The University of Illinois will pay its former president’s chief of staff $175,000 to resign from her faculty post and drop unresolved wage claims, the university announced Tuesday.
Lisa Troyer, former President Michael Hogan’s closest adviser, resigned abruptly from her administrative position earlier this year amid an email scandal in which she was accused of posing anonymously as a faculty leader to influence faculty debate.
Troyer was allowed to continue working at the university as a tenured faculty member with a $109,000 salary for a nine-month appointment. Campus officials had signaled they might challenge her faculty position, and Troyer’s resignation means the U. of I. won’t face the negative publicity of a protracted battle.
“This is a reasonable, responsible agreement with Dr. Troyer reached through mediation,” U. of I. spokesman Thomas Hardy said.
The announcement Tuesday comes as the U. of I. is hoping to move beyond its latest crisis and inspire confidence in those who have grown weary of scandal at the state’s flagship public university. The university has had two presidents resign under fire in the last three years.
U. of I. education professor Nicholas Burbules called Tuesday’s announcement “a welcome end to a very sad chapter for our university.”
“It’s the best outcome for all parties concerned,” said Burbules, who was among the 20 faculty senators who received the anonymous emails in mid-December. “I don’t think there was any great appetite for spending another year investigating her activities and, speaking personally, I am just relieved it’s over.”
The separation agreement was signed by university officials on the second day of new U. of I. President Robert Easter’s tenure, though Troyer had signed it June 19. Easter, a trusted administrator who has worked for four decades at the Urbana-Champaign campus, has said one of his top goals is to bring stability to the university system.
“There are periods you go through that are a bit rocky and hopefully we are not in that world for a while,” Easter said Monday.
The separation agreement provides some insight into how contentious the relationship had become between Troyer and the university. Among other provisions, the agreement states that Troyer will promptly withdraw wage claims she had filed with the Illinois Department of Labor. Troyer had said she deserved to be paid for a month of work she did for the president’s office between the time she resigned as chief of staff and when she assumed the faculty position.
It also states that any prospective employers checking Troyer’s references should be directed only to Hogan. In addition, Troyer and university officials agreed not to make defamatory statements, including on Facebook or Twitter, about each other.
David Morrison, deputy director for the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, criticized Troyer’s severance pay for being significantly larger than the average household’s annual income.
“It does sound to be awfully generous, all things considered,” Morrison said.
The email scandal not only led to Troyer’s resignation but also initiated the unraveling of Hogan’s presidency, as faculty critics used it to point to a larger “failure of leadership” in the president’s office. Troyer was Hogan’s closest confidante, and they had worked together at three universities.
The anonymous emails were sent to U. of I.’s faculty leadership group by someone purporting to be a member of the group. The emails tried to sway opinion on the president’s plans regarding the contentious issue of enrollment management. A faculty senator who is an expert in computer science recognized that the text was created on a computer used by Troyer and alerted the group.
Troyer has maintained she did not write or send the two anonymous emails and has contended that an external investigation into the matter was flawed. During the investigation, two firms reviewed Troyer’s laptop, phone records and thousands of emails. They concluded that the emails were sent from her computer and that there was no evidence that anybody else knew about them.
The Tribune was the first to report on the anonymous emails, in early January.
In a news release issued Tuesday, Troyer wrote: “I have always stated that I never sent any anonymous emails, and the Investigation Report never concluded that I did.”
When Troyer was hired as chief of staff in 2010, she also was given a tenured position as a psychology faculty member. Her faculty duties, as outlined in an offer letter she signed in early February, were to include research and teaching duties. The letter, however, also stated that there may be “additional reviews of (her) activities” related to the anonymous emails.
Troyer’s resignation from her faculty post is effective Aug. 15.
