<p>From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
<a href="http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060919/NEWS01/609190332%5B/url%5D">http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060919/NEWS01/609190332</a></p>
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RIT looking for right fit at the top</p>
<p>Simone has set bar high for successor, many say</p>
<p>Matthew Daneman
Staff writer</p>
<p>(September 19, 2006) HENRIETTA Perhaps in a decade or so, when the nation's 100 top high school students decide where to go to college, a third will head to Harvard University, another third to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the rest to Rochester Institute of Technology.</p>
<p>That's a goal that RIT President Albert J. Simone has talked about repeatedly in his 14-plus years at the helm.</p>
<p>It's a goal that, starting in July 2007, a new president will pick up and run with.</p>
<p>The area's largest four-year higher education institution expects to have its next chief executive hired by late March. Simone announced in May that he planned to retire at the end of the 2006-07 academic year.</p>
<p>His replacement could have a dramatic effect on the area's ninth-largest employer. New leadership "really is one of the most important things that happens in any organization," said Michael Morley, chairman of RIT's board of trustees and a member of the 21-person committee heading up the national search for a new president.</p>
<p>The area's universities "are going to be key" to economic growth in the Rochester region, said Rochester Business Alliance President Sandy Parker. "So the community should very much care" who the next RIT president is, she said.</p>
<p>Hiring that president could be thorny.</p>
<p>This year alone, presidents have quit or been fired at Harvard University, Case Western Reserve University, Western Michigan University, University of New Mexico, Clark College and University of Maine at Presque Isle.</p>
<p>Boston University in 2003 paid incoming President Daniel S. Goldin, a former head of NASA, $1.8 million to walk away from a job he had not yet even started. And in 2005, Cornell University President Jeffrey Lehman announced that after two years in the top job, he was leaving because of clashes with the board of trustees.</p>
<p>"Finding successful presidents of universities is a very difficult process," Simone said. "I think it's 20 percent of new presidents are out of their job in two years."</p>
<p>The next RIT president will be in charge of a $436 million operation with more than 15,000 students, 237 buildings on 1,300 acres and more than 2,800 full- and part-time employees. And that person will likely be handsomely rewarded; Simone's salary was $290,424 for the 2004-05 academic year, the most recent year for which figures were available.</p>
<p>The next RIT president also will encounter the sizable shadow of Simone, who has been a major presence on and off campus since he started at RIT in 1992. During his presidency, RIT's enrollment has added students, an eighth college and numerous buildings and has made racial and gender diversity of students and faculty a particular focus.</p>
<p>Off campus, Simone is active in High Technology of Rochester, the Rochester Business Alliance, the Center for Governmental Research and Hillside Children's Center, among numerous other organizations and boards. He also headed a committee on reforming the Rochester School District that came out last September with a raft of recommendations, including recruitment of 10,000 volunteer mentors over 10 years to work with city kids.</p>
<p>"With an institute as large and influential ... as RIT has been under Al's leadership, the next president ... will be expected to carry on the great tradition and leadership Al has provided," said St. John Fisher College President Donald Bain. "There'll no doubt be a different style. Every president, every leader has their own unique approach."</p>
<p>Being actively involved in the community will surely be one criteria for candidates, Parker said: "The fact Al has been so active really brings recognition to RIT."</p>
<p>Simone's replacement also will inherit a number of challenges, including the fact that half of RIT's enrollment comes from New York state but that the college-age population of New York will start dropping by 2010, according to state Department of Education projections.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, RIT trustee and search committee chairman Donald Boyce said, one way to boost RIT's national and international reputation is by more research, but at the same time RIT probably doesn't want to become a research-heavy institution. The balance between research, teaching and career preparation has been an increasingly debated issue at RIT as the university has increased its number of doctoral programs.</p>
<p>"I am really impressed with the campus' interest in understanding (students') needs," Student Government President Elizabeth Sorkin said in an e-mail. "We have the field house, the renovations, the student development center, new buildings here and there and so on. What we need, we get it.</p>
<p>"I would hope the next president is understanding and receptive to that."</p>
<p>For many students, who the president is doesn't matter much as long as the university runs smoothly, said Rachel Laster, 21 and a bioinformatics major from Buffalo.</p>
<p>Finding people interested in the RIT job may not be difficult, Simone said, though finding candidates who actually can do the job could very well be.</p>
<p>"If I was 60 and I had another 10 years, it'd be a ball coming to RIT at this time," Simone said. "(But) there's a limit to everything. It's time for change."</p>
<p><a href="mailto:MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com">MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com</a>
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