SUNY trustees appoint new Farmingdale State president
John S. Nader, provost of upstate SUNY Delhi, will become the ninth president of Farmingdale State College on July 15, 2016, State University of New York officials said on Thursday, March 24. Credit: Farmingdale State College
Farmingdale State College’s next president will be John S. Nader, the provost of upstate SUNY Delhi and a former mayor of Oneonta, college and state officials announced.
Nader, 60, was approved by State University of New York trustees at their meeting Thursday afternoon in Albany. He will be the ninth president of the 8,700-student four-year college.
“I am elated to have the opportunity to serve Farmingdale State College, which can play a prominent role on Long Island and in higher education in New York State,” Nader said in a telephone interview.
He begins at Farmingdale State on July 15 at an annual salary of $210,000.
Nader will succeed W. Hubert Keen, who has led Farmingdale State for the last nine years and is widely credited with overseeing the institution during a period of significant enrollment growth, expansion of academic programs and nearly $200 million in campus construction and renovation. Keen, 71, announced in June 2015 that he would step down this June.
Nader has been provost since 2009 at SUNY Delhi, a four-year college with a 3,600-student enrollment. There, he directly supervises all academic programs, as well as the library and learning center, career and business services, grants and sponsored programs, and partnerships with the community colleges and local high schools.
He was selected through a national presidential search, conducted by an 18-member committee that began its work in October 2015 at Farmingdale State.
“We are hoping that his selection will continue to serve us and move us in the direction that we’ve achieved so far under President Keen,” said Patricia Hill Williams, the school’s former vice president of external affairs and chairwoman of the Farmingdale State College Council.
The college contracted with the firm Academic Search Inc., based in Washington, D.C.
As provost of SUNY Delhi, Nader forged partnerships with community colleges and oversaw creation of the college’s first graduate program, a master’s degree in nursing with a focus on nursing education.
Nader started work at the upstate college in 1982, teaching economics. He also was an academic dean there for 10 years.
“Dr. Nader has been an instrumental member of the SUNY Delhi leadership team for several years, helping to make the college a national leader in online education and ensure the implementation of its performance improvement plan,” SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher said in a statement. “He is going to make an excellent president for Farmingdale State College.”
Of Keen, Zimpher said, “We are deeply grateful to President Keen for his outstanding leadership over the last nine years and commend him on a widely successful 40-year career in higher education in New York State.”
Nader was mayor of Oneonta from 2006 to 2010, where he worked to revitalize downtown property and guided creation of a veterans’ memorial walkway. He also served as an Otsego County legislator and in that capacity worked with a nonprofit agency to establish a homeless shelter in his district.
He is sports fan whose family owned a minor league baseball team affiliated with the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers for more than 40 years.
Nader earned a bachelor of arts degree in politics from Ithaca College and both a master’s and a doctorate in economics from the New School for Social Research.
Candice Ferrette covers Nassau County government and politics on Long Island. She has been a reporter at Newsday since 2011.
