The Presidential Search Committee has announced that as of January 14, they have found the four potential candidates for the presidency of the University. Each of the candidates will be visiting the campus to speak to and answer questions from the staff and from students in late January into early February.
The finalists are: Dr. F. Javier Cevallos; Dr. Paul Richard Brown; Dr. Stanley “Stas” C. Preczewski and Dr. Donald H. Sebastian. They were selected by the 16-member committee that has been working to find the next president of the University for when current President Paul G. Gaffney II retires in June 2013. The search committee followed a set of guidelines that had been established and put up on the University website known as the “Leadership Statement.”
The characteristics the committee was searching for in a future president included: dedication to the University’s academic and financial success; ethics, honesty and fairness with excellent interpersonal skills and a sense of humor; passion about eliciting private and public-sector fundraising; easy and effective in relating to the internal and external constituencies of a University, including trustees, faculty, administrators, staff, students, alumni, legislators and business and community leaders and genuine interest in students and their personal growth and development and much more.
According to an interview in a press release, Dr. Marcia Clever, trustee and co-chair of the search committee, said, “The search committee has been impressed with the exceptional pool of candidates seeking the position of the presidency. It has been difficult to choose the finalists because of the high caliber of individuals who applied for the position.”
In the same interview, Alfred J. Schiavetti, Jr., trustee and co-chair of the search committee said, “We are confident that we have selected the best people to compete in the final round and are excited to introduce them to the university community later this month.”
According to an email from Grey J. Dimenna, Vice President and General Counsel, each of the candidates will be coming to the campus from January 24-25, January 28-29, January 31-February 1 and February 5-6. A schedule has been released for each visit.
“Each of the visits will allow for faculty, administrators, staff, students and trustees to meet and interact with each finalist,” said Dimenna. “The Search Committee will also be setting up a system for the campus community to provide feedback on each of the candidates. The Search Committee will be collecting that data at the end of the four visits and providing that information to the Board of Trustees for their consideration in making their choice. Information on the feedback system will be released prior to the first visit.”
Schiavetti urges students to attend the visits of each candidate in order to be a part of the selection process and to provide the University with feedback as to their reactions of each potential president.
Dr. F. Javier Cevallos, who spoke with students last Friday, January 25, is the current president of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana.
Dr. Donald H. Sebastian will be attending the University on January 29 at 5:00pm. Sebastian is a Senior Vice President for Research and Development at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Stevens Institute of technology.
Dr. Paul Richard Brown will be at the University on February 1 at 5:00pm. Brown is the Dean of the College of Business and Economics at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Stanley “Stas” Preczewski, the Vice President for Academic & Student Affairs at Georgia Gwinnet College in Lawrenceville, Georgia, will be at the University on February 6 at 5:00pm. Preczewski received his Ph.D. from the Department of Education Leadership & Policy Analysis in the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.
