Petrick

Credit: DKS Editors

A search committee to fill the vacant vice president for finance and administration position has selected three candidates to visit campus this week for open sessions.

Pat Book, vice president for regional development, chairs the committee, which was formed after David Creamer, who previously held the position, took a job at Miami University in May.

The vice president for finance and administration oversees the university budget, facilities planning and operations, public safety and Dining Services.

Gregg Floyd

Law school was a good step toward becoming a vice president for business affairs and finance at Indiana State University, Gregg Floyd said.

“(My law degree) has been a very helpful resource for me in my management,” Floyd said. “As you can imagine, there are a lot of contracts and a lot of legal matters that you get involved with in terms of relationships, partnerships, operating agreements.”

Floyd’s position at Indiana State was his most recent one. Before that, he worked for 18 years as assistant vice chancellor and director of business affairs at Indiana University in Bloomington.

If he lands the job here, there are some projects Floyd would want to be involved in right away.

“I know that the implementation and deployment of RCM (Responsibility Center Management) is something that’s going to be critical to be done properly,” he said. “So a role in helping get that started off correctly is something that would be a priority.”

He said he loves working with strategic planning and facilities master planning.

“I’ve worked in a very large institution . and I’ve worked at a very small institution,” Floyd said, “and interestingly, Kent State is on the high side of the middle of those two. I have to say the opportunities and challenges of a university of that size are terribly appealing to me.”

Richard Metz

Ohio is familiar territory for Richard Metz.

“My roots are in Ohio and so are my wife’s roots,” he said. “I was born in Toledo, and she was born in Columbus. And we are both graduates of Ohio State.”

His higher education gigs have been elsewhere, though.

Metz is vice president for finance and administration at the City

College of New York and for 12 years was vice president for administration and business affairs at California State University. He was also vice president for administrative services at Frostburg State University for eight years.

“I can bring to Kent State an awful lot of experience in the field of higher education administration,” Metz said. “It’s been my life’s work. I have been in it for over 30 years.”

He said when Kent State’s search committee asked him to consider the job in his home state, he was immediately interested.

“I know Kent State,” Metz said. “I know what a fine institution it is, and my feeling is that it would be an interesting move for me. So when they contacted me, I said, ‘Sure, put me in.'”

If Metz is hired, he said his goals “would all be around serving the mission of the university.”

Richard Petrick

Richard Petrick is the only finalist for the vice president spot who isn’t coming from another higher education institution.

For 18 years, he’s served on the staff of the Ohio Board of Regents, as the vice chancellor for finance for the last 10 of those years.

“Everything I’ve been doing at the state level, I’m 15 steps removed from the people for whom I’m hoping to make a difference,” Petrick said. “I’d like to contribute more on the campus level.”

For the Board of Regents, Petrick’s job involves overseeing the budget and allotting funds to Ohio’s public institutions. He works with budgets in the billions. Kent State’s budget is in the hundreds of millions.

But he doesn’t see it as a step down.

“It’s a higher level of exposure,” Petrick said, regarding his current job of doling out funds. “But it’s almost analogous here, in terms of the responsibilities.”

Petrick, who lives in Columbus, graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in government, and he has a graduate degree in political science from the University of Minnesota.

He said his work with the Board of Regents has made him acquainted with all of Ohio’s public universities, giving him a broad perspective.

“Where appropriate, I hope to steal every good idea out there,” he said. “It saves you the time of having to create it yourself.”

Contact principal reporter Ben Wolford at [email protected].