Ellen Chaffee, the 15-year president of Valley City State University who spent nine of those years doubling up as the leader of Mayville State University, announced Monday she plans to end her tenure at the close of this school year.
"I'm stepping down," Chaffee said. "I don't like the word 'retire' and I don't like 'resign,' so I'm looking for a new term. I don't have employment plans after I leave on June 30. I'm not ruling it out, but I'm not looking for it."
Chaffee said she and her husband plan to return to Bismarck, where they lived when she was a vice chancellor of the North Dakota University System, before taking on the Valley City and Mayville presidencies. She said the couple also plans to spend more time in the Boston area, visiting their daughter and grandchildren, who live there.
Chaffee's departure brings to four the number of university system presidents who will leave office this school year. Searches are also underway to replace retiring presidents at UND, Dickinson State University and Lake Region State College.
Last school year brought new presidents at Bismarck State College, Mayville State University and the North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton as well as a new university system chancellor. That means two-thirds of the university system's 12 chief executive posts will change hands with 18 months.
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State Board of Higher Education President John Paulsen said Monday he only learned that day that Chaffee planned to retire and hadn't spoken yet with Chancellor Bill Goetz about forming a search committee to find her replacement.
"Obviously (performing four presidential searches at once) will be a challenge, but that's what we need to do," Paulsen said. "We need to meet challenges, and we will. I'm very confident that we'll find a strong successor to a very strong president."
Chaffee did not come willingly to the role of university president. In a previous job with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, she spent five years researching college leadership.
"I interviewed a lot of people, presidents and people around the presidents," she said, "and I thought, 'Gee, no matter what you do as a college president, someone won't like it.' I thought it's kind of a thankless job and maybe I don't want to be one after all."
Chaffee was thrust into the president's role in 1993. At that time, she was the university system's vice chancellor for academic affairs. When Mayville State University President James Schobel left suddenly, Chaffee said, the chancellor asked her to take the job on an interim basis.
When the administration of Mayville and VCSU merged later that year, Chaffee inherited that post, too. Contrary to her own expectations, she held on to both jobs for nine years, until Mayville again was granted an on-campus president in 2002.
When she steps down in June, Chaffee will have served longer than any other sitting president in the university system.
Reflecting Monday on her former aversion to a university president's job, Chaffee said she hadn't paid enough attention to the job's rewards. Among those rewards, she cited forging connections between VCSU and the Valley City community and major technology initiatives, including becoming one of the first schools to issue laptops to all students in 1996.
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Last fall, the school began offering an online master's degree for practicing teachers, the school's first advanced degree.
Marks reports on higher education. Reach him at (701) 780-1105; (800) 477-6572, ext. 105; or jmarks@gfherald.com .
