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The Student Voice of MSU Denver
Volume 39, Issue 22 February 15, 2017
Board of Trustees finalizes Janine Davidson as new president By Esteban Fernandez eferna14@msudenver.edu
Janine Davidson outside of the Student Success Building shortly after she was voted in and named the next president of MSU Denver on Feb. 14. Photo by Lauren Cardova • scordova@msudenver.edu
Months of searching concluded Feb. 14 when the MSU Denver Board of Trustees moved to formally appoint Janine Davidson as the successor to President Stephen Jordan. The appointment was preceded by a two-day visit to campus during which Davidson met with faculty, staff, administrators and others. Students had the opportunity to meet Davidson in an open forum held on Feb. 13. During the forum, Davidson reiterated her commitment to making herself accessible to students throughout her tenure. “To come be university president because you care and love students and then to sequester yourself and not be available to students would be sort of weird,” she said. “My leadership approach is to be open, transparent and available. There’s multiple ways to do that. If you invite me to things, I will come.” Davidson’s contract begins July 2017 and ends June 30, 2020. Her annual salary will be $300,000. Davidson comes to MSU Denver after serving as undersecretary of the Navy for nearly one year. Prior to that, she taught courses at George Mason University related to national security policy and military-civilian relationships. The incoming president is no stranger to Colorado either. She received a degree in architectural engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder before embarking on a 30-year military career in the Air Force. She was the first woman to fly a tactical C-130. Davidson also holds a doctorate in international studies from the University of South Carolina. Davidson said through an email statement that she will draw from her combined military and civilian experience to guide MSU Denver
“To come be university president because you care and love students and then to sequester yourself and not be available to students would be sort of weird. My leadership approach is to be open, transparent and available. There’s multiple ways to do that. If you invite me to things, I will come.” – Janine Davidson throughout her tenure. At the student forum and a later Board of Trustees gathering, she said she intended to follow through on Jordan’s work. In the same email statement, she said she was 100 percent committed to keeping MSU Denver on track to becoming an Hispanic Serving Institution. Davidson also said that she would work to strengthen the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program at MSU Denver by identifying obstacles and eliminating them for DACA students. She called it the right thing to do. One of the major challenges that Davidson said the school faces is the Colorado General Assembly. “In a perfect we’d have a partnership with the taxpayers and the legislature and they would understand the value of higher education and they would actually fund higher education at the levels that they used to fund higher education,” she said. “Don’t think I’m not going to continue to fight for that, because I think that it’s time we turned this in America around.”
Derrick Clark takes unexpected leave of absence By David Schaut dschaut@msudenver.edu
Fresh off of his 3-game suspension, MSU Denver men’s basketball head coach Derrick Clark has taken an indefinite leave of absence. The athletics department announced the leave of absence via press release on Feb. 10. “Derrick Clark has chosen to take
indefinite leave of absence. During his absence, Adam Wall and Michael Bahl will serve as co-head coaches for the Roadrunners. Because this is a personnel matter, further details will not be provided or discussed.” Clark has not coached the team since the imposition of his suspension on Jan. 28. The reason Clark was disciplined was not released by the department. The only information provided was that the suspension was the a personnel matter and not a legal matter.
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A Colorado Open Records Act request fi led with MSU Denver by The Metropolitan for more information is pending. The Runners are 3-2 since Clark’s departure, and their two losses have come against Regis and Westminster, two teams ahead of them in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference standings. Their next game is at home against University of Colorado - Colorado Springs on Feb. 18 at 7:30 p.m.