At Penn State, a new University President is set to be named this week. The University trustees moving faster than many anticipated and their presidential selection process.
Current Penn State President Eric Barron announced in February of this year that he’d be retiring next year in June at the end of his contract.
A search process was launched with this update from the university’s trustees at their meeting last month.
“Our initial canvass produced more than 400 individuals for consideration for this role.”
Now there’s word Penn State’s 19th president to succeed Barron will be announced Thursday. Barron was named university president in 2014.
“When I walked in the door at Penn State, one of the things that impressed me was the amount of research and federal dollars that the university brings into the community.
Yet the amount of transfer into it tech transfer was relatively modest compared to what is now 1 Billion dollar research enterprise.”
That led to the founding of a business development network aimed specifically at helping start up companies called Invent Penn State, its new headquarters in downtown State College,
recently opened.
“We worked hard to create visibility for our intellectual property. An awful lot of people said, You can’t do it in this town. You can’t even do it in state college.
You need to be in Silicon Valley, you need to be in Boston.
Well, the invent Penn State venture. An IP conference is now one of the largest tech startup conferences in the mid-Atlantic.”
Thursday, the university trustees are scheduled to hold a special meeting where it’s expected Penn State’s next president will be introduced in Centre County.
