BREAKING NEWS: St. Cloud State University President Robbyn Waker announces she's leaving

In a surprise bit of news this morning, St. Cloud State University announced that President Robbyn Wacker isn't returning for a second term. The announcement opened by saying "Robbyn Wacker, who has led St. Cloud State University as its president since 2018, announced Nov. 27 that she will be leaving her position on June 30, 2024, upon completion of her contract."

The announcement quotes President Wacker as saying "Serving as SCSU’s president has been an honor and a privilege. I am proud to have had the opportunity to serve our amazing students, faculty, staff and administrative leaders. This decision was extremely difficult; however, I feel great about what I and my leadership team have accomplished in the past six years, and the time is right to hand the reigns over to the next leader."

With all due respect to President Wacker, her legacy won't be a positive legacy. That isn't meant as a criticism to her. To be fair, she inherited a difficult situation. A long-time reader of this blog and a retired professor from SCSU just told me that MnSCU didn't intend to renew her contract.

This is part of the retirement announcement letter sent by Minnesota State Chancellor Scott Olson:
Robbyn Wacker's picture:
I've written about this subject gazillions of times since 2012. What's been missing are legislators who've taken a leadership role in attempting to straighten out SCSU. I've heard tons of dizzying spin on the situation at SCSU. The most dizzying spin was from a past president who said that SCSU was right-sizing, that there wasn't anything to worry about. I think that was in FY2013 or FY2014.

A friend of mine who worked at SCSU offered this (IMO well-informed) opinion:

SCSU is an admin policy arm of the Left wing of the DFL. That has failed miserably.
Why hasn't anyone gone to a major newspaper and called for change? I've tried to sound the alarm through this blog but I don't have a big enough readership to affect that type of change. It's frustrating knowing that 2 DFL legislators (Rep. Dorholt and Rep. Wolgamott) have held leadership positions within the DFL but didn't do anything to affect meaningful reforms. Dorholt was the vice-chair of the House Higher Ed Committee. Wolgamott is currently the Speaker Pro Tempore. What good are these lofty titles if they don't translate into positive change to one of St. Cloud's major institutions?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Joe Biden our Grifter-in-Chief?

Image
Apparently, Joe Biden doesn't care about the law or Supreme Court rulings. When asked about the ruling on his student loan bailout, Biden said that the Supreme Court misinterpreted the Constitution. He knows they didn't. That's just what he said to preserve the opportunity to introduce his next unconstitutional plan that will get rejected by the Supreme Court. This isn't about whether it's constitutional. It's about whether he can con enough young people into voting for him in 2024. Biden must've anticipated this ruling. Within an hour of the ruling, the Administration was out with this detailed fact sheet to replace the plan that he knew would fail. It opens with the same partisan attack as Democrats have mouthed. The fact sheet opens by saying "No President has fought harder for student debt relief than President Biden, and he’s not done yet. President Biden and Vice President Harris will not let Republican elected officials succeed in denying hard
Read more

Tim Walz's Confederate Flag Fiasco

Image
After Minnesota's Democrats shoved the most controversial progressive legislation down Minnesotans' throats, gossip started popping up about Gov. Walz being interested in running for president . That's died off but Gov. Walz is still making headlines, this time for all the wrong reasons. First, Gov. Walz isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Still, Gov. Walz is fighting against Minnesota's history. This Alpha News article quotes David Hann, the chairman of Minnesota's Republican Party, as saying " The flag the DFL has eliminated was a version of the historic flag our regiments fought under during the Civil War. Minnesota was the first state to offer troops to the Union cause in 1861 , beginning a long tradition of leading the nation in confronting injustice. The DFL quest to erase our history is repugnant and should be rejected." Gov. Walz, though, sees things differently. He's quoted as saying "Minnesota is a diverse state, it continue
Read more

Maria Bartiromo's interrogation of Gov. Ron DeSantis

Image
Yesterday, Maria Bartiromo interrogated Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday Morning Futures. The first half of the interview, Bartiromo asked policy questions. Gov. DeSantis showed his understanding of the issues and presented his solutions on everything from China, inflation and growing the economy. The first reply he had was to cut spending. His next reply was to open energy production. Third, he talked about the importance of increasing productivity, which he correctly said is the best way to eliminate inflation. A little over half the way through the interview, though, it turned into an attack. Bartiromo asked "I'm wondering what's going on with your campaign. There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year but here's this weekend's headline from the Politico Playbook: Failure to launch. Gov. Ron DeSantis's campaign to topple Donald Trump has stalled. We are way behind says a top DeSantis PAC official. What happened? Despite that bad
Read more