IPFW Chancellor Vicky Carwein announced Wednesday she will be retiring by the end of this year. As IPFW transitions to two campuses, run separately by Purdue and IU, she says the timing is right for a new chancellor to step in and lead the campus to this next stage.
Carwein says the next chancellor will have a blank slate and can develop new programs that distinguish Fort Wayne from Purdue’s main campus in West Lafayette.
Carwein says she is most proud of leaving the school with a balanced budget, despite inheriting a $12 million budget deficit.
“Today the institution is in a better place than it was five years ago,” she said.
But she says making budget cuts is not how she had wanted to spend her time as chancellor. Carwein says some of the changes she implemented as chancellor, like modernizing the school’s technology, weren’t very visible to the public.
Instead, she says the past five years have been focused on realignment and the future governance of the university.
“The only regret, if there is one, is that we were so constantly consumed by these external forces that kept talking about who should govern this campus and what should it look like, that we really never had the opportunity to just spend time sitting around the table and dreaming about what could happen here,” Carwein said.
Carwein became chancellor in September of 2012. She says the goal is to have a new chancellor in place for the 2017-2018 school year, and she’ll stay on as chancellor until that transition takes place.
