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By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor

MONTEVALLO – University of Montevallo President Dr. John W. Stewart III announced his retirement during a UM Board of Trustees meeting on Monday, May 5.

During the meeting, the UM Board of Trustees received a resolution from the UM Faculty Senate recognizing Stewart’s contributions to the university and expressing his desire to retire as president of the university effective July 31, 2025.

“Cindi and I are incredibly grateful to the UM community for so many wonderful years together,” Stewart said. “We appreciate the many meaningful relationships we’ve enjoyed with our students, faculty, staff and alumni, and we wish the UM family all the best in the future.”

Stewart was hired as the 15th president of the University of Montevallo on May 15, 2010—succeeding Philip Williams—and was inaugurated on Oct. 14, 2010.

Under Stewart’s leadership, the university added numerous programs to grow enrollment. He started the Outdoor Scholars program, which includes a bass fishing team that has won four consecutive Bass Pro Shops School of the Year titles and the Montevallo MADE program, which has seen a 90 percent retention rate.

Stewart was actively engaged in both the public and private sectors and has been widely recognized for his service to the state of Alabama. He was recognized in 2015 when the Birmingham Business Alliance named him a CEO of the Year Finalist and awarded him the Vulcans Community Award for Outstanding New Leadership.

Stewart earned his P.h.D. in English from the University of Southern Mississippi, a M.A. in English from Washington College in Chesterfield, Maryland and his B.A. in history from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Stewart worked for 15 years for an industrial contracting company in Delaware before officially joining academia full-time in 1997. In addition to teaching, Stewart worked in fundraising and held development positions at the University of Southern Mississippi, Swarthmore College and William Carey University. Before finding his place at UM, Stewart served as the vice president for institutional advancement at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida where he raised $30 million in three years.

With Stewart’s plans to retire announced, the university will begin its search for an interim president to serve.

“A candidate for interim president should have the capacity to build trust, restore a positive university climate and expedite solutions to current and pending fiscal challenges during the search phase for the next president,” read the resolution.

With the approval of the UM Board of Trustees, the resolution accomplishes the following:

• Grant Stewart his retirement effective July 31, 2025
• Include faculty representation on decisions regarding the appointment of an interim president
• Prioritize candidates for interim president who demonstrate understanding and commitment to UM’s liberal arts mission and vision
• Prioritize candidates for interim president who demonstrate capacity to build trust, restore a positive university climate and expedite solutions to current and pending fiscal challenges

Deliberation on the interim president for the University of Montevallo will take place during a UM Board of Trustees meeting on Friday, June 13.

News of Stewart’s retirement comes after weeks of controversy at UM regarding its financial situation.

In February, the UM Board of Trustees voted to raise tuition by 3.5 percent for the 2025-2026 academic year which was the first increase the public liberal arts university saw to its tuition since it had previously been paused for seven years in a row.

Before making the decision to increase the tuition, administrators consulted the Student Government Association to learn about how the decision could negatively impact students.

“We received valuable feedback from our students and used this insight to create a plan to raise revenue while simultaneously keeping our tuition rate increase at a low percentage,” Stewart said. “This was the most viable solution that could be both tolerated by students and would assist with budget relief for the university.”

In addition to tuition, parking permits increased to $70, the streaming fee for students increased to $85 and the technology and access fee increased by $2 per hour.

The decision to increase tuition was then followed by budget cuts and staff layoffs with a total of 28 staff members having been laid off since March 13.

Stewart provided an explanation behind the university’s recent financial situation and decision making.

“During the past five years, the university has invested heavily in maintenance and electrical upgrades,” Stewart said. “These investments, which were needed to improve aging facilities, utilized cash from net assets. Rising operating expenses have led to expenses outpacing revenues.”

Stewart also cited the expiration of COVID-19 funding and the possibility of future federal funding cuts which he believes require the university to be more mindful of its fiscal condition.

“As a result, the university is experiencing a short-term budget shortfall,” Stewart said. “The difficult decision was made to make budget cuts across campus and implement a small reduction in force. The university is taking immediate action to continue providing a high-quality education and minimize the impact on the student experience at UM.”

As part of budgetary cuts across campus, the UM executive cabinet took a 10 percent reduction in its compensation package with the president taking a 20 percent reduction in his compensation package starting on April 1.

According to public record, Stewart’s total compensation package for fiscal year 2024 was $679,669.62 which includes car allowance, travel expenses, catering and more.

During the Board of Trustees meeting on May 5, administration examined the university’s recent financial audit and took further measures to ensure the college remains financially sound.

“After we met with the auditors and started to receive some information, we saw that we needed to take action on our finance side of the equation to ensure that we were able to successfully sustain the summer time when revenues don’t generally come in,” said Todd Strange, chair of the UM Board of Trustees. “To prepare ourselves for the future, whatever that future may be… a number of things were put in place (and) that started, really after our last board meeting.”

During the May 5 meeting, the board approved the closure of several programs which were seeing low student participation and fiscal redundancies. Any students currently registered in the programs will be able to carry out their full education with the programs no longer admitting new students for the 2026-2027 academic year.

The following programs were approved for closure:

• BA in world languages
• BA/BS in deaf and hard of hearing
• Marketing BBA advertising concentration
• Finance BBA sustainable finance concentration
• BS in data analytics
• Digital filmmaking certificate

The board also approved a resolution for an additional credit line.

“The way its couched is to approve an additional credit line but we have a $10 million credit line to start with,” Strange said. “This is more of a permanent loan that we will be able to get with full anticipation and a game plan to pay it off by Sept. 28.”

With all of the measures taken over the past several months, Strange said during the meeting that he feels the university is in a better place financially.

“We are today in a very different financial situation than we were 30 days ago,” Strange said. “There are many other items that are on a list of cost savings, not the least of which is just expense reduction in general. Shame on us, but we lost control of the spending… What we find ourselves in is just a myriad of expenditures that we just didn’t need to have.”