cortland facility was upgraded and reopened as Main Street SUNY Cortland, facilitating town and community educational and service learning opportunities for students.

Bitterbaum has presided over more than $200 million in physical plant construction, including the completion of two of the first new buildings to be erected in decades: the Education Building and Child Care Center; and Glass Tower Hall, a residential facility that gained certification as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).

Major renovations were made on campus to Sperry Center, Moffett Center, Brockway Hall and Cornish Hall and nine residence halls.

A renovated and expanded Bowers Hall science building will better serve 21st century students, while in coming years the campus will construct a $51.2 million student life center.

During Bitterbaum’s administration, the College Outdoor Education Center’s Camp Huntington in Raquette Lake, N.Y., became the first designated National Historic Landmark within SUNY.

A biologist who espouses conservation of the earth’s limited resources, Bitterbaum was a catalyst for SUNY Cortland becoming a charter signatory of the American College and University Presidents Climate Committee in 2007.

He has been inducted into Beta Beta Beta national biology honorary, Kappa Delta Pi national education honorary, Phi Sigma Iota national foreign languages honorary, and Omicron Delta Kappa national leadership honorary.

A native of New York City, Bitterbaum attended Kalani High School in Honolulu, Hawaii, before graduating cum laude with a B.A. in biology from Occidental. He spent his junior year abroad at Sussex University in Falmer, England. He earned a M.A. in biology from Occidental and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Florida, where he instructed in the Zoology Department.

From 1981-90, Bitterbaum served as assistant and associate professor in the Department of Biology at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Neb. He concurrently became assistant provost for lifelong learning at NWU from 1983-87 and associate provost from 1987-90.

In 1990, Bitterbaum accepted the position of vice president for academic affairs at Methodist College in Fayetteville, N.C., where he also held the rank of professor in the Department of Biology. As vice president, he was responsible for academic administration as well as a renowned ROTC program, Evening College and the Atlantic Coast Center for Language and Culture.

He joined Missouri Southern State College in Joplin in 1994 as vice president for academic affairs and a fully tenured professor of biology. He remained there until 2000, overseeing faculty and many student services and administrative offices. A member of the Academy of American Poets, Bitterbaum won the 1997 Missouri Writers’ Award for Poetry.

Before joining SUNY Cortland, Bitterbaum was the president of West Virginia University at Parkersburg (WVUP) from 2000-03. There, he secured a $2 million gift in the university’s first capital campaign, instituted a new admission program resulting in an applications increase, increased student retention, improved distance learning, created a Council of Grants to bring external dollars to campus, and created a Center for Teaching Innovation to assist faculty and K-12 educators with improving the learning environment for elementary, secondary and university students. He had the added responsibility of serving as a regional vice president for West Virginia University at Morgantown with responsibilities for the educational and economic development of western West Virginia.

Bitterbaum is married to Ellen Howard Burton. They have two children, David, who graduates from SUNY Cortland in May, and Anna, a freshman at Binghamton University.