Framingham State Picks Nancy Niemi As New President

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The Framingham State University Board of Trustees has selected the school's new president to replace retiring leader F. Javier Cevallos.

Nancy Niemi, the provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES), will become Framingham State's eighth president. She was selected from a field of three finalists who visited the campus in early December.

"The values at Framingham State align with my own: we share a commitment to public, fiercely student-centered education with a strong emphasis on liberal arts," she said in a news release. "There is so much at Framingham State that is already extraordinary, and I look forward to working with the university to become an even greater version of itself.”

Before UMES, which is a historically Black college, Niemi was the head of the University of New Haven's education department, and serves as director of faculty teaching initiatives at Yale University.

Cevallos, who took over as president in 2014, announced in March he would retire in 2022. The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education will likely approve Niemi's hiring in January, and she is set to start in the job on July 1.