Carnegie Museums president at center of controversy over Sweet Briar College ... - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In August, Jo Ellen Parker arrived in Pittsburgh and became the 10th president of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the first woman to lead the nonprofit consortium. , outside of Kansas City, the 61-year-old academic was previously president of Sweet Briar College, a private school for women in central Virginia. Before she moved out of the president’s residence in 2014, Ms. Parker told faculty, staff and students the 114-year-old school was poised to thrive. Less than a year later, the campus community was stunned by a March 3 announcement that Sweet Briar College would close in August because of declining enrollment, a dwindling endowment and $28 million in deferred maintenance. The news galvanized alumnae, who filed a lawsuit in Virginia to stop the school from spending donors’ money to wind down operations. More than 50 Sweet Briar faculty members also sued to stop the closing. Maggie Saylor Patrick, a former Sweet Briar board member, in a commentary in the Washington Post’s online higher education section, blamed the closing on “poor leadership” during Ms. Parker’s presidency from 2009 through 2014. Key people in power,... Sweet Briar professor Daniel Gottlieb asserted in the same Washington Post section that the college’s leaders “have made misleading through numbers an art. Source: www.post-gazette.com
