UNCG’s Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Debbie Storrs announced Wednesday she is leaving the university — to focus on a struggle with Stage 4 breast cancer.
“Please know I am stepping away because my diagnosis demands that I turn my energy toward a profound health struggle,” Storrs wrote in a message to faculty and staff. “I would much prefer to link arms behind UNCG’s history and what we have accomplished thus far and join you on the journey into the future.”
Last month, UNCG’s faculty passed a resolution of no confidence in Storrs, in continuing fallout from the university’s earlier decision to eliminate 20 academic programs. The motion was critical of how the program cuts are being carried out as well as Storrs’ decision to move all professional track faculty to one-year contracts. Professional track faculty are not eligible for tenure.
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The faculty vote, which carried no official weight, was 181 (53%) in favor of the no-confidence resolution and 158 (47%) against, with 339 out of more than 800 faculty members voting on the resolution.
In his own message Wednesday, UNCG Chancellor Frank Gilliam said he wanted to make it clear that Storrs’ departure was her choice alone. He called her the best person for the provost role during this time of “historic change” for UNCG.
“She is a visionary leader with a spine of steel,” he wrote.
Storrs came to UNCG in June 2021 from the University of North Dakota and has served as provost and executive vice chancellor ever since. In her message Wednesday, she said she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in January 2022.
Her nearly two-page message touched on her thoughts on her time at UNCG, the future of higher education and her role in the recent review of academic programs and resulting cuts.
“The provost’s responsibility is to juggle the complex issues and make decisions for maintaining academic excellence; supporting faculty, staff, and students; and balancing our budget,” she wrote. “I have done this in an honest, fair, and transparent manner.”
She also dedicated some of the message to clapping back at critics following the vote of no-confidence.
“I understand that it can temporarily feel satisfying, even empowering, for some faculty members to stage rage, attack leadership, question integrity, and critique change when confronted with a decision not to their liking,” she wrote.
“However, after a year-long, inclusive, and transparent process in response to actual conditions, I have zero confidence in this impulse.”
Gilliam said that Senior Vice Provost Alan Boyette is set to become acting provost on May 1, immediately following Storrs departure at the end of this month. He said Boyette will stay on as acting provost until the university finalizes an interim provost appointment, in preparation for a national search for a permanent provost, Gilliam said.
He said the university will begin that search in August, in partnership with executive search firm Isaacson, Miller.
“It’s been an honor for me to serve alongside Debbie,” he wrote. “Although I’ll miss her as a colleague, I’m grateful that she’ll remain in Greensboro, where we will continue to share our care with her and her family.”