WEBSTER GROVES — The chair of Webster University’s board of trustees said he is working with Chancellor Beth Stroble on finding a successor to lead the troubled college after faculty and staff wrote letters expressing their concerns for the future of the school.
In a letter to faculty and staff Saturday, Sumit Verma said he and Stroble began discussing succession planning earlier this year. But the letter does not include details about that plan, such as when a new leader would be named or whether Stroble will remain at the university after a new leader is found.
“Chancellor Stroble is committed to working with the board to ensure that a thoughtful and thorough process is engaged to identify Webster’s next leader,” Verma said in the letter.
Steph Kukuljan and other business reporters bring you insights into Ƶ-area real estate and development.
Webster University’s board of trustees — who are fiduciaries of the private, nonprofit university — has continued to award annual raises to Stroble and President Julian Schuster despite falling enrollment and the loss of $128 million over the past decade.
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Its financial performance is the worst among comparable colleges in the Ƶ region. And earlier this month, the university was sued by the owner of its downtown Ƶ satellite campus over allegations it hasn’t paid the $20,000 monthly rent for most of the year.
Still, Stroble and Schuster are among the highest-paid university leaders in the region. Stroble now makes just less than $1 million a year and Schuster makes more than $850,000 a year.
Meanwhile, faculty and staff who spoke to the Post-Dispatch said morale is low as few receive raises and that a culture of blame permeates the college. They’re also frustrated by the lack of transparency from trustees, who had refused to explain the leaders’ soaring pay. Webster staff had called for a review of leaders’ pay.
On Friday, Webster University’s Faculty Senate also wrote a letter to leadership, detailing the media coverage of the college’s financial problems, and saying that many of those issues were forecast 15 years ago.
“Yet there has been no accountability at the top levels of decision making; instead, poor performance has been rewarded,” according to the letter from Webster’s faculty senate.
“We believe the Administration and the Board owe it the faculty, students, and staff to provide better leadership. We have seen no evidence that the current administration will address the continued financial crisis in a timely and actionable manner.”
Verma said in his letter to faculty and staff that executive compensation is based on a “rigorous process” that looks at pay at other universities around the world. He did not disclose which universities.
And he called the lawsuit over the downtown campus “misleading, disappointing and surprising.” He said the problem is not because of “an inability to pay the rent, but rather because maintaining the (downtown campus) as it is no longer made sense for a host of reasons,” he wrote.
Verma, who is senior vice president of Iovance Biotherapeutics, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Webster spokesman Patrick Giblin said in a statement that the administration will keep the Webster community informed as the succession planning moves forward.