The Governors State University Board of Trustees unanimously voted to approve a contract with Joyce Ester, who officially will become the university’s seventh president on July 1.

Ester, who was selected from a pool of 62 candidates for the position, has had a long career in higher education. GovState will be her third post in a top leadership position at a college. She was the president of City Colleges of Chicago’s Kennedy-King College before holding her last role as President of Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota, for more than a decade.

While she was not present at the April 24 Board of Trustees meeting, in a statement released by the GovState Communications Office, Ester said she is honored to have been selected as the next president of GovState.

“I look forward to joining this community that is dedicated to student success and whose core value of ‘deliberate university focus on student achievement of academic, professional and personal goals’ resonates deeply with my own,” Ester said.

Ester, a native of Phoenix, Illinois, holds a Ph.D. in Education and a Master of Arts in Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Northern Illinois University. She is also the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Higher Learning Commission.

GovState Board Chair James Kvedaras described the day as bittersweet. While he applauded the presidential search committee for their hard work in selecting Ester, the community was still reeling from hearing the news of the death of the university’s recently retired president, Cheryl Green the night before.

Green retired in March, having announced her retirement in August of the previous year. At the time, she told the community that she had been battling an illness.