Announcing the Presidential Search and Selection Process

October 19, 2020

Dear Montclair State University Community:

I appreciate that the members of the University are experiencing a range of emotions and thoughts about the recently announced retirement of our long-serving President, which will occur at the end of this academic year. Given the commitment and passion of President’s Cole leadership and the extraordinary progress this University has made, it is only natural that there will be some degree of anxiety about such a significant change. I want to assure you that the Board of Trustees is deeply aware of the importance of its responsibility to appoint the next president and is fully committed to appointing the very best candidate. I am writing to you to inform you about the framework of the search and selection process.

The Board will undertake a national search for the new president. Guided by the Board’s knowledge of the University, most of its members having served as Trustees for many years, and by the Strategic Plan recently developed by the campus community and adopted by the Board of Trustees, the Board is currently developing a position description, highlighting the characteristics it seeks in the successful candidate for president. The Board will welcome any written comments from the University community on the profile and will set up a mechanism for their receipt. The Board will conduct the search with the assistance of a prominent consulting search firm that has successfully assisted in the appointment of excellent presidents in comparable institutions. Selection of the search firm is currently on-going, and I expect to announce the formal selection by the end of October.

The Board of Trustees has established an ad hoc special committee of the Board to serve as a Presidential Search Committee and has delegated the initial stage of candidate review to that Committee. The assignment of this Committee will be to recommend to the Board of Trustees a slate of final candidates for the Board’s consideration. The full Board of Trustees will then consider those candidates and will select the appointee. In order to attract and retain the best candidates, for example sitting presidents, during the process, the search will be conducted with strict confidentiality throughout. The Board has every reason to think that it will be able to conclude the search process before June 30, 2021. However, in the unlikely event that this does not occur, President Cole will remain in office for whatever time is necessary to conclude the search.

As Chair of the Board of Trustees, it is my responsibility to select the members of the Presidential Search Committee, and I can assure you that I did not take this task lightly. In making my decisions, I sought to establish a Committee of highly regarded individuals who I believed would work together well as a team, who would come to the table with a broad perspective about the whole University, rather than their personal considerations, who had demonstrated both significant professional accomplishments and commitment to the University, who would approach the task with the seriousness of purpose that it deserves, and who, when one looked at the Committee, would be recognizable as a Committee broadly reflective of our particular University. The list of Committee members appears below.

Montclair State University, as it stands today, has an excellent opportunity to attract an experienced and visionary leader, to build on our success and our many strengths, and I am confident that we will be able to recruit such a leader to carry us ably into the future.

Any questions or comments you may have about the search process should be forwarded to University Counsel Mark Fleming at presidentialsearch@montclair.edu.

Sincerely,

Dr. Francis M.C. Cuss
Chair, Montclair State University Board of Trustees

Committee Chair

Dr. Francis Cuss, Chair, Montclair State University Board of Trustees

Committee Members

• Dr. Sandra Adams, Professor, Department of Biology, College of Science and Mathematics
• Ms. Yolanda Alvarez, Associate Dean of Students, Division of Student Development and Campus Life
• Mr. Keith Ansbacher, Esq. ’79, Trustee, Foundation Board of Trustees
• Dr. Heather Benton, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre and Dance, College of the Arts
• Dr. Yasemin Besen-Cassino, Chair and Professor, Department of Sociology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Dr. Lora Billings, Dean, College of Science and Mathematics and Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics
• Dr. Katrina Bulkley, Chair and Professor, Department of Educational Leadership, College of Education and Human Services
• Mr. Michael Capone, Chair, Foundation Board of Trustees
• Mr. Shawn Connolly, Vice President for University Facilities
• Dr. Elizabeth Emery, Professor, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Faculty Representative to the Board of Trustees
• Dr. Willard Gingerich, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
• Dr. Katia Paz Goldfarb, Assistant Vice President for Hispanic-Serving Initiatives and Professor, Department of Family Science and Human Development, College of Education and Human Services
• Mr. Daniel Gurskis, Dean, College of the Arts
• Dr. David Hood, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education and Dean, University College
• Dr. Erik Jacobson, Associate Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning and President, University Senate
• Mr. Ernst Lozin, Undergraduate Senior, Sports Marketing, Feliciano School of Business and President, Student Government Association
• Ms. Fenghua Peng, Senior Research Analyst, Office of Institutional Research, Division of Information Technology
• Dr. Luis Portes, Professor, Department of Economics, Feliciano School of Business
• Dr. David Rotella, Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Science and Mathematics
• Mr. Kent Sluyter, Vice Chair, Montclair State University Board of Trustees
• Ms. Melissa Velez ’06, Program Assistant, Department of Psychology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Ms. Nikita Williams ’20, Graduate Student, Industrial Organizational Psychology, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Dr. Leslie Wilson, Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor, Department of History
• Dr. Wencang Zhou, Chair and Professor, Department of Management, Feliciano School of Business