The next president of Slippery Rock University was formally introduced to students, faculty and the community on Thursday.
William Behre will be the school’s 17th president. He will start July 1.
“I don’t know if it’s possible to be both proud and humbled at the same time but that’s where I am…and I guess it’s not the first time I’m going to sound like Yogi Berra in front of you,” Behre said with a chuckle in front of a packed, standing-room-only crowd inside the Smith Student Center on SRU’s campus. “Over the next few months I look forward to working with interim-president Philip Way on a transition. If you see me here in May, I’m a student. I need to learn.”
Behre comes to Slippery Rock from a small, private school in New Jersey, but he is familiar with Pennsylvania.
“I spent 16 years in a small town in Bucks County,” he said. “The state system is very familiar to me. I’m very knowledgeable as a parent and a consumer about the system and the structure of it. As for the local roads, I’m still learning.”
It was a long search process for the school’s next leader. University officials started the search at the beginning of 2017, but the board of trustees couldn’t come to a decision. The search process was restarted last fall.
