Sherri Everts, Appalachian State University Chancellor and President of the SBC Executive Committee has resigned effective April 19th, 2024. Everts' two year term started on July 1, 2023.



Lots of Happy Mountaineers dancing in Boonetown today.

(04-15-2024 11:55 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Sherri Everts, Appalachian State University Chancellor and President of the SBC Executive Committee has resigned effective April 19th, 2024. Everts' two year term started on July 1, 2023.



Lots of Happy Mountaineers dancing in Boonetown today.

I take it Everts wasn't well liked? Short recap of problems?

(04-15-2024 12:08 PM)freshtop Wrote:  

(04-15-2024 11:55 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Sherri Everts, Appalachian State University Chancellor and President of the SBC Executive Committee has resigned effective April 19th, 2024. Everts' two year term started on July 1, 2023.



Lots of Happy Mountaineers dancing in Boonetown today.

I take it Everts wasn't well liked? Short recap of problems?

Students for the last 10 years have felt she was distant to them and indifferent to them. She definitely was long-term goal focused rather than worrying with the "issues of the day." Also, as everything else nowadays, politics are involved. Students didn't like how she ignored the BLM/LGBTQ communities. Outsiders didn't like how she filled the ranks with DEI hires. Locals didn't like that she really didn't ask permission from the town/county for anything. Blah blah blah. I do like she grew the school in areas such as research and investments. I didn't like that she didn't at least give lip service to the students. No bedside manners, as it were.

(04-15-2024 12:08 PM)freshtop Wrote:  

(04-15-2024 11:55 AM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  Sherri Everts, Appalachian State University Chancellor and President of the SBC Executive Committee has resigned effective April 19th, 2024. Everts' two year term started on July 1, 2023.



Lots of Happy Mountaineers dancing in Boonetown today.

I take it Everts wasn't well liked? Short recap of problems?

Basically, she managed to make enemies of students, faculty, alumni, and state officials all at once.

It's a GREAT DAY to be a Mountaineer!

Resigning as a result of being to politically correct is unlikely unless shes caught on camera abusing an elderly disabled panda. Be careful what you ask for.

(04-15-2024 12:16 PM)JTApps1 Wrote:  Basically, she managed to make enemies of students, faculty, alumni, and state officials all at once.

So she was a unifier and consistent in her work?
Good riddance and happy mountaineers, huh?

There had been several recent issues. The big one was a planned campus 911 Center, which got rebuked by the town, county and last month, the Board of Trustees to her face in a public meeting.

Other issues were the art building, which is half under-construction, wasn't safe for students and had to be shut down in an emergency. There were firings of staffers who were LGBTQ, which was reported in several higher education publications and has led to a federal lawsuit, and the whitewashing of the longstanding Pride Week (if you don't like that stuff, whatever, it's turning against those students, of which there are plenty at App State), plus the ending the decades-long expression tunnels tradition, which touched a nerve with many students and alums (I wrote letters about that one). That's all in the last two months.

Everts has been chancellor for 10 years. Some never liked her for dumb reasons. She started off rough, but got better. COVID was a lose-lose scenario. But her approval ratings fell off a cliff in the last year-plus. She hasn't lived in Boone for the last year-plus.

She's done positives for App State. Modernizing the residence halls near the football stadium was a big deal. Buying land for the new track and field facility, softball stadium and tennis courts, plus student parking, was huge. The App State Hickory campus is a mustard seed which could bare fruit in the future. And she increased enrollment to over 20,000 at the whim of the state, being a good political soldier. Plus, for the most part, she lets Athletics do its thing and didn't micro-manage. She hired Doug Gillin as AD after Charlie Cobb fled town 45 days into her chancellor's reign.

And most important to those reading this, more than any other single person, Everts is the reason Coastal, JMU, ODU, Marshall and Southern Miss are in the Sun Belt.

The worry for App fans looking ahead is that the UNC Board of Governors, which oversees all 16 public campuses in North Carolina, has screwed up multiple chancellor searches in recent memory. Comparatively speaking, Everts has done much better than some of their other hires. App State is by far the biggest "middle group" school in the UNC System (Chapel Hill, NC State, ECU and UNC Charlotte are "big group," mainly because they have 25k+ students and many doctorate-level programs, of which App has none) and competes in many aspects to ECU and UNC Charlotte in $$$ if you take away their doctorate program revenues.

EDIT: Change medical to doctorate-level programs. Out of the 16 UNC schools, App has had the lowest per-pupil funding for years. Too big to be small, too small to be big.

An interim chancellor will have to be named soon cause graduation is in 3 weeks and many other more important reasons. We're looking at a 13ish month interim chancellor as the search for a permanent one goes.

In the end, Everts left App State in a better place, but it was time for a change. Her "significant illness" is probably legit, as she had breast cancer over a decade ago, but her time was up.

Everts is THE reason Coastal is in.

The conference was at an impasse. You had Liberty wanting in but apparently zero to near zero support. EKU wanted in and got a meh response. NMSU wanted in and supposedly had a majority but couldn't get the magic 3/4ths majority.

Everts is the one who said, hey we've got Coastal in the neighborhood. Their athletic resume is basically identical to Liberty but they fit who we are. Let's take a break and reach out to them and see if they would be interested.

It was an inspired bit of leadership, I think it also had a good long-term benefit of changing the mood. There had been something of a cork attitude. Bouncing along on the water. Never sinking but never really driving our direction.

Taking charge of who joined rather than just talking to whatever hobos showed up mattered and this wasn't like the league reaching out to App and GaSo trying to stay afloat, this was a move driven by who can we add that fits and makes us better in some ways.

Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled adding the Mountaineers and Gnats, I mean Eagles, but the conversation was driven by y'all gotta come now or there is no tomorrow (or it's a tomorrow with EKU and Liberty).

We got to the cusp of this once before, shortly before UAB dropped football. The AD at UAB wanted Sun Belt to get costs down and the board of their back, USM was interested if UAB came. The UAB president balked fearing fan backlash. I think those conversations planted a seed at USM but it took the Sun Belt truly believing in itself for it to grow.

Dr. Everts, was a leader in the league before going on the executive board by being a consensus builder.

I can't comment on her leadership of the university, but people doing an inferior job rarely last ten years. The average tenure of a campus CEO is now 5.9 years a big drop from 8.5 years in 2006. The job is ridiculously harder with states paring back funding or increasing but increasing at a slower pace than costs are rising.

Campus CEO's in general are much like AD's and coaches with expiration dates when they need to move on.

If she is responsible for USM being here, I love her.

She was a unifying force in the Sun Belt when we badly needed direction as a league. I can't answer for what has happened at App (Does anyone ever actually like their president?) But she'll be missed in this conference.

Sounds like the conference should hire her.

A lot people at App love to piss and moan .
TDog has the most balanced view of her.
She was constantly being blackmailed by LGBT and others .
She followed the most liked Chancellor ever.

Like most of us, she did her best.... and I am thankful for her service.
She was brave in many ways..... politics I believe were crushing her.... she aged a lot in recent years.

(04-15-2024 11:15 PM)PhillyApp1 Wrote:  A lot people at App love to piss and moan .
TDog has the most balanced view of her.
She was constantly being blackmailed by LGBT and others .
She followed the most liked Chancellor ever.

Like most of us, she did her best.... and I am thankful for her service.
She was brave in many ways..... politics I believe were crushing her.... she aged a lot in recent years.

Politics are crushing everyone. You either choose to walk on eggshells or walk around with the middle finger at full mast. Whatever you say is going to offend someone. Nothing you can do when there is division on every single issue.

(04-15-2024 05:20 PM)T-Dog Wrote:  There had been several recent issues. The big one was a planned campus 911 Center, which got rebuked by the town, county and last month, the Board of Trustees to her face in a public meeting.

Other issues were the art building, which is half under-construction, wasn't safe for students and had to be shut down in an emergency. There were firings of staffers who were LGBTQ, which was reported in several higher education publications and has led to a federal lawsuit, and the whitewashing of the longstanding Pride Week (if you don't like that stuff, whatever, it's turning against those students, of which there are plenty at App State), plus the ending the decades-long expression tunnels tradition, which touched a nerve with many students and alums (I wrote letters about that one). That's all in the last two months.

Everts has been chancellor for 10 years. Some never liked her for dumb reasons. She started off rough, but got better. COVID was a lose-lose scenario. But her approval ratings fell off a cliff in the last year-plus. She hasn't lived in Boone for the last year-plus.

She's done positives for App State. Modernizing the residence halls near the football stadium was a big deal. Buying land for the new track and field facility, softball stadium and tennis courts, plus student parking, was huge. The App State Hickory campus is a mustard seed which could bare fruit in the future. And she increased enrollment to over 20,000 at the whim of the state, being a good political soldier. Plus, for the most part, she lets Athletics do its thing and didn't micro-manage. She hired Doug Gillin as AD after Charlie Cobb fled town 45 days into her chancellor's reign.

And most important to those reading this, more than any other single person, Everts is the reason Coastal, JMU, ODU, Marshall and Southern Miss are in the Sun Belt.

The worry for App fans looking ahead is that the UNC Board of Governors, which oversees all 16 public campuses in North Carolina, has screwed up multiple chancellor searches in recent memory. Comparatively speaking, Everts has done much better than some of their other hires. App State is by far the biggest "middle group" school in the UNC System (Chapel Hill, NC State, ECU and UNC Charlotte are "big group," mainly because they have 25k+ students and medical schools) and competes in many aspects to ECU and UNC Charlotte in $$$ if you take away their medical school revenues.

An interim chancellor will have to be named soon cause graduation is in 3 weeks and many other more important reasons. We're looking at a 13ish month interim chancellor as the search for a permanent one goes.

In the end, Everts left App State in a better place, but it was time for a change. Her "significant illness" is probably legit, as she had breast cancer over a decade ago, but her time was up.

FYI UNCC doesn't have a medical school. UNC-CH screwed them over trying to flex with an Atrium partnership in Charlotte, the State ***** footed around, and Wake Forest stepped in and signed the deal.

UNCC does get better funding due to more students and a more robust graduate/research programs.

Everts did an admirable job IMO moving App forward. App-Hickory is probably our best chance to move forward in classification. The west campus transformation was sorely needed. The new innovation campus also seems like a wise investment.

She had zero personal charisma with students. Following up the most popular chancellor to ever exist is hard. IMO these recent problems needed addressing, but were not forced resignation worthy.

10 years is a good tenure. It might have been time for a change and new blood anyway.

I'm very worried leaving the picking of our new leader to the politically charged and institutionally driven UNCBOG.

Guess we need someone else to continue and continue to push forward the work of our conference. I know a man in Troy, Alabama who has been around for a long, long time

(04-16-2024 06:29 AM)MUther Wrote:  

(04-15-2024 11:15 PM)PhillyApp1 Wrote:  A lot people at App love to piss and moan .
TDog has the most balanced view of her.
She was constantly being blackmailed by LGBT and others .
She followed the most liked Chancellor ever.

Like most of us, she did her best.... and I am thankful for her service.
She was brave in many ways..... politics I believe were crushing her.... she aged a lot in recent years.

Politics are crushing everyone. You either choose to walk on eggshells or walk around with the middle finger at full mast. Whatever you say is going to offend someone. Nothing you can do when there is division on every single issue.

I actually think there's a lot more middle ground than we admit, it's just easier to default to one of the extremes. Not sure what we do to convince each other it's worth trying. (It doesn't help that a lot of people, I believe, have discovered that they really enjoy walking around with the middle finger at full mast.)

A little bit of empathy and humility would go a long way for everyone; unfortunately no one is willing to make the first move for fear of being taken advantage of.

(Off my vaguely moralistic soapbox now.)

(04-15-2024 06:48 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Everts is THE reason Coastal is in.

The conference was at an impasse. You had Liberty wanting in but apparently zero to near zero support. EKU wanted in and got a meh response. NMSU wanted in and supposedly had a majority but couldn't get the magic 3/4ths majority.

Everts is the one who said, hey we've got Coastal in the neighborhood. Their athletic resume is basically identical to Liberty but they fit who we are. Let's take a break and reach out to them and see if they would be interested.

It was an inspired bit of leadership, I think it also had a good long-term benefit of changing the mood. There had been something of a cork attitude. Bouncing along on the water. Never sinking but never really driving our direction.

Taking charge of who joined rather than just talking to whatever hobos showed up mattered and this wasn't like the league reaching out to App and GaSo trying to stay afloat, this was a move driven by who can we add that fits and makes us better in some ways.

Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled adding the Mountaineers and Gnats, I mean Eagles, but the conversation was driven by y'all gotta come now or there is no tomorrow (or it's a tomorrow with EKU and Liberty).

We got to the cusp of this once before, shortly before UAB dropped football. The AD at UAB wanted Sun Belt to get costs down and the board of their back, USM was interested if UAB came. The UAB president balked fearing fan backlash. I think those conversations planted a seed at USM but it took the Sun Belt truly believing in itself for it to grow.

Dr. Everts, was a leader in the league before going on the executive board by being a consensus builder.

I can't comment on her leadership of the university, but people doing an inferior job rarely last ten years. The average tenure of a campus CEO is now 5.9 years a big drop from 8.5 years in 2006. The job is ridiculously harder with states paring back funding or increasing but increasing at a slower pace than costs are rising.

Campus CEO's in general are much like AD's and coaches with expiration dates when they need to move on.

She was the reason because Doug Gillin told her to be.

Someone I know who worked in Athletics as an intern Tweeted "For her big picture work, in terms of growing the university, I have almost nothing but praise for her. For her day to day overseeing the school and student-school relations, I have almost nothing but criticism for her." That's pretty dead on IMO.

Everts had a popemobile (a three-row golf cart with windows and a roof) that she was seen in around campus a lot. That made her appear unapproachable.

The Chancellor's Tailgate was across the road from where I tailgate. It wasn't there every home football game. But when it was, they not only had the plastic walls that come with a huge tent, but staff would put up a temporary white picket fence around it all, making it look more stuffy and uptight. I never saw that thing full of people and half of them were administrators.

Point being, Everts on-the-ground optics were elitist and snobby.

Something that personally made a lot of people mad was that she never gave the "Chancellor Emeritus" title to her predecessor Ken Peacock, as is customary. And when he died last fall, she didn't go to his on-campus memorial service.

Her personal standing has fallen so far that besides the Board of Trustees and the UNC BOG (the bosses of all 16 system campus chancellors) issuing statements, I've seen no one else comment positively on her leaving. One County Commissioner, a retired App professor who runs a popular local weather website, asked on Facebook if students were jumping into Duck Pond to celebrate. A Boone Town Council member said something to the effect of "ding dong the witch is dead."

Something else I've since learned is that the UNC Board of Governor's personnel committee had called a special meeting for Noon on Monday to discuss personnel in closed session. The board meets on Wednesday and Thursday for a regular meeting (where it's expected an interim will be named), so to call a Monday special meeting was significant. Everts' announcement was at 11 a.m., an hour before that meeting.

And for clarity, I was told Everts was going to be out a few weeks ago. I was told this past weekend it would be this week.

(04-15-2024 06:48 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Everts is THE reason Coastal is in.

The conference was at an impasse. You had Liberty wanting in but apparently zero to near zero support. EKU wanted in and got a meh response. NMSU wanted in and supposedly had a majority but couldn't get the magic 3/4ths majority.

Everts is the one who said, hey we've got Coastal in the neighborhood. Their athletic resume is basically identical to Liberty but they fit who we are. Let's take a break and reach out to them and see if they would be interested..

*Was

Liberty has ZERO major sport National Championships. Coastal is in a different category off that alone.