The Commonwealth University trustees have decided to give Interim President Osgood a recommendation to the Board of Governors for university presidency.
This leaves one step in the presidential search, and will determine the future of Commonwealth University.
Interim President’s impression on the campus community
Osgood has left a strong impression amongst the CU community. This includes faculty, staff and students.
Many students claim to not know much about him, however his emails have been notable.
Owen Amato, a sophomore student attending the Bloomsburg campus, shared an experience when he was at the President’s house on the Bloomsburg campus. “He seems like he cares, he seems like a nice guy,” Amato said.
The university faculty union also expressed positive notions towards Osgood. Eric Hawerlak, the President of Bloomsburg APSCUF, explains that the union felt listened to.
“To sum it up, we’re really happy… we fully expect that the council will approve him as the next president of Commonwealth,” Hawerlak said in an interview with The Voice before the council confirmed their recommendation, “we expect the Board of Governors to also approve it.”
Dan Knorr, the Executive Chief of Staff, explains that a part of the presidential search was that the campus communities had open forums. Over 200 people attended these sessions, including community leaders and the collective bargaining union leaders. After these sessions, a feedback form was sent to the CU community. The search committee received 104 individual feedback pieces from students, faculty and staff.
“To get that much feedback on Jeff (Osgood) was really helpful to the search committee, and really gave the trustees a sense that the campus’ felt they had a voice in this process,” said Knorr.
The Council of Trustees vote for the recommendation
According to the trustee meeting documents, on March 6 the university trustees decided to give Osgood a recommendation to the Board of Governors.
Knorr explains that the trustees had two choices; they could vote to recommend Osgood, or they could recommend that the search opens up to national recruitment to get more candidates. The trustees unanimously voted for Osgood.
This moves the presidential search to the final step. The recommendation will go to Chancellor Christopher Fiorentino for consideration by the Board of Governors.
“I think students should know that one of the things that the trustees and our search committee were really committed to is that even though they were only assessing one candidate… They still wanted it to be a full robust search where people felt like they had a voice and a say in the process,” Knorr says.
