Rutgers-Newark Names New Chancellor

The board of governors at Rutgers-Newark Thursday announced that Nancy Cantor, formerly the chancellor of Syracuse University, has been named the new chancellor at Rutgers.

She becomes head of the 12,000-student campus Jan. 1, 2014, university officials said.

“I am excited to welcome Nancy to Rutgers as our Newark chancellor. She is an outstanding scholar recognized internationally for her work in understanding individual perceptions and behaviors in social environments. Over her career, Nancy has also held leadership positions at some of our nation’s best schools,” Rutgers President Robert L. Barchi said.

“Rutgers-Newark is a place where all of these impulses come together in a remarkable way – as a research university creating innovation, engaging in public scholarship, educating the next diverse generation and partnering to make a difference in a remarkably resilient city where the global becomes local, and the future is being charted,” Cantor said in a statement. “I am very grateful to be able to be a part of that future, and part of the community of experts that will make it happen.”

Cantor, who will earn $385,000 a year, has been chancellor at Syracuse since 2004. Previously, the 61-year-old New York City native served as chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has also held academic and administrative posts at Princeton and the University of Michigan.

A social psychologist, she holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and Stanford University.

Cantor will take over the Newark campus months after a complex merger July 1 between most of the University of Medicine and Dentistry and the Rutgers system, which also includes a campus in Camden as well as the main campus in New Brunswick. The move is expected to bring more autonomy to the Newark campus.

Cantor blogs about higher education issues for The Huffington Post.