A struggling small college in North Carolina has been shaken up this week — potentially losing its accreditation, firing its president, and, most recently, facing faculty no-confidence votes in its leadership.
On Thursday the Faculty Assembly at Saint Augustine’s University, a historically Black institution with around 1,000 students, delivered unanimous votes of no confidence in the Board of Trustees, the acting president, and the vice president for finance and administration. About half of the college’s nearly 70 faculty members participated in the votes, representing a quorum.
While the votes came in the same week that the board abruptly fired President Christine Johnson McPhail, the faculty also expressed discontent with the financial auditing of the college, a process that has dragged on for six years. Saint Augustine’s has failed to meet deadlines set by its accreditor to submit records of its finances and documents related to its governing board.
The faculty requested the same documents and never heard back from the board, said Virginia Tyler, vice moderator of the Faculty Assembly and an associate professor of visual arts at Saint Augustine’s. “We have been asking to look at the audits for months now,” Tyler said.
The no-confidence votes signaled the faculty’s frustration with “a lack of transparency,” she added.
In a statement after firing the president, the board emphasized the importance of completing the audits. Neither the board nor the administration would comment on whether the financial turbulence was the determining factor in firing Johnson McPhail, calling her termination a personnel matter and offering no further context.
But the firing immediately followed a vote by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, commonly known as SACSCOC, to remove Saint Augustine’s from its membership, which could ultimately terminate its accreditation. The institution has filed an appeal and remains on probation.
If the decision stands, it would be a gut punch to the college, cutting Saint Augustine’s off from access to federal financial aid. The accreditor had placed the college on probation in 2016 for financial instability.
“The work has already begun to appeal SACSCOC’s decision, and we will remain steadfast during this process,” said Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon, the college’s acting president, in an emailed statement. “While we are disappointed by SACSCOC’s decision, we are confident and unified in our commitment to fulfill and complete our mission.”
In the statement, Rodriguez-McClellon said she is “excited to continue supporting the mission and vision of this historic institution.” She added: “This is an important time for SAU, and I will continue to focus on institutional sustainability, student success, and the wonderful legacy of this university.”
She was not made available for an interview. Gwen Kea, the college’s vice president for finance and administration, also declined to comment on the firing or the vote of no confidence in her performance.
End of the McPhail era
A wrinkle in the saga at Saint Augustine’s is the question of when and why Johnson McPhail was fired. She alleges she was dismissed in retaliation for a complaint she had filed against two board members. She sued Saint Augustine’s in November.
According to Tyler and published reports, Johnson McPhail claims that the trustees — Rufus Montgomery and Hadley Evans Jr. — created a hostile environment at a board meeting in early October. In comments to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Johnson McPhail said the board members had “yelled at us,” referring to herself and Kea, and had “banged on the table when they were talking to us.”
When asked by the board to rescind her complaint against Montgomery and Evans, she refused, according to the lawsuit.
Johnson McPhail’s lawyer, David H. Tracey, told Diverse that the board voted to fire her on November 13, days after Tracey contacted the university and said he was representing the president. “Ultimately, we understand that the board terminated Dr. [Johnson] McPhail’s employment mere weeks after her internal complaint and days after notifying the university that she had retained counsel for her discrimination and retaliation claim,” Tracey said.
The board called Johnson McPhail’s allegations “unfounded” and vowed to “defend itself and the institution.”
Rumors swirled around campus in November that Johnson McPhail was to be terminated at some point before the winter break. The first weekend of December, she flew to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges’ annual conference, where the accreditation vote happened. Her termination was announced on December 4.
Johnson McPhail’s ties to the university date to 2020, when her husband, Irving Pressley McPhail, was hired as president. He arrived after the accreditor placed the college on probation for two years. When he took office, enrollment — which had dropped from around 1,500 students in 2010 to fewer than 1,000 — was beginning to rebound.
However, Irving Pressley McPhail’s tenure ended tragically: He developed Covid-19 and died on October 15, 2020. The university said that he had contracted the virus from someone outside the college and that there was no evidence of large cluster events that had acted like superspreaders at Saint Augustine’s.
Christine Johnson McPhail was appointed president in February 2021. By December 2022, Saint Augustine’s was back on probation with its accreditor, a move many at the college blamed on poor bookkeeping by previous administrations.
The squabbles over finances have kept the board and administration at odds for years. Saint Augustine’s went through two interim presidents before it landed on Irving Pressley McPhail. Now the institution has appointed yet another interim president. The turmoil has left faculty members and students to watch bare-knuckle fights between college leaders and the board that oversees them.
“There is an African proverb, when two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers,” said Tyler, the faculty leader. “The faculty and the students in this case are the grass.”