In a surprise departure, Elizabeth “Betsy” Cantwell is stepping down as the president of Utah State University — after spending only a year and a half at the helm of the Logan school that continues to be dogged by allegations of a toxic culture within its football program and, more recently, concerns that prompted legislation about transgender students.
The sudden announcement came Thursday night with a brief statement from the Utah Board of Higher Education, which provided little information on the circumstances behind her resignation.
The message said Cantwell has accepted another job as the 12th president of Washington State University — becoming the first woman to lead the school in Pullman, Wash. And she will be starting work there in less than two months.
“While the details are still being finalized, we expect that she will wrap up her time at USU in the next couple of months and assume her new role on April 1, 2025,” the board’s statement noted.
The board, which oversees the hiring and firing of the state’s public university leaders, said it is “aware of and focused on the opportunities and needs at Utah State University.” The board soon will announce plans for the search for a new president, as well as an interim administrator.
Cantwell — who is paid an annual salary of roughly $533,000, plus nearly $233,000 in benefits and an additional allowance of $33,000, according to Utah’s transparent public salary data — took over at the northern Utah research and land-grant institution in summer 2023.
She came in following the troubled tenure of former President Noelle Cockett, who stepped down amid similar scrutiny over the football program and how the university has handled reports of sexual assault. That included several lawsuits, including one that brought light to recordings of the former football coach and former police chief brushing off the seriousness of sexual assault.
Some of that carried into Cantwell’s term, with the president making national headlines when she chose to fire former football coach Blake Anderson — a controversial decision she made just weeks after she took the job.
Cantwell said an independent investigation showed Anderson failed to appropriately respond when a player was arrested for domestic violence, failing to promptly notify the school of the allegations, allowing the player to continue with the team, and conducting his own fact-finding mission that allegedly included contacting the victim to determine what happened. The school spent more than $130,000 to compile that report.
Anderson has denied the claims and has sued the school for $15 million, saying USU used “sham” claims to purposefully get out of having to pay him a $4.5 million buyout with his coaching contract. The former coach has also said he was scapegoated for the university’s ongoing problems with the Department of Justice.
The DOJ investigated the Logan school and issued a damning report in February 2020 that found university officials repeatedly mishandled cases of sexual assault on campus, failing to investigate when it knew about misconduct and, as a result, “rendered additional students vulnerable.” That included reports filed against football players, fraternity members and faculty in the school’s piano department.
Last September, the DOJ announced that USU had not sufficiently cleaned up its athletics program and it was extending its oversight. The department slapped the university with a notice of “substantial noncompliance” and gave it a 45 days to show it was working to clean up the issues that were still plaguing it.
“This environment has been allowed to grow and fester due to repeated ineffective, inequitable and untimely responses,” the department wrote.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah State Aggies head coach Blake Anderson, complains about a call, in Football action between the Brigham Young Cougars and the Utah State Aggies, at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo, on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022.
The DOJ specifically called out Anderson for his vigilante attempts to do his own investigation into his player’s misconduct, instead of following strict Title IX protocols that direct schools how to properly respond to sexual misconduct and harassment. Former interim athletic director Jerry Bovee and director of player development Austin Albrecht were singled out in the DOJ letter, as well; USU had also fired them for allegedly failing to comply with the university’s policies in regard to reporting sexual misconduct and domestic violence. Bovee has filed suit against the school.
At the time, Cantwell said: “We acknowledge and share the DOJ’s concerns. We will take all steps necessary to create an enduring culture of respect within USU and especially within USU football.”
Transgender students, anti-DEI bill and budget cuts
The issues with the athletic department — as well as new problems that arose this semester — kept a harsh spotlight on Cantwell.
The announcement of her departure came hours after the Utah Senate gave its final approval to a bill that would ban transgender students from living in dorms that align with their gender identity. The measure was drafted, in large part, in response to a roommate conflict this semester at USU that has garnered widespread attention.
Marcie Robertson, a 20-year-old transgender student, was assigned as the resident advisor for a women’s dorm. When a roommate assigned to the same suite learned of Robertson’s identity, she said she felt uncomfortable living there and sharing a restroom.
The issue seem to be resolved when the roommate was, at her request, moved to another room in the same building. But the situation exploded when the roommate’s mom posted about it on social media, where conservative commentators picked up on it.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Avery Saltzman, behind, pushes in her chair after speaking in favor of HB269, as Marcie Robertson, a transgender resident assistant at USU, speaks in opposition to the bill during a Senate Education Committee meeting at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.
Utah State University promised to examine its housing policies. In an email to the campus, Cantwell wrote, “In the coming weeks, USU will begin an external review of the Housing and Residence Life program and organization — including our policies, procedures and practices — to see what improvements we can make to better serve our students who live on campus.”
But leaders in the Utah Legislature expressed frustration over the situation and pushed forward with HB269, which would require transgender students live in gender-neutral dorms or dorms that align with their sex at birth.
Cantwell, like other presidents at Utah’s public universities and colleges, has also been tasked in the last year with rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs that the Legislature prohibited.
USU disbanded its Inclusion Center, which had served all marginalized student populations, with specific programming for students of color and the LGBTQ+ community. The school drew fire in January for canceling a popular Women’s Climb Night, where women and nonbinary students got together to practice the sport, in accordance with that law.
(Matthew D. LaPlante | Utah State University) Mia Bateman of Mapleton, a sophomore studying human biology, climbs at the Utah State University Aggie Recreation Center on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023.
Also like other presidents, Cantwell had to prepare for the Legislature’s plans to cut public higher education budgets.
At USU, the cut will be $12.6 million; the state has instructed schools that they can get their share of the funding back, as long they show it’s being reinvested in high-demand, high-wage programs — and that they’re cutting those that don’t have a lot of graduates. Cantwell declined to comment to The Salt Lake Tribune on those cuts.
The school has also, in recent years, seen dips in its enrollment. And the state, overall, is bracing for that to get worse.
It’s been a lot of commotion over a few months.
“While her time at USU was short, we are grateful for President Cantwell’s dedicated work in lifting up Utah State University,” Jacey Skinner, the chair of Utah State’s board of trustees, said in a message to campus late Thursday night.
Higher education leadership turnover
At the same time, Cantwell was criticized from within the university for her actions overhauling the school’s reporting structure as soon as she was hired. In February 2024, just a few months into her tenure at USU, she said the university was in need of a “complete reorganization” of its leadership.
Her plans for that included hiring some close associates she had previously worked with.
One of those was Kerri Davidson, who worked with Cantwell in Arizona before coming to USU. Cantwell named Davidson the new vice president of institutional affairs and her chief of staff.
Cantwell came to Utah State from the University of Arizona, where she was the senior vice president of research and innovation. Before that, she was Arizona State University’s vice president for research development. She also worked for NASA.
Cantwell created a new position, as well, for a vice president for operational strategy, hiring John O’Neil for the job.
“With six months under my belt as president,” Cantwell wrote in an email to Utah State employees at the time, “I have had a chance to consider the leadership structure I need to continue Utah State University’s trajectory of impact and excellence far into the future.”
It’s unclear why, after changing the leadership and making other big moves at the school — including expanding both research funding and student scholarships, and pushing USU into a new athletic conference with the Pac-12 — Cantwell is now stepping down. But in a statement issued by her new campus Thursday, she noted that a few years ago, her daughter enrolled in a graduate program there and “my family’s connection to the university deepened.”
She is the latest Utah president to leave her post as the state’s eight institutions of higher education have seen major turnover in recent years; six of those schools have had new leaders appointed within the last three years. And USU, once it chooses another president, will have had two in that same stretch.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah State University President Elizabeth Cantwell speaks during the Newsmaker Breakfast: The Value of Higher Education at the Thomas S. Monson Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024.
Similarly facing concerns about student safety after the murder of athlete Lauren McCluskey, Ruth Watkins stepped down from her post as president of University of Utah in spring 2021. Taylor Randall is now leading there.
Mindy Benson was named president of Southern Utah University in 2022. Snow College got a new president, Stacee McIff, in 2023. And Salt Lake Community College picked Greg Peterson to take the helm there last year.
Utah Tech University now is looking for a new leader after its last president, Richard “Biff” Williams left last year. It was later revealed that he left while he was being investigated for alleged misconduct.
Cantwell already issued a letter to her new campus at Washington State University on Thursday.
In that, she wrote: “I am honored to step into this role and committed to our collective success. My heartfelt thanks go to the Board of Regents, the Presidential Search Advisory Committee, and the students, faculty, staff and community members who participated in the selection process.”
It echoed the statement she made when she was picked to lead USU in May 2023.
“I’m enormously grateful to the board for their faith in me,” Cantwell said on stage moments after being voted in. “I will do everything in my power to step into a place that has basically made beautiful by President Cockett, and move us all forward into what is truly an incredible future for Utah State University and for the state of Utah.”
