Edward Feser will be St. Louis University’s next president, according to a statement from the school.
Feser will join the university in July 2025 after the current president, Fred Pestello, retires in June.
Feser currently serves as provost and executive vice president of Oregon State University where he oversees a $1.8 billion operating budget. He also was the interim vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The university said that the search for Pestello’s successor began in March and that the Board of Trustees unanimously approved Feser’s appointment on Dec. 6.
“In the Jesuit tradition of holistic leadership and inquiry, Dr. Feser brings to SLU a commitment to excellence that recognizes the interdependence of student access and success, leading-edge research, exceptional teaching, diversity and equity, institutional effectiveness, and community-engaged innovation,” Eric Engler, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in a statement.
Feser is a Roman Catholic who received his undergraduate degree at the University of San Francisco and his graduate and doctoral degrees at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
He will join a university that's grappling with a $20 million budget shortfall during this fiscal year, which led the school to lay off about 20 employees and implement a hiring freeze earlier this fall.
The deficit is caused in part by the decreasing enrollment of international graduate students who typically pay full tuition — about $36,000 or more.
The university enrolled about 1,400 new graduate students during the 2023-24 school year. It projected to enroll about 1,300 students this academic year but ended up with about 300.
In a statement issued in September, the university said the drop in enrollment was due to a decline in visas issued by the federal government to prospective students.
