May 28, 2026
Ursuline College in Pepper Pike is entering its final days as an independent institution ahead of its merger with Gannon University. (Contributed)
By Joe Scalzo - May 28, 2026 05:45 AM EDT
Two years ago, when Ursuline College first announced plans to merge with Gannon University, one of the big questions hanging over the deal was whether any employees would lose their jobs.
For President David King, the answer was yes. His.
Ursuline’s board decided to pursue a merger partner in the fall of 2023, long before hiring King in July 2024. He knew from the start that his job was to execute that plan. He also knew that if it worked, he’d probably be looking at a two-year gig.
“Number one, it helps the narrative when people understand that,” King said of Ursuline eliminating his position. “Number two, there will be job losses at Ursuline largely by natural attrition. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to identify a position at this point that is lost because of the merger. So, yeah, knowing the president would be the first to have to step out helps the narrative.”
The merger becomes official June 30, when Ursuline formally comes under the ownership and financial oversight of Erie, Pennsylvania-based Gannon University through a “change of control” agreement approved by the Higher Learning Commission.
The schools will continue integrating operations through late 2026, when Ursuline is expected to fully transition into the Ursuline College Campus of Gannon University.
King, meanwhile, leaves the small Catholic college with surprising momentum: Enrollment is rising, residence halls are full and Ursuline has gone from a $2.7 million deficit two years ago to projecting a modest surplus for fiscal 2027.
“We have improved the value of the asset that Gannon has acquired,” said King, who previously spent more than a decade as the president of Malone University in Canton. “The objective has been not just to maintain, but to leverage an opportunity for growth in the Cleveland market given the strength of the partnership.”
From the beginning, though, King said Ursuline and Gannon approached the merger as more than a survival strategy for a small private college. They also wanted the process itself to become a potential roadmap for similar schools facing demographic and financial pressures.
“We want to do this well so other people can see it and learn from it,” King said.
To that end, they focused their work on four categories: integration, governance, communication and culture.
Integration
The schools signed a definitive agreement in January 2025 and eventually created 13 integration teams covering everything from academics and enrollment to athletics, finance and IT. Some of the integration work accelerated after the “change of control” agreement took effect last summer, especially in areas like IT, advancement and enrollment management.
In some cases, that happened out of necessity. Ursuline’s vice president of enrollment management left last spring not long after Gannon hired a new vice president of enrollment marketing, creating an opening for the schools to move more quickly than expected.
“That personnel change was one example of where we accelerated our integration work more rapidly than we would have otherwise,” King said.
Governance
When the Higher Learning Commission approved the “change of control” agreement in June 2025, the Ursuline Sisters stepped aside as the college’s corporate entity and Gannon took over. Ursuline’s longtime board of trustees was also dissolved and replaced with a temporary nine-member board that has overseen the college during the transition.
That board also will go away June 30, when governance officially shifts to Gannon’s existing board of trustees. Three current Ursuline trustees — board chair Terry Corletzi, Ursuline Sisters representative Sister Laura Bregar and former Lake Health CEO Cynthia Moore-Hardy — will join Gannon’s board as part of the transition.
Moore-Hardy also served on the Ursuline task force that explored merger options and brought prior merger experience from the health care sector.
Communication
Communication became a major focus almost immediately after Ursuline and Gannon announced their letter of intent in September 2024.
The schools worked to stay “in lockstep” on both internal and external messaging, coordinating everything from town halls and emails to videos, press releases, websites and frequently asked questions. King said leaders from both schools also met weekly to monitor emerging questions and concerns as the merger process unfolded.
Ursuline also hired Lois Consulting to help manage the communications effort during the transition. The college retained the firm from August 2024 through April of this year.
“Communication was key,” he said. “We wanted to manage those communication issues together with one voice as best we could.”
Culture
Culture quickly became one of the biggest — and most complicated — parts of the merger.
As the integration process moved forward, leaders at both schools had to think not only about structures and systems, but also about habits, communication styles and decision-making patterns that had developed over decades.
“We realized at Ursuline that we would have to change our culture to some degree,” King said. “And the question became, what do we want the emerging culture to become? What shared habits do we want to create in the merged outcome?”
King said the merger reinforced what he called the old Peter Drucker line that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
“We’ve always known that intellectually,” he said. “Experientially, I would now say there is absolutely no doubt that culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Ursuline enrolled 124 incoming freshmen last fall — its largest incoming class since 2006 — and current enrollment indicators point to an even stronger incoming class this year, King said. Ursuline also expects residence halls to be full this fall after reconfiguring parts of campus to squeeze in additional housing capacity.
At the same time, King said Ursuline has managed that growth without significantly changing its tuition discount rate, while net tuition revenue has continued improving during the merger transition.
“There’s a lot to celebrate in the months to come,” King said.
Some of the enrollment growth has come through athletics. Ursuline added men’s sports for the first time in the 2024-25 academic year — cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field — and will add men’s golf this fall. Male students are expected to make up about 12% of the student body this fall, King said.
“That’s one element of how we’ve gotten to that (enrollment) outcome,” King said.
Even King’s hiring reflected some of the cultural changes already underway at Ursuline. When he arrived in 2024, he became the first male president in the college’s 154-year history.
But King said he’s not ready to step away from higher education. He was a finalist this spring for the presidential opening at the University of Findlay and said he would still like to work with colleges considering mergers, partnerships or other long-term strategic changes — whether at the board level, in senior leadership or as a consultant.
“My wife and I both love being on a college campus,” King said. “I’d love to be giving back in some meaningful ways to institutions based on what we’ve learned in this process.”
Since the merger was announced, King has said he expects more colleges to pursue similar partnerships as demographic and financial pressures mount across higher education. That hasn’t happened much so far — Iowa’s Buena Vista University and the University of Northern Iowa are an exception — but it’s coming, he said.
That’s why Ursuline and Gannon have approached their partnership not simply as a merger, but as a model.
“We want to do this well so other people can see it and learn from it,” King said.
