Already one month in office, Monica Rimai is PSU’s new vice president of finance and administration (FADM).
“I’ve known about Portland State for a long time,” Rimai said. “It’s an amazing place and I’m very attracted to this part of the world. So, when the opportunity came up, I applied.”
Already one month in office, Monica Rimai is PSU’s new vice president of finance and administration (FADM).
“I’ve known about Portland State for a long time,” Rimai said. “It’s an amazing place and I’m very attracted to this part of the world. So, when the opportunity came up, I applied.”
Rimai, 49, born in Massachusetts and raised in Michigan, was the unanimous choice of the 18-person search committee charged with finding previous Vice President Lindsay Desrochers’ successor. Rimai caught the attention of the committee and PSU President Wim Wiewel with her qualifications.
“We saw one candidate who was overwhelmingly head-and-shoulders above the others,” said Wiewel.
Normally a handful of candidates are selected for further interviews after the preliminary round; in this case, the search committee focused their attention solely on Rimai.
“Rimai is a worthy successor to a string of superb vice presidents,” Wiewel said. “[Hiring her has been] a slam dunk all around. She has affirmed everyone’s expectations.”
Rimai is a lawyer by training, but comes to Portland State from Albany, N.Y., where for the past two years she was senior vice chancellor and chief operating officer of the State University of New York. Prior to her time with SUNY, she gained 10 years of administrative experience at the state universities at Cincinnati, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Rimai is very pleased to once again be working on a college campus. SUNY is a collection of 64 separate institutions that span the state of New York, and Rimai’s responsibilities at SUNY were system-wide. Her office was in the system’s administrative headquarters in Albany, separate from the University at Albany campus.
“I really missed being on a campus,” Rimai said. “The work is much more compelling when you’re connected to students and faculty.”
Rimai is enthusiastic about the opportunities that PSU and the city of Portland present. “PSU is growing in terms of its research, its footprint, its enrollment and its reputation,” Rimai said. PSU’s respected standing among a coalition of urban-serving research universities was its primary draw for Rimai.
Urban-serving universities are those that actively engage with their surrounding communities to help solve social issues. These universities acknowledge that they do not work in isolation and consider community involvement a part of their mission. According to Rimai, PSU is a leader among the small group of urban-serving universities. “I want to be part of an institution that feels that sense of responsibility,” she said. “We are in the business of creating opportunity. Linking opportunity creation directly with the communities we live in is incredibly satisfying.”
The office of FADM manages auxiliary services like parking and housing, the budget process, business services, planning, real estate, IT campus security and sustainability. Rimai compares FADM to scaffolding that buttresses the institution by strengthening its infrastructure, thereby enabling it to pursue its mission. “Our job,” Rimai said, “is really to facilitate the substantive work that our faculty, deans, student affairs leaders and researchers do.”
Rimai’s enthusiasm for her new colleagues is returned in kind. Portland State’s Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Jackie
Balzer is eager to work with FADM’s new vice president. “We are blessed to have someone with [Rimai’s] experience,” Balzer said, adding that Rimai has the right background for the job and is a person of incredible vision whose values match those of the university.
Rimai’s vision for FADM aligns with that of her predecessor Desrochers. Rimai intends to continue Desrochers’ work aimed at growing and reinforcing public-private partnerships, which are elemental to the university’s mission.
Enthusiastic about her new place at the university, Rimai is also grateful to be living in Portland. She says her first six weeks here have been terrific. “It is an eminently livable community,” Rimai said. “The city as a whole—and the university reflects this—is a very welcoming place for people who are not from around here.”
Rimai describes herself as an avid outdoors person who loves the mountains, hiking and climbing. She has enjoyed visiting Portland and the Pacific Northwest before, on vacation. “The idea of getting a chance to live here,” she said, “and to not need to get on an airplane to do what I really love, is fabulous.”
