The fight over East Carolina's future: Divisiveness, declining finances and flagging football fortunes marked Cecil Staton's tenure as leader of eastern North Carolina's most critical institution.

• Author: Abramowitz, Michael

It was mid-January, and reports were swirling that Cecil Staton was on his way out as East Carolina University's chancellor. After less than three years on the job, the veteran politician-turned-academic leader dismissed published reports of his pending departure but didn't deny that the heat was turning up. "Absolutely, I'm not going to sit here indefinitely, spinning my wheels," he said in an interview. "There might be multiple visions for the university. The vision I brought is the one I thought resonated with the search committee and the board of trustees.

"I didn't come here to play small ball."

Unfortunately for Staton, that vision didn't resonate with the UNC System leadership, particularly a Board of Governors chaired by one of his most vocal critics, Greenville businessman and ECU alum Harry Smith. Former system President Margaret Spellings and her interim successor, Bill Roper, showed little enthusiasm to protect Staton from brickbats. Efforts to support Staton by ECU Trustee Chairman Kieran Shanahan, including a January petition signed by about 130 business and community leaders praising the chancellor, proved ineffective.

On March 18, Staton said he would resign effective May 3, then spend two months as an adviser to ECU's interim chancellor. (Golden LEAF Foundation President Dan Gerlach was named to the post on April 16.) Along with his $450,000 salary, the university agreed to pay Staton $598,700 in "nonstate funds" as a departure settlement.

Thus ends a tumultuous tenure that started with a bizarre hiring process, was stoked by significant disappointments in athletics and health care and agitation over a new $1.3 million chancellor's residence, and concluded with reports showing that ECU's enrollment and financial status slumped during Staton's tenure.

None of which would be more than traditional university politics except for a simple truth: East Carolina's impact on the state's poorest region is critical to North Carolina's future in myriad ways. No other UNC campus produces as many nurses, schoolteachers and primary-care doctors. Its role as a comprehensive university with robust academic and community-engagement offerings is vital for everyone who lives in the region, says John Chaffee, CEO of NCEast Alliance, a nonprofit economic-development group based in Greenville. It's also important for the wealthy metro area 85 miles to the west that ranks among the nation's fastest-growing regions.

"The Triangle can either send us money in the form of government transfer payments to the working poor who otherwise can't sustain themselves, or they can send us money that builds regional capacity as an investment in this institution and in the future of this region," Chaffee says.

With a controversial leader at the helm of ECU, though, the institution's ability to attract needed support from passionate alumni and supporters and state lawmakers was hobbled, if not crippled. And a controversial leader is what ECU got in Cecil Staton.

A 16-member search committee led by Raleigh banker Steve Jones and Shanahan, a Raleigh lawyer, recruited Staton in 2016 as the successor to Steve Ballard, a political science Ph.D. who led the university for 12 years as it added the state's second dental school. The goal was to attract a dynamic leade with experience in the private sector, government and higher education. They got their match in Staton, a Greenville, S.C., native with a master's of theology from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest and a doctoral degree in religious studies from Oxford University in England. After returning to the U.S., he was a professor and led the publishing unit at Mercer University, a private school in Macon, Ga. He also started small publishing and media companies, served as a Georgia state senator from 2004-14, and lei 11,000-student Valdosta State University as an interim president for about a year, starting in July 2015.

Staton's Republican and Christian credentials appealed to North Carolina's conservative legislative leadership and UNC System governor Henry Hinton, the board's liaison with ECU. The Greenville radio station owner, hoping to be reappointed to the UNC board in 2017, contended in an email that he deserved another term because he was a leading fundraiser for key conservative N.C. politicians. After the email was made public, ECU alum Smith was reappointed and later became chairman, while Hinton was passed over.

Smith's relationship with Hinton and Staton had soured a year earlier when Smith complained about the search process. He concluded that Staton may have misled the committee and ECU's Board of Trustees about his private-industry history and his compensation in Georgia, including an unconfirmed claim that Valdosta State planned to offer Staton $500,000 to stay on as permanent president. The $450,000 annual salary offered Staton in 2017 compared with $385,000 earned by Ballard in his 12th year as chancellor. (Gerlach will recieve $350,000.) It also was unclear if Staton had a shot at the Valdosta job; Georgia Board of Regents' policy prohibits interim presidents from selection as permanent leaders, though a board official says the policy is occasionally waived.

Smith says the search process reflected poorly on the ECU board. "Governance and oversight can be difficult at times, but not asking...