Northwestern president-elect resigns just after cancer diagnosis

Rebecca Blank, Northwestern University’s incoming president, introduced Monday that she would no more time be capable to direct the institution following currently being identified with “an aggressive variety of cancer,” which she stated “will have to have all my strength and solve to struggle.”

“This letter is among the most painful and challenging I have experienced to create,” Blank wrote in a concept to the Northwestern neighborhood. “The task of president calls for several occasions, very long times, travel and regular power, in particular in the very first yr. I have generally been in a position to provide this in former work opportunities, but my health professionals suggest me that the therapies I am commencing will make it practically impossible to do the work you will need in a new president. I do not have the text to specific to you how upset and unfortunate I am to be telling you this.”

Blank, 66, been given the prognosis last 7 days. The working day she shared the news was supposed to be her 1st working day as president-elect on the Evanston, Sick., campus, where by she was scheduled to operate for two months just before officially replacing extended-serving incumbent Morton Schapiro in September. Blank would have been Northwestern’s first female president.

“We have been incredibly excited to have such a dynamic and professional leader join Northwestern,” wrote J. Landis Martin, chair of the Northwestern Board of Trustees. “Our thoughts are with Rebecca and her family for the duration of this difficult time.”

Blank has solid ties to Northwestern she served as a faculty member in the economics division from 1989 to 1999. She also briefly served in Barack Obama’s cupboard as the performing U.S. secretary of commerce from 2012 to 2013.

Right before getting named president of Northwestern, she spent eight yrs as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She and her loved ones will return to Madison for her cure.

When it was first introduced last October that Blank would leave UW Madison, she explained to Inside of Bigger Ed that she was energized for “another adventure” and was seeking forward to returning to her previous put of hire.

“It’s not that this is a thrust factor out of Wisconsin as a lot as it’s a pull component to Northwestern,” Blank stated. “It feels a minor like coming dwelling.”

Schapiro, who was established to retire in August immediately after 13 a long time at the helm, will continue on to direct the university until finally an interim or alternative is identified.

The look for committee for Blank’s substitute will be led by Peter Barris, who also headed the committee that hired Blank. Barris is slated to thrive Martin as chair of Northwestern’s Board of Trustees in September.

Patrick Sanaghan, author of From Presidential Transition to Integration and president of the Sanaghan Team, a greater instruction consulting firm that specializes in leadership transitions, explained that maintaining the search committee steady is useful for protecting stability.

“You have to be mindful and thoughtful about how you shift ahead. You seriously have to have that trustworthiness, that institutional awareness,” claimed Sanaghan (who is also an Inside of Larger Ed viewpoint contributor). “It’s a fragile time there suitable now.”

Sanaghan stated the challenge is to acknowledge the unhappiness and disappointment of the abrupt change without dwelling much too much on it, especially because Blank is alive and fighting the condition. She could even beat her most cancers and occur back again in a couple several years, he said.

“Any incoming president is now in a tough scenario, and not to title the ghosts would be silly,” he stated. “But you don’t want it to really feel like a funeral. You want to move the establishment ahead.”

Organizing for the Worst

Blank’s case is tragic but not unparalleled. Cornell University’s 1st female president, Elizabeth Garrett, died of colon most cancers in 2016 just after only 8 months on the occupation. And in April, Clayton State University’s 1st Black president, T. Ramon Stuart, resigned a lot less than a year following stepping into the purpose because of to wellness concerns ensuing from kidney failure.

Susan Resneck Pierce, former president of the College of Puget Audio and president of SRP Consulting, an additional higher education consulting company focusing on management and governance, reported Northwestern’s condition would be considerably far more complicated if they couldn’t turn to an incumbent president in fantastic standing.

“It’s likely to be about as seamless as you can consider beneath these actually tragic circumstances,” she explained. “There are occasions when it would be significantly extra tough for an institution, and in all those conditions they actually want to plan ahead.”

Sanaghan said that increased training establishments don’t often have the identical strong succession setting up as businesses or other corporations, which can direct them to carry out lengthy—and expensive—external queries for management positions.

“You have to create folks. If you never have some inner candidates who are well prepared to lead your establishment for a amount of months, then you definitely haven’t created out your bench,” he stated. “In higher ed, we do 80 percent of our hires outdoors of campus, and I think which is not a excellent predicament.”

Making ready for each scenario, of course, is unachievable. In 2005, immediately after a decade as president of Loyola University Maryland, the Reverend Harold Ridley died quickly in his campus residence. Ridley’s predecessor, Joseph Sellinger, experienced also died unexpectedly when in business office.

In the e-book Presidential Transitions: It is Not Just the Position, It’s the Changeover, John Cochrane, previous chair of Loyola’s Board of Trustees, wrote that regardless of the again-to-back again deaths of the institution’s leaders, there “were no ideas at all” for contingency when Ridley passed.

“We ended up centered on the foreseeable future,” Cochrane wrote. “I’ve thought many occasions considering that then about how substantially much easier the approach could have been had we been better geared up for this possibility.”

Sanaghan stated that getting a contingency plan—even for the most not likely of circumstances—is an crucial component of a university’s strategic governance.

“You under no circumstances anticipate these tragedies,” he explained. “But as a strategic chief, you’ve acquired to make absolutely sure this scenario is thought by way of. Which is not comfortable for most men and women.”