Another Government Lawyer Selected to Lead Higher Education System

The Kentucky Community and Technical College System Board of Regents has selected Ryan Quarles, Ed.D. and J.D., as its fourth president. Quarles was first elected Commissioner of Agriculture in KY in 2016 and from 2011 to 2016, he served as a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives. He has spent 13 years in public service. KCTCS consists of 16 community and technical colleges.

According to the press release announcing the appointment, Quarles was first introduced to higher education policy as a college student, when he was appointed by then Governor Fletcher as the student representative to the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, the state’s higher education coordinating agency.

Quarles previously served as associate general counsel at Georgetown College and he worked in private practice.

He earned his JD from the University of Kentucky College of Law, an M. Ed. from Harvard University, and an Ed.D. in higher education administration from Vanderbilt University.

Sophie Zdatny, Chancellor of the VT State Colleges System, to Step Down at the End of December

In 2020, lawyer Sophie Zdatny was named Chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System. Prior to this appointment, she served the System as Associate General Counsel for three year and as General Counsel for three years. Last week she announced her intention to step down as Chancellor after a successful three-year tenure. She is credited with positively transforming the system despite the challenges of assuming office during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to joining the Vermont State Colleges System, Zdatny spent more than five years with the law firm Dinse, Knapp & McAndrew in Burlington, Vermont, where she represented a number of higher education clients. She previously practiced employment law with Allan Karlin & Associates in Morgantown, West Virginia, following a two-year federal clerkship with Judge Irene Keeley of the Northern District of West Virginia, and two years with Kay, Casto & Chaney, PLLC. She also taught appellate advocacy and served as an adjunct professor in the Immigration Law Clinic at West Virginia University’s College of Law.

Zdatny is a graduate of the West Virginia University College of Law.

Nichols College Pres. Glenn M. Sulmasy, on Leave Pending Coast Guard and College Investigations

When Nichols College appointed Glenn M. Sulmasy, JD, LL.M, as its 8th President in 2021, an acclaimed international law and national security expert with experience in academics, law, and government service, with 24 years of prior experience in higher education, no one imagined he may have had a sordid past. Prior to joining Nichols College, he served as provost and chief academic officer of Bryant University. Before that he served as Deputy University Counsel and later led the Humanities Department at the United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA), in New London, CT. However, now Sulmasy is tangled in allegations of a cover-up of a rape while he was an attorney working for the Coast Guard, and unfolding information about a questionable past.

Sulmasy has taken a voluntary leave from his position pending a Coast Guard investigation. The investigation was launched after an officer alleged she had been raped while at the Coast Guard Academy and that two lawyers for the Coast Guard had discouraged her from pursuing the complaint further. Things have taken a turn for the worst amid information uncovered by CNN claiming that when Sulmasy was a Dean with the Coast Guard Academy, he exchanged more than 100 sexually suggestive text messages with woman, prompting a recommendation in 2016 to bring charges against him in the military court. Further, the Coast Guard has now banned Sulmasy from the grounds of the Academy and is considering taking the rare step of demoting an officer after retirement.

Sulmasy earned his JD at the University of Baltimore School of Law (cum laude and his LLM from UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall).