BREAKING: Dell’Omo to retire in July

By Jake Tiger

Updated Sept. 11, 2024 at 12:15 a.m. Published Sept. 10, 2024 at 2:38 p.m.

Rider President Gregory Dell’Omo announced his plan to retire once his current contract ends on July 31, 2025, ending his decade-long term, per a universitywide email on Sept. 10.

“This decision has not come easily, as my time at Rider has been one of the most fulfilling chapters of my life, but after nearly a decade leading this extraordinary institution, I am looking forward to spending more time with my wife Polly, my children, and especially my grandchildren,” Dell’Omo said in the email.

Dell’Omo was not available for an interview on Sept. 10 following his announcement.

The president’s tenure will end after a tenuous period in Rider’s history in which he oversaw the controversial move of the storied Westminster Choir College to the Lawrenceville campus, the ongoing lawsuit over WCC’s former Princeton campus, a financially draining pandemic, recent dips in enrollment and the current, long-term overhaul of Rider’s place in higher education.

Dell’Omo, Rider’s seventh president, succeeded former President Mordechai Rozanski in July 2015 and oversaw various improvements to the university, including renovations to the Bart Luedeke Center, and the expansion of the Mike and Patti Hennessy Science & Technology Center. His “Transforming Students, Transforming Lives” campaign raised more than $88.7 million since it was publicly launched in 2022.

However, many of Dell’Omo’s most ambitious plans never came to fruition, including building a new, campus village-style retail and housing complex off Lawrenceville Road, or constructing an extensive addition to the Fine Arts building.

For the majority of his tenure, Dell’Omo has had a fraught relationship with Rider’s faculty. In 2017 and 2022, the university’s chapter of the faculty union held  two votes of no confidence in Dell’Omo, asking for his removal the second time. The union had never held a no-confidence vote on any prior Rider president.

Quinn Cunningham, president of Rider’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said after the announcement, “It’s a little bit of a relief in that the faculty have been sort of begging for change for a while now. … Unfortunately, the 2015 layoffs immediately broke trust between the faculty and Dell’Omo. … Our concerns are not personal. Clearly, there are a lot of people that like him. The decision-making is our problem, and we need someone fresh. We need a new perspective.”

Dell’Omo stated his vision for a “smaller, more selective” Rider during his staff and faculty convocation on Aug. 29, trimming and reshaping of the institution, possibly through program cuts and faculty layoffs. In July, 31 non-faculty positions were eliminated, 17 of which were vacant, ultimately saving the university $2.04 million in fiscal 2025.

The downsizing is tied to Dell’Omo’s “Path Forward” plan, announced in July 2023, which aims to eliminate Rider’s operating deficit by the 2026 fiscal year.

“​​The journey wasn’t always an easy one,” Dell’Omo said in his email. “In the past decade, higher education has undergone profound changes, many of which are interrelated and have broad implications for students, institutions and society at large. Higher education is encountering heightened scrutiny and criticism from various stakeholders, while simultaneously grappling with shifting student expectations, evolving workforce demands, escalating financial pressures and a looming enrollment cliff.”

Now, the president plans to step away after almost exactly a decade, a timeline Dell’Omo seemed to foreshadow in a January 2023 interview with The Rider News: “An older president, who I was very fond of as sort of a mentor today, once told me … ‘Greg, max out at 10 years.’ That’s because 10 years [is] like a magic number, because after that, you’re not really adding much value.”

Despite this, Dell’Omo remained undecided on the topic of retirement, as he clarified after the interview that this was not an official decree.

In an April 2024 interview with The Rider News, Dell’Omo reiterated his stance, saying he was taking things “one day at a time” rather than focusing on his future.

Rider’s Board of Trustees will begin a search for Rider’s next president with Trustee Joe McDougall serving as chair of the presidential search committee, according to a universitywide email from Trustee Joan Mazzotti that was sent out about two hours after Dell’Omo’s announcement.

Dell’Omo’s Sept. 10 notice gave the Board about 11 months to find a replacement before his contract expires, whereas Rozanski alerted the university 18 months prior to his departure, leading to a nationwide search that ended with Dell’Omo, who was Robert Morris University’s president from 2005 to 2015.