Joe Schwenk

Joe Schwenk is, at forty-five, the youngest president in Rockbeach University's history, and he arrived with three master's degrees, a PhD and a JD, roughly one credential for every nine years of his life. The son of two professors, he grew up in Bayonne and has spent his whole life in the New York-New Jersey metro, most recently as provost at his alma mater, Palisades State, before Osprey called. He puts academics and student success first and the Whitecaps a close second. Unlike most university presidents, he talks, at length and to anyone. He is in the student recreation center most mornings challenging undergraduates to bench-offs, works through Osprey's restaurant scene one Friday night at a time, and on game days sits in the student section at Jacobsen Stadium and The Beacon because, as he puts it, that is where the energy is. Students have adopted him as one of their own, mainly because he is never boring.