PHILADELPHIA — Jason Wingard is out as president of Temple University after less than two years, the board announced Tuesday.
Wingard, 51, who has led the 33,600-student university since July 2021, tendered his resignation and the board accepted it at a special meeting Tuesday afternoon, said Mitchell Morgan, chair of the board of trustees.
"The plan over the next week is to identify interim leadership and then move forward with a search for a new president," said Morgan, founder and chairman of Morgan Properties, who has led the Temple board for more than three years. "In the meantime, we have a strong core group of senior administrators that we will rely on."
Wingard's resignation caps a tumultuous time at the North Philadelphia university, after a 42-day strike by graduate student workers and the February shooting death of an on-duty Temple police sergeant. Enrollment has fallen 14% since 2019, with deposits for next year down 25% compared with the same time last year, according to a source close to the school's deans.
It also comes as the Temple Association of University Professionals, the faculty union, was preparing to hold a vote of no confidence in Wingard, as well as provost Gregory N. Mandel and Morgan, and a letter by the school's deans that requested a meeting with Morgan over their concerns. Last week, a Temple News survey of 1,000 students showed 92% disapproved of Wingard's performance, adding to the pileup.
Yet the resignation also appears to have come about rather abruptly. Just on Friday, Wingard had put out a message to the Temple community that he intended to pause some of the initiatives in the strategic plan aimed at elevating Temple "to the next level of best-in-class" to focus more intently on campus safety and the enrollment decline.
It was not immediately known what prompted the seeming change in direction, or whether the university would pay out Wingard's five-year contract or some other settlement. The university has declined to provide his salary or total compensation, which won't be available through public records until later this year.
"We are thankful to Dr. Wingard for his leadership and dedicated service to the Temple community," said Morgan, who declined to answer questions about a payout or settlement.
Wingard said late Tuesday evening in a statement to the Inquirer that he was "humbled and honored" to serve as Temple's 12th president and that he had developed a strategy to elevate the university's profile and enhance its reputation, but that the safety and enrollment challenges proved a "perfect storm of societal crises" that "drastically and disproportionately impacted Temple.
"While I am confident in my ability to pivot and lead Temple through this crisis, I understand, and it has been made clear, unfortunately, that too much focus is on me rather than the challenges we seek to overcome," said Wingard, a former Columbia University dean who also previously worked at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford. "In order for Temple to overcome these safety and enrollment challenges — and all of the related issues they instigate, the campus community must work in collaboration and minimize divisiveness."
Temple's board leaders announced last week they planned to take a stronger oversight role of the university as it faced what Morgan called an "unprecedented confluence of serious challenges." Board leaders said they had formed a special committee to apply "more rigorous attention to urgent matters," specifically campus safety, enrollment, and "university engagement and responsiveness," between its quarterly board meetings.
Morgan said Tuesday that committee would remain in place as the university looks for its next leader.
"The Board and the Special Committee will be focused — as we had planned — on the university's efforts to address the many challenges we face with safety as the first priority," Morgan said. "And we will be reaching out to core constituent groups to make sure we hear from them directly. We recognize that to be effective, solutions need to be reflective of the perspectives of the many different groups who care deeply about Temple's future. Engagement and collaboration is critical."
In a message to the campus community, Morgan said a small group of senior Temple leaders would guide the school.
"This group will have many years of experience at Temple and devotion to its mission," the board said. "Each will have discrete responsibilities for the university's essential functions and provide a stable foundation for us as we look toward the search for our next president."
Among those leaders will be Ken Kaiser, senior vice president and chief operating officer, who had previously said he would step down this summer. Kaiser, who has been at Temple for more than 30 years, said late Tuesday afternoon that he planned to stay now.
"With this change in leadership, the board has asked that I stay on, given my experience and years here at Temple to help guide us in the future and to make Temple the best university it can be," he said.
Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, faculty senate president, was not pleased to hear about Wingard's resignation. She previously had said that Wingard had been carrying out the charge the board of trustees had given him — to be the outward face of Temple and fundraise.
"I'm very sad to see the way this has played out," she said.
Gianni Quattrocchi, student government president, said he didn't see it as "wholly bad or wholly good," noting that he liked some aspects of Wingard's leadership but was frustrated by others.
But he said he thought given recent events, it was a good step forward to find leadership that might better fit what Temple needs now.
"The biggest next step forward should be looking toward what we should have in the next university president," he said, "one that values the mission of the college as both an academic and research institution and is dedicated to expanding and building upon our relations with different institutions, one that goes out in the world and fundraises and brings more funds in and one that appreciates the unique aspects of a college education and a Temple University education that you can't find anywhere else."
While the administration's handling of the graduate student negotiations may have been the impetus for the faculty union's considering a no-confidence vote, concern about university leadership had been mounting. Union officials cited noncontract renewals for some nontenured faculty, public-safety concerns, and vacancies in some key administrative jobs. They also have raised concerns about university finances and problems in the offices of ethics and compliance and research and have cited Wingard's seeming lack of presence on campus.
They raised questions about Wingard attending the Super Bowl in Arizona and then a Temple program in Jamaica for several days in February while a graduate student strike was roiling the campus.
Others within the faculty union, however, were concerned that it would send the wrong message to vote no confidence in Temple's first Black president when he had so little time in the post and had been confronting post-pandemic problems like rising gun violence.
And on Tuesday, some quietly expressed disappointment that a tenure that started on such a historical high note ended so awfully.
Temple has been wrestling with how best to beef up safety in the area around campus following the Feb. 18 shooting death of Temple Police Sgt. Christopher Fitzgerald while on duty.
Jeffrey Doshna, faculty union president, said the union intended to go forward with the no confidence vote, scheduled to begin April 10.
"Our members made it very clear this wasn't about one person," Doshna said. "This was about senior leadership. There are still significant concerns that haven't gone away because Wingard quit."
Fresh from a meeting of union members, Doshna said faculty have some ideas "about how Temple can be remade" and "we want to be a part of it."
"We are ready to take concrete steps to be sure Temple is moving forward in the right direction," he said.
Wingard in December drew some praise when said he had planned to move near Temple's North Philadelphia campus as soon as early April, after the house had been renovated. He would have been the first Temple president in decades to live in the neighborhood.
"It's what I believe is necessary for the president and the first lady of the university to be able to engage fully with the students, with the faculty, with the staff, to attend plays, to go to games, to engage with the community, to frequent local businesses and shops," Wingard said at the time.
The university did not respond to questions earlier this week about when he would be moving in.
