Rider University President Mordechai Rozanski is going to retire, effective July 31, 2015, after serving 12 years at the helm of the university.
Rider University President Mordechai Rozanski is going to retire, effective July 31, 2015, after serving 12 years at the helm of the university.
Dr. Rozanski, who has served as Rider University’s president since 2003, made the announcement Wednesday. He had originally intended to retire at the end of his second, five-year term in 2013, but he was persuaded by the Board of Trustees to stay on for two more years to coincide with the school’s 150th anniversary.
”With that anniversary on the horizon,” Dr. Rozanski wrote in a letter to the Rider University community, “Rider deserves new leadership to work with the Board of Trustees and the University community to shape a new and compelling vision for Rider’s future.”
”In the meantime, I look forward to continuing our work together as we complete the important tasks still remaining, and ensure a smooth leadership transition,” he wrote.
Serving as Rider University’s sixth president “has been the most fulfilling experience of my academic career,” Dr. Rozanski said. That career will have spanned 45 years upon his retirement, and it will have included 12 years as Rider’s president and 10 years as the president of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Rozanski’s career also included leadership roles at Adelphi University on Long Island, N.Y., Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and Wagner College on Staten Island, N.Y.
During his presidency, Dr. Rozanski led a successful program of institutional renewal at Rider. The school enrolls 5,500 undergraduate and graduate students, and employs more than 1,000 faculty and staff. Since 2003, fulltime undergraduate enrollment has increased by 8 percent. The school attracts students from 41 states, three U.S. territories and 77 countries.
This year, Rider University moved up from 26th place to 18th place in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of public and private regional institutions in the North, making Rider the second highest ranked institution in its category in New Jersey.
Rider University graduate Gary Shapiro, who is the chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees, praised Dr. Rozanski’s leadership. He noted that Dr. Rozanski’s decade-long guidance of the school “has been superb and characterized by a clear vision, a collaborative spirit, creativity and an unwavering commitment to our students’ success.”
”President Rozanski has guided Rider’s institutional progress and heightened its academic stature by virutally every measure,” Mr. Shapiro said. “Mort’s strategic investments in new undergraduate and graduate academic programs, the establishment of the two-campus Westminster College of the Arts and extensive facilities improvements across both campuses have all strengthened Rider’s competitiveness.”
Over the past 10 years, Dr. Rozanski oversaw the investment of $125 million in facilities improvements to enhance the campus environment for students, faculty and staff.
Significant examples on the Lawrence Township campus include the West Village Residence Hall, the Student Recreation Center and North Hall, which is a modern academic building that was completed in 2011.
Improvements to the Westminster Choir College campus in Princeton include the construction of the Marion Buckelew Cullen Center, which is currently under way and is expected to be completed by mid-year. The Cullen Center will be a state-of-the-art rehearsal and classroom facility for student performances and coursework.
Academic, residential and dining facilities on both the Lawrence and Princeton campuses were renovated and the Lawrence campus’ athletic facilities have been upgraded.
A broad-based Presidential Search Committee, which will serve in an advisory capacity to the Board of Trustees, is in the process of being formed. It will be chaired by Rider University graduate Michael Kennedy, who is the vice chairman of the Board of Trustees.
”We anticipate the search process will be completed by early January 2015,” Mr. Kennedy said.