Albany College of Pharmacy president stepping down

PHOTOGRAPHER: Michael Goot

Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences President James J. Gozzo announced Monday that he will step down as president effective June 30, 2014.

Gozzo was hired as the seventh president of the college on July 1, 1998, and currently ranks as the longest-serving president among colleges and universities in the Capital Region. During his tenure, the college added five bachelor’s degree programs and five graduate programs around the school’s core doctor of pharmacy program; expanded the Albany campus from one building to eight and from two acres to more than 25; constructed a student center; completed an $11 million library expansion and built three residence halls; and acquired the former Bender Laboratories building for academic research.

Other accomplishments included opening in 2009 a satellite campus in Colchester, Vt., which will graduate its first class in May; increasing enrollment from fewer than 600 students in 1998 to more than 1,700 students today; and establishing the Pharmaceutical Research Institute in 2003 and subsequent addition of the Center for Nanopharmaceuticals.

The college will begin a national search for his replacement and expects to have someone in place before Gozzo retires.