ALLEN W. GROVES has been appointed as senior VP of student experience at Syracuse University, effective July 1. He comes to Syracuse from the University of Virginia (UVA), where he has spent more than a decade as associate VP and university dean of students. Groves will lead a division that includes the programs, services, and personnel of the Barnes Center at The Arch (including counseling services, health services, health promotion and recreation); career services; Disability Cultural Center; first-year and transfer programs; fraternity and sorority affairs; international services; LGBTQ Resource Center; multicultural affairs; parent and family services; student activities; student centers and programming services; student engagement; student living (residential life); and student rights and responsibilities. As associate vice president and university dean of students at UVA, Groves had daily contact with students on issues of personal concern, including adjustment to the University community; tensions surrounding race, ethnicity, and culture; alcohol and substance abuse; emotional and mental health; and the university’s standards of conduct. Prior to that role, he served as student-affairs development officer. Before his academic career at UVA, Groves was a partner in the Atlanta, Georgia, law firms of Seyfarth Shaw LLP and McCullough Sherrill LLP. He also had extensive experience dealing with student issues as executive director of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. Groves received a bachelor’s degree in history at Stetson University, a juris doctor degree at the University of Virginia School of Law, and a certificate in crisis leadership in higher education at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

CERRI A. BANKS was appointed VP of student success and deputy to the senior VP at Syracuse University, effective July 1. Banks, who earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees at Syracuse University, returns to her alma mater from her current post as dean of students and VP for student affairs at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. She has held her position at Skidmore College for nearly five years, overseeing all student services, serving on the president’s cabinet, and overseeing the bias response group and the COVID-19 campus planning and response. Banks served in a similar position at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, from 2011 to 2016, and at William Smith College in Geneva, from 2009 to 2011, where she was also director of the President’s Commission on Inclusive Excellence. Banks’ undergraduate degree from Syracuse University was in inclusive elementary and special education (2000). She earned a master’s in cultural foundations of education in 2004, a C.A.S. in women’s studies in 2005, and a Ph.D. in cultural foundations of education in 2006.

KEITH A. ALFORD, chief diversity and inclusion officer (CDIO), at Syracuse University, will depart Syracuse this summer to become dean of the University at Buffalo’s (UB) School of Social Work. Alford, who has been a member of the Syracuse University faculty for 25 years in the School of Social Work in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, will begin his new position on Aug. 15. He will serve as CDIO until his departure. Syracuse University Chancellor Ken Syverud appointed Alford as CDIO in May 2019. Alford served as interim CDIO since July 2018, following the announcement of the newly established CIDO position. In his new role at UB, Alford will be a member of the university’s senior leadership team, working with the president, provost, deans, and other senior leaders to advance the university’s academic mission. As the chief academic and administrative officer of the School of Social Work, he will report to the provost and executive VP for academic affairs and will be charged with leading a new strategic planning cycle that incorporates diversity, inclusion, and social-justice efforts into the vision for the school. During his tenure at Syracuse University, Alford served as professor and chair of the Falk College’s School of Social Work, and at separate times as its graduate and undergraduate program director. Alford’s areas of specialization include mental-health service delivery to children and families, culturally specific programming for children in out-of-home care, contemporary rites of passage programming and loss/grief reactions among African American families. He served on the Faculty Senate Committee on Diversity, the Division of Enrollment and the Student Experience’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council, and as an advisor to the Student of Color Advisory Committee. Alford received a Ph.D. from the College of Social Work at Ohio State University (OSU). He earned a master’s degree in social work from OSU, and a bachelor’s degree in history and sociology from Coker University in South Carolina.

LAURA SYER, associate dean of finance and administration in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, has been named VP for budget and planning, effective Aug. 1. Her appointment was approved May 28 by the executive committee of the Cornell board of trustees. Syer succeeds Paul Streeter, who previously announced plans to retire this summer. Syer has served as associate dean of finance and administration in the SC Johnson College since its launch in 2016. She led administrative services for finance, budgeting, human resources, and IT across the college, which has more than 700 employees and about a $300 million budget. She oversaw the integration of the three schools’ finance and human resource organizations, developed financial reporting for one allocated budget with endowed and state resources, restructured human resource and finance school-based groups into single college teams, and supported the centralization of more than 15 units within the college. Prior to that, Syer worked as associate dean of administration as well as executive director of finance and business intelligence in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, and manager of decision support and project director in the Division of Budget and Planning. As VP for budget and planning, Syer will be responsible for managing the university’s resources and leading the annual budgeting process of the Ithaca–based campuses, in addition to engaging with the Weill Cornell Medical College on budgetary and planning matters. She will also lead institutional research and planning as well as university-wide space and capital planning efforts. Syer received a bachelor’s degree in health and human services with a minor in business from Ohio University in 2000, a master’s degree in sport administration from Canisius College in 2002, an MBA from Quinnipiac University in 2006, and an executive master’s degree of consulting and coaching for change from INSEAD International Business School in Fontainebleau, France in 2020. Before coming to Cornell in 2012, Syer was a financial analyst and manager of international finance for ESPN, Inc.