Her staff doesn't look any different than most other senior administrators anywhere in the country; her senior staff was 8/12 white (half men, half women), 3 people of color (two women), and one man who didn't have a picture. More curious to me is this:
“Significant, unanticipated expenses…came to light very suddenly,” chair Judson Aaron and president Kerry Walk said last Friday, and they “were unable to bridge the necessary gaps.”
Sounds like the accreditation was lost because they failed to give significant notice of their closure (and at that point, what good is it?).
The details behind the closing have been tough to learn, as the trustees and staff have given very few details.
From a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article:
"University of the Arts notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, its accrediting agency, on Wednesday [May 29], the first day of its summer term, that it planned to close on June 7. Middle States, in an unusually quick move, then said it would withdraw University of the Arts’ accreditation Saturday because it was out of compliance with all of the organization’s standards."
The Middle States Commission actually publicly announced the withdraw of accreditation on Friday (May 31), which is how the story broke. The University of the Arts leadership has indicated that they should have been the ones to first announce the closing, and they do seem to have some regrets that this wasn't how things played out.
There may be a Middle States Commission standard on closing announcements that U of A was about to violate. However, I think there were likely many other standards that the U of A was out of compliance, and that Middle States, like the U of A students, faculty, and the city, were in the dark about what was taking place at U of A.
