Stepping down
Sources say Johnson heading for post at Ohio State University
SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson expected to leave for a job at Ohio State.
State University of New York Chancellor Kristina Johnson plans to leave her job for a role at The Ohio State University, according to two state officials with knowledge of the situation.
She has not handed in her resignation yet and it is unclear when SUNY will announce her departure. A spokeswoman for the university system said she could not confirm that Johnson was stepping down.
Johnson, who earns $560,000 as SUNY chancellor, joined the university system in September 2017. She is an electrical engineer and inventor by trade who previously worked as undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in the Obama administration.
She is leaving in the wake of a global health crisis and a period of financial uncertainty for SUNY’S 64 campuses. In March, the COVID-19 pandemic forced SUNY buildings to close and Johnson oversaw a systemwide transition to remote learning.
Colleges and universities are facing significant losses associated with refunded room-and-board for the spring and summer semesters as well as lower than projected enrollment. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, during the COVID-19 outbreak, asserted more control over SUNY and its campuses, announcing the closure of all public universities and taking action to transform vacated SUNY buildings on Long Island into makeshift medical facilities to handle the influx of patients. Local SUNY colleges, including University at Albany, hosted regional coronavirus testing sites.
Johnson recently spearheaded a task force to work with the governor’s team on the coronavirus response. The university system contributed research on the deadly virus and dispatched first-responders from SUNY’S Upstate University Hospital to hotspot locations.
Johnson took the helm of the nation’s largest public university system during a period of transition. The state had recently announced the Excelsior Scholarship, which made college tuition-free for thousands of middle-class New Yorkers, but it would be accompanied by statewide tuition increases.
She has previously served as dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, as well as provost of Johns Hopkins University. She holds a bachelor’s, master’s and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and today has 118 U.S. and international patents to her name.
Her prominent inventions include a camera that detects pre-cancerous cells on a cervical smear.