Ursinus College suddenly removes president, citing ‘best interests of the college’s long-term success’

Ursinus College president Robyn E. Hannigan, who was in her fourth year at the small liberal arts school in Collegeville, was abruptly removed from the job Thursday and her Ursinus webpage was removed.

”I met with the board this morning," said Hannigan, 60, who was reached by phone. “I was let go. It’s the board’s decision. It’s not for cause. The board wanted to go in a different direction.”

She declined to disclose what the board told her at the meeting.

In a statement, the college said it was a board decision “made in the best interests of the college’s long-term success.”

Joseph DeSimone, chair of the college’s board of trustees and a 1986 Ursinus grad, declined in an interview to say why the board chose to part ways with Hannigan, saying it was a personnel decision. The leadership change is happening just as the college is about to celebrate homecoming weekend.

The move comes after the college experienced a 10% decline in first-year enrollment this fall and a 6.4% decline in overall enrollment, which stands at 1,406.

The college also was coping with financial challenges, in part because of the enrollment decline, but also because the retention rate last year for returning freshmen was 77%, six percentage points lower than the school’s average, Hannigan told the student newspaper, the Grizzly, in an interview published Oct. 2.

“We have a structural deficit, which means that we’re not living within our means and our revenues are not enough to cover our expenses,” she told the Grizzly. “So we have to fix that.”

She told the student newspaper that Ursinus took steps last year to “right the ship” financially and launched APEX, a program designed to better align academics with experiential learning and career prep. That is expected to bring enrollment back up, she said.

The college is offering students up to $2,000 for internships, team-based career coaching and advising, and a week for first-year students devoted to real world problem-solving.

The college plans to hold a town hall for faculty and staff at noon Friday.

“This decision should not reflect in any way on the strength of the college and its direction,” Hannigan told The Inquirer. “It is the nature of the business that we are in.”

The news stunned the campus community.

“I was just baffled,” said senior Renee Washart, editor in chief of the Grizzly. “I did not see this coming at all.”

She said she met with Hannigan on Monday, as she does once every month in her role as editor, and there was no indication of the change.

“She was talking about future plans for Ursinus,” said Washart, a chemistry and English major from Frederick, Md.

Washart said she was in class when an email came to campus about the change in leadership and her phone “started blowing up.” Her professor, she said, was hearing it for the first time, too.

Hannigan, an academic in the sciences who holds several patents, said that she was under a contract that goes for “another couple years” and that she would be on leave for a few weeks while a separation agreement is worked out.

DeSimone, a professor of Translational Medicine and chemical engineering at Stanford University, said in an announcement to the campus shortly before 11:30 a.m. that Gundolf Graml, the provost, will serve as interim president.

“The board has full confidence in Dr. Graml to ensure continuity of operations and to advance the college’s strategic priorities,” the college said in a statement. “The college’s mission, values, and commitment to our students remain unchanged.”

In an interview, DeSimone said there were no current plans to launch a search for a new president and that Graml and the executive team were well positioned to lead the college forward. Applications and donations are up, he said.

Hannigan came to Ursinus in July 2022 from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., where she was the provost. She was the first permanent female leader of Ursinus and the first of Native American descent.

In a 2022 interview with The Inquirer, she said she was a first-generation college student whose parents scraped to save enough to pay for her first year of college and whose older brother chose to forgo college so that she could go.

She grew up in New Jersey and received a bachelor’s degree in biology from the College of New Jersey, a master’s in geology from SUNY Buffalo, and a doctoral degree in earth and environmental science from the University of Rochester.

Hannigan described her departure from Ursinus as “a friendly separation.”

“The college has been doing great work in trying to turn around and do what it needs to do to thrive in the future,” she said.