Dell’Omo undecided on extension, retirement

By Caroline Haviland

Amid a period of financial uncertainty, Rider President Gregory Dell’Omo remained undecided on his future at the university with his contract set to expire in July 2025, stating that he and the Board of Trustees had not begun a discussion regarding retirement or another extension, he said in an interview with The Rider News on April 16.

In January 2023, Dell’Omo told The Rider News that his contract was extended for one year by the Board, stretching his contract to July 2025, despite criticisms of his tenure from faculty and students. 

Dell’Omo’s first of three extensions was in 2018 when his contract was renewed for four years; the second time was in 2020 when his term was extended for an additional two years until 2024, followed by the latest one-year extension to 2025.

In the recent April interview, Dell’Omo said, “We’re all too busy working on issues within the university. We have a lot of things we’re working on, so we’re just going to keep our focus on that. … Roughly a year or six months before, you begin to talk about what you’re going to do.”

He had not decided if Rider was his final stop in his career, saying, “I’m taking it one day at a time.”

The president came to Rider in 2015 after a 10-year stint as president of Robert Morris University, a private institution in Pittsburgh. Next year will mark a decade for Dell’Omo at Rider. 

 “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,” Dell’Omo said in a January 2023 interview with The Rider News. 

During that same interview, when asked if 2025 would be his final year at the university, Dell’Omo responded, “I think so,” but when the article was published, he sent a universitywide email denouncing the claims. 

The Rider News released the transcripts of the interview, and in a second universitywide email, Dell’Omo replied, “It is readily apparent that I was too ambiguous when speaking about the subject of retirement. I should have been much clearer. Though my contract currently ends July 31, 2025, I truly have not made any definitive decisions about retirement at this moment.”

Rider’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors has voiced its strong opposition of Dell’Omo’s presidency, as most recently, union members silently protested Dell’Omo’s university convocation in August 2023, holding signs commanding the president to resign. 

AAUP President Quinn Cunningham said, “We’ve had two votes of no confidence in [Dell’Omo], and the second one was specifically asking for his removal. We are very hopeful that we will be getting a new president in the next couple of years.” 

Dell’Omo, unsure if he will extend his contract or retire, remained focused on the university’s current financial situation.

“We’re so focused on working on all of these challenges we have; I don’t really think beyond,” Dell’Omo said. “We’re trying to take care of the summer, the fall, just looking at those major milestones you hit every year in terms of running the university and making sure things are on track.”