West Chester taps former provost and long-time employee as its next president

R. Lorraine “Laurie” Bernotsky, who has worked at West Chester University for 27 years and has been on loan the last 15 months as the leader of another Pennsylvania state university, has been named West Chester’s next president.

Bernotsky, who had been West Chester’s executive vice president and provost since 2016, will begin July 1 after she finishes her acting presidential stint at Pennsylvania Western University, which was formed a year and a half ago when Clarion, Edinboro, and California Universities merged.

West Chester’s Council of Trustees in September approved a resolution that made Bernotsky, 56, who is a political scientist, the sole candidate to be considered for the job by the search committee, at least initially. After a process that included more than a dozen interviews, the committee recently voted to recommend to the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education’s board of governors that Bernotsky get the job, and the board approved that recommendation Wednesday.

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Daniel Greenstein, state system chancellor, said the search committee gathered input from hundreds of students, faculty, staff and alumni before recommending Bernotsky.

“Dr. Bernotsky has demonstrated that she is a talented higher education leader and, as such, is poised to continue advancing West Chester’s growing reputation as a great university,” Greenstein said. “For my entire tenure, I have relied upon Laurie’s thought partnership in ways that benefit all of our universities, and I appreciate her ability to see the big picture, not only for WCU but for the whole system.”

Her salary will be public, but it has not been set, said state system spokesperson Kevin Hensil; finalizing a contract begins after the vote and usually takes several months.

She will replace Christopher Fiorentino, another longtime West Chester employee, who will be retiring this summer after seven and a half years as president of the 17,100-student university, the largest in the state system.

“I’m very excited,” Bernotsky said. “This has been a dream I have nurtured for over 20 years.”

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It was on a university trip to South Africa more than 20 years ago when she was a professor that she spent a lot of time with then-West Chester president Madeleine Wing Adler and began to think about one day leading the university.

“Because we were the only two women faculty on the trip, we ended up being roommates,” she said. “She really helped me understand that as much as I love the classroom, ... that I could do more for the university as a whole if I was an administrator. I literally came home and mapped out the training I would need to do to be able to one day be the president of West Chester.

“And here I am. I am just over the moon.”

Bernotsky said she remains deeply committed to public education, which she sees as “the most powerful vehicle for social mobility and equality in our society.”

Born in Philadelphia and raised in the Lancaster area, Bernotsky got her bachelor’s degree from then-Messiah College (now a university) in political science, a master’s and doctorate from Oxford University, and another master’s from Temple University. She started teaching at West Chester in 1996 and became provost in 2016.

Her last nine-plus months as acting president of PennWest served as a great learning experience, she said. She initially went to the university on loan in September 2022 as its chief operating officer and executive vice president. Then she transitioned to the acting presidency in March.

“I’m going to come back stronger and more experienced than if I stayed,” she said.

She lives in Exton with her husband, Michael Bray, who also works for the university as coordinator of academic contracts and agreements.

Bernotsky said because she will have been gone for about two years when she starts the presidency, her first priority will be to listen and catch up on what’s been happening at West Chester.

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But she said she already knows some key areas to focus on: