A Year After Controversy Toppled Its Divisive President, Mount St. Mary’s Forges Ahead

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Behind Timothy E. Trainor’s desk here is a small white placard bearing the Mount St. Mary’s University logo and a simple phrase: “Forward! Together as one.”

It’s the name of the Maryland university’s forthcoming fund raising and marketing campaign, the interim president says. It’s also been a mantra for administrators, faculty members, students, and alumni at this Roman Catholic college since the spring 2016 semester, when the previous president, Simon P. Newman, thrust the institution into a national spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

You know the history: Mr. Newman, who came from the finance world, had a plan to cull 20 to 25 low-achieving freshmen early in the fall semester in an attempt to bolster the university’s official retention numbers. The Mountain Echo, the campus newspaper, quoted the president as telling a faculty member: “You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”

He later abruptly fired two faculty members and demoted the provost.

Outrage spread, and Mr. Newman reinstated the professors, but he would not outlast the controversy that engulfed his presidency. He resigned at the end of February 2016, little more than a month after his first comments came to light.

Now that a full academic year has passed, people on this tight-knit campus would like to think of Mr. Newman as a brief blip on the 209-year-old university’s radar.

Mr. Trainor, a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army and formerly dean and chief academic officer of the U.S. Military Academy, in West Point, N.Y., is widely praised for bringing stability and strong leadership to the institution at a critical time. Faculty members say they don’t often talk about the former president. If students mention Mr. Newman, said Sydney Johnson, a sophomore, “it’s more of a joke than anything.”

Freshman enrollment for this coming fall has recovered after a steep decline in 2016. Retention of first-year students from the first to second semester — one of the issues that sparked Mr. Newman’s bunnies comment — was 94 percent this academic year, 10 points higher than just two years ago, according to the university.

There’s no doubt that Mr. Newman left a mark on this campus. (Attempts to reach Mr. Newman were not successful.) But Mount St. Mary’s has done its best to make the bunnies and the Glocks a distant memory.

Healing and Rebuilding

Coming into this academic year, Mr. Trainor knew he had to do damage control. He had to rebuild trust and help heal the rifts that had bitterly divided the campus. And he had to start crafting a strategic plan and shoring up the university’s finances and enrollment.

How has that gone? So far, so good, he believes. The university is expecting 536 freshmen this fall, about 100 more than last year.

Uproar at Mount St. Mary's

A controversial freshman-retention plan at Mount St. Mary’s University of Maryland, and the way the institution has handled the ensuing criticism, has cast the small Roman Catholic campus, and its president, Simon P. Newman, in a harsh light.

• The Mount St. Mary’s Presidency Was a Corporate Test Case. It Failed Miserably.
• Simon Newman Resigns as President of Mount St. Mary’s
• How Mount St. Mary’s Chose Simon Newman as Its President
• A Violation of Trust at Mount St. Mary’s
• Are Struggling College Students Like Cuddly Bunnies That Should Be Drowned?

One result of the turmoil, said Michael A. Post, vice president for enrollment management and student affairs, is that many alumni and faculty members wanted to do anything they could to help with recruitment.

Alumni often came along to high school visits with the admissions staff, Mr. Post said, and in the spring, they called accepted students and congratulated them individually. When students came to tour the campus, professors met with them and their families one on one. Some of these efforts were common in the past, he said, but not with such focused intent.

Throughout the past year, Mr. Trainor said, the campus community had worked collaboratively on a strategic plan that should be ready by the fall. He also talked eagerly about other successes: higher donor giving; multiple students receiving Fulbright awards; a new Center for Student Engagement, created in part to support at-risk freshmen; a $1-million gift for an entrepreneurship center.

Moody’s Investors Service, the credit-rating agency, announced in February that it had revised its outlook for Mount St. Mary’s from stable to negative. But thanks to the sunnier enrollment picture and a forthcoming capital campaign, Mr. Trainor said he is bullish about the future.

He’s hopeful that he will be a part of that future. Originally he was supposed to serve in the interim role for two years, but the Board of Trustees decided earlier this year to go ahead and start the process of looking for a permanent president. Mr. Trainor has made clear that he wants the job.

The board is currently evaluating Mr. Trainor’s performance, said Mary D. Kane, the board’s chair, and will probably announce its decision in early summer.

In the view of many faculty members and students, Mr. Trainor would be an especially good fit.

At the start of the year, “everyone was still a little shell-shocked, obviously,” said Thane M. Naberhaus, an associate professor of philosophy. He’s one of the faculty members Mr. Newman fired last year. “The amazing thing is what a difference a single person can make,” Mr. Naberhaus said. “When Dr. Trainor was selected, and people started getting a sense of the kind of person he was, everything just changed.”

Students say he’s a much more visible presence on campus than Mr. Newman was. He’ll typically eat lunch with students in the dining hall when he’s in town. A framed photo in his office shows him packed tightly in a crowd of cheering students at a basketball game this past season. “I don’t think I go a day without seeing him somewhere,” said Ms. Johnson, the sophomore.

Another student who has high praise for Mr. Trainor is Rebecca Schisler, a senior and the outgoing editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. Ms. Schisler co-wrote the article that exposed Mr. Newman’s plan to cull at-risk freshmen, a piece that was publicly attacked by both Mr. Newman and John E. Coyne III, then the chair of the Board of Trustees. The newspaper’s adviser, Ed Egan, was also fired and then reinstated. “It was a wild ride,” she said.

But the difference between last year and this one is like night and day, she said. Mr. Trainor has been forthcoming and happy to help student reporters whenever he’s asked. He also helped bring about major renovations to the Echo’s offices this spring, she said.

After Mr. Egan, director of the pre-law program, got his job back, he was not reinstated as newspaper adviser. Mr. Newman appointed Pratibha Kumar, an assistant professor of communication, who continues to serve in the role.

Though Mr. Egan was fired in a dramatic fashion just 15 months ago, he’s not worried about future threats to faculty rights.

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education sent a letter to Mount St. Mary’s last year indicating that the accreditor wanted to revisit the university’s compliance with certain standards. As part of that process, Mr. Egan said, faculty members examined governance documents and “shored up some things that maybe needed attention.” For one, they tweaked the procedures for dismissing tenured professors.

“But really, with Interim President Trainor,” Mr. Egan said, “he gets it — he understands shared governance.”

A Mixed Legacy

There are still reminders of Mr. Newman’s tenure here. Many of the changes he championed under a plan he dubbed “Mount 2.0" — for instance, creating majors in high-demand fields like cybersecurity and ramping up investments in athletics — have either become a reality or are in the works.

Ms. Schisler said some of her friends lament that Mr. Newman wasn’t able to carry out all of his proposals. Even his most ardent critics acknowledge that he had some good ideas.

One prominent holdover from Mr. Newman’s administration is Jennie C. Hunter-Cevera, the interim provost. Ms. Hunter-Cevera assumed the role in February, after Mr. Newman forced David B. Rehm to step down, a decision that also drew widespread backlash from the academic community.

She had been working for the university as a part-time consultant, after serving for 11 months as Maryland’s acting secretary of higher education. Three weeks after she took the job, Mr. Newman resigned. But she agreed to stay on.

Ms. Hunter-Cevera admits that she’s “not the normal provost.” But, she said, “I did respect Simon and his vision for the Mount, so I said, I’m going to stay and see if I can help.”

She describes her role as “a liaison between what was and what will be.” Her goal: to empower the faculty and repair the relationship between professors and senior administrators. In her view, her job is just about done. She plans to leave the campus in December.

“What the university needed more than anything was communication and a feeling that people were really appreciated,” she said. “When something is concerning them,” she said of professors, “they now speak up and let us know.”

Other reminders of Mr. Newman’s tenure are not so welcome. Because Mr. Newman fired a number of administrators, Mr. Naberhaus said, there is still a lack of stability in some areas. The two top officials are interim leaders, and this spring, the university announced that three deans were leaving their positions. (Mr. Trainor said the deans’ departures had been in the works for some time.)

Several people who were adamant supporters of Mr. Newman remain on the board, which some faculty members and alumni say is concerning. Ms. Kane, the chair, said that hadn’t caused any friction among the trustees this year: “Our goal is to do what’s best for the university.”

Mr. Newman also hired consultants who remain employed by the university, and some people criticized him for appearing to rely more on them for advice than university administrators. Mr. Trainor said the number of consultants had been pared down before he became president. But he endorsed the few who had stayed on, adding, “We will use consultants selectively on specific projects when and where needed.”

Mr. Newman kick-started important conversations on the campus, even though he did so in a divisive manner, said Mayokun Ojo, a senior. Many students “really appreciated Newman’s style and approach” and wanted him to stay, even when calls for him to resign were growing.

“I wish Newman had gotten more of a chance to instill change at the Mount,” Mr. Ojo said, signaling some agreement with those students. He praised the former president’s focus on financial stability and “trying to move the Mount into the modern day.” But he and many of his peers “understood moving forward for the benefit of the university.”

The Newman controversy exposed rifts among faculty members, too, Mr. Naberhaus said. Last fall, he often wondered whether some things had been left unsaid. “It was almost like we were stifling some conversations for the purpose of getting on with things,” he said.

Mr. Ojo is a member of the university’s strategic planning committee and said being part of the group has helped students, faculty members, administrators, and alumni work through disagreements.

Committee members might not mention Mr. Newman by name, he said, but the divisions over the former president have surfaced in conversations about how much Mount St. Mary’s should emphasize its Catholic identity, among other things. “There’s still that disparity as to what people envision the Mount becoming in the future,” Mr. Ojo said.

That feeling of needing to talk about Mr. Newman’s tenure has faded further into the background this past semester, Mr. Naberhaus said. He and his colleagues are focused on their work and their students.

“To me, it was a question of, What does the health of our community require? Are we doing damage to ourselves by not talking about it?” he said, referring to divisions among the faculty. “I still wonder whether those conversations should be had — but the question is, How would you even do it?”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.