Laura Walker, the president of Bennington College, will retire from the role at the end of fall term, the chair of the college’s board of trustees announced in an email on Friday sent to staff, faculty and students.
Walker chose not to renew her contract, Nick Stephens, the chair, wrote in the email. She will continue to serve as president through the end of the fall term “to ensure consistent and steady leadership,” he wrote.
Walker will then continue as a strategic adviser to the board of trustees concentrating on new revenue projects and fundraising next year, Stephens wrote. The board will name an interim president, and then begin a national search for a permanent president, he wrote.
“Along with my board colleagues, I want to express my enormous gratitude to Laura for her leadership, her dedication to and love of Bennington, and the significant positive impact she has had on the college,” Stephens wrote.
Walker, in a statement posted to her LinkedIn page, said she was “so proud of what we’ve done together over the last five years,” and pointed to the college’s “doubling the number of applicants” and “graduating Bennington’s largest-ever class.”
Walker, formerly the long-time president and CEO of New York Public Radio, or WNYC, joined the college as president in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
She joined the private college in Bennington after a rocky exit from WNYC, facing scandals involving its workplace culture, according to reporting from the New York Times and WNYC..
The email said Walker would be returning to New York City in January, where she will “resume her lifelong commitment to public media, developing new projects in both media and education, at a critical time for both sectors.”
Stephens wrote that the college, under Walker’s leadership, “achieved dramatic increases in fundraising revenue — including the largest gifts in Bennington’s history — and more than doubled the number of applicants, leading to the largest enrollment in the College’s history.”
The college has recently faced financial trouble, and this month announced it was eliminating 15 staff positions as part of the school’s efforts to address budget challenges.
Ashley Jowett, the director of communications at the college, said in a previous statement that the decision was “difficult” but “necessary to place the college on a more sustainable financial path.”
