University of Akron trustees to have first new leader in five years as Joe Gingo retires
The University of Akron Board of Trustees will have its first new leader in five years with Chairman Joe Gingo set to retire from the board at the end of his term in July.
Gingo, who received his law degree from Akron in 1971, has served five years as chairman, the most of any board leader since the university became a state institution in 1967. Gov. John Kasich appointed Gingo to the board in 2016.
The university will honor Gingo with the honorary doctor of humane letters degree at a commencement ceremony next month.
The trustees this week selected Lewis W. Adkins Jr. as the board's new chair and Christine Amer Mayer as the new vice chair. Adkins also received his law degree from Akron and is a partner at Roetzel & Andress' Cleveland office. He is the former board chair for the Akron Urban League. Mayer is president of the GAR Foundation.
Gingo oversaw the board during arguably the university's most tumultuous years, but leaves at a time of relative stability.
He led the board through the hiring of President Gary L. Miller at a time when the university was already facing significant financial challenges and declining enrollment.
"Indeed, it was his clear-eyed understanding of those challenges and opportunities and his informed optimism about our prospects that were the most important factors for Georgia and I when we decided to come join the (university.)," Miller said at a trustees meeting Wednesday.
Those challenges only escalated with the arrival of the pandemic, which precipitated a massive downsizing for the university, shrinking the size of the university's unionized faculty by about 20%. Those decisions prompted significant pushback from the faculty and the community.
Miller said it was "difficult to imagine a better partner over the past several years." He said Gingo knew how to be a "colleague, a critic, a defender, an analyst, a psychologist... a communicator and a friend."
"Joe has been all those things to me at one time or another, and it is incredible to me that he actually knew what he should be at any particular moment," he said.
Even in the few times they disagreed, Miller said, "what he really was interested in was this university and this community."
Gingo joked that he tried at least a few times to step down from the leadership role on the board and his colleagues wouldn't let him. Being on the board, he said, was "an honor and a privilege" and the university has come "a long way" in the last seven years.
"Leadership, transparency and our relationship with the faculty" were the biggest changes Gingo said he saw over that time. He called it a "very smart decision" to hire Miller. "He was the right man at the right time and we could not have made a better selection than Dr. Miller."
"Transparency — there was none," Gingo said. "I can really and honestly say that to you, none. Zero. And we've come such a long way. What I see in finance now. What I'm seeing in the provost's office now. It honestly is lightyears from where we started, and that's going to be a great benefit to all of you. Because sometimes we were operating on intuition and not data."
Gingo said the faculty relationship when he arrived was "adversarial to say the least."
"And it was as much our fault as the faculty, because we as trustees had not reached out to the faculty and told them who we are and what we believed in," he said.
They found common ground, he said, in everyone wanting to see the university to succeed.
Gingo spent 41 years with The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., starting as a design and development engineer and leaving as an executive vice president. He then became president, CEO and chairman of A. Schulman Inc. from 2008 until his retirement in 2014 and then returned as CEO and president from 2016 to 2018.
He and his wife, Linda, recently made an estate gift of $5 million to establish the Joseph M. and Linda L. Gingo School of Law Dean's Chair Endowment and, in 2019, gave a $50,000 gift to establish the Joseph M. and Linda L. Gingo Endowed Scholarship to support UA engineering students.
Gingo will remain a trustee until the end of his term in July, and afterwards will be given the title chair emeritus. Gov. Mike DeWine will appoint his replacement.
Contact education reporter Jennifer Pignolet at jpignolet@thebeaconjournal.com, at 330-996-3216 or on Twitter @JenPignolet.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: University of Akron Board of Trustees Chair Joe Gingo to retire
