Member News

Kenneth Macur, the Medaille University president since 2015 who had come under fire on a few occasions over the past two years, has retired at age 66. The university board of trustees has named Lori V. Quigley, Ph.D., a former provost and senior vice president at Medaille from 2016 to 2020, as interim president, effective immediately.

Biola is a private Christian university in La Mirada, whose mission is to equip its students “in mind and character to impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ.” They know the work will be difficult. So much around them is thought to be sinful.

On June 1, Saint Joseph’s University officially merged with the University of the Sciences, making the crosstown campuses one institution under the Saint Joseph’s name. For Saint Joseph’s, absorbing the robust suite of health care offerings at the University of the Sciences allows for an immediate expansion of academic programs, drawing on the expertise of faculty members already on campus. For the University of the Sciences, the deal offers continuity for students amid financial challenges in recent years that led both Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service to downgrade the institution as its endowment funds dwindled.


 
 

By far, one of the most prolific college presidents on social media is Walter Kimbrough, leader of the historically Black Dillard University, a private institution with an oak tree-studded campus in the heart of New Orleans. 
Kimbrough is the self-dubbed “Hip Hop Prez” online, where he routinely comments on the political issues du jour and those affecting higher education. But his reach extends beyond Twitter and Instagram. 
In his decade at Dillard, Kimbrough is credited with growing the HBCU’s endowment by 115%, to about $105 million, and significantly bolstering philanthropy. One of his most recognizable achievements is helping ensure the federal government forgave a roughly $160 million loan made in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
He’s stepping down, and Dillard’s trustee board believes it’s found the “dynamic, charismatic and visionary leader” to fill his big shoes: Rochelle Ford, currently dean of the School of Communications at Elon University, a private nonprofit institution in North Carolina. 

The Free Press spent both academic years making trips to Alma, sitting in classrooms with masked students, watching a class meet on Zoom, going on a campus admissions tour in the middle of a pandemic and talking with college leaders, faculty and students about this most unique of circumstances — two years where COVID-19 turned every aspect of college life into a challenge.