Deborah Freund

Round three of the presidential candidate forums starts today with Deborah Freund, a woman who colleagues say has a knack for economics and a talent for increasing retention.

Freund, the provost at Syracuse University and a distinguished professor of public administration and economics, will begin today's series for students at 2:15 p.m. in the Student Union Memorial Center North Ballroom.

In addition to provost, Freund also serves as the vice chancellor for academic affairs and is responsible for all academic decisions for the 11 schools and colleges at Syracuse, including matters of curriculum and the appointing of deans, faculty and tenured professors.

Before her career set ground in the Northeast, Freund worked for five years as vice chancellor of academic affairs and dean of faculties at Indiana University-Bloomington.

In addition, she held a nine-year tenure associate professorship and was the director of the interdisciplinary doctoral program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she was also the director of the finance and economics research program, according to her biography.

Though Freund has expertise in economics and finances, one of her strongest skills is that she understands the link between money and retention, said Nancy Cantor, chancellor at Syracuse.

Cantor said despite having limited state funding, Freund has an innovative way of creating strategies that keep both faculty and students on campus, which was a recurring issue at the first two candidate forums.

"She has certainly created a novel set of programs here that really made a huge difference," Cantor said. "That's a real innovation in her work."

These programs have included a trustee professorship program that would allow chaired professors to teach while also researching at an increased salary, said Timothy Smeeding, an economics and public administration professor at Syracuse.

When Syracuse was experiencing a faculty brain-drain crisis, Freund convinced the Board of Trustees to allocate more funds for these professors so the school would be more competitive with other institutions, said Smeeding, who has known Freund for 25 years.

To keep a watch on student progress and increase retention rates, Freund created the office of enrollment management, which organizes freshman forums and monitors the progress of students to find those who are struggling, Smeeding said.

If she knew a student planned to leave Syracuse, Freund would sometimes make visits to a student's home or find them on campus to see why they didn't want to stay, Smeeding said.

"She's really concerned with how students do," Smeeding said. "She would talk to them and ask them for feedback about what they liked and didn't like about the university."

While she has an obvious enthusiasm for student development, Cantor said, Freund also has a niche for zeroing in on interesting curriculum ideas for different fields of study.

Because Freund handles most of the decision making for curriculum and program changes, it's crucial that while she may have business in her blood, she understands the different fields an American Association of Universities research university has, Cantor said.

"She is very much engaged with different disciplines and is willing to be broad in her openness to different fields," Cantor said, "whether it be for new programming, a change in curriculum, implementing research centers or starting new educational programs."

But if Freund is selected to become the new president next fall, it will mean a big move for her and her husband, Thomas Kniesner, who is chairman for the department of economics at Syracuse.

Though Kniesner didn't feel comfortable commenting because Freund was already in Arizona, he said he's open to a change in location.

"I would move, absolutely. In a second," Kniesner said. "I'm thinking about how I'd look in red and blue already."