The Ithaca College Board of Trustees will hold its first meeting of the 2006–7 academic year Wednesday–Friday, October 11–13. The meeting will include five new members elected within the past year and will be the first since 2001 without William Haines at the helm. After reaching the five-year maximum for serving as board chair, Haines has been elected chair emeritus.
Haines joined the board of trustees in 1996 and had chaired the Executive Committee and the Building and Grounds Committee prior to being elected board chair in 2001. In naming him chair emeritus, his fellow trustees praised Haines’s “outstanding vision, leadership and service” to the college and noted that he will continue to play a vital role as an advisor to the board and to president Peggy R. Williams.
Named acting chair was vice chair C. William Schwab, who will serve in that capacity until the annual officer elections are held in May 2007.
The October board meeting will also include the five members elected within the past year. Joshua Keniston ’08 is serving for two years as a student trustee, while John McClung, Susan Pervi, Sandra Pinckney ’70 and Lawrence Smith ’69 are each serving four years as term trustees.
Joshua Keniston
Keniston is a junior, majoring in television-radio and minoring in organizational communication, learning and design in the Roy H. Park School of Communications. His campus activities have included serving on the Ithaca College Election Committee, Resident Assistant Selection Committee, and LeaderQuest. He has also worked as a resident assistant, enforcing college policy in the residence halls and planning programs that fostered the development and transition of first-year students. In addition, he raced with the varsity crew team last year as a sophomore. He attends the college on a four-year Ithaca Leadership Scholarship, awarded to students with a demonstrated record of leadership.
Keniston recently studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris and spent an additional month touring Europe. His summer employment has included serving as an assistant instructor, intern and rehabilitation aide for Work First, an agency that assists in finding work for individuals with developmental disabilities. He has also operated his own professional photography studio. He served as chair of the Teen Issues Committee at Maranacook High School in Readfield, from which he graduated in 2004.
John McClung
From 1970 to 1988, McClung served in a variety of management capacities with GNB Incorporated—a subsidiary of Pacific Dunlop—including vice president of operations and vice president and general manager of the Automotive Battery Division. In 1991–92 he served as chairman and chief executive officer of Moniterm Corporation, a manufacturer of high resolution monitors and control boards.
McClung holds an undergraduate degree in business from Valparaiso University and an MBA from Roosevelt University. He has served on the boards of directors of Rollouts Inc. and Electrosource, and his community activities have included membership on the United Way of Central Virginia Board of Directors. He currently volunteers at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and Loaves and Fishes.
He and his wife, Paula, cochaired the Ithaca College Parents Fund Committee from 1996 to 1998. Their daughter Alison ’98, M.S. ’99, earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees in physical therapy from the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance.
Susan Pervi
Since 2002, Pervi has served as vice president for student life at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She had previously held positions there as vice president for administration (1987–2002) and director of resident life and food services (1982–87). She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the SUNY College at Geneseo and a master’s degree in higher education/college student personnel from Bowling Green State University.
A member of the Catholic University’s Strategic Reconfiguration Initiative Committee, Pervi has extensive experience across all facets of higher education, including institutional planning; student development; academic support services; financial, human resource and physical plant management; and curriculum development. An active volunteer in her community, she has served on the Jobs for DC Graduates Task Force; the District of Columbia Redistricting Task Force, Strategic Economic Development Planning Group, and Transportation Planning Group; and the board of directors of the ARC of the District of Columbia, among other organizations.
Pervi and her husband, Peter, are the parents of Kristina, who graduated from Ithaca College in 2002 after serving a two-year term as student trustee. To honor their daughter and her achievements, the Pervis established the Pervi Family Scholarship Fund and the Pervi Family Fund, endowments that provide financial aid to deserving students enrolled in the School of Humanities and Sciences Honors Program and general support for the program.
Sandra Pinckney
Pinckney travels the country sampling regional foods prepared the old-fashioned way, and she gets paid for it! She is the host of the Food Network’s “Food Finds,” which features her visits to small shops and local vendors in search of specialty foods. Before joining the cable network, she accumulated a long list of television credits. She served as a producer for Oprah Winfrey’s first television talk show—“People are Talking”—and as a health reporter and news anchor at WJZ-TV in Baltimore; as a news anchor for that city’s WMAR-TV; and as a reporter/anchor for Fox Television’s “The Hidden Truth.”
A 1970 sociology/anthropology graduate of the School of Humanities and Sciences, Pinckney also took graduate courses in communications at the college. In 1992 and again in 2004, she returned to speak at the Professionals Symposium, which is held annually as an opportunity for African, Latino, Asian, and Native American (ALANA) alumni to meet and network with current students. She currently serves on the Roy H. Park School of Communications Advisory Committee.
Pinckney volunteers for several nonprofit organizations, including the Ronald McDonald House.
Lawrence Smith
A 1969 graduate of the School of Business, Smith is the executive vice president and co-chief financial officer of Comcast Corporation, the nation’s leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services. He is responsible for all corporate development, internal and external reporting, taxation and other administrative and oversight matters for the company.
Smith has an extensive background in financial management. Prior to joining Comcast in 1988, he had served as chief financial officer of the financial services firm Advanta Corporation and as a tax partner in the Philadelphia office of Arthur Andersen & Co., where he also headed the international business and merger and acquisition practices.
In addition to serving on the boards of Comcast subsidiaries E! Entertainment Television and the Golf Channel, Smith is a board member of Air Products and Chemicals Inc., MGM Holdings Inc., Meadowood Corporation, the YMCA of Greater Philadelphia and Vicinity, and the Perkiomen School. In 2004 he was a co-recipient of the CFO of the year award from the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association, and in 2004 and 2006 he was named among America’s best CFOs by “Institutional Investor” magazine.
Smith’s service to Ithaca College has included membership in the President’s Associates and on the School of Business Volunteer Committee.
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