On New Year’s Day, Harvey G. Stenger Jr. will become the next president of Binghamton University. There’s much to be said about the half-a-million-dollar man, the one who jumped from engineering dean to interim provost to University president in seven months.
There is no doubt Stenger is a qualified research coordinator. He was a long-time engineering professor at Lehigh University and he’s been the dean of the School of Engineering at UB since 2006. By all accounts the man is a fundraising machine, and seems primed to push Watson even further in national rankings and put Binghamton on the map as one of the nation’s top research institutions.
But Binghamton University has five other colleges, and there should be more to this school than just research. BU has deep roots in the humanities — we were founded in 1946 as a modest liberal arts college and were known as a social science-based University until recent decades. As Stenger attempts to bolster research and engineering, he should not let Harpur College shrivel up and die.
Liberal arts programs are being cut, many remaining classes are overpopulated and graduate students are underpaid and under-appreciated. And though BU has been able to stave off the worst kinds of cuts to academic programs — we are losing things like the Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture graduate program, but at least we have a full docket of languages to study, unlike SUNY Albany — Stenger needs to strike an appropriate balance in time, effort and money among all fields of study at BU.
On a personal level, we hope Stenger will be more hands-on as president, one who leaves the Couper Administration Building’s ivory tower and regularly interacts with students — something his two predecessors, C. Peter Magrath and Lois DeFleur, opted not to do.
As a professor, students seem to have held Stenger in high regard — his average overall quality rating on www.ratemyprofessors.com, between Lehigh and UB, was a 4.6 out of 5. Stenger must prove that he can be just as engaging with students as an administrator as he apparently was as a professor, and maintain a steady, strong presence on campus.
Stenger’s $510,000 price tag seems steep — it is significantly higher than Magrath’s and DeFleur’s salaries at the time of their departures — but it’s the going rate for a University looking to establish itself as one of the country’s top learning and research institutions. Granted, it’s a fat number in a time of tuition hikes and program cuts, and we understand the public’s apprehension about his salary. But let’s let Stenger work before we evaluate his paycheck.