During the Board of Trustees meeting on Feb. 21, the Presidential Search Committee announced that they had picked their finalists to be the next president of Bucks, and the board wants students and staff to have a say in the decision.
The committee is holding forums in the auditorium at the Newtown campus to allow students and staff to ask the candidates questions and get to know them better. The first of the forums already occurred on Feb. 26, but two additional forums will be held over the next two weeks, beginning at 9 a.m. for faculty leaders, 10 a.m. for staff and 11 a.m. for students. The meetings will also be streamed live on Zoom.
The Board of Trustees hired RH Perry, a national search firm specializing in higher education, to conduct the presidential search. The firm said that over 75 applications were received, but the committee narrowed it down to just three candidates with various backgrounds in education.
On Feb. 26, students and faculty met Evon Washington Walters. Currently, he is a professor at Stony Brook University, where he teaches the school’s Community College Leadership course. Mr. Walters has a Doctorate degree in Education from the University of Massachusetts, where he ran on the school’s track team.
Since then, he has been credited for revitalizing Student Success Centers at three different community colleges, including Suffolk County Community College on Long Island, NY, where he and faculty leaders secured $40 million in federal funding for a new Learning Resource Center and Wellness Center. And while at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, he helped reverse a three-year 22 percent decline in enrollment at the school.
For the forum on Monday, March 5, attendees will hear from Patrick M. Jones, a Pennsylvania native who has worked in various areas of education. Right now, he is the Chancellor of the Music department at Penn State Schuylkill, with a long history in the world of music, including being the director of the Setnor School of Music, a music professor at Boston University and directing the Air National Guard Bands for 12 years. He has also been a judge for multiple Band competitions, locally at Neshaminy High School and Pennsbury High School.
His educational career included leadership positions at Drexel University, Utah Valley University, The University of the Arts and Boston University. He has a Doctor of Philosophy from Penn State and a Bachelor of Science from West Chester University. Jones also spent over 30 years in the military, at one point monitoring the deployment of over 400 personnel and providing input to the Presidential budget. He retired as a colonel in 2011.
The last forum on Thursday, March 7 will feature Mr. John C. Boyd, a man who has spent much of his professional career in the mountains. He has been the president of Mayland Community College, a school in the rural Appalachians of North Carolina. During his tenure, he has overseen the opening of the Anspach Advanced Manufacturing School, and the Mayland Earth-To-Sky Park, which includes the world’s only International Dark Sky observatory owned by an institution of higher education.
Prior to Mayland, Boyd was the president of Colorado Northwestern Community College, a college serving an area larger than the state of New Jersey. He is notable for helping the struggling college perform a massive turnaround, by reorganizing a nearly nonexistent school leadership team, raising over $37 million through the school’s first-ever gift campaign, building a new campus and renovating the existing infrastructure that all led to financial stability and reversed a drop in enrollment. Boyd has a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Clemson University, and a master’s in criminal justice administration from Oklahoma City University. He was also in the Army in 1992.
Once chosen, the new president will fill the position vacated by Dr. Felicia Ganther, who abruptly resigned at the end of the last fall semester, after being in the position for only two years. Ganther states that she resigned due to the passing of three colleagues in her life and the cancer diagnoses of two siblings, but the resignation came after the faculty union held a vote of no confidence in her due to the union expecting “a strong collaborative relationship that had not materialized,” Bucks Federation of Teachers President John Sheridan said at the time.
After attending the forums, students and staff are encouraged to fill out a form on Buck’s website, that asks a multitude of questions on what you want to see in a new president and your impressions of candidates you saw. Although the Board of Trustees hasn’t said when they will elect a new president, it rarely takes more than a full academic year to find one, according to George Birnbaum Law.