Penn State names 1st woman university president

When Neeli Bendapudi takes the reins as Penn State’s 19th president on July 1, officials hope her broad portfolio will help her boost the university’s struggling regional campuses.

Penn State’s board of trustees capped a 10 month national search Thursday with a unanimous vote to appoint Bendapudi, who has served as president of the University of Louisville since 2018, as the first woman and first person of color to lead Penn State.

Penn State names Dr. Neeli Bendapudi as its 19th president!

Welcome, President-elect Bendapudi!https://t.co/y82oujroSX pic.twitter.com/EyCn8uxKFI

— Penn State (@penn_state) December 9, 2021

Bendapudi, 58, is a native of the Indian state of Andrah Padresh, an agricultural region known as the rice bowl of India. She said she first came to the U.S. for graduate studies at the University of Kansas.

She holds a doctorate in marketing and has 30 years of experience in higher education, including teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level as well as administration at Ohio State, Texas A&M and Kansas.

She also served as chief customer officer of the Huntington National Bank and serves on a number of major corporate boards.

Matt Schuyler, president of the Penn State board of trustees, said Bendapudi’s broad background in academia and corporate America coupled with her reputation for integrity, collaboration and inclusion boosted her to the top 11 finalists the search committee interviewed to take the helm of the university that boasts an annual operating budget approaching $8 billion.

“This is an historic day for Penn State,” Schuyler said, introducing Bendapudi during a livestreamed board meeting.

Officials pointed to Bendapudi’s success with fundraising, increasing enrollment and boosting medical school enterprises in her prior posts.

Bendapudi is well positioned to tackle issues of equity, diversity and inclusion and perhaps as important “ will help fill some of those 5,000 empty seats at our commonwealth campuses,” said board member Ted Brown.

Although enrollment at the main University Park campus remains robust, records show 17 of Penn State’s 19 regional campuses have sustained a 26% decline in enrollment over the last two decades.

Locally, during that period, Penn State New Kensington’s enrollment declined from 1,080 to 492; Penn State Fayette, from 1,139 to 525; Penn State Beaver, 791 to 555; and Penn State Greater Allegheny, 934 to 396.

Brown said those 5,000 empty seats across the state represent about $90 million.

Bendapudi, who described herself as “an unapologetic extrovert,” said she’s eager to become a part of the Penn State community and is impressed with its reach through locations across Pennsylvania.

“My goal is for every single Penn Stater to feel invested in our enterprise. …We can only succeed as a community and our community is so broad and so wide,” she said.

Bendapudi will succeed Eric Barron. Barron, who took the helm at Penn State in May 2014, announced in February that he will retired on June 30.

The terms of Bendapudi’s five-year contract includes a base compensation of $950,000 a year with an additional $350,000 annually to be deposited into a deferred compensation account.