President of SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry Resigns

Quentin Wheeler’s firing of department chairs earlier this year didn’t sit well with university faculty members.

kerry grens
| 1 min read

Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
1:00
Share

WIKIMEDIA, DASONNENFELDQuentin Wheeler, an entomologist and the president of SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), will leave his leadership post at the end of June. Wheeler had made controversial decisions as head of the college, including firing three department chairs in January, and the faculty has expressed displeasure with his actions.

“Opposition to initiatives focused on the financial, academic, and research foundations of the College have become a distraction to our students, faculty and staff, and the administration,” Wheeler said in a statement yesterday (March 21). “Because I am the face of the change represented by those initiatives, too much attention is being diverted from the necessary work of the College by my continued presence.”

Wheeler is the founding director of the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) at ESF and became president of the college in 2014. But faculty members, for the most part, disagreed with his hiring decisions and plans for the school’s finances. Back in 2016, a majority of faculty members expressed a lack of confidence in Wheeler’s leadership, and again this month ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

The Scientist Logo
Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!
Already a member? Login Here

Keywords

Meet the Author

  • kerry grens

    Kerry Grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

Share
3D illustration of a gold lipid nanoparticle with pink nucleic acid inside of it. Purple and teal spikes stick out from the lipid bilayer representing polyethylene glycol.
February 2025, Issue 1

A Nanoparticle Delivery System for Gene Therapy

A reimagined lipid vehicle for nucleic acids could overcome the limitations of current vectors.

View this Issue
Enhancing Therapeutic Antibody Discovery with Cross-Platform Workflows

Enhancing Therapeutic Antibody Discovery with Cross-Platform Workflows

sartorius logo
Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Considerations for Cell-Based Assays in Immuno-Oncology Research

Lonza
An illustration of animal and tree silhouettes.

From Water Bears to Grizzly Bears: Unusual Animal Models

Taconic Biosciences
Sex Differences in Neurological Research

Sex Differences in Neurological Research

bit.bio logo

Products

Tecan Logo

Tecan introduces Veya: bringing digital, scalable automation to labs worldwide

Explore a Concise Guide to Optimizing Viral Transduction

A Visual Guide to Lentiviral Gene Delivery

Takara Bio
Inventia Life Science

Inventia Life Science Launches RASTRUM™ Allegro to Revolutionize High-Throughput 3D Cell Culture for Drug Discovery and Disease Research

An illustration of differently shaped viruses.

Detecting Novel Viruses Using a Comprehensive Enrichment Panel

Twist Bio