Loyack’s first ride: A year of ‘survival’

By Grace Bertrand and Caroline Haviland 

Coming into the first year of his term, Rider President John Loyack was faced with the challenges of climbing the university out of its $21.8 million deficit, enforcing mass faculty layoffs and keeping the university afloat long enough to maintain its accreditation — a task not many university presidents have taken on. 

In an exclusive interview with The Rider News on April 16, Loyack said, “Some days, it feels like my first year’s been eight minutes, and sometimes it feels like it’s been eight years. Just depends on the day you catch me.”

Taking the bull by the horns 

After decades-worth of quick fixes from past administrations to overcome these obstacles, Loyack’s approach was to lay down a new foundation of sustainable measures, almost completely restructuring the university’s framework. 

Four months into his appointment, Loyack announced his March to Sustainability Plan on Nov. 12, a detailed layout of the different steps Rider would have to take in order to get out of its debt, which required major cutbacks among faculty and students. 

Five months later, Loyack said that most of the Plan has now been implemented and the results are far better than the projections originally made in November. According to a Jan. 12 version of the Plan, the projected cash deficit for fiscal 2026 was $6.5 million, a halved amount from the $12.6 million deficit in fiscal 2025.

One major effort outside of the Plan that aided in the climb out of Rider’s financial deficit was Mercer County’s purchase of two plots of land and its facilities and services agreement with the university, totalling to a $10 million deal. 

The landmark agreement allowed Mercer County to designate most of the purchased land as open space, specifically preserving the Big Woods located in the back of Rider’s campus. 

Moving forward, Loyack said he anticipates more similar partnerships, calling it a “win-win-win.” 

He added, “Frankly, we had $10 million worth of debt that we couldn’t have repaid without that transaction. … So, it was not only a good thing to be able to repay the debt, but it was, more importantly, a $1 million-a-year of interest expenses that we can now invest in students, instead of paying a bank an exorbitant amount of interest.” 

The journey toward a positive cash surplus will continue with further execution of the Plan in the 2026-27 academic year through an end to faculty external tuition remission and reduced paid faculty development benefits, which serves as about $1 million of the Plan’s total forecasted annual savings of $11.7 million, the Jan. 12 copy of the Plan stated.

The two biggest contributors toward the Plan’s savings were employee salary reductions and faculty layoffs, supplying a projected $6.6 million and $4.5 million back to university funds. 

However, with the loss of 30 colleagues and cut benefits and salaries, faculty morale took a hit coming into spring 2026. 

In an email to The Rider News on April 21, Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Kelly Bidle said that, through conversations with constituents across campus, she has learned that an investment in faculty must be made to counteract some of the sacrifices.

A result of these conversations, she said, is a faculty development structure that is soon to be announced, which will involve a competitive selection process for faculty fellows to design and deliver programming to their peers. 

“Faculty learn best from their peers, and I want to create a robust teaching and learning collective that is led by faculty, for faculty,” Bidle said. “I believe faculty are eager to deliver and participate in more opportunities like this on campus.”

An additional initiative to tend to faculty losses was the university’s admittance into the Council of Independent Colleges on March 26, an association of colleges and universities across the United States.

The CIC’s Tuition Exchange Program grants tuition-free enrollment to full-time employees and their dependents at the 420 colleges in the council, a process that will start at Rider on Aug. 1. 

The reason for this change, Loyack said, is that tuition remission is “a benefit that’s out of market” and the university had to realign their resources amid their financial turmoil. 

He added, “We wanted to make sure that faculty and staff had some good options where tuition remission could be something that’s much more efficient from a cost perspective, but yet provides the benefits back to their family.” 

An attempt to lead Rider down greener pastures

In Loyack’s first efforts at the university, he welcomed the Presidential Hope Fund to Rider, an initiative to provide students with a financial safety net that dates back to his time at King’s College and Alvernia University. 

Since its launch in late October, the Hope Fund has allocated nearly 60 students with $200,000, according to Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff for Student Experience Mary-Alice Ozechoski, who oversees the program and was brought onto the Senior Leadership Team by Loyack, who previously worked with her at Alvernia. 

Loyack described taking the initiative to “a different level” at Rider compared to the prior institutions, saying “[At Alvernia] in 2.5 years, we raised $2.5 million. Here, in 60 days we raised $2.5 million.” 

The motive behind the Hope Fund for Loyack was extending a helping hand to first-generation college students, being one himself, and making sure students were being supported financially in order to be able to progress academically. 

He said, “Someday, they’re going to go on and do great things and you sort of help get them … around the pothole. It’s one of the things that feels really good as a president.” 

As Loyack looks onward to the future of his term, he said he’s excited to finally be getting to “the fun part of being a president,” which, to him, is building new programs and new student experiences. 

With almost half of Rider’s students being first-generation college students, Loyack’s vision for Rider is to become “the first generation, experiential learning-based, outcome driven institution in New Jersey.”

“I think if we do that right, the value proposition of that’s very strong … Because we invest so many resources in [students] along the way, we get a lot of all of you to the end goal, which is what it’s all about,” Loyack said. 

How he plans to achieve this is by getting students engaged with entrepreneurs, providing free resources for them to grow and expand and planting them in the local community to help students receive experiential learning. 

He also added that he hopes to build out the health sciences program altogether at Rider, expanding beyond just degree programs into technical 12-to-16-week programs and nursing programs.  

With the potential for new initiatives, Loyack also said he planned to accommodate them with facility expansion so that the programs would have a home on campus.  

Looking back on his first year as Rider’s president, Loyack encapsulated the biggest thing he gained from the year in one word: “survival.” 

“That was the goal in year one, was to do what we needed to do to survive with the creditors; survive financially and still provide a good experience to students along the way,” Loyack said. 

As he reflected on the obstacles he faced to get there, he explained that there was also a different outlook amid the challenges.

He added, “I guess that’s the fun of obstacles, right? If you overcome them, you have the joy of getting to the other side.”