Q30 Television and The Quinnipiac Chronicle held an exclusive sit-down interview with Quinnipiac University President Judy Olian for the sixth year in a row. Olian announced on Aug. 23 she will be leaving the University at the end of the 2024-25 academic school year.
In this conversation, Olian explains her departure along with her final goals for this academic year.
Last year, Quinnipiac saw numerous instances of hate crimes; Olian was asked how her administration will work to prevent incidents like this in the future.
Below is a portion of the interview.
Julia Barcello, Q30 Television News Director (JB): On Friday, [Aug. 23.], you made your announcement that you will be stepping down from your position at the end of the academic year, so when did you make this decision?
Judy Olian, Quinnipiac University President (JO): You know, you don’t make a decision like this from a job that is really a vocation in your life easily, you think about it and it has such implications for what you’re going to do, what your plans are, how you leave the institution, how you leave your team, what impact you had. So I’d been thinking about it for a while. Thinking about when the timing would be good, and you know it’s never perfect timing. You want to go out when things are going great, which they are sometimes if things are not going well, you want to stay to fix them, that is not the case. And so you leave but you know there’s so much more to do, you have plans for the future, I don’t think we’re [Quinnipiac] going to be slowing down at all this year.
JB: In your announcement on Friday you described this year as ‘sprinting to the finish line’, can you elaborate on how you plan to put that to action?
JO: Pragmatically I will not be thinking about the fact that this is my last year… I have always been proud of and sometimes criticized for the fact that I move pretty fast in terms of the pace that we lead with and change. Our strategic planning will have some audacious goals associated with it. If you see what we accomplished this year with your help and the help of others, it is a fantastic entering class and not just the largest class in recent years, but one that has said that Quinnipiac is their first choice institution… I think it’s really continuing this amazing trajectory of improvements that are necessitated to be an excellent institution not just today or in five years but in 25 years.
JB: Going back to last year momentarily, the University saw multiple instances of anti-semitism across campus. This year, how will the university administration work to prevent that?
JO: Those were very sad incidents and troubling, and any incident of hate speech, and any kind of hate crime is tragic and inconsistent with our values as an institution where we accept and lord free speech. But we do not accept violations of our code of conduct which include insightful speech or any form of speech that evokes hateful symbols… We will take a strong stance, not just using the code of conduct but also reminding people of the values we stand for.
You can watch the full 25-minute interview above or on our YouTube channel.
