After Dr. Calvin O. Butts III announced in March his intention to retire as president of SUNY Old Westbury, the school set up a committee to find his successor. Thomas DelGiudice, associate professor of Politics, Economics and Law at SUNY OW, is a member of the search committee that is currently looking for a replacement. According to DelGiudice, there are six faculty members who were selected after a runoff vote, four members from the college council, and an administrative staff member.
“The college council chair is the head of the committee,” DelGiudice said. He added that there has been a delay in the search due to the fact that Professor Mario B. Mignone of Stony Brook University, who was on the college council and the chairman of the presidential search committee, passed away on September 9th.
“We are kind of leaderless now,” said DelGiudice. “The other thing that came up was that there were also some vacancies on the college council as well. That requires the governor appointing people or at least somebody letting us know what a temporary solution might be for that…so we’re kind of sitting on that.”
In terms of the progress being made in the search, DelGiudice believes it’s a waiting game.
“It’s a little bit of a mystery,” he said. “Evidently, there are a number of college president vacancies so it’ll be a number of searches. That’s going to require the governor and chancellor to get a little more involved in picking our vacancies on the college council…we’re grounded to a halt.”
DelGiudice stated that Dr. Butts will be taking a leave of absence in January.
“Nobody really has a lot of information,” he said. “Dr. Butts has met with the chancellor…and so we’re kind of waiting to hear.”
Since the amount of information is scarce, DelGiudice thinks that the search may take an extended period of time.
“I’m assuming the chancellor filled [President Butts] in,” he said. “And I’m assuming there will be an interim president or acting president. I don’t know if it’ll be an internal or external person. I’m assuming it may go into next year because the search might take longer than a semester.”
