UAF administrator Bernice Joseph is finalist for APU president
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Joseph is the only in-state candidate among the finalists to lead the private Anchorage-based university. She has spent the past three years as vice chancellor for rural, community and Native education at UAF and previously was the dean of the College of Rural and Community Development.
According to her biography on the UAF Web site, Joseph also served under Gov. Tony Knowles as the deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Community and Economic Development and has worked for the Doyon Foundation and the Fairbanks Native Association.
Joseph said she’s attracted to APU by its small size and focused approach, which includes an emphasis on leadership skills. The campus hosts about 570 full-time and 200 part-time students and only features about a half-dozen academic programs.
“They’re not trying to be everything to everybody,” she said.
The other finalists include Betsy Vogel Boze, the former campus dean and CEO at Kent State University in North Canton, Ohio; Don Bantz, academic vice president and provost at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.; J. Andy Sheppard, academic vice president at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kan.; and Steven Corey, executive vice president at Prescott College in Prescott, Ariz.
More than 60 people applied for the position, according to a press release from APU.
Joseph is scheduled to visit the APU campus Thursday and Friday. The visit will include time with the Board of Trustees, faculty, staff, students and alumni.
The APU Board of Trustees expects to make a decision on its new president in early January, Board President Harry McDonald said in a press release.
The new president will replace Douglas North, who is leaving APU in January to lead a college preparatory school in Albany, N.Y.
As for Dr. Boze, since you are presumably making comparisons, she has a very distinguished career and did amazing things at Kent State Stark, which is part of the Kent State eight campus system. She started new programs, grew enrollment and raised a lot of money for scholarships and a new science building.
APU would be fortunate to get her, which they may be able to do because she loves Alaska and has family in Anchorage.
Kind of unrelated but wasn't one of the presidents of APU, when it was still Alaska Methodist University, the former president of Kent State when the national guard blew away 8 college students protesting the Vietnam War and Alaska was the last place he could hope to find a job after that. Does anybody remember?