The following paragraphs are taken from the opening of an article by Katy Murphy that appeared in the May 12, 2014, edition of the San Jose Mercury News:

“San Jose State’s embattled president has issued a public apology, vowing to ‘right the ship’ after a rocky year and widespread criticism led the statewide chancellor to an unprecedented public review of the campus’s leadership.

“In a joint statement with California State University Chancellor Timothy White, SJSU President Mo Qayoumi acknowledged in a campus-wide letter late Friday that he had moved too rapidly in his excitement to improve the campus and ‘stepped on’ and ‘harmed’ a tradition of cooperation among staff, students and faculty.

“’For this, I am regretful,’ he wrote in the letter, which included a detailed plan to improve the school’s governance.

“Qayoumi came to San Jose State in late 2011 and has drawn intense criticism for his experiments with online education, his budget cutting directives, and decisions to replace existing campus diversity initiatives with his own. A crisis over a dorm-room bullying incident that resulted in criminal hate-crime charges against four students ignited a campus protest and raised more questions about his leadership.

“The public display of contrition, coupled with the action plan and chancellor’s support of it, was unusual, even for a public university, observers said.”

The complete article is available at: http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_25747038/san-jose-state-president-apologizes-says-he-regrets

An earlier post to this blog, from the CFHE “On the Issues” series, treated the failure of the Udacity/San Jose State “MOOC experiment”: https://academeblog.org/2013/08/27/udacitysan-jose-state-university-mooc-experiment-fails/