Laursen to leave role as SUNY Poly acting president

ALBANY, N.Y. — SUNY Polytechnic Institute Acting President Tod Laursen will end his tenure at the university, which has campuses in Albany and Marcy, on Dec. 14.

Steve Ference, director of university communications, confirmed to CNYBJ that Laursen is departing, but did not provide any further information.

“We appreciate the many contributions of Dr. Tod Laursen during his time at SUNY —first as provost for the system and now as acting president of SUNY Poly,” SUNY Press Secretary Holly Liapis said in an email. “We expect to announce interim leadership in the coming weeks.”

Along with his role as acting president, Laursen served as senior vice chancellor and provost of SUNY since September 2018.

Laursen was recently a finalist for the role of president at Florida Gulf Coast University but withdrew from consideration on Nov. 14. According to an article by Eagle News of Fort Myers, Florida, Laursen was moving forward with another opportunity.

The SUNY Board of Trustees appointed Laursen as SUNY Poly’s acting president in December 2020. He came to SUNY from Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, according to his bio on the SUNY Poly website.

Laursen was a faculty member at Duke University between 1992 and 2010, with appointments in civil engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering. He also served as chair of the mechanical engineering and materials science department from 2008 through 2010 and senior associate dean for education in the Pratt School of Engineering from 2003 to 2008.

Laursen earned his Ph.D. and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree from Oregon State University. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the International Association of Computational Mechanics, and the United States Association for Computational Mechanics.