Lois B. DeFleur

Lois B. DeFleur (born June 25, 1936, Illinois) is the current president of SUNY Binghamton. She came to the university after being provost at the University of Missouri. Before that she had served as a sociology professor at Missouri State University and Washington State University. She has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Illinois. She studied juvenile deliquency in Latin America and has done extensive work in the fields of deviant behavior and occupational socialization.

DeFleur became the president at Binghamton in 1990, making her the longest serving president of the university to date.

A few of her accomplishments:
*Began an aggressive fundraising campaign, more than doubling giving for multiple consecutive years.
*Moved athletics to Division I from Division III, changing the school's mascot from the Colonial to the Bearcat.
*Substantially raised Binghamton's rankings in many publications (although some have declined drastically in recent years, such as overall ranking in the Princeton Review).
*Reorganized schools at Binghamton: the College of Community and Public Affairs and the School of Education were created July 1, 2006, from the former School of Education and Human Development.
*Funded construction of over more than a dozen new buildings, including a new residence community, university union addition, events center, academic complex and the new Downtown University Center.
* The University’s endowment has risen from approximately $8 million to $64.5 million.
* Faculty research awards have increased 60 percent.
* Binghamton completed its first-ever comprehensive gifts campaign more than a year early, and at 121 percent of its goal.
* Binghamton was designated a New York State Center of Excellence in 2006.

Criticisms

* Although the state ethics commission has never accused DeFleur of wrongdoing, some question the propriety of DeFleur sitting on boards of companies that do millions of dollars in business with the university that she oversees. For years, she was on the board of Energy East, in which she had held more than half a million dollars in stock. She is also a paid adviser to M&T Bank, a financial institution that has long had sole rights to operate on the Binghamton campus. [http://www.bupipedream.com/pipeline_web/display_article.php?id=5240 "DeFleur's position on several board may violate spirit of ethics guidelines"]

* While DeFleur was holding the Energy East stock (worth more than $500,000 when she sold it in 2007), the campus purchased Energy East's office building for $6.1 million across from the campus -- a transaction dismissed as a sweetheart deal by local real estate experts and state officials. This deal -- DeFleur says she recused herself, but her aides kept her informed on the no-bid deal -- was at first rejected by the Public Service Commission, the state comptroller's office and the state attorney general. Although it was eventually approved, an assistant attorney general, Henry DeCotis, still objected to the entire transaction, arguing the school will have paid more than $140,000 too much. In addition, he said, the deal unwisely allowed Energy East to keep office and parking spaces. [http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0243,barrett,39368,1.html]

External links

* [http://www.binghamton.edu/home/about/profile.html Binghamton profile of DeFleur]