The consultant serving as Lafayette College’s interim vice president for communications stepped down on Dec. 31 after almost two and a half years in the role.
Pete Mackey, who joined the communications division in the fall of 2022, resigned months before a search for a permanent replacement was expected to end. Scott Morse, the assistant vice president for communications, is acting as interim vice president until the replacement is selected.
“I had other emerging obligations in my business that made this a good time for the transition,” Mackey wrote in an email. “My outstanding Lafayette colleague, Scott Morse, is more than capable of assuming this interim role while the search concludes.”
Lafayette has not had a permanent communications head since 2022.
In the years since, the college has seen a federal antisemitism investigation, the departure of five senior administrators, the planning of an aborted vice-presidential debate and outrage over a dining provider transition, among other controversies. Through it all, Lafayette’s communications tactics were led by Mackey while he ran his consulting company, Mackey Strategies.
In the month since Mackey’s departure, the college has faced the fallout of a historic faculty no-confidence vote and Trump administration policies upending research and immigration.
According to college President Nicole Hurd, a permanent vice president could be named “in the coming weeks,” but the timeline has shifted several times.
Mackey’s hiring filled one of the first senior leadership vacancies of Hurd’s presidency. At the time, the college noted that Hurd would consider “the best time to launch a search for a permanent vice president in the coming year,” but the search was not launched until May 2024. By September, Hurd said in a campus announcement that finalists would be interviewed that month and a hire would be made by the semester’s end.
Though several candidates visited Easton that month for a series of “open lunch sessions” with the campus community, no replacement has been named. According to Hurd, the administration decided to “reassess” its approach to hiring with its search partner, Storbeck Search.
Hurd did not respond when asked why this took place.
In late January, another series of open lunches was held. Morse wrote in an email that three candidates were being interviewed.
“Lafayette College deserves the best possible candidate to fill this position,” Morse wrote. “We will take whatever time is needed to find that right individual.”
According to Mackey, his departure had been a “rolling conversation” between him and Hurd, and the pair decided in fall 2024 that he would step down at the end of the calendar year.
“It was our intention from the start of our agreement that at an opportune point I would step down and a new vice president would be recruited,” Mackey wrote, noting that he and Hurd came to the decision because “other leadership searches had been completed.”
The only public announcement of Mackey’s departure was a note appended to an event reminder in the Jan. 21 issue of the Lafayette Today, three weeks after Mackey’s term had ended.
The vacancy is one of three in Hurd’s senior leadership team, a group of the college’s 11 most senior administrators. The fundraising division has been led on an interim basis by another consultant from Mackey’s firm since 2023, while the college’s information technology division has been without a leader since October.
The average term length for an interim senior administrator under Hurd has been one year and three months, according to an analysis by The Lafayette. Under Hurd’s predecessor, Allison Byerly, the average interim term was four months.
Mackey’s interim work for and subsequent exit from the college was cited by the faculty in its no-confidence motion against Hurd. The duration of his term was used to support the faculty’s claim that Hurd “has not effectively addressed the mass exodus driven by her administration.”
Aaron • Feb 10, 2025 at 12:44 pm
I’m just catching up on all the drama (class of ’94!) and while I’m not ready to join in the lynch mob against President Hurd, I have to say this raises an eyebrow.
Leaders bring their own vision and people – and I certainly can’t hold any of the early turnover against her. It happens in all businesses. President Hurd was in no way obligated to maintain the status quo. Nicole Byerly’s departure for Carleton, which is a lateral move from most every perspective, leads me to believe that the position might not have been particularly attractive when she took over. A good percentage of the faculty held the athletic department with disdain in my day and little changed over time. I’m sure Hurd’s willingness to embrace Lafayette’s unique position as a small liberal arts college with a robust D1 athletic program met with a lot of scorn -and most alumni are tired of the whining. If we’re going to do it – we need to do it right and without apology. Giving the AD a place at the table was the right move. Alumni very much support it.
Make no mistake – that’s the heart of the faculty’s issue with Nicole Hurd. In that sense all I can tell them is to cry more.
But this article makes the administration look like it’s amateur hour. 2.5 years after hiring an interim he quits JUST BEFORE they were going to fill the position? The gentleman (Mackey) probably thought “interim” meant just that. We’re talking about a communication VP, not a mandarin-speaking woman who also coaches football. In an era where media and communications professionals are DYING for better opportunities, this isn’t the hardest mountain to climb. Give me 10 minutes on LinkedIn and I’ll have a line of candidates outside of Markle – I can be your “Interim VP of Recruitment!”
At the very least you need to contract with a better firm to do your searches.
Again, Hurd has every right to take the school in the direction she feels is best – but some of the stuff I’m seeing gives us an amateur hour look.
Finally – EXCELLENT REPORTING BY THE LEOPARD SCRIBES!
Baby boomer alum • Feb 7, 2025 at 7:26 pm
Great reporting on the departure and the work done (and not done) during his tenure.
What wonderful obfuscation with the quote: “I had other emerging obligations in my business that made this a good time for the transition,” meaning that he’d been soliciting new business and now had another engagement or two.
Question: how much time did he actually spend on campus, as opposed to working out of his office?
Concerned Citizen • Feb 8, 2025 at 8:32 am
I am told he was there physically maybe once a month or so, other than meetings and major events he needed to attend live, but kept in touch with his staff and president and handled the communication needs he was in charge of by phone and electronically from his remote location while running his business.
One of things not mentioned that he managed to accomplish was stop the presses on the College’s alumni magazine for a year in order to reformat it. When it re-emerged, it was not in my judgment any significantly better but he eliminated the Class Notes that all alumni I know loved so much to look at as soon as the issue arrived in the mail to see what was happening with classmates. Part of that killing of meaningful class notes was also effectively killing the class correspondents too, a long and vital Lafayette tradition.
How an interim major position that he says he was hired to handle for the “moment,” as he called it, of the transition to a new head of communications can stretch out to 2 and 1/2 years in any well-run organization beats me.
Higher Ed Ed • Feb 11, 2025 at 11:05 am
Well stated. I cannot confirm how frequently Mackey was actually on campus (or even in the Lehigh Valley), but I would say you’re correct that it was no greater than once a month. For someone who hardly stepped foot on campus, it’s disappointing how much he changed the culture around communications. It seems like every time the student paper reaches out to an administrator, they are referred to the communications division. Even over banal issues that any decent administrator should be able to respond to in their sleep. While that is certainly appropriate and expected in most circumstances, this administration does it significantly more than any other in my memory.
The other thing that doesn’t pass the smell test here is that Scott Morse is now the interim VP, and is (according to Mackey), “more than capable of assuming” the role. Scott Morse has been at the College how long? 15 years? Over two decades? Why wasn’t he made the interim VP two and a half years ago? He has much greater institutional knowledge and has been deemed “capable.”
I’m not convinced President Hurd can make a decision, much less a good one.
Thankful Alum • Feb 8, 2025 at 12:37 pm
On the overall subject of using interims in key leadership roles on college campuses, and the recent revelations about the unorthodox use of this temporary process on the Lafayette campus, yesterday’s announcement from the president office is quite noteworthy. She announced that the college is starting a search for its new Vice President of Advancement. Maybe it’s just me, but one would have thought that the search to fill such a key role had been underway since Kim Spang vacated that critical position over 19 month ago. We were all mistaken if we believed that such a need was properly appreciated and a search being actively pursued. A person from Mackey’s firm has filled that job on a temporary basis and probably would have continued doing so into the future. Again, a huge thank you to the faculty for awakening all of us and the sleeping giants called the trustees about strange things happening in the administration of Lafayette College.