UW's President Sternberg Resigns

After a couple of weeks with seemingly endless headlines regarding the growing controversy over changes at the University of Wyoming, President Sternberg has chosen to resign.

Well, resign probably to avoid being terminated by the Trustees. The Trustees met for nine hours yesterday and then Sternberg turned into his resignation in part, he stated, so that they would not have to vote on removing him.  The Trustees announced, through one of their members, his resignation.  He didn't speak at that function, but he did email the Casper Star Tribune, with which he seemingly had a good relationship, on his decision.  He stated that he felt the Trustees had lost confidence in him.

I only know what I've been reading and hearing, but this causes me to loose a bit of confidence in the Trustees.  It seems Sternberg's main faults, if they were faults, was that he had a strong commitment to his idea of what UW should be and was determined to act on it. Not everyone at the school, indeed it would seem a majority, perhaps, of faculty, supported his vision.  He also did, at least in regards to the law school, seem willing to charge ahead rapidly without involving the department in his initial decisions, but I don't know that he was entirely incorrect in that approach.

I fear that the very long term of the prior president has acclimated the departments to a certain culture of independence and now, effectively, they've won that fight.  Some faculty (but not the law school) have almost been expressing a "m'eh" type of culture in regards to their departments. Good enough is good enough, so to speak.  The law school has, as I've blogged about down below, moved towards the concept that it's a regional school which is separating it from the non lawyers of the state and their occupations.

Well, the critics of Sternberg won, but did the university?  Hard to say. Whoever follows will inherit this mess, with some departments in seeming rebellion, a law school that seems headed towards increasing irrelevance and a president that was forced out.  That's a tough task to take on.  I don't doubt that somebody can to it, but now the Trustees, who seem to have at least partially dropped their support of Sternberg, will have to find that man in this context.  That's a tough thing to do.