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?

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