N.Y. consultant picked as interim leader for TCC

A temporary leader has been picked to run Tidewater Community College when Deborah DiCroce steps down this spring.

Peter Spina, of Honeoye Falls, N.Y., will become interim president on March 1. He is expected to hold the position for about six months, or until a permanent president is named.

DiCroce, who has been president since 1998, is leaving to lead the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. In a letter to her staff this week, she called Spina "an experienced, proven executive in higher education circles, particularly community colleges."

Spina is a higher-education consultant and a former president of Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., according to a news release from Virginia's Community Colleges.

He has served as an interim community college president in the area before - at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton during 2003-04. He then spent four years as interim president of the State University of New York Institute of Technology, Utica.

Spina holds a doctorate from New York University and bachelor's and master's degrees from the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Virginia's Community Colleges spokesman Jeffrey Kraus said Chancellor Glenn DuBois will choose TCC's new president after talking to the college's board and staff and figuring out where they want to go in the next few years.

It has been DuBois' practice not to pick the interim college president for the permanent position, Kraus said.