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Washington College President Sheila Bair is resigning, the college said Thursday, about a week after word began leaking out about strained relations between the well-known president and the college’s Board of Visitors and Governors.
Bair, who chaired the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the financial crisis and who has become a leading voice for student debt reduction and college affordability, is resigning effective June 30. An announcement gave no explicit reason for her departure, although it contained a statement from Bair referring to her family.
“Unfortunately, this job has required that I be away from my family quite a bit, and I underestimated the hardship that would create when I took up leadership of the college,” she said in the statement. “I regret that I am not able to serve my full five-year term, but in many ways, thanks to the dedicated efforts of our hardworking campus community, we accomplished in two years what would have required five at other institutions.”
Last week a source close to the college told Inside Higher Ed that the relationship between Bair and the Board of Visitors and Governors had deteriorated. The president and board disagreed over the board’s level of involvement in the institution’s operations, the source said.
Bair is the first woman president in the history of Washington College, which, at 234 years old, is the 10th-oldest college in the country. She was appointed in May 2015.
Washington College launched several notable programs during Bair’s tenure, including a plan guaranteeing entering students tuition that will not rise during four years at the college. Another effort started under her presidency offers full scholarships to highly qualified low-income students. Others attempt to help graduating seniors pay off student loans and provide matching scholarship dollars for money families spend out of college savings accounts.
The college said it intends to continue programs started during Bair’s presidency.
“We are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with President Bair for these past two years, and wish her all the best in her future endeavors,” H. Lawrence Culp Jr., the college’s board chair, said in a statement. “Her work on behalf of both this institution and the nation’s undergraduate population as a whole to diminish our national student debt crisis has been remarkable, and we both thank and commend President Bair for her dedication to improving access to high-quality education for all students.”
