EAST LANSING, Mich. – The Michigan State University Board of Trustees has selected Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D., as its next university president at a special meeting on Tuesday.
President-designee Stanley will officially begin his term as Michigan State’s 21st president on Aug. 1, 2019, the university said.
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“Today, by a unanimous vote, the MSU Board of Trustees has elected Dr. Samuel Stanley as Michigan State’s 21st president,” said Dianne Byrum, chairwoman, MSU Board of Trustees. “Dr. Stanley is an empowering, compassionate and thoughtful leader, who will work tirelessly alongside our students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees and broader Spartan community to meet the challenges we face together and build our future.”
Stanley has been the president of Stony Brook University since 2009 and has nearly 15 years of higher education leadership experience. After earning his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, he completed his resident-physician training at Massachusetts General Hospital. He then went to Washington University in St. Louis for a fellowship in infectious diseases, eventually becoming a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Molecular Microbiology and one of the nation’s highest recipients of NIH funding. He was appointed Vice Chancellor for Research at Washington University in 2006, serving in that position until he was appointed president at Stony Brook.
Last August, the trustees appointed an 18-member search committee, co-chaired by Byrum and Melanie Foster, MSU trustee.
President Lou Anna Simon resigned in January 2018 after sports doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to decades in prison for sexually assaulting women and girls. Former Michigan Governor John Engler was named interim university president, but he resigned in January.