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President Scott Scarborough

(Karen Farkas, cleveland.com)

AKRON, Ohio - University of Akron President Scott Scarborough and the university board of trustees mutually agreed he should step down, after a tumultuous two years.

Scarborough was absent from a Tuesday morning trustees meeting. The resignation is effective immediately.

"The board and administration best work to position the university for success," trustee chairman Jonathan Pavloff said after the meeting. "As we looked at the environment we have today and the challenges we have in front of us this was the best path forward for success."

Scarborough has the option of becoming a faculty member in the college of business administration or taking a contractual buyout of about a year's salary - $450,000.

He must vacate the university-owned home by Sept. 27. He will receive $15,000 in moving expenses. All his presidential perks, including a vehicle stipend, travel expenses and club memberships, end on Sept. 28.

Scarborough released a three paragraph statement thanking trustees for the opportunity to serve and looking forward to the next chapter in his life.

"It is our belief that new leadership is needed for the university to move forward and achieve sustained success in the future," he said.

Rex Ramsier, interim senior vice president and provost, will fulfill the duties of the president until an interim president is named, Pavloff said. The university will begin a search for a new president.

Pavloff had defended Scarborough numerous times during the president's tenure.

"We are grateful for the work he has given us and the challenges he has accepted," Pavloff said. But the challenges Scarborough was asked to address, enrollment declines and financial problems, still exist, he said.

Pavloff said trustees could not ignore the views of the university's constituents.

Scarborough lost the trust of faculty, employees, students, alumni and fellow college presidents.

"The one thing we learned over the past couple years is there is a tremendous amount of passion around the university," Pavloff said. "That passion is going to help us address the situation going forward. "Our best chance of success is a change in leadership."

Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan said in a statement that Scarborough's resignation "provides an opportunity to move beyond a difficult period in the history of our university - although many challenges still remain."

He urged the board to engage faculty, students, alumni and community stakeholders in an open dialogue regarding the type of leader UA needs because the university "is an indispensable partner for our city and our region."

At UA fall enrollment is down and many programs led by Scarborough have not succeeded.

Faculty have long expressed their dissastisfaction with Scarborough's leadership. They took an overwhelming vote of no confidence this year, and protestors upset at Scarborough's actions often gather outside the board room at trustee meetings.

Scarborough recently met with the Faculty Senate, and members said he spent an hour saying exactly the same things since he arrived on campus, confessing to no failures other than not "clear enough" communication, and repeating that universities need bold new initiatives.

In a statement released Tuesday he university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors said it "welcomes the opportunity to work with Interim Provost Rex Ramsier and the university community to turn the page and move forward as one."

Initiatives such as rebranding the university as Ohio's Polytechnic University and spending more than $800,000 for a new Cleveland company for success coaches have not succeeded.

This month the university said it is no longer featuring the brand.

Last week the university announced it would not renew the contract of Trust Navigators, which had provided "success coaches" to freshmen, saying there was not an appreciable difference in the fall-to-spring retention rate for students this past academic year with the coaches, compared to the year before without them.

In April Scarborough said he would stay on for a third year.

Scarborough made the comments on "UA to Z," a weekly, hourlong program the university airs Saturday mornings on AM radio station WAKR.

"As I look forward, I think the world isn't going to stop changing, so we have to change," Scarborough told the host of the radio show, adding that he "pops out of bed every day excited" about moving the university forward, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

Scarborough attributed much of the campus upheaval to poor communication by trustees and by him.

In his first year he offended some by saying other urban universities need to change to survive and tried to institute a widely unpopular $50-per-credit-hour upper course fee.

He was called to Columbus by legislators and Chancellor John Carey of the Ohio Department of Higher Education about the fee, which they called an ill-disguised tuition increase at a time when the new budget froze tuition.

That fee, imposed to help eliminate a $60 million deficit, was rescinded by trustees.

The university has taken other unpopular measures to trim the budget, including terminating 161 employees.

That has irked employees, who cite the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to remodel the university-owned president's home.

In a speech at the Cleveland City Club in May 2015 Scarborough said UA will develop a career-focused program and become a "great public university." As UA grows in stature, other four-year public institutions, which are good, may not exist in the future, he said.

A few days later the presidents of Cleveland State, Kent State and Youngstown State universities and the Northeast Ohio Medical University issue a joint statement saying they are upset that Scarborough publicly questioned the future of their institutions in the City Club speech.

Last November he did not receive a raise or bonus from trustees, which is fairly unusual.

His five-year contract included an initial salary of $450,000 a year. He was also is eligible for an annual performance bonus of up to $80,000.

His wife Tammy Scarborough was named vice president for ambulatory services at Summa Physicians Inc. at the Summa Health Systems in 2015.

Scarborough tweeted shortly after the trustee announcement.