“New England Conservatory President Tony Woodcock plans to step down at the end of the current academic year, leaving a position he has held since 2007, the conservatory announced Friday,” writes Trisha Thadani in Friday’s (10/3) Boston Globe. “In a letter to the NEC board, Woodcock said the Fenway school ‘needs a different type of leader as its president. The pressure to balance budgets in the face of scholarship demand and changes in philanthropic support, especially in the years that followed the world’s economic financial collapse, tests every one of us in ways, frankly, I never imagined when I took the reins at NEC.’ Among the conservatory’s undertakings are the construction of a Student Life and Performance Center, scheduled for completion in 2017. Plans call for the center to include student residences, a state-of-the-art library, and an opera studio…. The NEC’s Board of Trustees said it will immediately begin looking for a successor. Board chairman Ken Burnes praised Woodcock’s accomplishments, including overseeing a campus overhaul and presiding over the rise of NEC’s stature among music schools ‘not just in this country, but worldwide.’ ” The article notes that NEC was founded in 1867 and has approximately 750 students.
Posted October 6, 2014
