Amidst the shuffle of end-of-the-year preparations, Bradley announced Stan Liberty will serve as interim president effective June 1, following the retirement of University President Joanne Glasser May 31.
According to Liberty, he was approached one week ago by Chairman of the Board of Trustees Doug Stewart regarding the interim position.
Liberty was provost and vice president for Academic Affairs of Bradley University from 1998 to 2005, until he left to serve six years as president of Kettering University in Flint, Michigan.
Liberty said he has had various administrative positions at three different universities, which gives him a good range of experience.
“All I can say is that I’ve got the experience to deal with anything that can be thrown my way, so I’ll find out what [these critical issues are],” Liberty said. “As I said in the [press] release, we are not going to try to set a vision or change strategic plans for the university until we involve a new president. So, an interim just needs to make sure to provide stability and continuity and working on things that would be addressed no matter who was sitting in the chief executive position.”
Liberty said he has not been briefed or sat down with people to look into the issues the university is dealing with yet.
“Obviously, there have been some financial difficulties and some with enrollment, but I don’t know as much about those things as [those on campus] do,” Liberty said. “My time on the campus here for the last three semesters has just been focused on teaching on a part-time basis, and I really haven’t been interacting with any university administrators or governance about the university.”
Liberty said, between now and June 1, he will work on getting up-to-speed with current university issues.
Liberty will serve as interim president throughout the time it takes to successfully complete a nationwide search for Glasser’s successor, according to Bradley administrators.
“The timeline was that we had hoped we would have a deep and rich pool of applicants for the president, and if in fact that materialized, it looked as though we would be able to hire someone in the August-September timeframe,” Stewart said. “Based upon what we have so far, it would appear that timeframe will hold, but we’re absolutely focused on getting the right person regardless of how long it takes.”
However, Stewart said there is nothing that the board of trustees has seen so far that has told them they are anything but on track.
“The board of trustees had talked all along that an interim president might be needed but said we were going to wait until we got to the April-May timeframe so that we know how the search for president was going and what sort of things needed to be dealt with from an issue standpoint particularly during the summer and into the planning for the fall semester,” Stewart said. “Once we got an interim provost in place, it became apparent that it would be good likewise to have an interim president.”
During his time as former provost of Bradley, Liberty was involved with the local community as Board of Directors of the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce, where he also served as chairman of the Transportation Committee and member of the Business Advisory Committee. He also worked with the Peoria Civic Federation Transportation Committee, the Peoria NEXT founding team and the Community Advisory Committee for the Peoria Area World Affairs Council.
“The two strongest attributes are that [Liberty] is a former university president, so he knows what the job entails, and secondly, he had been provost at Bradley for seven and a half years, so he knows not just the university but in fact he will be working with some people who he worked with seven and a half years ago,” Stewart said.
Students taught by Liberty were also supportive of the appointment.
“I know Dr. Liberty will be an excellent interim [president],” sophomore electrical engineering major Mitch Pericak said. “He dedicates himself to the job and makes sure that students come first.”
Stewart said he believes they chose the best possible person for the job.
