Kevin Guskiewicz is leaving Michigan State University to become Clemson University's next president, a move that is expected to be formalized at a Clemson board meeting on Wednesday.
Guskiewicz had been MSU's president since March 4, 2024, after a Dec. 8, 2023 unanimous approval by the Michigan State Board of Trustees. He was the sole remaining candidate for the MSU job after the University of Texas at San Antonio president, Taylor Eighmy, withdrew. The board also approved a measure just over a week before his departure that nearly doubled his salary and extended his contract by two years.
The numbers underline why the change matters now: Guskiewicz leaves after a little more than two years at the helm of a university that has repeatedly cycled through leadership. Since Lou Anna K. Simon resigned in January 2018, Michigan State has had six different people serving as acting, interim or permanent president — and with Guskiewicz's exit the university will launch a search for its seventh leader in eight years.
Guskiewicz came to MSU with a short list of priorities that he framed publicly. In May 2024 he told the campus, "We're moving in the right direction, focused on the future, not looking at the past. We are one team. We are going to move this university forward as one team." He pushed for a series of structural changes, including plans to merge the university's medical colleges and to create a Green and White Council, even as he imposed university-wide budget cuts to tackle a recurring deficit.
Administrators said the cuts were necessary: Michigan State planned to reduce spending by $85 million over two years, with final cuts expected to appear in the planned budget for fiscal year 2027. Those measures, and the proposed medical college merger, met resistance on campus; faculty raised concerns about a lack of information and questioned whether the merger was feasible.
That resistance points to a central tension of Guskiewicz's brief tenure. The board's decision to extend his contract and substantially raise his pay came amid a string of unpopular operational decisions and open questions about how his proposals would be executed. On campus, frustration bubbled up. In one public line that captured the mood, Brianna Scott said she was at her "wits' end," a phrase that summed up anxieties about communication and direction during a period of tight budgets and organizational change.
Guskiewicz's move to Clemson also resolves an immediate leadership gap there: Clemson has been without a president since James Clements resigned in December. His expected confirmation on Wednesday will end that vacancy and begin a new chapter for Clemson while leaving Michigan State to restart a search that has become, over eight years, a recurring story of turnover.
The clearest consequence is practical: unfinished initiatives and an ongoing budget plan will now be handed to an interim team or a new president to implement and to defend. For Michigan State, the board-approved pay raise and the timing of Guskiewicz's departure will intensify scrutiny of governance decisions at a time when the institution says it needs stability. For Guskiewicz, the move offers a fresh mandate at Clemson; for MSU, it guarantees the immediate next task is finding steady leadership to carry through expensive and contested changes.
