Quinnipiac University’s two most senior women administrators of color — Khalilah Brown-Dean, associate provost for faculty affairs, and Elicia Spearman, general counsel and vice president for human resources — announced their impending departures this month, bringing the total number of high-level resignations since October 2022 to 14.

Provost Debra Liebowitz on March 18 announced to the Faculty Senate that Brown-Dean, whose tenure at Quinnipiac has spanned nearly 13 years, would be leaving the university April 26 to take a position at nearby Wesleyan University.

“I feel very fortunate that Khalilah has spent the last 13 years sharing her commitment to students, faculty and staff here at Quinnipiac,” Liebowitz wrote in an email statement to The Chronicle Thursday. “The institution is certainly the better for it. She leaves big shoes to fill, and I look forward to all of the impact she will have in her new role.”

Quinnipiac President Judy Olian then announced to faculty Thursday that Spearman is also leaving next month to become the Girl Scouts of Connecticut’s next chief executive officer.

“I’m very sad to lose Elicia’s expertise, wise counsel and creative energy that she brought to all she touched at the university,” Olian wrote in the March 28 email. “Yet this new opportunity captures her longtime passion for female mentoring and development.”

Spearman, who joined Quinnipiac in 2020 as its inaugural in-house legal counsel, is departing the university on April 3. 

“As a Hamden native, it was very enjoyable to work in my hometown and serve as a brand ambassador for QU,” Spearman wrote in Olian’s email to faculty. “I’ll be rooting for more continued success for all Bobcats. This will be a new and exciting opportunity as CEO of the Girl Scouts of Connecticut — and I’m looking forward to this next step in my leadership journey.”

Caroline Park, a partner at law firm Wiggin and Dana who has provided outside legal counsel to Quinnipiac since 2012, will serve as acting general counsel until the university appoints Spearman’s permanent successor. 

Anna Spragg, associate vice president for human resources, will serve as interim vice president for human resources.

“As sad as I am to see Elicia leave, she is ascending to a tremendous leadership opportunity, a CEO role, something she has a life passion about,” Olian wrote in a March 28 statement to The Chronicle. “Quinnipiac is proud that highly talented individuals can expand their skill set while at our university and are thus positioned for further career opportunities.”

The consecutive resignations of the campus’s two most prominent women of color did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they are indicative of an administrative mass exodus that has defined the university’s last year-and-a-half.

Quinnipiac has said goodbye to 11 senior administrators over the past 18 months: four vice presidents, three deans, two Title IX coordinators and now the associate provost and general counsel. 

Three lower-level administrative officials — the director and associate director of multicultural education and training and the director of recreation — also resigned during this period.

Quinnipiac has named since permanent appointees to the vacant dean positions in the schools of nursing, law and communications, and the university’s fourth acting Title IX coordinator in 14 months took over in mid-March. Brown-Dean and Spearman also announced their imminent departures just weeks after the university made a handful of high-level administrative hires that appeared to buck the monthslong turnover trend. 

But taken together, a total of 14 high-ranking Quinnipiac officials, including seven administrators of color, have left the university since October 2022 — the rough equivalent of one departure every five weeks.