Last Monday, the University at Buffalo’s President John B. Simpson announced that he is retiring after seven years of leadership that has taken UB in a radically different direction. His retirement will be effective January 15, 2010.
According to Jeremy Jacobs, chair of the UB Council (a board serving at the appointment of the Governor, whose primary responsibility is advising the president), the two had been discussing this possibility for “several weeks”, but Simpson brought the news to the Council last week before making the public announcement.
Replacing Simpson as Interim President will be Scott Nostaja, who followed Simpson to UB from Simpson’s previous post as Vice Chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Nostaja, who served as a consultant to UCSC through AVCOR (a small firm founded and run by him), began a consulting relationship with UB in 2005, and after serving in this capacity for two years, was appointed Interim VP for Human Resources. It wasn’t until May 2010 that that job title lost the “interim” and Nostaja was also ordained with the title of chief of staff.
Artvoice reports that Nostaja was not a state employee until this July.
The Buffalo News reports in Sunday’s paper that Nostaja was is living in California while maintaining a part-time residence in Amherst. The article also calls into question the administrator’s educational credentials, and draws attention to dissent within the University Faculty Senate over the appointment.
Interestingly, Nostaja replaced an outgoing chief of staff in July, James “Beau” Willis, who also had “interim” attached to his job title for much of his career at UB. Willis’ official job title was “interim executive vice president for finance and operations” from his arrival in 2004 until at least 2007, according to university catalogues. Willis resigned in February in what Simpson characterized as an “amicable and mutual decision”, and his position has not yet been replaced.
This all begs the question, what is the deal with the interims? Perhaps it is a way to circumvent the state employment system, and the accountability that comes with it. In fact, the very decision by the UB Council to appoint Nostaja is circumventing due process within the SUNY system as reported here and here. It should not be surprising that as UB pushes forward with legislation to roll back state oversight, it is also pushing the limits of its current authority.
On another interesting note, I should point out that according to Simpson, he notified the UB Council of his intention to retire on the morning that all this news broke. No mention of it in the video recording of that meeting, in which he discusses the annual senior staff retreat that occurred one week prior, in which there was “consensus” on moving forward despite UB’s setbacks in Albany.
