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That is, there was no sign of what would come later that day.

Tuesday evening, Glover announced he was resigning after less than two months on the job and returning to the University of Florida.

That set off a new round of worry about what is wrong at the University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. For most of a year, the campus has been shaken by a financial crisis that has morphed into a crisis of morale and self-doubt.

The provost is a key position, because it is the university’s top academic officer, with oversight over faculty hiring, retention and promotion, among other things. So when Glover suddenly announced he was leaving, that raised important doubts.

Perhaps the most common interpretation of his U-turn: Glover must have found something here that he couldn’t tolerate.

The second most common reaction: The new UA president, Suresh Garimella, must have made it clear he didn’t want Glover.

After weighing the evidence and feeling out the contours of the situation, I don’t care that much what the real explanation is. It’s better Glover’s gone, and good that Garimella has his own choice to make.

With the newly announced resignation of Senior Vice President Jon Dudas, and the ongoing search for a new vice president for research, Garimella will be able to establish his own team and, I hope, stable leadership for years into the future.

Nevertheless, I had hoped to get a clearer explanation from Glover on Friday afternoon. I made an appointment to talk with him for 15 minutes starting at 2:30 p.m. At 2:28 p.m., I got word that he would not participate, that he had been “pulled into another meeting and his schedule is packed for the rest of the day.�

So I didn’t get to put questions to him that I planned to, like “Did anything happen in your time at the UA to make you change your mind?� And “In retrospect, do you think a president should be hired before a provost when both seats are empty?�

Instead, I received this prepared statement via email:

“My decision to leave had everything to do with the University of Florida and not the University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. I regret that I will not get to work alongside President Garimella and see his vision for the U of A unfold.â€�

“The University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ is one of the finest institutions in the nation, and it has a bright future. Under President Garimella’s leadership, and with the commitment of the deans, faculty and staff, the U of A will continue to thrive in the years to come.â€�

Whatever.

Wasted time, money

The truth is, the UA never should have hired Glover, or anyone, in the first place. The position of provost became available in the aftermath of the on-campus murder of the chair of hydrology and atmospheric sciences department, Thomas Meixner. Then-provost Liesl Folks was among those who got the blame for missing warning signs ahead of the killing, and then-president Robert Robbins pushed her aside into a new and equally well-paid position.

A search for a new provost ensued, of course, but then the financial crisis came into public view in November. Robbins, who was largely responsible, held on for a while, but no longer had the necessary public support and announced April 2 he would step down by the end of his contract in June 2026, or whenever the Board of Regents hired a replacement.

As John Schaefer, the respected former president of the university, said in an April 18 letter, the UA should have suspended the search for a new provost then. “You do not hire the vice president of a company before you hire the President!� Schaefer wrote.

But we did, anyway. That was a waste of time and money. We wasted time and money bringing candidates out to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ for interviews, and we wasted time and money bringing Glover to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ to take the job.

By all appearances, it was the hiring of former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse as University of Florida president that pushed Glover out of the provost job he held for 15 years there, and it’s departure of Sasse that is sending him back. was just catching up to him when he resigned, allegedly for family reasons.

If it’s true that Garimella did not force Glover out, we ought to recoup from Glover or the University of Florida whatever money we spent on bringing him here.

We would also save money and time if Garimella chose either an internal candidate as the next provost, or Marie Hardin, the other finalist for the job in the spring. In any case, there’s no need to re-run a national search, since we’ve already scoured the country for candidates during the last year.

‘Some stability’ needed now

Fortunately for Garimella, this renewed shakeup at the top of the UA administration has overshadowed the controversy of just a week ago — his selection as the only candidate for UA president. Under traditional circumstances, a slate of finalists is picked, and they visit campus to interact with the university community, who gets some say in the outcome.

This practice, though, seems to be going the same way as candid interviews with administrators. It’s being replaced by stage-managed outcomes.

That said, Garimella looked good in his . Relevantly, he emphasized the need for a functional administrative team, specifically the provost.

“What I need for me to be successful in this role is to build a team that all functions closely together, that there’s no daylight between me and the provost, etc.,� Garimella said.

“I very much look forward to bringing some stability to the team,� Garimella said. “You should expect to see some stability, some trust building, some confidence building, conversations with the governance groups — faculty senate, staff council, student government association.�

That’s what the UA needs out of administration now — moderate, stable administering of the university’s affairs. No grand, expensive ambitions and revolutionary pursuits. Just a righting of the ship.

The existing faculty and staff, the current and future students — they know how to keep the university churning forward if the administration can just keep the university stable.