MSU President Guskiewicz leaving for another university

Michigan State University President Kevin Guskiewicz is joining the ranks of other short-lived Michigan university presidencies.

Guskiewicz was selected as the 16th president of Clemson University at a Wednesday board meeting. Clemson has been without a president since James Clements resigned in December.

“To be entrusted with leading a university as respected, ambitious and beloved as Clemson is both humbling and inspiring,” Guskiewicz said during the Clemson board meeting. 

“At Michigan State, I inherited both significant challenges and extraordinary opportunities,” he said. “Together, our community has been focusing on rebuilding trust, strengthening transparency and reaffirming the university’s commitment to students, faculty and the people of Michigan.”

Clemson officials explained why they chose Guskiewicz, who was the chancellor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill before heading to East Lansing.

“We were searching for an inspired leader, someone with a bold vision and the operational expertise necessary to lead in a rapidly evolving higher education environment,” Clemson Trustee Cheri Phyfer said during the meeting.

Guskiewicz was the sixth president in six years at Michigan State when he started in March 2024 and just the second permanent president since Lou Anna Simon resigned in the wake of the sentencing of serial sexual abuser Larry Nassar in 2018. The Michigan State board will now be searching for its seventh leader in eight years.

Guskiewicz’s departure comes just over a week after the MSU Board of Trustees approved a measure nearly doubling his salary and extending his contract by two years. Board Chair Brianna Scott and Trustee Sandy Pierce, who led the measure, said the board needed to act quickly because Guskiewicz had received other offers and was at his “wits’ end” with the elected board, which disciplined two of its members in 2024 for violating the university’s ethics policies.

This wasn’t enough to get Guskiewicz to stay. He has agreed to a $1.216 million base annual salary at Clemson, hundreds of thousands of dollars less than the MSU board was prepared to offer him after approving a hike to $2 million. His contract at Clemson is for five years.

Guskiewicz now joins a pattern of high-profile Michigan university presidents who have resigned or been fired less than two and a half years into their tenure. He is the third president of a major Michigan research university to depart their university in the last year and the fifth since 2022. He follows the resignation of Wayne State University President Kimberly Andrews Espy in September and the University of Michigan President Santa Ono in May 2025.

Experts say change is necessary

If the relationship between the board and the university’s presidents doesn’t change, MSU will continue being plagued by high presidential turnover after Guskiewicz’s departure on Wednesday, experts told The Detroit News.

Guskiewicz said in a goodbye message to the campus Wednesday that the university’s ability to make “meaningful progress” was hampered by certain trustees, whom he didn’t name, going against what the majority of the board and his administration wanted for the university. But a 5-3 majority on the board voted in a special May 17 meeting to approve the salary hike as well as a revised code of ethics and conduct aimed at creating unity.

The rift between the trustees and Guskiewicz was clear, said Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira, a Spanish professor and president of Local 1855, which represents non-tenured teaching faculty and MSU Extension workers. The staff hoped the tensions would be resolved without such a major departure, he said.

“I don’t think any of us expected this to happen or for it to happen so quickly,” Rodríguez-Pereira said Wednesday. “A lot of us were hoping that we would continue to have a certain sense of stability for a longer period of time.”

But there might not be a simple fix for the issues at the university, and individual trustees might not be to blame, experts said. Instead, the issue might lie with the understanding that universities are increasingly complex institutions dealing with external and internal pressures that cannot be solved overnight, said Demetri Morgan, a professor of higher education institutions at the University of Michigan.

The board should take time before initiating another presidential search that will likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, the experts said. The chance to reevaluate what the university needs and how the board can work together is critical to avoid another short-lived presidency that catches the university by surprise, said Nick Down, the associate director of external affairs at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

“I really do think this is a great time for the board to take stock and critically think about what they want going forward,” Down said.

Faculty Senate Chair John Aerni-Flessner told The News he also believed the latest turnover would allow the board to take a step back and figure out how it could better serve the institution, and find a president who would stick around.

“We need to focus on who can be a custodian for the long term for MSU,” Aerni-Flessner said. “If that means we hire a boring dean from the Midwest, who doesn’t want to be a global thought leader and just wants to run an institution, I think people would welcome that. … We should be looking for someone who cares about the institution and the mission and is willing to provide long-term stability.”

Trustees react to Guskiewicz’s departure

MSU Trustee Rebecca Bahar-Cook said she learned of Guskiewicz’s departure Wednesday, when the board secretary forwarded a letter that went out to the university. She said it’s possible board leadership learned of it earlier.

“It’s obviously disappointing, right, but the university is bigger than one person, and we’ll figure out a way to keep the momentum moving forward and implement a lot of good things he started,” Bahar-Cook said from the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island. “I’m not happy about it, but it’s not the end of the world either.”

The threat of another university making Guskiewicz an offer is in part what drove the unorthodox May 17 board meeting, where members voted to raise his salary, she said.

“We didn’t know what the offer was or where it was coming from, but we knew he was being pursued,” said Bahar-Cook, D-Lansing.

Bahar-Cook, who acknowledged that board dynamics might have had a role to play in Guskiewicz’s departure, said she was open to a legislative proposal that would move the university board selection process from elections to a gubernatorial appointment system. MSU Trustee Sandy Pierce on Tuesday night endorsed the proposal.

“I think if you look at the other universities that have appointed boards, they are much more functional than Michigan State has been in the past,” Bahar-Cook said. “I would like that for Michigan State.”

MSU Trustee Brianna Scott, D-Muskegon, when approached by The News on Mackinac Island, did not have time Wednesday to take questions. Instead, she issued a statement.

“We greatly value these past two-plus years under President Guskiewicz. His leadership has set the university on a positive trajectory and one that we can continue during this transition,” Scott said. “Michigan State University has demonstrated resilience throughout its history, and the institution’s strength has never depended on any one individual. The university’s mission, talent and momentum continue just as they have for nearly 175 years.”

The board president said the board will soon provide information on its transition plan as it looks “forward to aligning our shared visions over a productive summer in anticipation of a busy and prosperous academic year.”

What Guskiewicz achieved during his MSU tenure

Guskiewicz was officially approved by the board on Dec. 8, 2023, in a unanimous vote. He was the sole candidate remaining in the running for the presidency after the other finalist for the job, University of Texas at San Antonio President Taylor Eighmy, withdrew, as reported by MSU’s student newspaper, The State News.

Guskiewicz started on March 4, 2024, and during his first months made it a central priority to “listen and learn” from students, faculty and staff in his first months as university president. He told The News in May 2024 that one of the main themes he heard from those he spoke to was the need for stability and consistent leadership.

“We’re moving in the right direction, focused on the future, not looking at the past,” Guskiewicz said at the time. “We are one team. We are going to move this university forward as one team.”

Guskiewicz had ambitious plans for the university, including the merging of the medical colleges and the Green and White Council, which aims to develop MSU students with skills for careers of the future and propel Michigan’s economy.

The merging of the medical colleges was met with resistance from faculty over a lack of information surrounding the plan and the feasibility of a successful integration.

Guskiewicz also implemented university-wide budget cuts to address a recurring deficit. The university would cut $85 million over two years, with the final cuts expected in the planned budget for fiscal year 2027.

Guskiewicz had tensions with the board

Guskiewicz made it clear to the board he wouldn’t be putting up with the infighting that’d characterized the board for years when he took the position. If the board wanted him, they’d have to agree to eight “governance commitments” that attempted to define the relationship and boundaries between the board and the president.

From the outside, it looked as if Guskiewicz was the one to finally bring calm to the board as it dealt with the fallout of an investigation into two trustees for breaking the board’s Code of Ethics and Conduct.

But Guskiewicz’s frustrations with the board were brewing for a while, Scott and Pierce said during the May special meeting.

Tensions seemed to grow over the new nonprofit to raise money for the athletic department, Spartan Ventures. Several trustees pushed back against the idea, which allows donors to earn revenue from the athletic department.

The last permanent president of Michigan State, Samuel Stanley, resigned in October 2022. He said he had “lost confidence” in the board and could no longer serve as president. A month earlier, the board asked him to leave his post early due to the university’s handling of sexual misconduct issues.

This piece was originally published by The Detroit News on May 27, 2026.