Lois B. DeFleur

Lois B. DeFleur, Ph.D.
President, Binghamton University
In office 1990–2010
Preceded by	Clifford D. Clark
Succeeded by	C. Peter Magrath
Personal details
Born	(1936-06-25) June 25, 1936 Illinois
Residence	Vestal, NY
Alma mater	University of Illinois Indiana University Blackburn College
Profession	Sociology
Website	[1]

Lois B. DeFleur (born June 25, 1936) was president of Binghamton University from 1990 to 2010. She came to the university after being provost at the University of Missouri. Before that she had served as a sociology professor at Missouri State University and Washington State University. She has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Illinois. She studied juvenile delinquency in Latin America and has done extensive work in the fields of deviant behavior and occupational socialization.

DeFleur became the president at Binghamton University in 1990, making her the longest serving president of the university to date. She retired at the end of July 2010 [2].

DeFleur at Binghamton

A few of the events occurring under her administration:

• Began an aggressive fundraising campaign, more than doubling giving for multiple consecutive years.
• Moved athletics to Division I from Division III, changing the school's mascot from the Colonial to the Bearcat.
• Binghamton's publications rankings increased (although some have declined drastically in recent years, such as overall ranking in the Princeton Review).
• Reorganized schools at Binghamton: the College of Community and Public Affairs and the School of Education were created July 1, 2006, from the former School of Education and Human Development.
• Funded construction of over more than a dozen new buildings, including a new residence community, university union addition, events center, academic complex and the new Downtown University Center.
• The University’s endowment has risen from approximately $8 million to $64.5 million.
• Faculty research awards have increased 60 percent.
• Binghamton completed its first-ever comprehensive gifts campaign more than a year early, and at 121 percent of its goal.
• Binghamton was designated a New York State Center of Excellence in 2006.
• Announced retirement weeks before major scandal involving the basketball team was revealed to the public.
• University was not included in rankings and lists of most competitive colleges (such as BARRON'S GUIDE TO THE MOST COMPETITIVE COLLEGES) but included as a Best Buy.;
• Implicated for ethical violations that had been hinted at throughout her tenure as university president but which were clearly described in the Kaye Report;

Retirement

DeFleur resigned in July 2010 to focus on her personal life. DefLeur retired when it became clear that details of her unethical conduct would soon become public. It is widely accepted that she resigned in complete disgrace. Her announcement on January 13, 2010 coincided with the announcement that an outside audit, one that resulted in the Kaye Report, would be conducted to explore impropriety as it pertained to the basketball scandal. The scathing report revealed a host ethical violations even though it was limited to those associated with athletics.

Criticisms

• Although the state ethics commission has never accused DeFleur of wrongdoing, some question the propriety of DeFleur sitting on boards of companies that do millions of dollars in business with the university that she oversees. For years, she was on the board of Energy East, in which she had held more than half a million dollars in stock. She is also a paid adviser to M&T Bank, a financial institution that has long had sole rights to operate on the Binghamton campus.

• While DeFleur was holding the Energy East stock (worth more than $500,000 when she sold it in 2007), the campus purchased Energy East's office building for $6.1 million across from the campus—a transaction dismissed as a sweetheart deal by local real estate experts and state officials. This deal—DeFleur says she recused herself, but her aides kept her informed on the no-bid deal—was at first rejected by the Public Service Commission, the state comptroller's office and the state attorney general. Although it was eventually approved, an assistant attorney general, Henry DeCotis, still objected to the entire transaction, arguing the school will have paid more than $140,000 too much. In addition, he said, the deal allowed Energy East to keep office and parking spaces.

• DeFleur's legacy included construction of a $33 million dollar sports arena at a university that now has one of the highest student/faculty ratios (20/1) in the country. For over a decade, Defleur's focus was to build a sports team at the expense of academic quality and regardless of the extent to which corruption and unethical conduct were required to do so.

External links

• Binghamton profile of DeFleur