The challenge at YSU

The challenge at YSU

The Youngstown State University Board of Trustees is searching for a president whose job it will be to lead YSU at a time when state universities in Ohio are facing extraordinary challenges.

Each of YSU’s past five presidents and Dr. David C. Sweet, who is retiring in June, have inherited a mission and have left a mark on the institution.

Dr. Howard W. Jones, who was named director of Youngstown College in 1931 and president in 1935, served for almost 35 years, longer than any three of his successors combined. He molded a YMCA school founded in 1908 into a college, then a university. He retired as the school was being accepted into the state university system in 1966. Albert L. Pugsley oversaw the early years of Youngstown State University and the emergence of the modern campus. The campus continued to grow in buildings and curricula under John J. Coffelt and Neil D. Humphrey. Leslie H. Cochran instituted the University Scholars program and YSU Metro Campus, a scholastic outreach program. Dr. Sweet, an urban planner by training and inclination, has worked for 10 years to increase enrollment and to finance the building of physical ties between the university and its neighbors, including the downtown area.

What lies ahead

But arguably, only Dr. Jones, without whom the emerging institution could have withered rather than bloomed, and Dr. Pugsley, who oversaw YSU’s earliest days as a state institution, faced challenges equal to those of its next president.

One of four candidates — Aaron Podolefsky, president of the University of Central Missouri; Jack Maynard, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Indiana State University; Cheryl Norton, president of Southern Connecticut State University, and Cynthia Anderson, vice president for student affairs, YSU — must have the vision and wherewithal to meet the new expectations for member schools in the University System of Ohio.

Chancellor of Higher Education Eric Fingerhut, with the full support of Gov. Ted Strickland, is demanding that universities identify and develop areas of excellence. Funding, previously based on head counts, will rely more on retention rates and graduation. Remedial work will fall to community colleges, not four-year institutions, which means open-admission universities like YSU will have to make possibly painful adjustments.

The most important decision facing any member of the board of trustees is that of making the right choice this week. They must select a president capable of meeting the known challenges, as well as some that no one can even anticipate in these early years of YSU’s second century.