Search committee will help Clarkson find next president

POTSDAM — Clarkson University plans to form a search committee to find a successor to current president Anthony Collins, who plans to step down following the 2021-22 academic year.

Collins, the university’s 16th president, has served as its top official since 2003, per a Clarkson news release. 

The committee will include trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The search committee will provide details on the full committee membership and the process guiding the search for Clarkson’s 17th president “when available,” the university added.

A Clarkson faculty member since 1982, Collins has been a “booster” for economic development in the North Country and throughout New York State, and a “national advocate” for higher education, the university said.

“President Collins’ contributions to Clarkson University have been extraordinary and will prove to be enduring. He has exceeded the broadest measure of success, leaving the institution in far better shape than when he accepted the role of president. In addition to advancing many of the metrics typically considered in assessing institutional success, Tony’s leadership throughout the challenges wrought by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has been outstanding,” Tom Kassouf, chair of the board of trustees, contended in the release. 

About Collins

Under Collins’ leadership, the Vision of a Clarkson Education and Clarkson@125 have “guided strategic initiatives which have been substantially realized over almost two decades,” the school said. 

Clarkson’s Potsdam hill campus has been expanded both physically and in “academic reach,” while the downtown campus has been “repurposed to advance interdisciplinary entrepreneurship,” with the recently added Lewis School of Health Sciences and the “economic revitalization” of the village of Potsdam. 

Outside Potsdam, Clarkson has expanded geographically in recent years, with new graduate and professional programs accessible at its Capital Region campus in Schenectady and at the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries on Dennings Point in Dutchess County.

A native of Australia, Collins earned an undergraduate civil engineering degree from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He then worked for Australian Consolidated Industries and the Utah Development Company before earning master’s and doctoral degrees from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. 

After earning his Ph.D in 1982, Collins launched his career at Clarkson, progressing from assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering to full professor, department chair, dean, vice president for academic affairs, and provost. 

During that time, he received awards for outstanding teaching, research, and advising, as well as lecturing internationally, and authoring more than 90 publications.

He currently serves as chair of the Association of Independent Technological Universities (AITU), is emeritus chair of New York’s Commission for Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU), serves on the board of the Business Council of New York State, is president of the Seaway Private Equity Corporation, and was previously nominated to serve on the advisory board of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. 

Collins has also served on a number of New York State advisory task forces as well as co-chair for the North Country Regional Economic Development Council, Clarkson said.