School of the Art Institute of Chicago president to retire

Elissa Tenny, the first female president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in its 157-year history, has announced she will retire from her post next year.

“Today, after a career in higher education of more than 45 years, I write to share that I will retire at the end of the 2023–24 academic year,” Tenny wrote in a letter to students and faculty. “I do so with enthusiasm for all you have done to shape the remarkable legacy that you, and I, and so many before us, share.”

The school will use a firm to conduct a national search for a new president.

Tenny was hired as a provost at SAIC in 2010 and became president in 2016. During her tenure, she helped increase the school’s endowment by more than $102 million and addressed issues of diversity and inclusion. She created an anti-racism committee in 2020 and increased hires of full-time faculty of color by 30% from 2016 to 2019, the school said.

Tenny “will leave an enduring and far-reaching legacy,” board chairs Anita K. Sinha and Denise B. Gardner, the first women of color on the board, said in a statement.

Under Tenny’s watch, the school last year rescinded an honorary doctorate it had awarded the artist Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, after he made racist statements. The school’s non-tenure-track instructors also unionized last year.

Tenny, a first-generation college student, began SAIC’s First-Generation Fellows program to help first-generation students find their path at SAIC. She also started the School’s College Arts Access Program, a three-year college preparatory bridge for Chicago Public School students.