Former Hogan chief of staff leaves U of I

CHAMPAIGN — The woman who served as former University of Illinois President Michael Hogan’s chief of staff has agreed to resign from a faculty job and will be paid $175,000 as part of a deal with the school, the university said Tuesday.

Lisa Troyer agreed to leave the tenured Department of Psychology faculty position she took after her January resignation as Hogan’s chief of staff, the university and her attorneys announced. As part of the deal she agreed to never make a legal claim against the university and the school said it will not pursue disciplinary action against her.

Troyer was a key figure in the dispute with faculty that led Hogan to resign in March. Anonymous emails were sent last December to faculty leaders aimed at swaying their opposition to an enrollment management plan Hogan favored. Those emails eventually were traced to Troyer’s computer and were the subject of an outside investigation conducted by a law firm and a data analysis company hired by the university.

Troyer has denied writing them and did so again in a statement released by her attorneys Tuesday.

“I have always stated that I never sent any anonymous emails, and the Investigation Report never concluded that I did,” she said in a single-sentence statement.

But Ted Chung, a lawyer who was part of the investigation, concluded when the report was released in January that it was “reasonable to infer” Troyer was the writer.

University spokesman Tom Hardy on Tuesday called the deal “a reasonable, responsible agreement with Dr. Troyer reached through mediation.”

In addition to the payment and Troyer’s agreement to forego legal claims against the university, the deal also says the school will allow Hogan — now a professor at the university — to serve as the university reference for Troyer as she seeks future employment. University leaders and key school spokesmen and spokeswomen are forbidden from making defamatory statements about Troyer, and she in turn agreed to say or write nothing derogatory about the university, its leaders or employees.

The deal still needs the approval of university trustees, whose next regular meeting is Sept. 14 in Urbana.

The emails were a flash point in ongoing disagreements between Hogan and some faculty over what they saw as his top-down management style.

Hogan hired Troyer in 2010 but she previously had worked for him when he was president at the University of Connecticut and a top administrator at the University of Iowa.

Hogan’s replacement at Illinois, Robert Easter, officially took over as president Monday.