When Janet L. Steinmayer was appointed president of Lesley University in 2019, she took the helm of a small liberal arts institution facing declining student enrollment, a $10 million budget deficit, and its fourth president in three years.

Steinmayer was tasked with consolidating academic programs, reducing the budget deficit, and increasing enrollment on the eve of the pandemic and at a time when small colleges across the Northeast were already struggling with a decrease in applicants.

Nearly five years later and 15 months into Steinmayer’s “Better Lesley” plan, low-enrollment programs have been cut, a $100 million campus renovation plan to consolidate and sell unused buildings is underway, and the university is on a plan to reach financial equilibrium by the 2026 fiscal year.

But in the process, the university has laid off nearly 20 percent of core faculty members, cut most of its social science programs, and seen enrollment drop by an additional 45 percent since 2019 — all while remaining more than $100 million in debt.

Now, faculty and students have revolted, saying in interviews and in three faculty votes of no confidence that Steinmayer is not the right person to lead the university through a time of peril.

While Harvard began to make international headlines over its handling of antisemitism on campus and Claudine Gay’s leadership in fall 2023, its lower-profile neighbor in Cambridge had spiraled into a full-blown crisis of its own.

Steinmayer, with the backing of the university’s Board of Trustees, has held her ground, insisting that her administration will succeed at restoring stability to Lesley.

“Lesley is undergoing a series of changes that are designed to set it up for the future, avoid the fate of a growing number of small colleges and universities, and create a university that better serves its students and is more vibrant academically,” a university spokesperson wrote in a statement. Steinmayer declined to be interviewed for this article.

But more than a dozen faculty, students, and alumni interviewed by The Crimson said that the problem starts with Steinmayer herself.

“The president is always saying that faculty don’t understand that change has to come. And we do understand,” said Steve Benson, the chief steward of Lesley’s faculty union. “We just don’t think the direction that’s going in is the direction that’s going to bring good change.”

“We asked for the president to resign,” added Benson, a former chair of the faculty assembly. “That’s the change we want.”

‘Program Updates’

Senior and political science major Mia E. Dillon was sitting in class on Oct. 4 when she received an email from Lesley’s chief operations officer, Joanne Kossuth, with the subject line “Program updates.”

The email stated that the political science program was being “sunset” as part of “university efforts to streamline programs and academic offerings” and would not be available to new, incoming students. The email assured Dillon that she would be able to graduate with her degree in political science.

Dillon wasn’t aware of the faculty layoffs tied to the program changes until she spoke with her political science professor, Michael Illuzzi, later that day.

“I could just see it on his face,” she said. “He looked sick, and I felt sick.”

Illuzzi is one of 30 core Lesley faculty who learned on Oct. 4 and 5 that they were being laid off, though many will continue to teach through the spring. The layoffs also included more than 20 staff members.

The news was accompanied by a video message from Steinmayer — her primary means of communicating with Lesley affiliates since 2023 — where she addressed the “difficult” choice to “let go of some valued colleagues.”

In a subsequent video released on Nov. 15, she made the reasons for the changes clearer.

“Lesley had evolved over time to a structure that was only appropriate to a much larger university, not to the number of students we actually serve,” she said.

All told, the university cut four academic programs — political science, global studies, sociology, and a graduate program in photography — as part of a move to “re-focus on Lesley’s core strengths,” according to an Oct. 4 email from Steinmayer to the university.

Beyond the four majors to fully get the ax, the layoffs could effectively eliminate others.

Of the three faculty responsible for teaching classes in the English major, two were laid off, and a third was promoted to a non-teaching position in the administration.

“Supposedly, Lesley is not eliminating the English major,” said Mary Dockray-Miller, one of the English professors laid off in October. “But you’ve eliminated all the faculty who teach the English major. So how is that going to work?”

Lesley’s Science and Mathematics department went from around a dozen professors to just 2.5 full-time equivalent faculty, none of whom teach chemistry or physics classes required for certain majors. The university has not announced any programming changes.

“Students could be enrolling as first-year students at Lesley University, hoping to be health science majors or get a B.S. in biology or a B.S. in environmental science. And I do not know what that looks like, or how that’s possible,” said Julie Shoemaker, an associate professor of earth science.

Lesley University has three small campuses in Cambridge between Harvard Square and Porter Square. By Briana Howard Pagán

The belt-tightening has also threatened what many see as a key feature of Lesley’s academic offerings: the graduate school’s Expressive Therapies program, the only in the world to offer degrees in all five expressive therapies: music, dance, drama, art, and expressive art.

Of the program’s fewer than 30 core faculty positions, 10 are currently filled by temporary faculty. The music therapy program has lacked a single permanent core faculty member for the past three years, endangering its accreditation with the American Music Therapy Association. A job listing for the position was only posted in February following sustained student activism.

The news of the layoffs came as a surprise to faculty and students, including Illuzzi’s own department chair.

“It’s just strange,” Illuzzi said in an interview. “Why would you fire 20 percent of the faculty mid-semester?”

In the October video, Steinmayer seemed to anticipate the reaction they would elicit among students and professors.

“That may sound like we’re taking a pair of scissors to Lesley, but that’s not it,” she said.

In three subsequent videos released over the next six weeks, Steinmayer continued defending the university’s handling of the program changes and layoffs.

“There has been speculation that Lesley is moving away from the liberal arts and humanities. That is not true,” she said in an Oct. 19 video.

“We hear that people are worried and sometimes angry,” she said in a Nov. 2 video, adding that “another word I keep hearing over and over is heartbroken. It is hard for our university to undergo the essential changes that the new demographics and changes in higher education in general are demanding that we make.”

“At its heart, Better Lesley is a promise for the future,” she said. “We all need to work together to keep it.”

Since the October announcement, the university has announced that five of the faculty members initially identified for layoff will remain at the university in other positions and an additional faculty member will have a revised contract.

Lesley faculty do not have tenure, and are instead hired on contracts with three, five, or eight-year terms.

According to Benson, more than a dozen impacted faculty members — whose median age is 63 — have filed lawsuits with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, specifically about age and race discrimination.

Many laid-off faculty members expressed concerns about finding other jobs, citing their age and the timeline for academic job applications, which typically begins around August.

“I’m 76 years old,” said Donna Halper, an associate professor at the university. “You think realistically speaking, that the average place is going to hire me?”

Miller, who has been teaching at Lesley for 23 years, said that she thinks the chances of her getting another job in the fall are “practically zero.”

“No one is hiring senior humanities faculty,” she said.

A ‘Better Lesley’

The ire toward Steinmayer began well before she announced Lesley’s restructuring.

Late in 2021, 100 students and faculty members gathered on campus to protest problems with clean water, dorm heating, food safety, transportation, and campus security — what they said was the administration’s refusal to meet “basic human needs.”

The protest came as faculty and students began to feel increasingly shut out of university governance. Faculty representatives on the Board of Trustees said they became sidelined from the body, asked only to stay for the beginning of the meetings and given almost no opportunities to provide feedback. The Board’s student advisory committee had also ceased meeting during the pandemic, according to current and former faculty representatives on the Board.

Things came to a head later in December, when the faculty assembly issued its first vote of no confidence against Steinmayer. Only two years after her appointment and even before major program change announcements, Steinmayer was under fire from all directions.

Steinmayer and the Board’s “Better Lesley” initiative, announced in January 2023, was supposed to restore trust in the university’s leadership and usher Lesley into a period of health and stability.

In early 2023, the university convened eight cross-university task forces to look at how the university could optimize enrollment, academic and non-academic initiatives, and its financial and campus plans.

In March, the administration presented its finding to the Board of Trustees, which charged Steinmayer with three goals: to refocus on Lesley’s strengths and move away from low-enrolled programs, to operate as “One University” by academically and administratively restructuring, and to continue the university’s pre-existing Strategic Framework campus renovation plan .

“This may be the most difficult phase of rebuilding for Lesley, but necessary if we are to remain affordable and in demand,” Steinmayer said in a May update video.

But the restructuring only inflamed worries about the direction Lesley was taking under her leadership.

Grace Ferris, then the chair of the faculty assembly, pointed out that the plan was being undertaken while Lesley was without a permanent chief financial officer. The CFO position had been unfilled since 2021, and a new CFO was only announced in March.

The faculty as a whole responded as well, passing a second no confidence vote just a month after Steinmayer announced Better Lesley.

“Decisions made by the university’s leadership have eroded the student experience and endangered the long-term viability of some academic programs,” they wrote.

Steinmayer was undeterred.

“While we appreciate how stressful change can be,” a statement from a university spokesperson to the Cambridge Day after the vote read, “Lesley has the right leadership, and the board and the administration are committed to using this opportunity to create a bright future for Lesley that is tailored to the challenges for the next few decades.”

Lesley was dealt another blow in December 2023, when S&P Global Ratings lowered their credit rating from BBB+ to BBB, citing “anticipated negative margins over the next few years, and pressured and weakening undergraduate demand profile” as the university navigated restructuring under “Better Lesley.”

“The outlook is negative,” S&P wrote in a report.

On Feb. 27, the faculty assembly passed a third vote of no confidence against Steinmayer.

This time, the assembly’s release included an appendix alleging “continued financial mismanagement as evidenced by the increases in management salaries and budgets, while salaries and budgets in instruction have declined.”

“They’re focusing more on the structure than the actual problems and needs of the people that are here,” said Benson, the chief union steward, adding that since Steimayer assumed office, he has noticed the “corporatization of Lesley.”

The faculty also issued its second vote of no confidence against the Board of Trustees and its first vote of no confidence against interim Provost Deanna Yameen, calling for the immediate resignations of Steinmayer and Yameen.

Undergraduate student activists at Lesley joined the call for Steinmayer’s resignation in March.

Steinmayer has held her ground, and the Board of Trustees has continued to back her. A February statement from Steinmayer after the February no-confidence vote stated that the Board “remains steadfast in its support of our administration and in the Better Lesley initiative.”

“We encourage all faculty members to collaborate in moving Lesley forward,” read the statement, “so it does not suffer the fate of a growing number of small colleges and universities nationwide.”

But faculty and students said they tried to communicate their concerns to Steinmayer and top leadership — to no avail.

“There’s very controlled channels of information,” said Shoemaker, the associate professor. “You’re not allowed to talk to people higher up in the chain.”

Bailey Haines, the president of Lelsey’s student government from fall 2020 through spring 2022, said that she had difficulty communicating with Steinmayer and other administrators, from whom she said she experienced a “strong sense of apathy.”

“I know how to inform someone, I’m happy to do that,” she said. “But how do I make someone care?”

Jason Butler, the former chair of the expressive therapies department, said he stepped down from his position at the end of 2023 because the Better Lesley reorganization and university leadership had made his job “impossible.”

“I felt that I had been trying to advocate for the needs of the department, and that the advocacy hadn’t moved anything anywhere,” he said.

In a statement, a university spokesperson declined to comment on individual criticisms of Steinmayer’s leadership, writing that many of them were “based on misinformation.”

“It is inevitable that there will be strong opinions on these changes and the leaders required to make them, particularly where individuals have been personally affected,” wrote the spokesperson.

Sandi C. Hammond, a student in the music therapy program, was one of several students to meet with Lesley’s provost and assistant provost about the lack of core faculty in the program as it nears the accreditation process. She said she emerged feeling like the administrators cared about the situation and “are trying very hard to play catch up and work with us.”

“I don’t want an ‘us and them,’” Hammond added. “But the more we get stonewalled in trying to talk to Janet or the board, the more it becomes ‘us and them.’”

“Can we have coffee with Janet Steinmayer?” she added.

‘A Canary in a Coal Mine’

On Saturday, March 23, half a dozen students and faculty stood under umbrellas and ponchos in the rain at the entrance to Lesley’s University Hall, holding posters and handing out flyers to recently admitted students and their families attending Accepted Students Day.

The posters read “Mismanagement is NOT leadership” and “Education is not a commodity! People over profit!” The protesters’ flyers addressed Steinmayer’s salary, which rose from around $250,000 in the 2020 fiscal year to around $530,000 in the 2022 fiscal year.

According to a Lesley University spokesperson, Steinmayer’s 2020 salary was half of the annual fee because she came into the role halfway through 2019.

“Is this how you want your tuition dollars to be spent?” the flyers asked.

The protesters said their goal wasn’t to encourage admitted students not to enroll, but simply to inform them about the changes taking place at Lesley.

“We’re not telling anyone not to come here,” said Benson, the professor and union steward. “We’re trying to explain to them what’s happening.”

“Lesley in many cases sold students and faculty members on false promises of being a social justice University, a university that cared about creating well-rounded citizens and all these things that they don’t deliver on,” Frisella added. “We had to disrupt them at the place where they’re doing the false advertising.”

Lesley faculty and students protest outside Lesley's University Hall at an accepted students day event on Saturday, Mar. 23. By Julian J. Giordano

A spokesperson for Lesley wrote in a statement to Cambridge Day that “the university was delighted to welcome over 300 people, students and their families to Accepted Students Day” and that “no questions were asked about Better Lesley” during open conversations with faculty and staff, “although we are very happy to answer those questions.”

Keaveny Magennis, a sophomore studying environmental science at Lesley, said she was telling students at the open house: “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

“They’re raising tuition,” she added, referencing a 4.5 percent increase to tuition, fees, and room and board announced earlier that week. “They’re gonna make you pay more for a worse quality education, and they’re not gonna care about you.”

In an email announcing the increases, the associate vice president for student financial services wrote that it is “in line with our peers and many universities nationwide.”

“Despite rising costs to maintain our facilities, deliver robust academic offerings and provide quality living experiences, our goal is to keep our rates as manageable as possible for our students and families, while also providing increased financial support for those in need,” the email read.

Magennis says she is currently planning to transfer out of Lesley, and that many of her classmates are as well.

“I was in a class last semester and the professor asked how many of us are thinking about transferring and over half the class raised our hands,” she said. “I know half those people are already transferred out. And if you’re not thinking about transferring now, you’re thinking about transferring next semester.”

In her January update video, Steinmayer said Lesley’s inquiries from prospective students were up 54 percent and final enrollments up 28 percent. And in her March update video, she said that registrations for the spring semester have increased for the first time since 2020, by more than five percent.

“Given the trends at colleges nationwide this is something to celebrate,” she said.

Faculty and students agreed that the problems facing Lesley were reflective of national trends: declining enrollment, post-pandemic budget deficits, and political backlash against higher education. But they said the school’s response has been an ineffective remedy.

Lesley professor Donna San Antonio said a “perfect storm of factors” have “turned a lot of universities and colleges upside down.”

“I think that we’re a canary in a coal mine,” said Dockray-Miller. “Lesley is part of this trend towards eliminating non-professional, non-technical, non-vocational academic programs at non-elite schools. And I think it’s really, really sad.”

Haines, the former student government president, said that while her experience at Lesley was “a very transformative one,” she “cannot in good faith recommend this school” to prospective students.

“When I think of Lesley and I think about the good parts of Lesley, it’s because of its people,” she said. “I think the students are special. I think the faculty and staff are fabulous.”

“But with the leadership and with all of the things that are happening that are really trying to bar and take apart all of the things that make Lesley so beautiful,” Haines said. “I can’t vouch for that.”

Despite the backlash, Steinmayer has continued to insist that things are looking up for Lesley. In her March video, she said the university is making progress on reimagining its academic structure and that construction on the new campus plan is underway.

“We’re well on our way into what we believe will be a new model for small private universities like ours,” Steinmayer said. “One that not only can weather the economic pressures of today and thrive into the future but one that at every turn has focus on one goal: what is best for the education and experience of our students.”

“Spring is in the air,” she added.

Clarification: April 8, 2024

This article has been updated to clarify that Lesley University President Janet Steinmayer’s 2020 salary represented half of the annual fee because she assumed the presidency in July 2019.

Corrections: April 5, 2024

A previous version this article incorrectly stated that Lesley University has amassed more than $100 million in debt since 2019. In fact, the university has taken on no new debt since 2019, according to a university spokesperson. As of FY 2022, the university had $120.6 million in total debt.

A previous version this article incorrectly stated that many of the 30 faculty members identified for layoff in October were asked to continue teaching through the spring. In fact, according to a university spokesperson, this is something the faculty agreed to as part of their contract.

—Staff writer Julian J. Giordano can be reached at julian.giordano@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @jjgiordano1 or on Threads @julianjgiordano.