How One Leader Set a Toxic Tone, Spurning Allies She Needed Most

Could it really be happening again?

A group of fund-raising officers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gathered for an emergency meeting. It was June 2012, and their boss of just two years, Brenda Wilson-Hale, told them exactly what they had feared she might: She was being forced out as vice president for institute advancement — just like her two predecessors.

Get your financial house in order, Ms. Wilson-Hale advised. This could happen to any one of you at any time.

It was a visceral moment. Advancement officers wept, knowing that in the next few minutes their boss would pack her belongings into a brown box and never be seen at RPI again.

This was a more graceful exit than is typical for high-level officials at the institute. Shirley Ann Jackson, then Rensselaer’s president of more than a dozen years, had allowed Ms. Wilson-Hale a few minutes to address her colleagues. Normally, when someone fell out of favor with Ms. Jackson they simply disappeared. Was this brief speech a small courtesy? Or was it a calculated public humiliation? In that room, no one could say for sure.

In her quest to establish Rensselaer Polytechnic as a national player, Ms. Jackson has leaned heavily on fund raisers to find money to pay for big-ticket building projects and cover the spiraling debts accumulated on her watch. But the president’s bold aspirations are continually undercut by the very culture Ms. Jackson has created at Rensselaer, many former officials say, where the corrosive effects of unchecked executive power permeate from the president’s office across the entire institute, and now even infect the one place where universities usually find their most immutable cheerleaders: the advancement office.

Now under the leadership of its fourth permanent vice president in a decade, RPI’s advancement office has weathered turnover, low morale, internal squabbling, complaints of gender discrimination, and a climate of anxiety in which respected employees have been made to feel imminently disposable.

The story of Rensselaer’s advancement office, as related to The Chronicle by 15 former top managers and lower-level employees, is a case study in how leaders in any organization, particularly those who have served well beyond an average tenure, can warp institutional culture.

Rensselaer enjoys a solid reputation, albeit more regional than national. But Ms. Jackson, a theoretical physicist, envisions a day when the institute will be in a league with the likes of Georgia Tech, Stanford, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It is the sort of grand vision that might elicit eye rolls if posited by just about any other college leader, but Ms. Jackson’s vaulting ambition proves the anything-is-possible theorem. She was the first African-American woman to ever earn a doctorate from MIT, headed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, in 2016, received the National Medal of Science. It is ironic and tragic, therefore, that many of those who have served Ms. Jackson say she has squandered her enormous political capital.

Nearly all of the people who spoke with The Chronicle did so on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about professional retribution, even years after their departures from RPI. Many have gone on to hold high-level positions in college fund raising and have misgivings about being publicly critical of a former employer in an industry where discretion is valued. Some had signed exit agreements that contained nondisparagement clauses.

In the past three years, more than half of Rensselaer’s roughly 70 advancement employees have left or been fired, former officers say, and until now they have carried their stories as mostly private burdens. One former development manager, who resigned for a higher-level position at a liberal-arts college, describes herself as a “post-traumatic stress survivor.” An advancement officer, who says she became uncomfortable with the institute’s aggressive donor relations, had a nervous breakdown before leaving for a position that paid far less. Another, who had two decades of experience in development before coming to Rensselaer, clashed with her boss over how often she used the bathroom before a final disagreement over whether she had engaged a prospective donor who was not assigned to her.

Before they left, Rensselaer’s departed advancement officers found nowhere safe to turn for help. Trustees, who publicly back the president, either overlooked the constant churn in fund-raising leadership or thought little of it, former officials say. Human-resource officers, who were told the work environment was toxic, appeared never to follow up, former advancement employees say.

Each case reflects the messiness of personnel matters, and Rensselaer officials, including Ms. Jackson, did not respond to email or phone messages and were not made available by the institute’s communications office to relate their own versions of events. Collectively, however, the stories form a picture of a dysfunctional operation that experienced professionals concluded was unlikely to change.

The Chronicle provided Richie C. Hunter, a spokeswoman for the institute, with a detailed synopsis of the charges levied by former Rensselaer employees. In response, she noted the president’s accomplishments, including the completion, in 2009, of a $1.4 billion capital campaign.

“Dr. Jackson is a transformative leader,” Ms. Hunter wrote in an email, “who embodies and encourages excellence in every facet of the university.”

The turmoil in advancement comes at a pivotal time for Rensselaer, where alumni giving has eroded and debts have piled up. Over the course of Ms. Jackson’s tenure, which began in 1999, the percentage of alumni giving to the institute has dropped by half, falling to 12 percent in 2016, according to U.S. News & World Report. On her watch, Rensselaer’s bond rating has been downgraded twice by Moody’s Investors Service. Moody’s raised Rensselaer’s outlook from negative to stable in 2015, but the institute’s bonds were downgraded yet again in January by Standard & Poor’s.

Rensselaer officials are banking on a capital campaign, slated to begin in the fall, to change things. Former advancement officers, however, argue that Ms. Jackson’s continued presence at the helm makes fund raising a needless struggle. Her clashes with the institute’s Faculty Senate and its student union, and her dismissals of numerous high-ranking officials who had enjoyed broad support on campus, have irrevocably strained relations with some prospective donors.

“There is enormous capacity among the alumni,” a former advancement officer says. “So why is it so difficult? And why were we hearing so often ‘I will never give money as long as Dr. Jackson is president’? That’s a very serious concern. It’s not just about people who work there being unhappy. It’s a much bigger picture.”

Not long after her appointment, Ms. Jackson was credited with a huge fund-raising coup. A $360-million unrestricted gift from an anonymous donor, secured in 2001, was at the time believed to be the largest single donation ever given to a university.

That early win, people who have worked closely with Ms. Jackson say, gave the president the false impression that fund-raising was a snap.

“She doesn’t respect the donor, doesn’t really like the donor: ‘I want you to give me money right now,’” a former leadership team member says. “It sets up this transactional relationship.”

The president’s belief in her singular fund-raising prowess, coupled with her reluctance to share credit, has closed off opportunities to bring in more money, the official continues. Several years ago, Rensselaer abandoned a program that had assigned individual advancement officers to schools, empowering deans to bring in more of their own cash. The approach, common in higher education but new to Rensselaer, would never fly, the official says, because it risked stealing credit from Ms. Jackson and threatened a dynamic of supplication between the president and her deans.

It was just one example among many, several of Ms. Jackson’s former colleagues say, where the president’s desire for control appeared to trump Rensselaer’s own best interests.

Ideally, a university’s fund-raising operation fuels dreams, not utilities. But for financially stressed institutions, a broad category that describes much of higher education, advancement officers are expected to pull in money for basic operational needs not covered by tuition revenue. At Rensselaer, these business realities are particularly stark, contributing to what advancement officers describe as a spirit of desperation, where $1,000 from a donor today is more valued than $10,000 next year.

In recent years, Rensselaer has gutted its principal-gifts operation, former officials say, which was responsible for raising individual contributions of more than $2.5 million. Officers who once focused on 30 to 40 key donors saw their portfolios grow to 175 prospects.

With “fast money” as the guiding principle, former advancement officers say, the president has fostered a culture in which prospective donors are reduced to dollar amounts on a spreadsheet. Several officers, for example, recall an exercise, around 2010, when they were corralled into a conference room and instructed to assign bogus fund-raising projections to individual prospects, creating a fantasy budget for trustees who were fretting over finances.

“Here is Joe Schmo on paper,” a former advancement officer recalls, describing the process. “I’ve never met him, so I’m going to project that I’m going to ask for $50,000. That’s not even an educated guess, but that’s what we were made to do.”

A former member of the leadership team described the process as “all smoke and mirrors.”

“But it was set up so there was someone to blame when it didn’t happen, and that dog was always advancement,” the official says.

Even when the advancement office shows signs of success, the president treats its employees as “her little problem children,” a former officer recalls.

In 2014, after naming a new vice president for institute advancement, Ms. Jackson introduced him to his new colleagues by way of a dark treatise on the division’s shortcomings, people who attended the meeting say. What was striking, former officials say, was how the president’s dim view contrasted with the performance of the advancement office in the previous year. The office had posted its strongest returns in a decade, earning a national award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. But the message, as the audience understood it, was clear: These folks need to be whipped into shape or shown the door.

“I would very much characterize it as a dressing down,” a former officer says. “It was very demoralizing. It shook our confidence.”

Ms. Jackson’s office is on Rensselaer’s main campus, up the road from the Chasan building, in downtown Troy, N.Y., where institute advancement is housed. The looming possibility of the president’s presence keeps the Chasan on edge. Women know that only skirt suits, not dress pants, are acceptable, and some keep blazers on hand just in case Ms. Jackson stops by.

“Whenever anybody knows Dr. Jackson is coming,” a former employee says, “we all dress in the same color, which is black, because we want to blend in. We don’t want to be called upon. She can be relentless in her questioning.”

The president, who can dazzle people with her deep knowledge of the institute’s programs, is known to test subordinates in meetings, probing for what seems a predetermined answer, and showing visible displeasure when it does not come, former officials say. It is a style that often intimidates rather than motivates, but there are exceptions. Elisabeth Cain, who worked as an advancement officer in the division from 2010 to 2015, says she was inspired when Ms. Jackson questioned why fund raisers did not lean more heavily on donors.

During a meeting with the president, Ms. Cain recalls Ms. Jackson saying, “When you ask for an amount of money, think about it. And think about whether what you’re asking for isn’t too little because of who we are. And be proud of who we are.”

“That really stuck with me,” Ms. Cain says. “That’s the angle she’s coming from. I’m not saying she’s an angel. But she inspired me.”

A president like Ms. Jackson, known for an air of formality and a preference for tough love over praise, might intend to imbue an institution with a high degree of professionalism. Whatever the president’s aim, many people who have worked closely with her say, her approach has produced a culture of cowering, where subordinates hide from her or tell her what they expect she wants to hear. The survivors in such an environment are seldom perceived within the organization as innovators, but rather as malleable executors of the president’s frenetic strategy.

Not long after the president gave her gloomy lecture, in 2014, two of the three people who had led the advancement office during its previous, prolific years would be forced to resign. Kathy Durivage, Rensselaer’s director of principal gifts and a 13-year veteran of the institute, was forced out within two months. Joseph Medina, an assistant vice president, lasted less than a year. Many more would flee the institute in the coming years, demoralized, they said, by an eroding culture.

Rensselaer officials say that the new team, led by Graig R. Eastin, the vice president, has been effective. Ms. Hunter, the spokeswoman, described the 2017 fiscal year as one of Rensselaer’s “strongest years of philanthropy” since its last capital campaign, which ended in 2009. But Ms. Hunter would not say how much had been raised in 2017, describing the numbers as preliminary.

Dismissals at Rensselaer are handled with clinical efficiency. The first indication of a termination is often an appearance from Larry Hardy, the institute’s director of human resources, who has escorted enough people from the building to earn the nickname “the Grim Reaper.”

“Whenever Larry Hardy came into the building, it was, ‘Oh shit,’” a former advancement officer says.

Firings and departures have decimated middle management. Assistant vice presidents, directors, analytics specialists, and researchers have all but disappeared, a former administrative coordinator says, depriving fund raisers of current information about prospects and creating palpable stress for the few remaining managers.

“We kept a roster on our desks and would start crossing people off,” says a former advancement officer. “It was like a death pool. I was Number 26 in just 2015, and I left in August.”

The turnover coincides with the appointment of Mr. Eastin, who came to Rensselaer from CHOC Children’s Foundation, where he had been vice president. Mr. Eastin declined an interview request. Ms. Hunter described the turnover during his tenure as routine for a time of new leadership.

“I can confirm that during Vice President Eastin’s first year, as is the case when any leader joins an organization, there was a higher than average turnover rate within Institute Advancement as he began building out the right team to achieve our new philanthropic goals,” Ms. Hunter wrote in an email. “With that said, now in his third year, turnover has stabilized (and is well within the normal/healthy range for an organization of our size).”

Rensselaer officials will not say how many people now work in advancement, and they would not confirm or deny the accuracy of a list of employee departures that was provided to The Chronicle.

Arthur F. Golden, chairman of Rensselaer’s Board of Trustees, did not respond to interview requests. When reached by phone, Wanda Denson-Low, the vice chairwoman, said that she had no comment and hung up.

Rensselaer’s communications office provided a statement from the board, which said “The board is generally aware of, and supportive of, the personnel decisions of the Institute.”

The statement went on to note that turnover tends to run high across higher-education advancement, an assertion supported by national data. For fund raisers under 30, the average tenure is 16 months, according to a 2013 study by Cygnus Applied Research, Inc., a philanthropy research and consulting firm. Overall, major gifts officers serve an average of about three and a half years, a 2013 study from Eduventures found.

The board said that the average length of tenure in Rensselaer’s advancement office is “significantly longer” than national averages, but did not provide any data about how long current employees have been in place.

The revolving door of advancement professionals in higher education is considered an industrywide challenge because it can take several years for fund raisers to get up to speed. But the stories of people who have worked at Rensselaer, including those who had been there for more than a decade and had witnessed plenty of typical attrition, suggest that the last three years have been far from normal.

As their ranks thinned, advancement officers say, donor cultivation grew even more aggressive and transactional. Prospect strategy sessions under Mr. Eastin, following Ms. Jackson’s lead, felt like a boiler room to many.

Boundaries between work and life evaporated. A former officer grew accustomed to phone calls at 2 a.m. and texts all weekend.

Another former advancement officer, whom Mr. Eastin promoted, describes the culture at Rensselaer as one designed to push people to their ethical limits. She recalls one incident, involving a multimillion-dollar gift, where Mr. Eastin pressed her to secure a commitment from a donor who had repeatedly said that he was uncomfortable signing anything before he had finalized a lucrative business deal that was still pending.

But Mr. Eastin wanted a signature — now.

“He would call me, Has he responded? He would email me, Has he responded?” the advancement officer says.

By the time the gift was secured, the advancement officer says, she felt it had been given “under duress.”

The toxic environment drove her to the point of a nervous breakdown, she says.

“I would take my dog out at night in the darkness and cry hysterically,” the officer recalls.

At 37, with no prior history of mental illness, she was treated for depression and anxiety. She took a two-month leave of absence and then quit not long after her return. The part-time position she landed as vice president of a small nonprofit organization paid $40,000 less per year, but that seemed a small price to pay for getting out.

Among the 15 people interviewed for this article, seven said that they had reported concerns about the work environment to human-resources officials, either through exit interviews or informal conversations. But those who made the reports were given no indication that any follow-up investigation was conducted.

One former advancement officer, who had served in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army staff sergeant, filed a complaint against RPI in January with the New York State Division of Human Rights, citing gender discrimination based on inequities of pay and promotion. Hours after she mentioned the complaint to Mr. Hardy, the human-resources officer, she was fired, according to a letter that her lawyer wrote to Rensselaer, which was obtained by The Chronicle.

She has since settled with the institute, for an undisclosed amount.

Ms. Hunter wrote in an email that Rensselaer would “not comment on specific personnel matters.” She stated, however, that “Rensselaer respectfully, objectively, and fairly handles employee issues and concerns.”

They came to Rensselaer full of hope.

Many were midcareer advancement professionals, who had worked for years at other colleges or nonprofit institutions. They were energized by the idea of a trailblazing president with a personal story as sellable to donors as the mission of the institute itself.

Their ranks included a seasoned administrator with nearly a quarter century of experience who, along with his wife, had moved to Troy from New England. Following the suggestion of Rensselaer officials, they had decided to live temporarily in a ranch-style home owned by the institute.

It was not long before things fell apart.

The house, built in 1940, had not been occupied in years, and the administrator and his wife soon found that it was a breeding ground for mold that attached itself to their clothes, their shoes, and the wife’s leather riding saddle.

In just the first few months, the administrator would see his boss fired. He called his wife, his voice ashen, recounting the tale.

At the house, electrical lines failed. Two upright freezers, abandoned in the basement and stinking of years-old food, oozed with mysterious goo. His wife started calling the place “the hell hole.”

In a few years, he too was forced to resign. Now working in a top-level advancement position at another college, the administrator still hates talking about his time at Rensselaer. It dredges up memories he had tried to bury back at that old house — the one with the outwardly pleasant shell and the failing systems at its core.

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.