President pick for YSU to be unveiled

The four finalists include the current YSU vice president for student affairs.

By Harold Gwin

Photo

Scott Schulick

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown State University Board of Trustees is expected to announce its selection for the seventh president of the university Wednesday.

The board has scheduled a special meeting for 2:30 p.m. in the Chestnut Room of Kilcawley Center and has issued invitations to selected business and community leaders to attend.

The invitations say the board anticipates announcing its selection at that time.

The board has been meeting in closed-door sessions for the past few weeks in an effort to select a president from the list of four finalists for the post that will be vacated by the retirement of David C. Sweet in June.

The last session was Friday, and word is the board has reached the point where it is ready to take a vote.

Scott Schulick, chairman, said the board will convene Wednesday’s meeting, adjourn to an executive session for some final deliberations and then come back to the meeting to take a public vote on a presidential choice. Efforts are being made to have the new president at the meeting. That would be nice, but it might not happen, he said.

Schulick and other trustees contacted by The Vindicator declined to identify which candidate enjoys majority board support.

Schulick said no vote has been taken regarding the appointment.

However, David Marburger, a Cleveland attorney who is a recognized authority on Ohio’s open meetings law, said the fact that invitations have been sent to the public to attend the special meeting and efforts are being made to have the person to be named president at the meeting indicate that a decision has already been made on who the next president will be, and it was done out of the public’s view.

Schulick said there has been no violation of the state Sunshine Law. The board knows the open-meetings law very well and has taken care to ensure that it hasn’t been violated, he said.

The four finalists are:

UCynthia Anderson, vice president for student affairs at YSU.

U C. Jack Maynard, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Indiana State University.

U Cheryl J. Norton, president of Southern Connecticut State University.

U Aaron Podolefsky, president of the University of Central Missouri.

All four participated in campus and community interviews in January, and some trustees said at the time that any of the four would be a good choice for YSU’s next president.

The university has never had a woman president.

The nationwide search for a successor to Sweet, who has served as president for 10 years, began last July with the appointment of a search committee and the hiring of a search consultant company.

There were 300 initial contacts with individuals interested in the post, and that number was narrowed to about 50 for the search committee to review.

The committee narrowed the list to 11 people for interviews and then narrowed it again to the four finalists presented to the trustees last December.

gwin@vindy.com