Hazel R. O’Leary, the embattled president of financially strapped Fisk University, will retire from her post in December, the school said in a surprise announcement issued late Friday.
News of O’Leary departure comes as the school manages to maintain a small, solid academic program while continuing to lose enrollment and thirst for a huge infusion of money to keep its door open. O’Leary was appointed president of Fisk in August, 2004.
A member of the university’s board of trustees says the search for a successor to O’Leary would begin immediately.
In recent years, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) increasingly expressed concern about the university’s long term viability, sending one signal after another. It placed the historic institution on warning status then, last December, placed Fisk on probation.
