Emerson College president Jacqueline Liebergott announced Monday that she will step down after 17 years, on June 30, 2011.
Liebergott, who became a faculty member of the school in 1970 and has served as the president since 1993, said she had ‘reached the decision with mixed emotions but with a firm belief that [the retirement] is the right course of action for the College and for [her],’ according to a Dec. 2 press release.’
‘ ”Emerson has been at the center of my professional life for nearly four decades,” Liebergott said in a meeting with the Emerson community, according to the press release. ”Whatever I may have contributed to Emerson, it has given me so much more.”
Liebergott is the 11th president of Emerson and the first female president since the college’s founding in 1880, according to Emerson’s website.
‘I’ve experienced the joy of teaching, the satisfaction that comes from publishing research, and the challenge of administering a complex institution,” Liebergott said in the meeting, according to the press release. ”At every step of the way, I have enjoyed friendship and support from colleagues, Trustees, alumni, parents, students, and so many others.’
Liebergott was appointed president a few years after Emerson’s failed attempt to move from Boston to suburban Lawrence. The school was what Liebergott called ”financially unstable and faced an uncertain future.”
Liebergott worked with faculty, alumni and city officials and relocated the school from the Back Bay to the Theatre District.
The new facilities ultimately helped lead to a 55 percent enrollment increase and four times as many applications for admission.
Chair of the Emerson Board of Trustees Peter Meade called Liebergott’s work at Emerson ”unprecedented,” according to the press release.
”We will be forever grateful for the remarkable job she has done,” he said.
Liebergott said in her remarks that her plan before her official retirement is 2011 allows time for the administration to find her successor.
Some Emerson students said Liebergott’s retirement was surprising.
‘It was kind of a shock to me,’ Emerson senior Liz Hamel said. ‘They told us that she was going to be making an announcement today and then she got up and announced that she would be stepping down. The school is definitely going to miss everything she’s contributed.’
Students said they appreciate Liebergott’s contribution to the school.
‘She’s very welcoming to incoming freshmen and transfer students,’ Isabelle Redman, a sophomore who transferred to Emerson this semester, said. ‘I didn’t know how big of an impact she had on the school, until I read the article.’
[Hamel said the relocation and renovation made the school more visible.
‘When she took over the college it was a really small campus, most of the students were from the Boston area. The future of the school was questionable. And she really took it and made it a center of Boston campus,’ she said.
Staff reporter Jacqueline Lacy contributed to the reporting of this article.