In more than eight years as chancellor, Nancy Cantor has envisioned and helped champion programs aimed at elevating the university’s national and local presence.

Cantor’s successor is far from being determined, but as some Board of Trustees members look to the future and for a chancellor to replace Cantor when she departs in 2014, they are reflecting on certain aspects of Cantor’s leadership and initiatives. The University Senate will likely begin the search committee process for a new chancellor next month.

“I think the face of the campus, the face of the students has really changed for the better,” said Howard Phanstiel, describing Cantor’s influence at SU since assuming the role of chancellor in 2004. Phanstiel is a vice chair of the Board of Trustees and, along with his wife Louise, donated $20 million to the university to help establish scholarships for middle-class students.

Cantor took a university that wasn’t nationally known and made it prominent as far out as California, where Phanstiel lives, he said. Among the chancellor’s successes are the Connective Corridor, a project that encourages student engagement in the city; the Campaign for Syracuse University, a five-year fundraising effort that will go toward scholarships and establishing a study abroad program in New York City; and the university’s green initiative, he said.

Phanstiel said he is confident that the university won’t depart from Cantor’s vision in the coming years. Cantor’s work has received “broad support” among the Board of Trustees, he said.

“I think her legacy will remain with us for a long time,” Phanstiel said. “I don’t envision any major change in direction or priority for the university.”

Richard Thompson, chairman of the Board of Trustees, declined to go into detail on the search for Cantor’s successor, but described her work as “amazing.”

Thompson said the chancellor’s vision of Scholarship in Action and expanding the university into the Syracuse community through projects such as the Connective Corridor helped “pull the university into the 21st century.” The university’s international presence has also grown under Cantor, he said.

“That’s all about Scholarship in Action that’s connecting the university to the community, to the country and to the world,” Thompson said. “That’s a very visionary approach that doesn’t come by every day.”

For a successor to be in place for the chancellor’s departure in June 2014, the search for a successor will need to begin relatively soon, said Bruce Carter, chair of USen’s agenda committee.

Before news of the chancellor’s decision to leave broke Friday, the agenda committee was beginning to plan for the chancellor’s next five-year review. The review is now no longer necessary and the committee will likely begin to work toward establishing a search committee within the next month, Carter said.

“The real question in the long run is: ‘Who will the next chancellor be and what will their view and vision of the university be?’” he said.

Carter said it is not uncommon for universities to appoint chancellors from inside dean or vice chancellor positions, although he said he has received no indication of who will serve as the next SU chancellor. Chancellor Melvin Eggers, who served as chancellor from 1971 to 1991, was the last chancellor to be pulled from within the university, having served as an associate professor of economics, chairman of the economics department and then vice chancellor of academic affairs and provost.

Cantor announced her decision to leave in June 2014 during a phone meeting with the university’s Board of Trustees on Friday morning, the first meeting for newly appointed trustee Larry Kramer.

Kramer, president and publisher of USA Today, said he’s impressed by Cantor’s ability to lead a university in a time when innovation is needed for institutions to thrive.

“I think she embodied that spirit in her time here, and just as critically led an incredibly ambitious fund raising effort that puts the school in an excellent place after she goes,” he said in an email, referring to the billion-dollar campaign.

Among Cantor’s most prominent initiatives involves encouraging students to interact in the city of Syracuse. Don Mitchell, a Board of Trustees representative and a distinguished professor of geography, said tying SU to the city through community engagement is crucial.

“I think she was an incredibly good chancellor for the university. I didn’t always agree with her,” he said. “The reorientation of making it an urban campus, and part of the city, as incomplete and uneven and imperfect as all of that is, is really important.”

—Editor in Chief Mark Cooper and News Editor Marwa Eltagouri contributed reporting to this article.

Published on October 13, 2012 at 10:28 am

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong