TodayFla. exec to become next Pa. state university chancellor
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Article RatingHARRISBURG (AP) — The president of a state university in Florida will be the next chief executive of Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities.
John Cavanaugh was selected unanimously Monday by the State System of Higher Education's board of governors to become the third chancellor in the system's 25-year history. He starts his new job July 1.
Cavanaugh, 54, is president of the University of West Florida in Pensacola, where his annual salary is $295,000. He has led the 10,500-student university since 2002.
Details of his compensation package for the Pennsylvania job were still being worked out Monday morning, system spokesman Kenn Marshall said. Cavanaugh's predecessor was one of the highest paid state employees.
Cavanaugh said he was looking forward to leading "one of the premier systems in the country."
"What excites me is that it serves a population that is very much the kind of students I've worked with — a lot of first in family (to attend college), a lot of people for whom education is a way up," Cavanaugh said in a telephone interview.
He said his first priority will be talking with the system's leadership team to learn more about how the nation's fifth-largest system works.
"To do otherwise would be a little bit presumptuous," he said.
Born in Terre Haute, Ind., and raised in Wilmington, Del., Cavanaugh said he found the Pennsylvania system job attractive for both personal and professional reasons. He noted that he and wife have relatives within a two- to-three-hour drive of Harrisburg.
Cavanaugh previously was a faculty member and administrator at Bowling Green State University, the Medical College of Ohio, the University of Delaware and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
