UA president will quit top job in 2018 but stay on to teach

University of Arizona President Ann Weaver Hart will leave the school’s top job when her contract expires in mid-2018, but she isn’t going anywhere.

After a tumultuous school year in which her leadership drew criticism from around the state, Hart’s bosses announced Friday that she will not seek an extension to her president’s contract.

However, she intends to stay on as a faculty member at the school. Her contract includes a clause that gives her a job as a tenured professor in the College of Education when she steps down as the UA’s leader.

The announcement came in the closing moments of an Arizona Board of Regents meeting in Flagstaff.

Hart, 67, who makes $665,000 a year in base pay as the UA’s president, told the board she has decided “to become a full-time teacher and scholar again.”

It wasn’t immediately clear Friday how much she would earn as a faculty member.

Hart holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history and a Ph.D in educational administration, all from the University of Utah. One of her research interests is in leadership succession.

She said she intends to spend her last two years as president moving the university forward by implementing changes from the UA’s strategic plan.

Regents board chairman Jay Heiler said Hart decided on her own to leave the top job, and he praised her commitment to the UA. He said the board would likely start the succession planning process this fall.

“The decision not to seek an extension is hers, and true to her character she has made it in full consideration of both her personal aspirations and her institutional commitments,” Heiler said.

Hart’s critics expressed disappointment and questioned why she’s being allowed to stay on for another two years.

“She should leave immediately. Two more years of her leadership is going to hurt the UA even more than it already has,” said state Rep. Bruce Wheeler of Tucson.

The president’s supporters disagreed, saying Hart has made many needed improvements in her four years at the helm

“I believe the university is better today than when she arrived. On balance, she’s had a positive effect,” said Lynn Nadel, chair of the faculty.

He cited the Banner Health deal — in which the money-losing former University Medical Center was acquired by a nonprofit corporation — as evidence of Hart’s effectiveness in dealing with complex problems.

Hart also deserves credit for picking a talented leadership team and for making a push this year to increase diversity on campus, he said.

Among faculty, there are mixed opinions about Hart’s leadership, Nadel acknowledged. “I think if you took a poll some would be quite positive and others, quite negative.”

Controversies

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Hart, hired in 2012 as the school’s first female president, has been the subject of several controversies that began not long after she arrived.

The biggest in terms of negative public reaction was her decision earlier this year to accept a paid position on the board of the for-profit education firm that runs DeVry University. The school is facing a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that claims DeVry routinely deceived students about their job prospects after graduation.

DeVry denies wrongdoing and Hart — who receives a $170,000 annual paycheck in salary and stock from DeVry — has expressed her confidence in the firm.

But hundreds of Arizonans, including UA donors, students and faculty members, have protested her side job. Critics say Hart should be devoting all her energies to her president’s job, and that she’s tarnished the UA’s reputation by having its president associated with a questionable corporation.

Many donors have said they won’t give to the UA as long as Hart remains its leader, and the UA’s new budget projects that private donations will decline by $8.7 million — a 9.6 percent drop — in the coming school year.

University officials couldn’t be reached for comment on the cause of the downward trend.

More recently, the Arizona Medical Association made a public statement of “no confidence” in Hart’s leadership of the UA, and in particular its Phoenix medical school.

The doctors’ group passed a resolution at its recent annual meeting that asks regents to investigate after six deans at the Phoenix facility announced their departure. UA officials maintain that such turnover is normal in academic medicine.

Hard feelings also arose last year when Hart wrote a chapter for a book on leadership in which she publicly described the UA as an institution that was going downhill before she arrived.

Mixed reactions

Few students were on the campus Friday, but some of those who were had mixed reaction to news of Hart’s decision to step down.

“She did some good work, like making the campus smoke-free,” said Desiree Esquivel, 22, a senior in public health and Spanish.

Zack Williams, 27, a graduate student in geosciences, said he recently signed a petition asking Hart to resign after she joined the board of DeVry.

“I thought it diminished the brand of the university,” he said. “To have her use our brand to help make some money seemed low.”

Jacqueline Mwangi, 19, who just finished her junior year in accounting and management information systems, described Hart as “an OK president, not the best.”

Hart did a good job handling the demands from marginalized students, she said, but “I think the whole DeVry thing is why she’s resigning. She took a lot of flack for that.”

The Board of Regents will conduct a nationwide search for Hart’s replacement, President Eileen Klein said.