Lawyer Amy Parsons Named as Sole Finalist for Presidency of Colorado State University Fort Collins

On December 2, 2022 Colorado State University announced that Amy Parsons is the sole finalist for President of CSU Fort Collins. Once the 14-day waiting period concludes, Parsons will become the 126th woman lawyer to be appointed as college or university president and the 25th woman lawyer president appointed in the 2020s. The Board of Governors is expected to formally hire Parsons on December 16, 2022.

Currently the founding CEO of a Denver-based global e-commerce company (Mozzafiato, LLC), Parsons has had a long career (16 years) in higher education at CSU. She is the former executive vice chancellor for the CSU system and previously served as the Vice President for University Operations, and as the Deputy General Counsel and Associate Legal Counsel. Upon graduating from the University of Colorado School of Law (during which time she interned in the CSU general counsel’s office), she worked in private practice as a litigation attorney.

Parsons joins a growing list of former in-house general counsel who are leading campuses. While the list of lawyer presidents seems to be more than doubling each decade in the last three, lawyer are not always accepted as academics by faculties, and the CSU faculty is no exception. While some on the faculty are questioning the lack of academic experience she brings (while noting a lot of experience in higher education it has focused on legal and administrative work, not teaching and scholarship), others point out that it is not the academic credentials that are important, but rather the support of academics that is key.

In an interview, Parsons was asked how her previous roles prepared her for this position, and she answered in part that the University will get, “A seasoned executive who understands how to efficiently and effectively operate the institution, but with an entrepreneurial spirit and perspective to challenge teams to think differently and creatively to solve problems and generate new opportunities. I also am deeply committed to taking care of people because faculty and staff are the ones who make this University what it is, and we must do right by them.” When asked about her leadership style, she used the following words – positive, energized, pays attention to morale, accessible, collaborative, candid and decisive.

Parsons follows another woman lawyer president at CSU, Joyce McConnell, the University’s first female president (whose term ended prior to her five-year agreement), and she joins another current Colorado woman lawyer president, L. Song Richardson at Colorado College who was appointed in 2021.

New SUNY Chancellor John B. King, Jr is the 63rd Lawyer Appointed as a Chancellor in U.S. Higher Ed

On December 5, 2022, the State University of New York appointed lawyer John King as their next Chancellor. King, who is now the 15th Chancellor of the SUNY follows interim Chancellor Deborah F. Stanley who is also a lawyer.

From 2011 to 2015 Chancellor King served as the first African American and Puerto Rican education commissioner for the State of New York. He left New York in 2015 to become deputy secretary of education in the Obama administration, and a year later was appointed as the U.S. Secretary of Education. He is currently serving as the President of The Education Trust. In 2011 he was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to serve on the U.S. Department of Education's Equity and Excellence Commission.

King began his career in education as a high school social studies teacher. He founded a charter school in Roxbury, MA and he was appointed as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Education. He ran an unsuccessful primary bid for Governor of the State of Maryland in 2022.

John King earned his B.A. from Harvard University (where he as a Truman Scholar and received the James Madison Memorial Fellowship for secondary-level teaching), an MA from Teachers College at Columbia University, a J.D. from Yale Law School and his EdD from Teachers College at Columbia University.

Women Lawyers Occupy the Campus C-Suite Beginning in 1976 – Francis Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold

Although lawyers have been serving as college and university presidents since the 1700s, no campus had a woman lawyer president until 1976, and between 1976 and 2001, there were fewer than a dozen women lawyer campus presidents. The first non-lawyer woman college president, Frances Willard, was appointed in 1871 (albeit of an all‐women's school), it was not until 1925 that a woman, Emma Elizabeth Johnson, was appointed to lead a co‐educational institution, after the president, her husband, died.

Francis Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold was appointed as the 13th President of Wells College in 1976. At the age of 22, she was one of eight women to graduate from the University of Texas School of Law in 1949. After taking a hiatus from the law while she had five children, she returned to the profession in the early 1960s working on the City Human Relations Commission and as director of a county legal aid office. She was a trailblazer, becoming the only woman in the Texas House of Representatives in 1968. While Geraldine Ferraro may have been the first woman Vice Presidential candidate on the ballot in 1984 representing a major political party, Sissy Farenthold was nominated to for vice president at the Democratic National convention in 1972 (from the floor by Gloria Steinem and when voting was counted she came in second). The nomination followed an unsuccessful run for Governor in Texas. While in the Texas Legislature, Farenthold prioritized civil rights, raising the spending cap for welfare recipients, and she was a co-sponsor of the Texas Equal Rights Amendment. In the late 1960s she was part of a coalition of lawmakers known as the “dirty thirty” who advocated for accountability, transparency, ethics reform and open government. She entered the race for Governor again in 1974 trying to unseat the incumbent in a primary, but was unable to pull it off.

When Sissy was appointed as President of Wells College, she had no prior higher education work experience. At the time, Wells College was an all-women’s school known for leadership in women’s education. She had a successful four-year tenure during which time, among other things in 1978 she created a bipartisan Public Education Leadership Network (PLEN) designed to encourage college-aged women to enter public service. She was the first woman president of Wells College.

At the time of her death in September 2021, Texas Law School has produced four documentaries on her extraordinary life and a digital archive documenting her career. In 2022 the Government Accountability Project established a Fellowship in her name for the Protection of Democracy to honor her legacy to the struggle for transparency, truth and justice, and the University of Texas School of Law hosts an endowed lecture series in her name. The University of Texas School of Law considered Farenthold to be one of their most distinguished alumni, describing her as someone who “epitomized our highest and best traditions of leadership and courage.”