U president Gabel leaving for University of Pittsburgh

Updated 5 p.m.

University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel said Monday she is leaving to become chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Gabel, the first woman to lead Minnesota’s flagship university, was hired in 2018 from the University of South Carolina. In public interviews for the job, Gabel spoke about the need to address student debt and address public safety concerns.

In a Zoom call with reporters Monday afternoon, Gabel said that she’s always admired the University of Pittsburgh, and her son is a student there. Gabel said she was very much hoping to be contacted for the school’s top job. 

“We are a Pitt family,” Gabel said. “You can feel a very strong connection here. Make me feel as if the things that I’m good at are the things that will keep the momentum going and even accelerate it. And when you’re in this seat, you really look for that kind of alignment.”

Gabel’s move comes with a significant bump in pay. In a special meeting Monday, Pitt’s Board of Trustees compensation committee approved an annual base salary for Gabel of $950,000, which is 35 percent more than what she’s making at the U, and 36 percent more than the base salary paid to Patrick Gallagher, Pitt’s outgoing chancellor. 

Gabel’s compensation package at Pitt also includes $150,000 per year in retirement plan contributions, as well as retention bonuses.

Starting on her third anniversary, Gabel will be eligible for a $100,000 payment. And if she stays in her new job through June 30, 2029, she’ll receive deferred bonuses of $200,000 per year.

Including the deferred bonuses, Gabel’s total annual compensation is $1.4 million.

“That is the market these days,” Gabel said. “These are large, complex jobs, and the University of Pittsburgh did a market assessment, and that was the basis of our negotiation.”

Gabel faced criticism late last year for joining the board of St. Paul-based financial services firm Securian while continuing to run the U. Some critics viewed it as a potential conflict of interest with a university vendor. In January, she agreed to leave the Securian board.

Gabel, whose annual pay package at the U tops $1 million, could have made another $130,000 with the Securian position, although she said she’d waived that compensation.

It was clear, though, that the political winds were shifting against her. Also in January, the chair of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, Ken Powell, was bypassed by a panel that advises state lawmakers on school governing board selections amid frustration over the university’s direction.

The Powell-led board had signed off on the Securian arrangement despite misgivings of a few members and howls of protest from others, including state legislators.

And the board’s image took a hit when departing regent Steve Sviggum stumbled over matters of diversity at the school’s Morris campus.

Turnover on the regents board and in U leadership is problematic for legislators trying to write a higher education budget for the next two years, said House Higher Education Finance and Policy Chair Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona.

The next president should be more hands-on and pay attention to campuses outside the metro area, he added.

Senate Higher Education Chair Omar Fateh on Monday thanked Gabel for her work at the U and acknowledged the controversy around her the past few months.

"Under her leadership, the U made a lot of great positive steps forward and had some great successes, such as increasing student worker pay to $15 an hour for as as a minimum wage, as well as providing universal transit passes for students in the Twin Cities campus,” said Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis

“Those were some great things that were accomplished under her leadership, but at the same time we did face some challenges that kind of damaged the public's trust."

MPR News reporter Dana Ferguson contributed to this report.

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