Hiring and Firing Bytes

In appointment news …

• Bobby Fong, the longtime president of Butler University, in Indianapolis, announced last Friday that he is leaving in the spring to lead Ursinus College, a small undergraduate college in Collegeville, Pa., the Indianapolis Star reports.
• Meanwhile, another longtime president—Anthony Cernera of Sacred Heart University, in Fairfield, Conn.— is stepping down after more than two decades at the Catholic university’s helm, the Associated Press says. John J. Petillo, dean of the university’s John F. Welch College of Business, will take over as interim president, effective immediately.
• Cornell College, in Mount Vernon, Iowa, has picked Jonathan Brand, president of Doane College, in Crete, Neb., as its next president, the Des Moines Register reports. He’ll assume his new post on July 1, 2011.

In other news …

• Christopher Newport University, in Newport News, Va., will offer some tenured faculty members half-pay for two years if they promise to retire on June 1, 2011, according to an article in the Daily Press. To be eligible for the voluntary early-retirement plan, faculty members must be 63 or older by Aug. 15, 2011, and have served full time at CNU for at least 20 years, the local newspaper notes.
• Three Italian researchers at the University of Catania, Sicily, took home an Ig Nobel prize last month for showing mathematically that organizations would be better off promoting people at random than on the basis of merit, The Guardian reports.