New England Board of Higher Education » University of Massachusetts

Among Comings & Goings: Delta Cost Project Will Dissolve, but its Work on Higher Ed Spending Will Go On

John O. Harney — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:33:39 +0000

After five years bringing attention to how colleges spend money, the Delta Cost Project will dissolve in 2012. On Jan. 1, the database portion of its work will become part of the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS data-collection and communication work. The project's analysis and communication about revenue and spending trends will shift to the American Institutes for Research (AIR), where it will be known as the Delta Cost Project at AIR.

Jane Wellman founded the Delta Project in 2007 with support from the Lumina Foundation for Education and became the project's executive director. A clear and forceful writer on ways colleges spend money, Wellman wrote for NEJHE in 2010 about how colleges can reduce costs and permanently reduce spending demands while maintaining access. In the past year, she has split her time at the Delta Project and at the National Association of System Heads, where she will now focus her work.

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Trustees at St. Joseph's College in Standish, Maine, appointed Kenneth Lemanski to be interim president, while a search committee conducts a national search for a permanent president. A former NEBHE delegate from Massachusetts, Lemanski has held senior positions at the University of Massachusetts, the Council of Presidents for the Massachusetts State University system and, most recently, Westfield State University. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1976 to 1978 and 1980 to 1991. He assumed the interim position at St. Joseph's on Oct. 3.

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Fairfield University appointed four new trustees to serve six-year terms. They are William C. Crager, president and co-founder of Envestnet, Inc.; William P. Egan, founder and general partner of Alta Communications and Marion Equity Partners LLC; Biff J. O’Reilly, president of PBS Capital; and the Rev. Stephen A. Privett, S.J., president of the University of San Francisco.

UMass Names Towson U’s Caret as Prez; Former NEBHE Chair Menard Hired as VP at Bristol CC

John O. Harney — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 23:02:22 +0000

The University of Massachusetts selected Robert Caret, president of Towson University, to succeed Jack M. Wilson as head of the five-campus university.

A chemist with degrees from the University of New Hampshire and Suffolk University, Caret will need to concoct an effective potion for UMass, which the Boston Globe described as "struggling to climb into the elite ranks of public universities while contending with multiple rounds of cuts in state funding."

Other finalists for the UMass job were MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Chancellor Charles Bantz.

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Bristol Community College hired former Massachusetts state Sen. Joan Menard to lead workforce development, lifelong learning, grant development and external affairs at the Fall River, Mass. community college. Menard chaired NEBHE from 2007 to 2010 and represented the area as a Democrat in the state Legislature for 30 years. She is a former teacher and special education director in Somerset, Mass.

Honoring David Knapp

John O. Harney — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:43:20 +0000

The University of Massachusetts will honor the late David C. Knapp on Saturday, June 26 at 4 p.m. at the UMass Boston Campus Center.

Knapp died April 13. He served as UMass president from 1978 to 1990 and chaired NEBHE from 1998 to 2000.