Texas A&M Board of Regents meeting to appoint interim president, authorize to ‘negotiate a potential settlement of claims of Kathleen McElroy’
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – The Texas A&M System Board of Regents will convene a special meeting on Sunday, according to a meeting notice posted on the Texas Secretary of State website. There are two items on the agenda; to appoint an interim president of Texas A&M University and the “authorization to negotiate a potential settlement of claims of Kathleen McElroy.”
The meeting will convene at 6 p.m. and immediately recess to executive session.
This meeting comes after a turbulent few weeks at the university, when the hiring of Kathleen McElroy, a seasoned journalist with more than 40 years of experience, fell apart. The aftereffects left the new journalism program without a director, the Interim Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences stepped down and the university’s president, Katherine Banks, retired immediately. Gen. Mark Welsh III took over as acting president.
Since then, an outcry from faculty, students and the public has pushed Texas A&M into the national spotlight. The Faculty Senate has voiced they are wary of a university whose administration seemed to be influenced by outside political pressure.
In June, McElroy was hailed as the “perfect person” to spearhead and revitalize the university’s journalism program. Coming home to her alma mater and having an extensive professional and academic career in journalism, Texas A&M held an out-of-the-ordinary signing ceremony as she officially accepted the position to run the program and teach as a tenured professor, pending approval from the Texas A&M System Board of Regents.
Less than a month later, McElroy rescinded her acceptance after she said the conditions of her contract kept changing and A&M System officials expressed issues with her work on race and diversity and her time at the New York Times.
After agreeing to run the new program and teach as a tenured professor, A&M came back with a five-year contract position without tenure, and then a third offer that was a one-year at-will contract.
At this time, there are no lawsuits filed under her name.
