Genovese Chosen NSU President
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
Jimmy Genovese has been given the opportunity to restore the prominence for a university where he flourished as a student and athlete over 50 years ago.
Genovese, 74, a Louisiana associate State Supreme Court justice who grew up in Opelousas,,was selected by the Louisiana Board of Supervisors on Thursday afternoon as the 21st president of Northwestern State University where he received an undergraduate degree in 1971.
The selection of Genovese, who has a 50-year law career, came during a Board of Supervisors meeting on the NSU campus, where he excelled as a student organization leader, fraternity president and the top seed on the Demons’ men’s tennis team.
His role as the 21st president at NSU Genovese said after his selection was announced, will be to revitalize the identity of a school which has recently lost several head coaches in a number of major sports. Enrollment figures at NSU have decreased since the onset of the COVID-epidemic.
In 2018 Genovese, who graduated from AIC (now Opelousas Catholic), was inducted into the Northwestern Alumni Hall of Fame. Genovese is married to the former Martha Janes.
“My vision will be to reinvigorate and rejuvenate Northwestern. I have chosen this as perhaps my final endeavor in my employment career. It means so much to me that I am willing to forego the remaining two years of my (Supreme Court) tenure to help the institution that allowed me to get to where I am today,” Genovese said during a post selection press conference.
Genovese emerged on Tuesday as the lone finalist for the NSU position that became vacant in May when former president Marcus Jones announced he was leaving the university after he became president in 2021.
Jones resigned in order to take a senior advisory position to University of Louisiana System president Rick Gallot.
Jose Cantu, vice-chancellor of enrollment management at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, was also interviewed on Tuesday on the NSU campus along with Genovese.
Genovese however maintained an inside track for the position after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry announced early in June that he was casting his support for Genovese.
A search committee began the search for the NSU president on June 10.
During a telephone interview with The Current Sauce student newspaper last week, Genovese said that he was concerned that the university losing its public perception as a university whose image had become tarnished.
“I hate to see Northwestern not living up to its prominence it once had. We need to stop the bleeding. We need to work real hard towards invigorating and rejuvenating (NSU),” said Genovese
Genovese pledged during the interview to “get out in public and show the people that NSU is one of the finest universities that you can have. I’m a people person and I ike to get out in public. I don’t sit in my office.”
