SUNY Oswego narrows presidential search to five candidates

OSWEGO, N.Y. – SUNY Oswego has narrowed its presidential search to five candidates, and open forums are underway.

Five candidates are presenting their plans to faculty, staff and students during the open forums happening every week, which are hosted in person and via Zoom. Students are allowed to ask questions to the candidates and encouraged to complete a short evaluation survey.

Here’s how the process works. First, the College Council forms a search committee including campus representatives. Then, an external search firm matches qualified profiles that become semifinalists and are interviewed individually by the chancellor’s office.

At this point, five candidates have been selected and are interviewed by the campus community. After this is finished, the College Council meets to review and approve recommendation of three finalists to the chancellor. Finally, the chancellor recommends the final candidate for the subcommittee of the SUNY Board of Trustees to interview.

The five candidates participating in open forums are Mary C. Toale, Karin Ruhlandt, Bruno G. Hicks, David P. Jones and a fifth candidate, who has not been released yet.

The most recent candidate to visit campus was Jones.

Jones is a alumnus of SUNY Oswego and current vice president of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management at Minnesota State University, in Mankato.

“You know one of the things that I give SUNY Oswego so much credit for is the preparation I had during my time here and being able to work in some incredible places overtime,” said Jones. “I now find myself in a point in my career where I would love to give back, come back to this place and apply all the lessons I’ve learned in incredible other universities in the place I started my own journey.”

At his open forum, Jones expressed he is strongly focused on helping the community and providing more opportunities and success to students. He discussed diversity, and said he would like to make people feel welcome on and off campus.

Regarding safety and Title IX, he said we would like to create a team to address and provide support to students as well as implementing efforts he has worked on before such as promoting campaigns that educate students on violence and abuse. Moreover, he talked about the challenge of bringing in new students.

At the end of the forum, he remarked the value of getting higher education.