Nassau Community College officials completed the final step in selecting a permanent president Wednesday after the school’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved outgoing Farmingdale State College president W. Hubert Keen as its leader.
Keen is expected to begin serving as the college’s president on Aug. 1.
“We now have a president,” Nassau Community College board Chairman Jorge Gardyn said to a round of applause at Wednesday’s board meeting.
Nassau Community College has been seeking a permanent president since Donald Astrab left the position in July 2012.
Thomas Dolan, formerly the Great Neck school district’s Superintendent of Schools, has served as interim president since September.
Keen has served as SUNY Farmingdale’s president since 2007.
On May 12, State University of New York Chancellor Nancy Zimpher and the SUNY Board of Trustees approved his selection by the NCC board.
“While this opportunity is not one I anticipated, it is one I am pleased to embrace, and am honored to be entrusted with NCC’s leadership,” Keen said.
While Keen’s appointment was unanimously approved 6-0, prior to the vote, trustee Anthony Cornachio voiced opposition to Keen’s contract.
“The reason being I have severe cataracts and haven’t read it. I haven’t had time to think about it,” Cornachio said. “And the first time I was aware that the contract would be presented was today in executive session.”
Gardyn said that it was the same contract that both Astrab and Dolan were given and that the board’s counsel had explained the contract’s details in executive session.
“I think it is essential and imperative that we have this approved now,” he said. “If we don’t, then you have single-handedly stopped the process of picking a new president.”
Vice Chair Kathy Weiss said the board needed to approve the contract because it begins on August 1 and the board did not have another meeting before that date.
Since four of the trustees were not at the meeting and could not vote, the board needed Cornachio’s vote for approval.
Trustees Linda Green, Wanda Jackson, Donna Tuman and Arnold Drucker were absent from Wednesday’s meeting.
After the board went to executive session during the meeting to discuss the contract with its counsel, Cornachio voted in favor of the contract, thus finalizing Keen’s appointment.
The board also voted to amend Dolan’s contract so he can help transition Keen into his position.
He said he pledged his “full assistance” to Keen’s transition as the school’s president.
“I can’t say enough good things about the conversations I have had with Dr. Keen,” Dolan said.
Keen’s appointment comes three months after an independent accrediting agency slammed the college for its lack of leadership.
Of the 14 standards The Middle States Commission on Higher Education uses to accredit institutions, NCC was not in compliance with seven of them, with the community college’s failure to select a permanent president highlighting most of the report’s issues.
The Middle States Commission’s expected to make a final determination on the college’s accreditation by the end of the month.
