Michigan State Selects Stony Brook’s Leader, Samuel L. Stanley, as Next President

Michigan State University, which has seen two presidents resign since January 2018 in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual-abuse scandal, on Tuesday announced Samuel L. Stanley Jr. as its next leader.

Stanley, a physician and medical researcher, has been president of Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York system, since 2009. He will take office on August 1 at Michigan State, a community in search of healing and of transparency from its leaders.

Dianne Y. Byrum, chair of Michigan State’s Board of Trustees and a leader of the search committee, told reporters that the panel had focused on external candidates, following the community’s feedback after almost two dozen “input sessions.”

Rebuffing concerns that the closed search process was too secretive, Byrum emphasized that the committee had gathered input from many groups on the campus and had released its criteria in a public prospectus. “That’s why you can stand here today with a unanimous board vote,” Byrum said. She called Stanley’s selection “a new chapter in the history of Michigan State University.”

That sentiment was echoed by Prabu David, dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences and a member of the search committee, who wrote on Twitter that Stanley was a “consensus pick.”

Stanley will inherit a campus that has been roiled by years of controversy. He will take the place of the acting president, Satish Udpa, an administrator who succeeded the former interim president John M. Engler. Engler resigned in January following several scandals, including his suggestion that Nassar’s victims were enjoying the “spotlight.”

Lou Anna K. Simon, the university’s most recent permanent president, resigned in January 2018 after 13 years in office. She has been charged with lying to the police in the state’s investigation of the university’s response to accusations against Nassar. (Simon’s lawyer has called the charges “baseless.”)

In a news conference on Tuesday, Stanley called the Nassar scandal “a terrible tragedy” and “a gross and incomprehensible betrayal of trust.”

He said he intended to meet with survivors of Nassar’s abuse “as soon as we reasonably can.”

Reclaim MSU, an activist group that supported an open presidential search, called for such meetings to happen immediately. The group wrote on Twitter that Stanley had arrived under “a cloud of suspicion” and that trustees had chosen “secrecy and excuses” in the search.

STATEMENT: Dr. Stanley begins his leadership under a cloud of suspicion. He must immediately meet with survivors and their families and with the MSU community at large, particularly with those who have been pushing for fundamental change. #ReclaimMSU pic.twitter.com/RMT9m9R8ww

— ReclaimMSU (@ReclaimMSU) May 28, 2019

Stanley will take over a larger institution than the one he has been running. He oversaw an expansion of fund raising and renewable-energy research at Stony Brook, which is a member of the Association of American Universities but roughly half the size of Michigan State by total enrollment. He is a member of the Board of Directors of both the AAU and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, according to Michigan State’s news release. He acknowledged to reporters that the move to Michigan State represented a step up in “scope and scale.”

Stanley said he started to consider leaving Stony Brook in the last year or two. He said he is excited to focus on student access and success, as well as issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Stony Brook touted its high socioeconomic mobility under Stanley’s tenure. It was named the most socially mobile college among highly selective public institutions, according to data from the Equality of Opportunity Project (now called Opportunity Insights).

‘A Total Lack of Transparency’

But Stanley’s tenure at Stony Brook drew criticism in recent years. In 2017 the university announced a $35-million deficit, leading to cuts in the administrative staff as well as lecturers and tenure-track faculty members in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, including its writing program and foreign-language programs.

High-ranking faculty members revolted, writing a letter to the SUNY system’s chancellor that the Stony Brook administration “appears to be failing the institution.” They later pooled money to hire Howard J. Bunsis, a forensic accountant, a professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University, and a former official at the American Association of University Professors, to examine the university’s finances. Bunsis’ report, presented by a budget committee at a University Senate meeting in March, said Stony Brook was in healthier financial shape than it claimed.

In a lengthy email sent to Stony Brook faculty and staff members, Stanley called the report “unsubstantiated and very misleading.” Stony Brook said Bunsis had failed to exclude parts of state appropriations that funded the university’s hospital.

While the turbulence doesn’t compare to Michigan State’s Nassar-related trials, it points to “a total lack of transparency,” said Kathleen Wilson, a professor of history at Stony Brook and a critic of Stanley’s administration. “To say that we are ecstatic that Stanley is leaving is an understatement,” Wilson said. “We feel sorry for Michigan State, is what I would say, which is facing its own particular crisis.”

A spokeswoman for Michigan State said Stanley was not immediately available for an interview with The Chronicle.

In an interview on Tuesday with The State News, Michigan State’s student newspaper, and at the news conference, Stanley told reporters he was committed to transparency and to working with the community to prevent sexual assault.

“We want to create an infrastructure where people can report,” Stanley said during the conference. “But we also have to have a culture about preventing this kind of thing from happening.”

“It does begin with my leadership,” he added. “The leadership has to be someone that is accountable.”

Follow Steven Johnson on Twitter at @stetyjohn, or email him at steve.johnson@chronicle.com.