Seawolves Fans

ROSEMONT, Ill. – Steve Pikiell had been the men’s basketball coach at Stony Brook for four years when Dr. Samuel Stanley Jr. took over as president in 2009.

That season, the Seawolves made the National Invitation Tournament for the first time in program history. Seven years and six 20-win seasons later, they made their NCAA tournament debut.

And it began a record growth – both in other sports and with new facilities – for a university that was created in 1957 and an athletic program that had been in Division I for 25 years.

Pikiell, now the basketball coach at Rutgers, called Michigan State’s hiring of his old boss “a home run.” And for more than sports.

“We had a lot of firsts when he was there in athletics, and he was very supportive,” Pikiell said Wednesday at Big Ten media day. “But he did a great job for the whole university and the campus. He built new buildings. A visionary. Really a great guy, very smart and a great family guy. Just all the characteristics you want in a president.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars in donations poured in to Stony Brook – a 26,000-student university on Long Island in New York – for everything from new dorms to a computer science building to a $194 million cancer center that opened in January.

Pikiell called Stanley, who began at MSU on Aug. 1, an intelligent family man who “loves sports, loves student-athletes.”

“He would come to all the games – basketball, football, lacrosse, tennis, baseball. I mean, he’s a home run,” Pikiell said. “He’s a sports guy, likes all sports. … He’s a really good hire and he’s gonna help make the Big Ten even better.”

And just like that in three years he's out.....

https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2022/10/13/michigan-state-university-president-samuel-stanley-resigns-loss-of-confidence-board-of-trustees/69560712007/

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/video/michigan-state-university-president-samuel-stanley-announces-resignation/#x

Not exactly sure what was happening behind the scenes that could have drove him our or what have you, but MSU was always going to be a tough job with everything he was walking into from the get go.

Yale Corporation members Maurie McInnis GRD ’90 GRD ’96 and David Thomas ’78 GRD ’86 currently serve as the presidents of Stony Brook University and Morehouse College, respectively, and will have a voice in who becomes Yale’s next president. McInnis and Thomas’ backgrounds in university leadership could make them possible fits for the job.

Although the Search Committee has not released formal requirements for the job, the News compiled a list of eight potential candidates in September by examining the shared qualifications of former Yale presidents. The News found that the University’s presidents have often received advanced degrees and amassed a prominent record of scholarly research and publications before also serving as deans, as provosts or in other higher education leadership positions at institutions including Yale.

Both McInnis and Thomas fit those criteria.

“​​If the corporation elected one of their own members as president that would be legitimate and legal,” said Henry “Sam” Chauncey Jr. ’57, former University Secretary and special assistant to former President Kingman Brewster from 1963 to 1972. “It has happened in other colleges and universities, it’s not impossible or unusual.”

McInnis and Thomas did not respond to the News’ request for comment on the same topic — or about whether they would accept an offer, if extended, to become Yale’s 24th president.

Yale’s presidential search committee, composed of eight trustees and four faculty members, does not include McInnis and Thomas.

At Stony Brook, McInnis heralded in a $500 million gift from the Simons Foundation — the “largest unrestricted gift in the history of higher education,” McInnis wrote in an email to the News. Aside from her duties as a successor trustee to the Yale Corporation, McInnis also currently serves as the inaugural board chair of the New York Climate Exchange.

McInnis wrote to the News on April 5 that she finds it “personally fulfilling” to lead Stony Brook, “where excellence and equity are deeply ingrained in its culture.”

“It is a great honor, and it has been exciting to lead the institution to new heights,” McInnis wrote of her current role as Stony Brook president to the News on April 5. “We have set clear and ambitious goals grounded in expanding our impact through our research and scholarship, our engagement in some of the most challenging issues of the day and our extraordinary success in moving students up the economic ladder. And it has been an exciting year at Stony Brook. ”