Rhona Free is president of the University of St. Joseph, formerly a women’s college until Free shifted it to co-ed in 2018.
She’s also recruited some high-profile staffers, bringing aboard former legendary UConn basketball coach Jim Calhoun to develop a new men’s basketball program in 2018, and longtime TV news anchor Dennis House as a digital media professor last year.
After closing the USJ campus in the 2020 spring semester amid the pandemic, Free led a reopening for the following fall and spring semesters, while requiring residential students to complete a seven-day quarantine before returning to in-person classes.
Since Greg Woodward became president of the University of Hartford in 2017, he’s initiated plans to build a new $58-million, 62,000-square-foot academic building that will provide a state-of-the-art facility for two of the private college’s most in-demand and growing majors: engineering and nursing.
Amid COVID-19, Woodward was forced to close his campus in March, cancel in-person classes and implement virtual learning for the rest of the 2020 spring semester. UHart welcomed residential students back on-campus last fall and for the spring, 2021 semester.