Tennessee State College president to resign in spring 2024
Dive Temporary:
- Glenda Glover, president of Tennessee State College, introduced Monday she is going to step down on the finish of the spring 2024 semester after helming the traditionally Black establishment for a decade.
- In 2013, Glover returned to steer her alma mater, Tennessee’s sole public HBCU. She is the establishment’s first girl president and is credited with lifting its fundraising.
- Her departure comes after a state report alleged Tennessee State’s administration did not have sound monetary practices and instructed that officers there might be changed.
Dive Perception:
Earlier this yr, a state assessment discovered Tennessee State exacerbated a scholar housing scarcity when it engaged in an enormous enrollment effort and greater than quadrupled its scholarship price range for the 2022-23 faculty yr.
The state mentioned Tennessee State leaders had “disregard of primary monetary controls,” and state policymakers pushed to vacate its whole board of trustees and rent a brand new administration.
Glover fought towards the state’s findings, saying it had misrepresented the establishment’s enrollment technique. College officers and supporters additionally blamed the problems on a systemic dearth of state funding.
In 2021, an audit had decided the state may owe Tennessee State as much as $544 million due to persistent underfunding.
In response, Gov. Invoice Lee baked $318 million in capital funding for the college into the state’s fiscal 2023 price range.
Glover, nevertheless, has performed greater than information the establishment by way of controversy.
She is likely one of the longest serving and most adorned ladies HBCU presidents within the nation and has served as an skilled on points affecting this bloc of establishments. In 2021, for example, President Joe Biden named Glover as vice chair of the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs.
Glover has a doctorate, and is a licensed public accountant and lawyer. She’s one in every of solely two African-American ladies within the nation to carry all three credentials, in keeping with Tennessee State’s web site.
She bought her begin in faculty administration within the Nineties, when she grew to become dean of the enterprise faculty at Jackson State College, in Mississippi, earlier than coming to Tennessee State.
Throughout Glover’s tenure, Tennessee State grew grant funding to over $100 million yearly.
Glover is just not the one HBCU president to resign just lately. A number of others have introduced abrupt exits this yr, together with presidents of Alcorn State College, Texas Southern College and LeMoyne-Owen Faculty. A number of the executives left after clashing with governing board management.
