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President Saunders Resigns

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Dear Faculty, Staff and Students,

Late yesterday, on behalf of the Florida Atlantic University Board of Trustees, I regretfully accepted FAU President Mary Jane Saunders’ resignation. The Board respects her desire to return to the faculty, a decision which she made in the best interest of the University.

Throughout her time as President, she has consistently demonstrated a genuine love for the university, its students and the community. She attended every athletic game, arts performance and FAU-sponsored event that she could.  Few major community events were held without her involvement. President Saunders has been fully committed morning, day and night to the betterment of FAU.

The list of accomplishments she made during her three-year tenure is long. FAU, its students and the region benefited from the strong vision she had for the University’s future – a future she set in motion.

For example, President Saunders:

• Led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) reaffirmation, which earned the University the highest possible overall evaluation and special praise for our Quality Enhancement Plan, “Distinction through Discovery.”

• Launched the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, including establishing preceptorships with 900 physicians, partnerships with eight hospitals for Med 3+4 clinical rotations, and a consortium with five hospitals for 340 new post-graduate residencies; more than 7,500 applications have been received over a three-year period, enabling the University to select nationally competitive students to fill the 64 slots that are available annually.

• Fostered major donations that total more than $50 million in three years. The FAU Foundation’s endowment was $187.6 million as of March 31, 2013 and assets of the HBOI Foundation currently total $58 million.

• Led the process of creating the 2012-17 Strategic Plan, which establishes FAU’s three signature themes: Marine and Coastal Issues, Biotechnology, and Contemporary Societal Issues.

• Doubled freshman applications from 12,000 to 24,000 in 2011. The incoming class in fall 2012 was the largest in FAU history and had highly competitive SAT and ACT scores. FAU has become the most selective institution in the State University System and the student body has grown to an all-time high of 30,000-plus.

• Balanced budgets of $600 million for three years, including FY 2012 with $24.7 million in E&G (Education and General) budget cuts and no PECO (Public Education Capital Outlay) funding for FYs 2011-13.

• Created the Center for eLearning to increase the University’s competitiveness in the rapidly expanding online education arena.

We are grateful for the contributions President Saunders made to help make a great University even stronger, and wish her much success and happiness in her future endeavors. We welcome her back to the faculty of the Charles E Schmidt College of Science.

I consulted with President Saunders, who is appointing Dennis Crudele, FAU’s senior vice president for finance and administration, as the Acting President, effective immediately.

Anthony K.G. Barbar
Chair, FAU’s Board of Trustees
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

Thank you for your contributions Dr. Saunders....and good luck with your future endeavors.
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

I bet she got a lot of heat for the stadium thing and she hits that student with her car, all the bad publicity they've gotten recently. Someone has to be held accountable and if I had to guess she was given the option of resigning or being fired

My two favorite teams are FAU, and who ever is beating FIU!
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

FAU - President announces

I feel this was a long-time coming.  Saunders was not approachable nor eloquent in her dealings with any FAU story that came up.  This came back to haunt our prestigious university repeatedly.

Maybe we were spoiled by Brogan who was a gold-mine.  But Saunders was a black hole…

Going forward, I hope they do a stringent search and find a suitable replacement to Brogan as Saunders was never a good replacement.

Also, I worked with her and her "friends" she brought on board at FAU so I have inside knowledge of her workings with FAU staff, students and the community and I regret to inform everyone that our school (my alma mater) deserves MUCH better!

This is good news - make no mistake - good news!
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

President Saunders Resigns

She did a lot of good, but the recent bad press put a lot of pressure on her, i think she made the decision to try and change the image of the university. However some students are happy with news and posted their joy on twitter. Shame.
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

This was just a matter of time.  She just did a poor job of handling the recent controversies and that was her downfall.  There is no way any of the stories should have gotten as out of hand as they did.  Brogan would have handled all of them so much better.

Still, she seems like a nice lady and I do feel bad for her.  She did a lot of good things that will get overlooked. 
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

You only really have two options when it comes to university presidents, guys like Brogan (social, affable, political and typically disliked by the academic community) and women like MJ (academics, usually focused on the academic standing of the school and getting research dollars, typically adored by the profs). Where MJ ran into trouble is that she was president at a time where we could've used that PR machine President and she tried to do it but just didn't have the skill set. She drove hard to advance our athletics and enrollments but in the process drew the ire of the academics and when the PR debacles began she found herself on an island. MJ would've been successful at a different time where she could've done the things she would have excelled at, too bad, just the wrong time for her here.

The next move we make is a big one. Brogan 2.0 would be nice. Lets see if we can run this search better than the last
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

Not a huge shock, although it m sort of surprised it actually happened. As many have said, way to many issues and bad PR on her watch that outweigh the good things.
Now if only we can we get the President up in DC to make the same decision ;)
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

OwlBroker said

Not a huge shock, although it m sort of surprised it actually happened. As many have said, way to many issues and bad PR on her watch that outweigh the good things.
Now if only we can we get the President up in DC to make the same decision ;)

Ugh…Do some people really have to bring politics into EVERYTHING?  I don't care what your political views are, but now this thread will just get derailed.  There are other message boards for that.
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Re: President Saunders Resigns

fauowls44 said

Ugh…Do some people really have to bring politics into EVERYTHING?  I don't care what your political views are, but now this thread will just get derailed.  There's other message boards for that.

+1,000,000,000
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