Amy Parsons formally hired as Colorado State University's 16th president

Amy Parsons, a Colorado State University alumna, parent of a current student and longtime administrator at the school, was formally hired Friday as the the 16th president of CSU’s Fort Collins campus.

Parsons, 48, had been identified as the sole finalist for the position Dec. 2 by the CSU System Board of Governors. State law requires a 14-day waiting period between identifying the finalist and entering formal contract negotiations.

The Board of Governors met Friday afternoon at CSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital on its south campus in Fort Collins to make Parsons’ hiring official. A unanimous 9-0 vote in favor of her hiring followed each member of the board sharing their endorsement of Parsons and their reasoning behind that support.

"We have a world-class campus and university in a world-class state," board member Kenzo Kawanabe, a fourth-generation Coloradan, said. "Amy Parsons is a leader that will make us even better."

Parsons will assume the role Feb. 1. Contract terms are still being negoiated, CSU System spokesperson Tiana Kennedy said. Joyce McConnell, the president she is replacing, had a base salary of $550,000 in the first year of the initial five-year contract she signed when she was hired in 2019 that included annual cost-of-living increases.

"I do not enter this role with the idea that I deserve your trust and your confidence, but I want to tell you that I intend to earn them," Parsons told the board following the vote. "We have enormous opportunities and some real challenges ahead as an institution, and I’ll be working with the leadership team across the campus to address them.

"Together we will continue to make CSU the university of choice in Colorado and a national leader in delivering on the mission and purpose of a research university, to make progress in ensuring our student population reflects the community we serve, and to eliminate the gaps and barriers in student success with an emphasis on a campus that is welcoming, inclusive and accessible for all."

More:What we know about Amy Parsons, the sole finalist to become CSU's next president

Parsons is the second woman to serve as president of CSU, an institution of more than 33,000 students that opened in 1870 — six years before Colorado became a state. McConnell, who reached a “separation agreement” with the university in June to step down with three years remaining on her contract, was the university’s first female president.

Parsons' selection as the sole finalist drew criticism from the Faculty Council and others on campus. Some complaints centered on the secrecy of the selection process that led to a sole finalist without publicly identifying any other candidates, while others were concerned about her academic credentials and her close ties to CSU System Chancellor Tony Frank, who served as president of the Fort Collins campus from 2008 to 2019.

Armando Valdez, vice-chair of the Board of Governors, headed the evaluation committee tasked with leading the search for a new president. At the request of board chair Kim Jordan, Valdez gave a rundown again Friday of the process that led to a sole finalist, noting that desired qualities and questions were determined through a series of “listening sessions” both on campus and virtual, that allowed input from faculty, staff, students, employees and community members early in the process.

More:CSU survey shows half of respondents oppose selection of Amy Parsons as president

The 31-member search committee narrowed the field of candidates to 12 who were brought in for interviews. From that list, three were selected for in-depth interviews with the board's five-member evaluation team meeting in executive session Nov. 30 at the Westin Hotel at Denver International Airport, where Parsons was chosen as the sole finalist. That selection was approved by the full nine-member board at the conclusion of its meetings Dec. 1-2 at CSU's new Spur campus in Denver.

“The outcome of a sole finalist was anticipated from the very beginning of this process as I mentioned in performing this confidential search approach and as it was announced widely last summer,” Valdez said Friday. “This was not any kind of surprise at the end; we meant to do it. We were performing a confidential search.

“And again, I’ll stress that the purpose of this approach was to establish confidentiality to again ensure that we had the strongest and deepest candidate pool possible.”

Parsons spent 16 years in high-level administrative roles at CSU before stepping down in September 2020 to become the founding CEO of a global e-commerce company, Mozzafiato LLC, an importer and online retailer of Italian health and beauty products. Mozzafiato has four full-time employees in Denver and dozens of contract employees in Denver and elsewhere and a warehouse in Pennsylvania, she said. Because she doesn't own the private company, Parsons said she was not at liberty to share figures on its annual sales or revenue.

She served as CSU’s deputy general counsel and associate legal council from 2004 to 2010, vice president of university operations on the Fort Collins campus from 2009 to 2015 and executive vice-chancellor of the CSU System out of its Denver office from 2015 to 2020.

Parsons was born in Loveland and grew up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, participating in 4-H activities. She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from CSU in 1995, graduating magna cum laude (with great distinction), and a juris doctor degree in law from the University of Colorado in 1999.

Parsons was active in student government, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority as an undergraduate student at CSU. She also was a student employee at the Lory Student Center, working as both a greeter and on the facilities maintenance crew. She had internships at the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency and with the Fort Collins Public Defender's Office. She interned with the CSU General Counsel’s Office while she was in law school and was a member of the CU Law Review.

"Thank you, Chair Jordan, Governor Valdez and to all members of the Board of Governors for the enormous trust that you are investing in me," Parsons said. "I also want to thank the faculty and staff and students and all who engaged in the search process, including those who participated in the Faculty Council survey. I hear and I understand and I respect all of the concerns and recommendations expressed, and I take them seriously.

"This is, in many ways, the best part of the university — the freedom to disagree and to debate, to criticize and innovate on how best to fulfill the mission of the university and to advance the academic enterprise. I am far from perfect, and I’ve made mistakes over the course of my career. I am grateful to the CSU community, where I spent the majority of my working life in various roles, for the opportunities that I’ve had to learn and to grow and to fail and try again and to sometimes succeed. That type of environment, with learning at its core, is what I hope to build and sustain for all of the members of our campus community in participation with all of you."

Parsons and her husband, Jeff, have two daughters. Madelyn,18, is a freshman at CSU, and Sophia, 16, is a junior in high school.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers educatiion and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Amy Parsons formally hired as Colorado State University's 16th president