When a new president comes to a campus, some change is expected. But at the University of Wyoming, change has come widely and with unusual speed.
In the four months since Robert J. Sternberg assumed the presidency, a provost, three associate provosts, and four deans have resigned. The turnover has unsettled many professors on the campus and has led at least one to call for the president’s dismissal.
Among those who have left are Myron B. Allen, the provost, whom Mr. Sternberg asked to step down this summer, and Kay Persichitte, who was dean of the College of Education. Mr. Sternberg said he was directly responsible for her resignation, too.
Recently, Stephen D. Easton, dean of the College of Law, said that he was stepping down after Mr. Sternberg announced that a task force would examine his program. In an open letter, Mr. Easton said that “important decisions affecting the College of Law have been made without meaningful consultation with me or others on the faculty.”
Two other deans—David S. Cozzens, an associate vice president and dean of students, and Brent A. Hathaway, who led the College of Business—accepted positions outside the university.
Three associate provosts—Carol D. Frost, Andrew Hansen, and Nicole S. Ballenger—resigned over the summer.
Mr. Sternberg, who was previously provost and senior vice president at Oklahoma State University and is a regular contributor to The Chronicle, retains the support of the chair of the university’s Board of Trustees. He said the personnel changes were natural at a university that, for the last 16 years, has often promoted people from within.
An external perspective, he said, can help the university tackle the challenges it faces. Those challenges include declines in enrollment and stagnant faculty pay—the university has not been able to give raises to the faculty in four years.
‘A Climate of Fear’
But faculty members have questioned the resignations, voicing concerns about both the sweep of personnel changes and the way they have been notified of the changes.
Some professors fear that speaking out would threaten their department’s standing in the institution, said Peter N. Shive, a professor emeritus in the honors program who came to the university in 1969.
“There’s never been a climate of fear like there is here today,” he said. “It just looks like carnage.”
Several faculty members spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared retaliation.
One longtime professor said that she began to feel anxious when Mr. Sternberg asked Mr. Allen to resign. The professor said Mr. Allen, who had been provost for eight years, was beloved by faculty members for his integrity. Since Mr. Allen’s departure, a “rising tide of suspicion” has grown among professors, she added.
“All around us, we see these people falling,” she said. “The people we look to for leadership, the people we trust, they’re gone. They’re out.”
The personnel shake-ups have eliminated the trust that faculty members previously held in the administration, said a professor in a department whose dean resigned. He said that it would be impossible to regain trust in the administration after what seems like a “Saturday night massacre.”
Faculty members said that the disconnect between how the resignations were portrayed and how they actually happened felt jarring. In July, for example, the Laramie Boomerang reported that Mr. Sternberg said he had accepted Mr. Allen’s letter of resignation as provost with “great regret.”
Yet Mr. Allen told faculty members on an email list that the president had asked him to resign, and Mr. Sternberg later confirmed that. Mr. Allen, who is staying on as a professor of mathematics, shared his email to the faculty with The Chronicle but declined to comment further.
“When a president asks a provost to resign, the provost has little choice,” Mr. Allen wrote.
‘Not an Ivy League School’
Mr. Sternberg said he did not think that he and Mr. Allen had shared a vision for the institution. Mr. Sternberg said he would like the university to fulfill its mission as a land-grant institution by educating “activists and ethical leaders” and understanding the needs of the state, including its investment in energy and natural resources.
“He came from an Ivy League school, and this is not an Ivy League school,” the president said of Mr. Allen, who holds degrees from Princeton University and Dartmouth College. “His mission was more similar to theirs than to a land grant.”
Mr. Sternberg said he did not arrive on the campus expecting to change his personnel. Though he received advice from trustees and foundation board members about the university’s leadership, he said he had made his own decisions.
Mr. Easton, the law-school dean, left after Mr. Sternberg proposed a task force to examine how the College of Law serves Wyoming in energy and natural resources, among other matters.
On another front, Mr. Sternberg cited conversations with state higher-education representatives, who he said believe that the College of Education is “not functioning the way they would hope.” He said Ms. Persichitte, the college’s former dean, was not ready to reorient the program. His interim provost, then, asked for her resignation.
The president said he was not surprised by the criticism of the pace of change at the university.
“When someone comes in as a disruptive innovator, metaphorically, it’s like an antibody attack,” he said. “They attack objects not because they’re harmful but because they’re foreign. The result is predictable.”
‘A Void of Information’
The sheer number of senior administrators leaving their positions has destabilized the campus more than some expected, said Mr. Cozzens, the dean of students who will leave Wyoming in January to become the associate vice chancellor and dean of campus life at Texas Christian University.
Because he is leaving for a position at another university, Mr. Cozzens does not consider his resignation in the same category as Mr. Easton’s, Mr. Allen’s, and Ms. Persichitte’s, but he acknowledged that it fit into the string of resignations since Mr. Sternberg arrived.
Mr. Cozzens said that the president had articulated his vision to the faculty and staff, saying that the university must be the best land-grant institution in the country. Yet Mr. Cozzens said he did not understand why those who had been asked to resign could not be part of that vision.
“When there’s been a void of information, people fill that void with their biggest fears,” he said.
Other resigning administrators declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
Both Mr. Sternberg and David J. Bostrom, the trustees’ chair, said that they did not expect further resignations.
The Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet next Thursday and Friday. Its meetings often include a personnel discussion, but Mr. Bostrom said next week’s meeting would not focus on Mr. Sternberg or any other individual. And although Mr. Bostrom said he could not speak for the other trustees, he said he would not support dismissing Mr. Sternberg.
Some administrators who have stepped down elaborated on their departure or offered thoughts on the rapid change at the university in messages to the faculty email list, and shared those messages with The Chronicle. Mr. Allen, the former provost, wrote that because good university leaders are hard to find, he did not think losing so many capable associate provosts and deans was good for the institution.
Ms. Ballenger, who is resigning as associate provost for academic personnel, wrote in an email to the faculty that she had not stepped down out of loyalty to Mr. Allen but did not specify her reasons for her decision. She is returning to the faculty in the department of agricultural and applied economics.
“When one learns about important changes that affect their job, or the role of their office, through emails or word of mouth, or because they were announced in forums where one was not present,” Ms. Ballenger wrote, “that person knows that their ability to do their job is compromised.”
