The dean of the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis has been named chancellor of Syracuse University. The university announced Thursday that Kent D. Syverud was selected as Syracuse's 12th chancellor and president in a unanimous vote Wednesday afternoon by the college's board of trustees. He will succeed Nancy Cantor, who will become chancellor of Rutgers University's Newark, N.J., campus on Jan. 1.
The 56-year-old native of Irondequoit, near Rochester, was dean of Vanderbilt University Law School from 1997 to 2005. Before that, he served as associate dean for academic affairs and was on the faculty at the University of Michigan School of Law; an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C.; and a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He's currently a trustee of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill trust.
