Our Lady of the Lake University has made an unconventional choice to temporarily replace outgoing President Abel Chávez, who last week announced he would step down.
Starting Oct. 26, Brent Fields, CEO of Morgan’s Wonderland, a nonprofit theme park for children with special needs, will serve as OLLU’s interim president, the board said in a Friday press release.
Before joining Morgan’s Wonderland, where he oversaw a significant park expansion and diversification of its assets, Fields served as CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas and vice president of research and strategic health alliances at the American Heart Association.
“Dr. Fields brings a record of executive leadership, organizational alignment, and strategic execution that we believe will serve the university well during this transition,” OLLU Board Chair Steve O’Donnell said in a statement. “We are confident in his ability to work collaboratively with our university community as we address immediate challenges and position OLLU for long-term sustainability.”
The leadership change comes at a trying time for the private West Side campus. Last month, officials with the Catholic university said it hired an outside consultant to help boost enrollment, which has plummeted 47% since 2015, according to the Express-News.
Last year, OLLU also eliminated 16 academic programs while launching a three-year bachelor’s degree and a “no-cost” master’s plan to help stabilize enrollment.
Such pressures led Colorado State University political scientist Kyle L. Saunders, who studies trends in higher education, to label OLLU an institution under “high stress.”
That doesn’t mean the school is facing imminent closure, according to Saunders. However, he said the school is less equipped to handle economic headwinds, the growing impact of artificial intelligence, federal funding cuts and declining student interest in four-year degrees.
“High stress is a structural diagnostic,” Saunders told the Current. “What it really captures is compound pressure, places where several structural conditions are cutting in the same direction at the same time.”
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