CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 10 (UPI) -- Teresa Sullivan, the first woman to head the University of Virginia, said Sunday she is quitting because she and school trustees don't see eye to eye.
The Washington Post reported the board voted to accept Sullivan's resignation and she will leave the Charlottesville campus Aug. 15 after just two years on the job. Her predecessor at the school founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, John Casteen, had served for 20 years.
Sullivan said she was leaving over "a philosophical difference of opinion" with the board and Chairwoman Helen Dragas said the trustees decided "strongly and overwhelmingly that we need bold and proactive leadership" in dealing with "difficult issues," including spending.
The university, Dragas said, faces "an existential threat to the greatness" of the school.
University law Professor George Cohen, who heads the Faculty Senate, said Sullivan's resignation came as a "complete surprise."
"It's a setback. It certainly isn't impossible to overcome," said Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. "This is still the University of Virginia."
Dragas said an interim president would be named "expeditiously."
The university, which has 14,000 undergraduates, 6,500 post-graduate students and a staff of 2,100 is feeling a financial pinch, with annual giving down several million dollars per year.
Sullivan had been provost at the University of Michigan for four years prior to arriving in Charlottesville, and earlier was executive vice chancellor of the University of Texas system.
