BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – After five years on the job, University of Vermont President Suresh Garimella is moving on. The University of Arizona on Friday officially hired Garimella as its next president. The UVM community has mixed reactions about his departure.
The UVM staff union frequently voiced frustration with Garimella’s leadership and said they were surprised to hear about the decision.
“We’ve always had great concerns with the priorities of this administration, which seems to prioritize executive salaries over paying fair wages to longtime staff, to all of the staff, so that we can have good retention and good recruitment at UVM,” said Ellen Kaye of the UVM staff union.
The union wasn’t the only group concerned about Garimella’s leadership. Back in March, more than 1,400 UVM faculty members, students, staff and community members signed a no-confidence petition after the administration announced a plan to phase out roughly 30 academic programs, in part to address the university’s budget deficit.
In his inaugural speech at the University of Arizona, Garimella said he’s spent his whole career focusing on students and praised the faculty’s commitment to making the University of Arizona a great institution.
“Our exceptional faculty are the guiding force for our students’ success and for our institution’s exceptional impact in research and innovation,” Garimella said.
Many UVM students we spoke with say they didn’t know Garimella well, saying he wasn’t a very involved president. But they say when he was, they weren’t happy with his decisions, including his handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment earlier this year.
Garimella also clashed with the city of Burlington after university plans for more student housing were paused because of expensive construction.
But the UVM board of trustees says it was no surprise Arizona wanted to hire Garimella given his impressive leadership.
“We are in such a positive trajectory with our improvements in research, our impact in the community, our focus on affordability, and so on and so forth, that of course the president of the University of Vermont would be getting really big visibility in academia as a potential candidate elsewhere,” said Ron Lumbra, the chair of the UVM board of trustees.
The university will work to appoint an interim president, while a search committee is formed to find a permanent replacement.