‘A dream come true.’ State confirms Jessell as FIU president, names Sasse UF head
In the last step of a seven-month presidential search that started in April, the Florida Board of Governors Wednesday confirmed Kenneth Jessell as the next president of Florida International University.
“The university is in good hands, and you have my support. Thank you for stepping up,” Brian Lamb, a managing director of JPMorgan Chase and board chair, told a smiling Jessell during the meeting.
The Florida Board of Governors oversees the state’s 12 public universities and had to sign off on Jessell’s promotion. Last month, the FIU Board of Trustees selected Jessell, 67, as FIU’s sixth president with an annual compensation package of nearly $1 million.
Sasse named UF president
On Wednesday, the Board of Governors also approved Nebraska U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, 50, as the 13th president of the University of Florida, approving a five-year contract that will start in February. His compensation package comes to about $1.6 million a year.
UF students protested the naming of Sasse, a GOP senator who has opposed gay marriage, as president. The Florida Faculty Senate, in a no-confidence vote, decried the selection process.
Sasse, who will leave the Senate before taking the UF job, and Jessell were the sole finalists for their respective posts under a new state law that allowed the interviewing process to take place in secret.
Sasse was previously president of Midland University in Nebraska, a small private Lutheran university. He attended Harvard University and earned a doctorate in history from Yale University.
Jessell rose to interim president in January, after Mark Rosenberg’s abrupt resignation as president amid harassment accusations. Jessell had been FIU’s chief financial officer for 13 years.
READ MORE: ‘A terrible message’ for women: Hispanic, Black faculty protest Rosenberg’s return to FIU
The state board spent roughly 12 minutes on Jessell’s hiring during its meeting; only two of the 17 members asked him questions.
Timothy Cerio, the general counsel and chief legal officer of Citizens Property Insurance Corp., asked about Jessell’s commitment to the free expression statement adopted by the state board in 2019. The statement calls for not stifling “the dissemination of any ideas, even if other members of our community may find those ideas abhorrent.”
Jessell acknowledged the statement, saying, “You cannot have a quality higher education without free expression, and that means you have to provide opportunities for divergent points of view so they can be debated in a very, very civil way.” He said FIU has modified its policies to ensure discussion.
Deanna Michael, a professor of higher education and policy at the University of South Florida, asked how FIU will contribute to the economy in the greater Miami area.
Jessell said most FIU graduates stay in Miami-Dade County after graduating. And he plans to work with local businesses and the FIU administration to make sure the university fulfills the workforce needs and updates the curriculum as appropriate.
‘Dream come true’
Jessell called the decision by the Florida Board of Governors to confirm him at FIU’s president “a dream come true.”
“As a first-generation college student in the mid-1970s, it never occurred to me that I would eventually attend graduate school to become a college professor, much less become a university president,” he wrote in an email to the university community. “Yet here I am, full of optimism and Panther pride focused and energized to get to work and collaborate with you as we usher FIU to new heights.”
For his part, Dean Colson, a Miami lawyer and the chair of the FIU Board of Trustees, called Wednesday a “celebratory day for the Panther family” in an email to the FIU students, faculty and staff.
“President Jessell is the leader that FIU needs during this pivotal moment for our institution,” Colson wrote, describing Jessell as “smart,” “strategic” and “visionary.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 7:39 PM.
