The chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System has decided to leave the position after almost four years.
On July 1st the Vermont State Colleges officially became the Vermont State University. The system includes Community College of Vermont, Castleton University, Northern Vermont University — comprised of Johnson and Lyndon Colleges — and Vermont Technical College
The Board of Trustees announced Monday evening that Sophie Zdatny is stepping down as chancellor. She says she’s leaving because she feels the network is in a good place as they complete the first phase of launching and transforming to a new university system.
“It’s a multi-year transformation process so there’s still quite a ways to go," says Zdatny. "But we’re getting ready to move into, or we’re already moving into, the second phase. And it just seemed that this would be a good time for me to step away, let someone else come in and take over the reins to move forward with the next phase of the transformation. It’s been an intense three-and-a-half years that I’ve been in this position and it just seemed like this was a good time for me to step away. And I feel like we’re in a good, stable place with the system. The transformation has been going well. I’ve got a very strong leadership team in place in the chancellor’s office. So this seems to be a good time, hopefully no drama, and just you know move on.”
Zdatny has been with the college system for nine years, initially serving as its General Counsel before being named Chancellor.
“I always saw my role as being to stabilize the system," notes Zdatny. "I feel like I’ve accomplished all the things that I personally set out to do when I was appointed to the position. Having a legal background was helpful. You kind of, you know you’re trained to think about both sides of issues and listen to people and understand the nuances that things are very rarely black and white. There’s just a lot of gray and you have to navigate your way through that. So I think both my knowledge of the people within the system and then the skillset that I had was probably helpful in this role.”
In February, the first president of the university system, Dr. Parwinder Grewal, announced plans to move to an all-digital library and eliminate sports programs. The controversy over the proposals eventually led to his resignation. Chancellor Zdatny says that situation is not a factor in her decision to step down.
“It was definitely a distraction," admits Zdatny. "The transformation work continued. Internally I think it probably had a negative impact on our ability to recruit students. It was unfortunate. There was a lot that we learned from that I think moving forward. I will say it’s never fun to be on the receiving end of those kinds of situations. But that wasn’t the reason that I’m thinking about doing this. This is more around where we are in the transformation and as we transition from one phase to another.”
Chancellor Zdatny will leave at the end of this year.
