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The University of Southern Mississippi is one of four public institutions in the state whose president left unexpectedly.
Dudemanfellabra/Wikimedia Commons
The presidents of four of Mississippi’s eight public universities have departed since last June, raising questions about the rapid pace of executive turnover in the state system.
Of those four departures, three were abrupt: the presidents of Alcorn State University, Delta State University and Jackson State University stepped down suddenly. Two of those—Alcorn State and Jackson State—are historically Black universities. The University of Southern Mississippi, where the president also announced his resignation, is the only one of the four that saw an orderly transition—though the off-ramp provided for the president was unexpectedly shortened when he left months earlier than planned.
While Southern Miss has since hired a new president, Alcorn, Delta and Jackson are operating with interim executives at the helm. Delta State's new president will start June 1, while a search is underway for permanent replacements at Alcorn and Jackson. But given the rate of executive turnover at the state’s public universities, critics suggest that something is amiss in how the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees finds, hires and supports presidents.
Four Presidents Out
The first of the four departures came at Delta State last June, when the IHL trustees removed Bill LaForge from the university he had led since 2013. The board has said little about the decision, but in an email to campus, LaForge suggested it was related to enrollment and financial issues.
Next came Rodney Bennett, president of the University of Southern Mississippi. Bennett, who took the helm at USM in 2013, announced in 2022 that he intended to serve through June 2023. But that timeline was cut short when Bennett left a year early in June 2022, for reasons the IHL Board of Trustees has not publicly explained.
Thomas Hudson resigned the presidency of Jackson State in March, after two and a half years on the job.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images News/Getty Images North America
In March of this year, Thomas K. Hudson resigned as president of Jackson State after two and a half years in office. He left amid conflict with the faculty, whose members had voted no confidence in his leadership in January, citing concerns about shared governance, transparency and accountability. Hudson was on paid administrative leave for unclear reasons when he resigned. The IHL Board of Trustees has stayed largely silent about Hudson’s sudden resignation at JSU, where leadership has long been in flux; seven presidents, including interims, have served since 2010.
Last month Felecia Nave exited the presidency at Alcorn State—her alma mater—which she had led since 2019. Nave had faced protests during her tenure and calls from students to step down over leadership concerns regarding communication and neglected campus infrastructure and resources, as well as questions from alumni on falling enrollment and employee retention issues. When Nave left, the IHL board offered little in the way of an explanation, so it remains unclear whether she resigned under pressure or was ultimately removed by the board. Counting interim appointments, Alcorn State has had seven presidents at the helm of the university since 2010.
Hiring and Retention Questions
Turnover at the highest ranks of Mississippi’s public institutions has created a range of challenges, according to constituents at various campuses who have been affected by the presidential departures.
“How do we recruit and retain quality faculty at an institution when you have this turnover at the presidential level? Who wants to move to Mississippi when they see presidents keep turning over?” asked Dawn McLin, president of the Faculty Senate at Jackson State University.
Others noted that universities may be stuck in limbo without stable, consistent leadership.
“It’s dramatic when you lose a president or chancellor, because a lot of things get put on hold until there’s new leadership. And so the effort to move forward can be stymied by that,” said Denis Wiesenburg, past president of the Faculty Senate at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Michael S. Harris, a professor of higher education and chair of the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at Southern Methodist University, said that losing a president can be inherently challenging even under the best circumstances, but it becomes much harder without an orderly transition.
“It leads to mass disruption throughout the institution, because if you don’t have that stable leadership at the top, then it definitely flows down all the way through the organization,” he said.
The IHL Board of Trustees, which is appointed by Mississippi’s governor, has offered few insights into individual presidential transitions and has not publicly acknowledged concerns about the high rate of turnover. In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, IHL commissioner Al Rankins defended the board’s processes.
“The Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning certainly understands the disruption and uncertainty caused by presidential transitions,” Rankins wrote. “The Board has implemented strategies to attract and retain institutional executive officers like a refined presidential search process that encourages applying without fear of reprisal from current employers and a more competitive compensation structure. The Board will continue to make adjustments to foster sustained successful presidential tenures.”
Asked to clarify how IHL has refined search processes, a spokesperson declined to comment.
In the IHL statement, Rankins also pointed to a recent study from the American Council on Education that “shows presidential tenures have declined nationally over the past two decades and currently the average presidential tenure is less than six years, so presidential turnover is not unique to public universities in Mississippi. Although our newest permanent president is in his first year of office, our longest serving sitting president is in his fourteenth year on the job.”
A spokesperson for Mississippi governor Tate Reeves said by email that “high turnover rates in higher ed across the country are unfortunately more the norm than the exception,” adding that the resignations “reflect individual situations” and unique circumstances.
“Governor Reeves has complete confidence in the IHL Board of Trustees to do what’s best for our state’s students,” the statement continued. “He remains committed to appointing individuals who will help ensure Mississippi’s institutions of higher learning maintain the highest standards.”
Representatives on the 12-member IHL board serve nine-year terms.
Unusual Search Processes
The ongoing searches for new presidents at Alcorn, Delta and Jackson State all have something in common: not a single campus constituent is part of the search committees. A subset of IHL trustees makes up the committees that will find the future presidents of all these institutions, breaking from the fairly common practice of including faculty members in executive searches. Instead of serving on the search committees, faculty members and other employees are part of campus constituency groups that offer input but do not meet with candidates.
Such advisory groups are allowed but not required, according to IHL bylaws.
Ultimately, IHL hires presidential candidates with faculty input only from the advisory groups. IHL also deploys campus listening sessions to gather feedback from students and employees on what they want from the next president.
Some faculty members suggested that IHL listens to their feedback.
Wiesenburg noted that the search at USM—where Bennett’s off-ramp was shortened without explanation—was unusual. Joe Paul, who worked in student affairs for decades, came out of retirement to accept the position as interim president. Then the search was suddenly halted and Paul was appointed president—a decision Wiesenburg said he believed was best for Southern Miss given Paul’s experience, familiarity with the university and belief in shared governance.
“We said we wanted someone like Joe Paul, and they gave us Joe Paul. It looked like the search committee actually listened to what people said in the listening sessions,” Wiesenburg said.
Another USM professor, speaking anonymously, raised concerns about the ongoing search for a chancellor, worried that IHL is allowing undue influence from donors in considering candidates with checkered pasts for the job.
Delta State has also filled its open presidential slot; Daniel J. Ennis was hired in March. Both Alcorn State and Jackson State are currently led by interim presidents, with searches underway.
While the IHL search process may be unusual, some critics have suggested it is also ineffective.
“Given the evidence of the problems they’ve had, I would suggest they need to seriously reconsider how to get better involvement. Clearly, the board is not able to identify candidates who are going to be successful,” Harris said. “The board should be talking to people involved in campuses to get their input so they can get better candidates. If you’ve had this many presidencies that haven’t gone well, it seems like a real no-brainer to be more open.”
The IHL Board of Trustees has changed its search processes in recent years to make its procedures more opaque. One reason for the additional secrecy is likely related to a 2019 leak during the search for a chancellor at the University of Mississippi. Under state law, IHL is required to reveal only one finalist. But in 2019, the names of eight candidates, including sitting presidents, came out. The job ultimately went to Glenn Boyce, who had served as a paid search consultant and as IHL commissioner from 2015 to 2018. His hire prompted protests on campus, and the University of Mississippi Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the IHL Board of Trustees.
In 2021, the IHL board voted to make campus search advisory groups anonymous—even to one another. That move was later reversed. But some faculty members saw IHL efforts to clamp down on executive search procedures as an overreaction to the leak of chancellor candidates in 2019.
“I think they reacted by throwing the baby out with the bathwater on that,” Daniel Durkin, chair of the Faculty Senate at the University of Mississippi, said about the changes in search procedures.
The IHL board has also given itself the authority to expedite or extend searches to include “anyone it chooses to interview,” even those who have not applied for the job.
Regardless of the search processes, Mississippi can be a challenging environment for a public university president. While the state has increased its support for higher education in recent years, Mississippi—the poorest state in the nation—still lags behind other states. It has also struggled with high school graduation rates.
But private institutions in the state have not seen the same revolving door at the executive level. Of the private, nonprofit universities in Mississippi, only two have seen their presidents depart within the last 12 months: Robert Pearigan left Millsaps College earlier this year for another presidency, while Rust College president Ivy Taylor announced her departure this week. It is unclear from recent media coverage if Taylor resigned by choice.
Observers point to a mix of factors driving the turnover at Mississippi’s public universities.
While Harris suggested that the hiring process itself is flawed and that the board “needs to take a hard look in the mirror,” he also questioned whether presidents are receiving the appropriate support from IHL.
“If you have multiple presidents that are not being successful for whatever reason, at some point you have to look at the board and those doing the hiring. Because either they’re not setting the conditions for those presidents to be successful or they’re identifying bad individuals to assume those roles,” Harris said. “There’s something wrong at a greater level than individual presidents.”
