Longtime CWC president announces retirement

(Dec. 11, 2013) Central Wyoming College President Jo Anne McFarland, who has spent more than 40 years of her professional life as a teacher and an administrator at CWC, announced plans to retire effective June 30, 2014.

Dr. McFarland advised the CWC Board of her impending retirement during an executive session called at the beginning of Wednesday night’s meeting of the trustees. The board scheduled a meeting in January to develop a search process.

Named Wyoming’s first female college president in March 1989, Dr. McFarland began her career at Central in 1970 when the college was a few years old. She moved up the ranks from instructor to professor, from Division Chair to Dean of the College. At the conclusion of the 2013 academic year, she was the first CWC employee to receive a 40-year service award.

At November’s meeting of the board, trustees voted to extend Dr. McFarland’s contract through June 30, 2016.

In a letter to the board, McFarland outlined a number of college accomplishments including expansion of improved learning spaces with the completion of the Intertribal Center and the Health and Science Center. “It is at this joyful high point for the college that I have decided to retire,” she said in a letter to the board. “I have always believed that the college should be enhanced by my presence, but not diminished by my absence.”

McFarland said she is leaving the institution with a “strong and capable board, an experienced and talented administration and a hardworking and dedicated faculty and staff.