SUNY Empire State College appoints Bejou as provost

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — SUNY Empire State College announced it has appointed David Bejou provost and executive VP for academic affairs.

Bejou will be responsible for the “academic enterprise” of SUNY Empire, including the education of nearly 19,000 students at 34 locations across the state, eight international locations, face to face, and online, at the associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degree levels, the college said in a news release.

SUNY Empire has eight locations in Central New York — at Fort Drum, Watertown, Utica, East Syracuse, Auburn, Binghamton, Ithaca, and Corning.

Bejou currently is dean of the College of Business and Social Sciences at West Virginia State University.

For the past 25 years, Bejou has worked in academic and administrative leadership roles of increasing responsibility and complexity. That includes nearly 18 years at the historically black colleges and universities of West Virginia State University; Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, N.C.; and Virginia State University, Petersburg, Virginia.

“David Bejou’s record of success in public higher education in teaching, learning, scholarship and research, as well as his commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, make him the ideal individual to lead SUNY Empire as its chief academic officer,” Merodie A. Hancock, president of SUNY Empire State College, said in the release.

Bejou begins his new leadership role with the college on July 1.

Bejou completed a Ph.D. in business administration, with a minor in psychology, at the University of Memphis; an MBA in aviation, with a minor in aviation management, from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida; and a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, with a minor in English literature, from the College of Literature and Foreign Languages in Tehran, Iran.

Prior to his career in higher education, Bejou spent 10 years as a manager, area supervisor and consultant in several industries, including hospitality, financial services, and aviation, where he worked as an aviation technician for 10 years on F-5 and F-4 General Electric jet engines.

 

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