University of Illinois provost named as new president of Hofstra University 

A vice chancellor and provost from the University of Illinois Chicago will become Hofstra University's ninth president — and its first woman president — on Aug. 1, the school announced Wednesday.

Susan Poser, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago, will succeed Stuart Rabinowitz, who announced his pending retirement earlier this year.

The 57-year-old New York City native with a law degree and a doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of California at Berkeley, was chosen after a yearlong search that considered more than 270 candidates.

In an interview Wednesday she said that she was thrilled with her appointment and "very excited to get started."

She was dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law before arriving in Chicago five years ago, where her responsibilities ranged from enrollment management and academic programs assessment to faculty and undergraduate affairs.

Poser developed initiatives to support faculty and promote diversity, as well as one that led to improved student retention and graduation rates. Last year, she oversaw the university’s acquisition of the John Marshall Law School to create Chicago’s only public law school.

Hofstra University Board of Trustees Chair Donald M. Schaeffer, who led the 13-member search committee that included faculty and students, said, "In Dr. Poser, we have found a higher education leader of exceptional experience, a collaborative and visionary person, and a scholar of great depth and intellect."

Dr. George Giuliani, a member of the search committee and the university’s speaker of the faculty, said, "It was important to the faculty that Hofstra select a president who was first and foremost an educator, together with a strong commitment to student success, a demonstrated record of fundraising and prove, proved, proving fiscal discipline. In Dr. Poser, Hofstra found the mix of qualities we were seeking."

Poser will be arriving on a campus that has seen significant growth over the last two decades under Rabinowitz, with the addition of a medical school, nursing programs and an engineering school, among others. It saw a sevenfold increase in its endowment and rising academic admission standards and national profile.

Hofstra’s "great strengths have been strategic risk-taking to grow the programs at Hofstra" with "strong alumni support, she said. "We have to think very strategically about how to continue this growth in a way that makes sense in the post-pandemic world to serve students and that is something I will begin as soon as I’m there."

Poser said that her work in advancing campus and faculty diversity were discussed "at length" with the search committee, noting that all institutions of higher education were becoming more diverse along with the population of the country.

Diversity is "something that is near and dear to my heart and it’s something I’ve worked very hard on" at the University of Illinois Chicago.

She also said she was impressed with Hofstra’s commitment to liberal arts while helping to build pathways to employment through undergraduate work and internship experiences. "It sets them up well for a post-pandemic world for Generation Z who want to know ‘if I major in the humanities, how will that lead to a satisfying career?" she said. "Hofstra has put a lot of effort into answering that question and the employment of undergraduates a year out of college is evidence of that."

Looking forward, she said educational methods and improvisations during the pandemic could yield insights for a post-pandemic world. "I’m very hopeful that Hofstra will be primarily on campus in the fall semester,’ she said. "But there are great opportunities here … we have done a grand experiment … and now we have to look back and ask if there is anything we have learned that would make us want to change what we were doing in the fall of 2019 before this all happened. "

She added, "We’ll all have to be very nimble and move very fast …. Hofstra has shown how nimble it is and that will be a key characteristic moving into the future. Because we don’t know what the next thing is."

By Carol Polsky

Carol.Polsky@newsday.com

Carol Polsky writes news and features on wide-ranging topics, from superstorm Sandy, 9/11 and presidential elections to health care and the economy.