After more than a year of searching, Utah Tech University finally has a new president.
Shane B. Smeed, currently the president of a small liberal arts college in Missouri, was named Wednesday to take the helm at the St. George school. At the announcement of his name, a room on campus filled with students, faculty and staff waiting to welcome their next leader erupted with cheers and claps, and many jumped up from their seats.
The roar didn’t stop until Smeed, wearing a red tie to match Utah Tech’s signature redrock color, got to the podium.
“The momentum is here,” Smeed said. “It’s already here.”
Smeed was named last week as one of three finalists for the job that has been open since January 2024 — one of the longest vacancies for Utah’s public institutions of higher education and for a school that’s been dogged by turmoil in those months.
“Our new president will lead Utah Tech as we come together,” said Deven Macdonald, a member of the university’s board of trustees and co-chair of the search committee, on Wednesday.
Of the candidates, Smeed has the longest record as a university administrator — a nearly three decade-long career in academia that started in 1998 when he was named a manager and advisor at the private for-profit DeVry University.
That’s also where Smeed got his bachelor’s degree in business operations and a master’s of business administration, in addition to a master of arts in student personnel administration from St. Louis University; none of the state’s other public school leaders have received their education at a for-profit school. Smeed worked his way through enrollment management positions and later became president of DeVry from late 2007 to 2011.
DeVry has a controversial reputation, which includes being chastised by the U.S. Department of Education in 2022 for being among four for-profit schools in the country that had misled students into taking loans by making false promises about about their job placement rates.
That included some of the time when Smeed was president.
Education Department investigators said, according to reporting from NPR, that students who attended DeVry from 2008 to 2015 were eligible to file claims for loan relief. DeVry had attested that 90% of its students who graduated found employment. Job placement rate was actually about 58%, investigators said.
DeVry was originally on the hook to repay some of the money, but the loans were later forgiven under a federal program during President Joe Biden’s administration. It’s the last of four for-profit schools that remains open and accredited today.
After his time at DeVry, Smeed went on to be a vice president and the chief operating officer at Ottawa University, a private Christian school in Kansas, for two years. And he spent a year as a vice president of Kaplan University, now Purdue University Global, another for-profit school.
He leaves his current position as president of Park University — where he’s been an administrator since 2015 and president since 2020 — to come back to his native Utah. He’ll be Utah Tech’s 19th president.
“I’m excited to return to my home state to serve this deserving student body and work closely with our dedicated faculty and staff,” Smeed said in a statement Wednesday after the announcement.
The Utah Board of Higher Education, which is tasked with hiring and firing presidents, added in that message that “transition details are still being finalized,” including a start date for Smeed.
Controversy with previous president
He takes over Utah Tech University at a difficult time, after it was embroiled in controversy for the past year and has waited 14 months for a permanent leader to find a way forward.
The previous president, Richard “Biff” Williams, stepped down in January 2024. It was later revealed in a lawsuit that he did so while he was under investigation.
Williams is accused of leaving a phallic gag gift for one of his vice presidents after the man had surgery in November 2023. Williams left a note with the present that credited the gift to staff members who are now suing — the university’s top attorney, its second-in-command attorney, and its Title IX coordinator, who is tasked with responding to complaints of sexual misconduct.
Those three employees — Becky Broadbent, Jared Rasband and Hazel Sainsbury — say in their federal case that attributing the gift to them felt like payback for their efforts to clean up issues with harassment and racism at Utah Tech University. They say the school has a toxic culture that stems from the top.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Tech employees Becky Broadbent, Jared Rasband, and Hazel Sainsbury, on Monday, Nov. 11, 2024.
The lawsuit claims that the Utah System of Higher Education conducted a “sham investigation” that served to protect Williams. He continued to receive pay from the school for six months after stepping down, until he started as president of Missouri State University in July 2024. Williams has acknowledged that he left the gift and apologized.
A few of the administrators who are also named in the lawsuit and were alleged to have contributed to that environment had thrown their names in to be the next president of Utah Tech. That includes Courtney White, who was serving as the school’s interim leader.
None of them were selected as finalists, though. And that was a welcome development for many faculty members who signed a resolution last year pleading that the next president be an outsider who could come into the school with a fresh perspective.
The Utah Board of Higher Education acknowledged some of the controversy Wednesday during the announcement.
Board chair Amanda Covington said the search for a new president was thorough and deliberate. Members of the board and search committee, she noted, reviewed every comment sent in about the candidates.
“We know how critical it is for the next university president to be a bridge-builder,” she said.
She thanked White for his work in the interim. And she said: “I feel very confident in where we’ve arrived today.”
Smeed will be faced with addressing the continued fallout from the previous administration and restoring trust. In his bio, he wrote that he’s ready for the job.
“Recognizing the importance of transparent communication and collaboration,” he said, he has “introduced an extensive communication plan to foster engagement and trust among students, faculty, staff and other stakeholders” at his previous institutions.
‘An exciting new chapter of growth’
It’s also looking like Smeed could be the last public university president in the state named in an open process.
Currently, Utah law requires that a presidential search committee publicly name three to five finalists. Staff, faculty, students and community members are then invited to weigh in, give feedback and vet the candidates.
State lawmakers, though, are currently moving forward with SB282, a measure that would shift that selection to behind closed doors.
Search committee members would be required to keep all discussions confidential. They would forward three picks, in ranked order, to the Utah Board of Higher Education. The board would only vote on one finalist in a public meeting.
It’s all part of a massively shifting higher education landscape — in Utah and across the nation — that comes as Smeed takes the post.
In that whirlwind, he’ll be tasked with impending budget cuts set by the Legislature, which amount to a $2.6 million reduction for Utah Tech University. State leaders have instructed that schools can earn that money back if they prove they’ve cut low-enrollment programs and reinvest in majors that have higher wage and job outcomes.
There’s also increasing pressure from the federal government and likely cuts to several budget items that universities rely on for funding.
On a local level, Utah Tech University, too, continues to face a battle over its name. The school switched in 2022 from a name that had been tied to slavery and the Confederacy of the Civil War South. But many in the community still hold firm to the heritage the old name had. Smeed gave a nod to that during his speech Wednesday.
“So many people have given their blood, sweat and tears to building up this community and this university,” he said.
Only a decade before that, in 2013, the school also shifted from operating as a college to a university.
Today, Utah Tech has more than 13,000 students and a strong technology and career focus. And its burgeoning campus is growing with expanding enrollment each year and new buildings, including a general education center currently under construction.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Greater Zion Stadium at Utah Tech University in St. George, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024.
“Utah Tech has accomplished much over the last decade-plus,” Macdonald, the trustee, said. “But there’s more work to do.”
Macdonald said Smeed is the right person “to build on our legacy and now lead Utah Tech University into an exciting new chapter of growth and development.”
The search committee was particularly excited by Smeed’s work at his previous schools forming partnerships between institutions and businesses, such as the collaboration at Park University with the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Macdonald said that would serve students well at Utah Tech, as they learn to work with industries while still studying in their programs.
Smeed thanked his wife, Angela, and three kids, Samantha, Andrew and Landon, as he accepted the post, saying he looks forward to bringing them to Utah and building a home here.
And after more than a year without a president, he said to the students and staff at Utah Tech, he’s most excited to come in “to lock arm and arm with each of you.”
