kevin's leaving; what now?

posted on Jun 10, 2026

danny caballero

I started to see these signs on campus and near my neighborhood this week. I was confused at first because our president is leaving, and is taking an $800k pay cut to do so. I thought maybe these signs were a joke, or maybe they were meant to be ironic. But, as I saw more and more of them, I realized that they might be sincere.

The signs were organized by the Gillespie Group, a massive developer in our region. This group received a nod from MSU Trustees to develop Spartan Gateway District before it was scaled back.

But, why post these thirsty messages during the final weeks of his departure?

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the MSU Board of Trustees’ move to increase President Kevin Guskiewicz’s salary and extend his contract. In that writing, I argued Kevin should turn down the salary or donate it to many of the unfunded efforts that MSU has.

It seems like he took my advice…thanks?

Kevin will leave MSU for warmer climates and become the president of Clemson University.

Kevin’s departure has triggered a myriad of responses and raised numerous questions about the future of MSU. There’s plenty of speculation about who to blame for his departure, confusion about the communication around his leaving, and some wondering if Kevin truly intended to join MSU in the first place.

During our prior search for a new president, the names of the two finalists were leaked to the press, and “Not Kevin” dropped out immediately.

I’m not sure how someone exploring their options for leading our university would feel about this episode, but I cannot imagine it was a positive experience. My own view is that Kevin did the noble thing in taking the position, and communicated his displeasure by indicating in taking the position that he would expect the Board to avoid meddling in the everyday operations of the university.

The continued issues among the Board of Trustees and the challenges of leading a university at this particular moment when higher education is under attack are likely factors in Kevin’s decision to leave.

But, MSU’s problems are not new, and Kevin’s departure was not truly a surprise.

we lack administrative stability

I have been a faculty member at MSU for 13 years, and in that time we have had 7 presidents (interim, acting, or otherwise). That is not a stable situation for any organization, and especially not a university, which is meant to be a bulwark of stability and continuity in the face of societal changes and challenges.

Imagine for a moment working for a company where you had 7 different bosses in 13 years. You are doing the same job, each day, everyday, clocking in, clocking out, making sure the day’s work gets done. And around you is a spectre of uncertainty about who your boss will be, what they will want, and how they will lead.

Moreover, you are constantly trying to find new ways to do your job because your company is losing money year over year, and you have been told that you simply should become more efficient. The work only increases and the expectations only grow, and no one seems to know how to fix it.

Would you keep doing that job?

I ask myself that question regularly and I know that many of my colleagues do the same.

MSU’s employees (faculty and staff) have been doing this for years. Most of the MSU employees I’ve met have worked here much longer than I have; we have staff members regularly celebrating 25, 30, or even 40 years of service.

We believe in MSU. We have been serving the citizens of Michigan through our work for decades. We have been doing our jobs, trying to do them as well as we can, and continuing to do so while the university leadership and Board of Trustees have been in regular chaos.

How does that affect our ability to attract and retain talented people?

Fortunately most of higher education is in the shitter right now thanks to the federal actions and the cowardice of our collective university leaders. So no worries there.

How can we expect to attract and retain talented people when we have no stability in our leadership? People want to work for organizations that have a clear vision, a stable leadership, and a commitment to their employees. MSU seemingly has none of those things right now.

MSU’s problems are not new. We’re the university that faced the Larry Nassar’s abuse of women and girls, the indictment of our former president (later exonerated), dictated COVID salary cuts, the Mel Tucker scandal, continued “efficiency cuts” that starve our programs and make us compete with each other for scraps, and, most recently, 9% budget cuts and at least 100 layoffs.

We have been in a state of crisis for years, and the Board of Trustees has been repeatedly unable to provide the stability and leadership needed to navigate these crises.

Kevin was trying; I saw that in his fundraising, budget wrangling, and attempts to build a new strategic plan.

revolving doors

New presidents come with new ideas, new visions, and new plans. Each time we have had a new president, we have had a new strategic plan, a set of new initiatives, and several new priorities.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. I definitely want a president who has a vision for MSU that is compelling, inspiring, and deeply aligned with our commitment of service to the people of Michigan.

But, the constant change in leadership has made it difficult to build momentum and make progress on any of these plans. Moreover, this constant change affects the budget and the financial stability of the university. Each new president has to make their case for funding their initiatives, and this can lead to a lack of continuity in funding and support for important programs. And each new president hires new people, elevates existing people, hires outside firms for planning or searches, and generally spends a lot of money on their vision for the university.

Every president wants to have new initiatives. That’s how you know they are the president.

I recall meeting Kevin in some of his first weeks on campus. He was doing a listening tour to talk about the major efforts on campus including undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. I was very excited to meet him because I had never been invited by our prior six presidents to speak about our work. Our students were invited as well, so I asked my two senior PhD students to join the meeting.

To be quite clear, MSU is the university for STEM education research.

We are internationally known for our work in this area, and we have been doing it for decades. We have a large and vibrant community of faculty, staff, and students who are dedicated to improving STEM education at all levels. We have a large number of grants, a large number of publications, and a large number of students who are doing cutting-edge work in this area. If you think about heavy-hitters in STEM education research, you think about MSU. Or you should. ;)

Now, I’ll preface this story with the fact that it’s difficult to know everything that is happening at a university, and you work from your priors in these meetings. But it was clear in that meeting that Kevin knew next to nothing about what we did. He had heard about ‘active learning’ and had helped shuttle some efforts to incorporate it more broadly, which is admirable, but also work that MSU had done decades prior.

To be clear, that’s totally fine to not know about what we do. It’s why you have a listening tour. To listen and learn. I appreciated that he took that time. Building a personal understanding of the university and its research landscape is a very important activity for a new university president.

What that meeting did not translate into was action. We were struggling to grow our most effective classes into more classrooms; we were grappling with budget and scheduling constraints; we were planning for the future of STEM education. And two years later, we still are.

Now, that might be unfair as I’m certainly not privy to the details of what Kevin took from that meeting and decided to wrap into his portfolio of actions. But, if you take the time to do that work, and ask for my and my colleagues’ time, for my students’ time (who were not addressed directly until we closed the meeting), then I expect you to close the loop. Tell me what you learned from us and what you intend to do with that information to meet our university’s goals. Tell me where you want me to expend my time and energy.

And for God’s sake, acknowledge the students in the room; they are why we are here.

Kevin continued as our president, and frankly, I didn’t really think about him much. Our work has weathered these executive changes and turmoil; we are battling federal attacks mostly with the help of staff and professionals communities; and faculty are organizing ourselves to ensure the long-term health of Michigan State.

I’ve become jaded with that kind of executive leadership. The revolving doors of presidents have numbed me to their words and actions, and dissuaded me from considering seriously many of their initiatives.

I work diligently in my corner of the university, ignore anything that isn’t required of me, and work the parts of the system over which I can gain some control. I suspect that’s not unlike the other 10,000+ regular employees of MSU.

the moral center of msu

Michigan State is not unlike most public universities.

We have executive leadership and management (president, provost, deans, department chairs), we have the faculty and academic staff who do the work of teaching and research, and we have the staff who keep the university running. Our campus is full of students, both graduate and undergraduate, who are the principal reason we all have the privilege of working at MSU. We have a dedicated alumni from all backgrounds who are doing all manner of work around the world.

Faculty and staff work for the State of Michigan; we are public employees; and our university mission charges us to serve the people of Michigan through our work. We take that charge seriously, and many of us wear that commitment like a heart on our sleeve.

Michigan State is one of the most important institutions and actors in our state and, through it all, I am still proud to be a member of the MSU community. MSU is much more than the headlines we read and the drama we see unfolding.

The Board of Trustees is not the moral center of MSU. And frankly, the executive leadership do not seem to be either. A revolving door of presidents cannot form the moral center of a university.

MSU’s community is the moral center of MSU. The students, faculty, staff, and alumni are the heart and soul of this university. They are the ones who do the work, who teach the students, who conduct the research, who serve the community, and who carry on the mission of MSU. We should remember that as we navigate this transition and look to the future.

The Board of Trustees and the executive leadership serve us. They work for the MSU community and the MSU community should hold them accountable to that service. There’s no reason to be fearful or trepidatious about that. They are public servants, and we are the public.

Allowing the Board to claim some sort of ownership over the university is a mistake. They are not the university; we are.

If they can’t handle accountability?

Goodbye. We are moving forward without you.

what now?

Kevin’s leaving and folks are scrambling.

I’ve been on calls and looped into emails about writing letters to various stakeholders, about how to communicate with students, and with gossip about the hows and whys of Kevin’s departure.

Kevin’s gone. Let it go.

We need to move on.

Holding him on some pedestal as the savior of Michigan State is misguided at best, and harmful at worst. We don’t need a savior; no one is getting us out of this mess. We will do it, as we always have, through our work and our commitment to the people of Michigan.

For all my bluster about MSU, I have no plans to leave it. I love MSU, I love the people I work with, and I love the students I get to teach and mentor. I know that many of my colleagues feel the same way. We are committed to this university and to the people we serve, and we will continue to do our work regardless of who is in the president’s office.

But, we do need a new leader.

Now is not the time for an external search; anyone from outside that wants to this job now, with the mess that we have, is not someone we want. We’ve done that before, and failed. We are in worse shape now than ever.

We need a president who will acknowledge that we, the MSU community, are the moral center of this university, and who will work with us to design long-term solutions to the problems that we have. We need a president willing to listen to faculty and staff, to trim the executive budgets and personnel to refocus on the core services we can provide to our students, and to advocate for increased state and federal support. We need a president to work with faculty and staff to build a sustainable, thriving future for MSU.

But most of all, we need a president who is more than a face, more than a cheerleader, and much more than a fundraiser. We need a president who doesn’t lead from the front, but who leads from the middle. A president that will grab a shovel and dig in. A president that understands that the real work of the university is done by the faculty and staff, and who will support us, invest in us, and advocate for us to do that work so we can continue to deliver for our students, our state, and the globe.

Until then, we’ll just keep doing our work.