The new boss at Florida International University is a familiar face.
The university promoted from within by naming Dr. Kenneth Jessell, who was serving as interim president, as its 6th president in its 50-year history.
“I am so emotional, I didn’t realize, as I said earlier, how much I love the institution as well as the support of our students, faculty, staff,” Jessell said in a news conference after the Board of Trustees gave him the job.
Jessell also served 13 years as FIU’s chief financial officer. The student body president told us Jessell is perfectly suited to the position because he’s student-centric, in tune with student concerns on housing and campus amenities.
Get South Florida local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC South Florida newsletters.
“He’s super outgoing, super charismatic, he’s super approachable,” said Cristofher Lugo, student body president.
The Board of Trustees conducted one last round of questioning before giving Jessell the job, and he covered a lot of ground, including the importance of athletics for fundraising and other reasons.
“It helps us with philanthropy, it helps us to support our existing students with jobs and internships, it’s an amazing element of FIU, and it’s not just football, it’s every sport that we have,” Jessell said.
Local
Jessell knows fundraising is a huge part of the president’s job, and so is directing the money where it can do the most good. He said his goal is to push FIU from number 72 in the public university rankings to the top 50 in three years.
“Student success is one of the key elements of US News and World Report rankings and that is first and foremost our number one priority, that’s what we’re here for, we are an educational institution,” Jessell said in a news conference after the Board of Trustees meeting.
One of the trustees asked him about dealing with the state for funding while the state is simultaneously enacting restrictions on what instructors can say in classrooms.
“We must support academic freedom,” Jessell answered.
Recently the Florida Senate president called universities “socialism factories” and Gov. Ron DeSantis has said they are “hotbeds for stale ideology” which “indoctrinate” students.
“I don’t believe that universities are socialism factories,” Jessell said in response. “I believe that anyone who looks at the work we’re doing here at FIU would agree that we are doing great teaching, objective teaching, doing teaching based on the facts, yes, we are bringing up different topics, we are bringing up different challenges that our country faced over many years, but that’s part of our history so our faculty has an obligation to bring that up in the classroom.”
For leading the state’s second-largest university, Jessell will be paid just under $1 million a year.
