New UD prez feels right at home

After 28 years at Syracuse, Eric Spina says UD is an ideal fit.


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This newspaper was the first to break the news last September that Eric Spina was selected as the University of Dayton’s 19th president. We are committed to covering our institutions of higher learning and how they impact the economy, our youth, and taxpayers.

Eric Spina worked his way through his first day as president at the University of Dayton with tours, meetings and plenty of handshakes and small talk. At one point, he found himself in a wind tunnel at UD’s School of Engineering.

“Ah, I’m home,” he said.

Spina has a doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering and has worked on multi-millon dollar grants from NASA and other heavy hitters. He even has two U.S. patents, which he earned in the early 1990s while working at Syracuse University.

“I did work in very high speed flows — Mach 18, Mach 20,” he said. “At those speeds you get high temperatures and complex flows. I worked with a team to develop a certain kind of probe to do certain kinds of measurements in those flows.”

Spina’s work now includes settling in as UD’s 19th president, which this weekend includes unpacking at his Oakwood home.

On Friday he met with a few dozen community partners at Catholic Social Services of the Miami Valley. He spoke about building relationships and making sure the area’s largest private university makes its presence felt beyond its campus.

“We’re an anchor institution. We’re not going to go to North Carolina or Mexico or anywhere else,” Spina said. “Our students want to engage in the community. We shouldn’t feign to come off the hill and help the community; we want to form mutually benefical partnerships.

“The Fitz Center and other parts of the university are already deeply engaged in beneficial ways, not from the ivory tower.”

Brother Ray Fitz, UD’s president from 1979-2002, applauded the choice of Spina and credited the university’s board of trustees for laying the groundwork for a smooth transition from Dan Curran, who just finished his 14th year as UD’s top administrator.

Spina was announced as president in September and said he made seven or eight trips to Dayton prior to this week.

“He’s been here and talked to a lot of us,” Fitz said. “I’ve had two or three meetings with him and he really wants to know about the institution. He’s a good listener and you can see he’s putting things together as he goes along. I see a very positive reception by the university community.”

Sean Creighton, president of the Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education, welcomed Spina to SOCHE’s executive committee.

“He seems like a great fit with a focus on collaboration and community engagement,” Creighton said. “He’s coming from a university that’s a leader in working with community partners.”

Spina, 55, was born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., and attended Carnegie Mellon University before earning master’s and doctorate degrees from Princeton University.

He joined the Syracuse faculty in 1988 and worked his way up to vice chancellor and provost.

“I did every single job there was to do on that campus — from sweeping the floors to four months as interim chancellor,” he said.

He had a goal of becoming a university president, and sees UD as an ideal fit.

“It’s a university where nothing’s on fire,” he said. “When I was looking for an institution that might fit, it needed to value undergraduate education, be a place where research was important, but where there was an opportunity to be a partner with others, to make the region better.”

Spina called himself a “genuine person who doesn’t put on airs,” and someone who is self-aware and knows his strengths and weaknesses.

He also spoke of the importance of transparency. To that end his followers on social media will get a taste of his comings and goings on Twitter (@DaytonPrezSpina) and on Instagram.

“I’m going to try to do a picture a day, kind of a slice of a president’s life,” he said. “Groups that I meet with, students that I see. Just with a little explanation to say, ‘Look, you don’t get to see the president every day, but here’s what he does.’ “

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