Dr. Randy J. Dunn, will be starting his second chapter at Southern Illinois University, as the school's eighth president. Dunn, currently the president at the Youngstown State University, will replace Dr. Glenn Poshard, who is stepping down June.
Rita Cheng, chancellor at SIU, Carbondale said that Dunn is aware of the mission of the Carbondale campus as a national, public research university and is the right choice to forward the momentum established by the school's predecessors.
"Randy Dunn has both the skills and the background to ensure that SIU continues to live up to its mission of providing a quality education for thousands of students, serving as an academic and economic engine and meeting the health care needs of individuals and families in central and southern Illinois," board chairman Randal Thomas said in a statement.
The SIU Board of Trustees will pay Dunn $430,000, starting June.
Speaking about the possible challenges Dunn might face, Poshard says, "So I think continuing to keep the university's head above water financially is going to be a big thing. Building the enrollment or trying to build the enrollment is going to be another challenge that he's going to face," KFVS reports.
Dunn served as an associate professor and as a department chair during his first tenure at SIUC. He quit the post in 2004 to join Illinois' state superintendent of education; president of Murray State University in Kentucky (2006) and Youngstown State in Ohio (May 2013).
Poshard, who has served as SIU's president since 2006, is retiring in June even though his contract is valid until the end of 2015.
In 2007, he was scrutinized over a 1984 doctoral thesis. Critics claimed that the thesis was partially plagiarized and demanded his resignation. Subsequently, a review panel set up to look into the claims, concluded that the thesis included "inadvertent or unintended" plagiarism that does not require his resignation, Belleville News, reports.
In 2009, Poshard once again came under fire for allegedly diverting some of the funds belonging to a university contract to his son's marketing agency. Once more, a university's general counsel found the claims to be false.
