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Hatch retirement

AMCDeac

Richard Joyce
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From an email today:

“With a grateful spirit for all that we have done together, I share that Julie and I intend to retire from Wake Forest University on June 30, 2021, or until it is appropriate for a new president to take office.”
 
Thoughts on the next president?
Does Wake look only at the traditional candidates or look at some non-traditional candidates? Does Wake get its first woman president or person of color as president?
 
Thoughts on the next president?
Does Wake look only at the traditional candidates or look at some non-traditional candidates? Does Wake get its first woman president or person of color as president?

Can't give any comment on who the next president might be - I have no real idea on the proverbial bench of academia.

That being said, I hope that it's the best candidate that fits Wake - fitting into the Wake culture is of high importance in my book.
 
Terrible university president. Arrogant personality.
Goodbye can't come soon enough.

Hearn should be the model for the replacement in personality and style. He loved and understood Wake Forest and the unique role the presidency plays at such a small university. Hatch loved and understood Hatch.....and money.
 
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Terrible university president. Arrogant personality.
Goodbye can't come soon enough.

Hearn should be the model for the replacement in personality and style. He loved and understood Wake Forest and the unique role the presidency plays at such a small university. Hatch loved and understood Hatch.....and money.

agree on all counts
 
Terrible university president. Arrogant personality.
Goodbye can't come soon enough.

Hearn should be the model for the replacement in personality and style. He loved and understood Wake Forest and the unique role the presidency plays at such a small university. Hatch loved and understood Hatch.....and money.

When did you attend WFU?
Mid-90s students were near uniform in their disdain for Hearn. We all thought he was arrogant, money hungry, wanted to destroy the Greek system, wanted to destroy all that was special about Wake Forest (plan for the Class of 2000 comes to mind)... in other words all the things people now ascribe to Hatch.

I'm guessing that in about 3 years, people will be on this board saying the exact same things about whoever the next president is, and within 5 years, people will be remembering the Hatch era fondly. Except the basketball part of it, Hatch will have to take that stink to his grave.
 
chair of the board is the dad of a kid I grew up playing soccer with, started sometime this year, I think

interesting time to be in that role
 
When did you attend WFU?
Mid-90s students were near uniform in their disdain for Hearn. We all thought he was arrogant, money hungry, wanted to destroy the Greek system, wanted to destroy all that was special about Wake Forest (plan for the Class of 2000 comes to mind)... in other words all the things people now ascribe to Hatch.

I'm guessing that in about 3 years, people will be on this board saying the exact same things about whoever the next president is, and within 5 years, people will be remembering the Hatch era fondly. Except the basketball part of it, Hatch will have to take that stink to his grave.

The bolded was true a decade earlier. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about WF admin and its effectiveness at the top, but the criticisms I see here in this thread and others mirror exactly what I heard about Hatch's predecessor up until he retired.
 
When did you attend WFU?
Mid-90s students were near uniform in their disdain for Hearn. We all thought he was arrogant, money hungry, wanted to destroy the Greek system, wanted to destroy all that was special about Wake Forest (plan for the Class of 2000 comes to mind)... in other words all the things people now ascribe to Hatch.

I'm guessing that in about 3 years, people will be on this board saying the exact same things about whoever the next president is, and within 5 years, people will be remembering the Hatch era fondly. Except the basketball part of it, Hatch will have to take that stink to his grave.

'95-'99. I was in a fraternity. Hearn (and Mike Ford) were pretty easy to deal with. We still had big parties on campus, often co-sponsored with sororities, no kegs but mass quantities of canned beer were ok as long as you kept a sign in sheet and did a half ass effort with the wristband\ID thing. It was pretty easy BS. Hazing was ignored unless you broke pledge's arms (nice work Kappa Sig) or took a drunken bus trip into Virginia (KA) or some other high profile stupidity.

Class of 2000 was...some seminar classes, laptops and wiring up campus. Wake was a little ahead of doing the same thing every school worth mentioning has done with tech.

Hearn in person was one of the nicest people I ever got to work with. Wake's endowment was mismanaged and very underfunded in the early 90's so that may explain the "money hungry" attitude. Hearn and the BoT changed the manager of the fund as I recall. Things eventually got better.

We all remember people differently I guess. I had a lot of in person meetings with Hearn as a student (not Dean Wormer style meetings) and found him to be a kind and humble man although not a pushover. As an alumnus I met Hatch in person 4 times, and all four interactions were awful (others in the group I was with felt the same).
 
The Hit Man was fine. All university presidents are going to be out of touch academic douchebags - it's the whole point of the job.
 
Thoughts on the next president?
Does Wake look only at the traditional candidates or look at some non-traditional candidates? Does Wake get its first woman president or person of color as president?

The last three deans (including the current one) of the law school have been black, female, and female. Hatch's replacement will not be like the presidents Wake has had since its inception. Just my prediction, without any sources.
 
The price of a college education demands a certain overall ROI, exceptional cases and anecdotes notwithstanding.
 
'95-'99. I was in a fraternity. Hearn (and Mike Ford) were pretty easy to deal with. We still had big parties on campus, often co-sponsored with sororities, no kegs but mass quantities of canned beer were ok as long as you kept a sign in sheet and did a half ass effort with the wristband\ID thing. It was pretty easy BS. Hazing was ignored unless you broke pledge's arms (nice work Kappa Sig) or took a drunken bus trip into Virginia (KA) or some other high profile stupidity.

Class of 2000 was...some seminar classes, laptops and wiring up campus. Wake was a little ahead of doing the same thing every school worth mentioning has done with tech.

Hearn in person was one of the nicest people I ever got to work with. Wake's endowment was mismanaged and very underfunded in the early 90's so that may explain the "money hungry" attitude. Hearn and the BoT changed the manager of the fund as I recall. Things eventually got better.

We all remember people differently I guess. I had a lot of in person meetings with Hearn as a student (not Dean Wormer style meetings) and found him to be a kind and humble man although not a pushover. As an alumnus I met Hatch in person 4 times, and all four interactions were awful (others in the group I was with felt the same).

Reminds me of when I was an RA in Luter and a couple PIKAs knocked on my door. They asked, strictly for a friend and hypothetically, how much beer a 21 year old student could store in his room at any one time. I said, show me and I'll make a judgment call. They had that dorm room jam packed with suitcases of coors, it was like one of those massive displays in a store before the super bowl. Apparently these two dudes were the only brothers PIKA trusted to have possession of the frat's party beer. Obviously i laughed and said good luck.

Anyway I'm glad you had good experiences with Hearn. The thing about most college presidents is that only a tiny minority of students/alums ever have significant personal contact with them to actually get to know them, so they are the target of projection of all the things people don't like, fear, etc. That was the point of my post - neither I nor any of my peers knew Hearn, just like almost no one on this board or in the wider community really knows Hatch, so there is a big tendency to project onto them.
 
The big items on Hatch's Legacy are:

Positives: the Wake Will Campaign, Call to Conversation, the Innovation Quarter, and the medical liaison with Atrium Health.
ACC Football championship. Groves Stadium renovations, Miller Center, Shah Center, McCreary Field house - indoor football practice facility.

Negatives: Tuition increases. Wellman, basketball program regression, with Jeff [Redacted] and Danny Manning. Most prominently, signing off on the abomination of a contract extension given to Manning.

TBD: purchase of the Joel, purchase of the church property adjacent to campus.

Like him or not, a lot of positive things happened on his watch.
 
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