Temple University Board Seeks to Dismiss President Over Shortfall
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Version 0 of 1. The Temple University board of trustees issued a vote of no confidence in the school’s president, Neil D. Theobald, and plans to seek his removal in connection with a $22 million deficit in the university’s financial aid budget, the board chairman said in a statement on Tuesday. The chairman, Patrick J. O’Connor, said that Dr. Theobald “must be held accountable” for the deficit and that the president had been offered an opportunity to resign, which he refused, according to the statement. The board will seek Dr. Theobald’s dismissal at a meeting on Thursday. The announcement came after the removal of the university’s provost, Hai-Lung Dai, for his apparent involvement in the $22 million over-allocation of merit scholarships for the 2016-17 academic year, PhillyVoice reported. Dr. Dai, who joined Temple in 2007, was provost for four years. After he was dismissed last month, members of Temple’s faculty began an online petition calling for scrutiny by the board of the president’s leadership, PhillyVoice reported. Efforts to reach Dr. Theobald or a spokesman for Temple were unsuccessful on Tuesday night. Dr. Theobald became Temple’s 10th president in 2013. He had served as an administrator and a member of the faculty at Indiana University, where he directed a research center that helped state governments design K-12 funding systems, according to his biography. Mr. O’Connor wrote that the board intended to appoint Temple’s current chancellor, Richard M. Englert, as acting president pending the outcome of a search for a permanent successor. Mr. Englert started at Temple as a professor of educational administration in 1976 and served in a number of administrative and leadership positions at the school, including chief of staff to the president. The board on Tuesday appointed JoAnne A. Epps, the dean of Temple’s law school, to succeed Dr. Dai as provost. |