June 25—GRAND FORKS — Chancellor Mark Hagerott’s term as leader of the North Dakota University System expires at the end of 2025.
Members of the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education voted Tuesday to extend Hagerott’s current contract for another six months through December 2025, after which the chancellor will serve as a distinguished professor of artificial intelligence and human security.
Board members cast the vote publicly after more than an hour of discussion in the board meeting.
“This will be an orderly transition,” Jerry Rostad, vice chancellor of strategy and strategic engagement, told the Herald.
Hagerott will continue at his current salary of more than $424,000 per year through 2025.
Rostad said the state board will be tasked with appointing a search committee to find a new chancellor before the end of Hagerott’s term, although that process may not begin for some time.
“There’s a lot of time between now and then, so I don’t even want to start speculating about what will happen,” Rostad said.
In brief remarks following the executive session, Hagerott expressed his enthusiasm for working with the Legislature in 2025 and continuing his academic work in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity within the NDUS system.
Hagerott’s new role as distinguished professor will not be tied to a specific campus, but to the Dakota Digital Academy, Rostad said.
Board Chairman Tim Mihalick complimented Hagerott’s academic work in his own remarks, calling the chancellor “unparalleled” in his expertise in AI and cybersecurity.
By the end of 2025, Hagerott will have served as chancellor of NDUS for just over a decade.
Hagerott took over the role from interim Chancellor Larry Skogan in 2015. Skogan had been appointed to the position following a 2013 vote by the state legislature to buy out then-Chancellor Hamid Shirvani’s contract.
In his nine years as chancellor, Hagerott has blazed a sometimes divisive path in North Dakota higher education.
In 2017, fired Vice Chancellor Lisa Feldner accused Hagerott in a labor complaint of cultivating a hostile work environment, alleging gender discrimination and retaliation, as well as bizarre behavior, including numerous incidents in which the chancellor allegedly expressed fear that he was being watched held by Chinese and Russian nationals.
Hagerott fired Feldner after he accused her of making derogatory comments about staff members.
In a column published late Monday night, Forum Communications columnist Rob Port speculated that board members could oust Hagerott during Tuesday’s board session, citing critical comments about the chancellor when his contract last came up for review in 2023, as well as private conversations with Hagerott’s supporters and defenders.
Hagerott’s supporters characterized the alleged impeachment as retaliation for the firing of North Dakota State University President Dean Bresciani and for Hagerott’s favoritism toward NDUS’s western institutions, Port wrote.
His opponents instead told Port that the chancellor was too short-sighted to address policy issues such as declining enrollment in the university system.
Rostad disputed the characterization of the board’s proposal as a termination.
“This is not a motion to terminate, it is a motion to transition,” Rostad said.
He said he could not compare the motion to Shrivani’s departure in 2013 because he had not been with NDUS at the time.
Board members then moved to renew contracts for all NDUS institution presidents after another 90-minute board session, after which the board broke for lunch.
