Provost and Vice President of Academic Affiars at SUNY New Paltz, Philip Mauceri, has announced his intention to resign as provost, returning to the faculty as a professor of political science come the Fall 2015 semester, according to a letter from the Office of SUNY New Paltz President Donald Christian. The resignation will go into effect as of July 31, 2015. Mauceri has served as provost since Aug. 1, 2012.
“Provost Mauceri has brought stability to our academic leadership following a period of four different provosts in four consecutive years,” Christian said in his letter. “I am grateful for his many contributions in this role that have continued to advance the academic reputation and success of SUNY New Paltz.”
Christian cited Mauceri’s accomplishments during his tenure as provost, including the establishment of a Provost Fellows program to increase understanding of key issues and to introduce mid-career faculty to institutional leadership opportunities, instituting an Academic Advising Council to address perennial concerns about advising as well as restoring full salary support for single-semester academic sabbaticals.
Christian said the administration will appoint an interim provost as early as possible this semester to begin Aug. 1, 2015, while they formulate plans to search nationally for potential candidates to fill the position long-term.
“This spring, we will identify and contract with a search consultant, name a search committee and develop a position description so that we can announce the position and launch the search as early as possible,” Christian said. “Consultants work with individuals who are maybe on the market. Sometimes the consultant will have worked with a candidate who has been in a dean position for five or six years and they know that person is interested in looking for new opportunities, so the consultants help identify candidates for positions like this.”
Christian said that while working with the consultants, administration will draft the specifications they hope to find in provost candidates.
“We’ll look to the future for the next five to eight years and ask what the biggest challenges are that we face, what the biggest opportunities are that we have and that will help frame the type of person we are looking for for [the provost] position,” Christian said. “One of the things that we’ve talked about, but haven’t been able to make as much movement on as we would like, is we would like to develop more programs for department-head leadership orientation. We were very attentive to the governor’s executive budget, which if passed will include a requirement that every SUNY and CUNY graduate have an applied learning experience. This is no small order. If that happens it will be a challenge for the next provost — working with the career resource center and academic departments to create those research experiences, internships and community based learning for every student.”
Provost Mauceri declined to be interviewed for this article.