Utah Valley University President Astrid Tuminez is stepping down after a tumultuous year filled with personal and campuswide grief.
Tuminez, 61, the first woman to serve full-time as UVU’s president, led the school for 7½ years. She announced her resignation Wednesday morning during her State of the University address.
“I want to announce today that I am leaving UVU,” she said. “I cried a lot last night. I’m not crying today.”
Tuminez’s husband, Jeffrey Tolk, collapsed and died on a South American peak in February. He had been an active partner and supporter in her presidency, and her ongoing anguish was shared across the university.
Charlie Kirk was graphically assassinated in September below the window to her campus office. She spent the past four months working through new layers of sorrow and leading students to process their own feelings.
“They are two very different griefs but happening in the same year,” she told the Deseret News in October.
Tuminez said her departure will be effective May 1, 2026. The Utah System of Higher Education has begun the process of finding a new president, said Scott Smith, chair of UVU’s board of trustees.
Smith, who co-founded Qualtrics with his son, Utah Jazz and Mammoth owner Ryan Smith, said he would give Tuminez a huge grade for her tenure: “Absolutely an A-plus.”
“She’s been incredible in terms of their energy and vigor and bringing to them that the university community and the students and benefiting the community in terms of growth,” he said. “She provided tremendous new steps in terms of movement within the university.”
He also said he was grateful to see Tuminez at peace with her decision.
Wearing green boots and a green scarf over a white sweater, Tuminez smiled and danced onto the stage to Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” in the Keller Building’s Vallejo Auditorium. She received a long, standing ovation from a full room that didn’t yet know she was leaving.
“If you are lucky like me, you get to have a job you fall in love with,” she said.
The room fell absolutely silent when she announced her resignation at the end of her presentation. Some wept.
When she was finished, Tuminez received a standing ovation that lasted more than a minute. People joined her on stage to dance to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
She shook the same green-and-white pompoms she brandished while cheering for UVU’s sports teams.
A political scientist who never anticipated being a university president, Tuminez told the Deseret News that the decision to leave was easier when she looked back on her tenure.
“‘Wow’ is the right word for the 7½ years here,” she said. “I am an accidental president. It was not part of my career plans, but it happened. And I think the fit between me and UVU was perfect.”
She benefited from a great leadership team, staff and donors, she said.
“We powered up a story, a story about changing human lives and being non-prejudicial about who deserves an education, who deserves to succeed, who deserves to have a dream,” she said.
The State of the University address provided an opportunity to study UVU’s growth since she became its seventh president in June 2018.
UVU has more than doubled its endowment to $129 million, up from $55 million. She also led a comprehensive fundraising campaign that raised $254 million.
The school’s enrollment, which became Utah’s largest during her first semester on campus, has jumped to 48,669 students, up from 37,000 under the previous president, Elder Matthew S. Holland, who left to serve as a mission president and now as a General Authority Seventy for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Smith praised the work Tuminez did at the university.
“You’ve done a remarkable job setting a trajectory for the university,” he said.
Former Utah Gov. Gary Herbert asked Tuminez during Wednesday’s event if she could see a time when UVU might have to cap enrollment. She said no, for several reasons.
First, 18,000 UVU students are high school students in concurrent enrollment programs. Others are students in the university’s online programs, which Newsweek ranked among the best in the nation.
“We also have a national demographic cliff coming,” she said, “so enrollment may have a time when it starts to taper.”
Under her leadership, the open-enrollment school — it accepts every applicant — embraced the unbridled growth.
For example, UVU more than doubled its annual graduating class. In 2019, the school had 5,953 graduates. The number increased last year to 12,940.
“We punch above our weight,” she said.
The school’s retention rate is 72%, well above the national average of 60%. It’s completion rate is 48%, surpassing the national average of 44%.
The momentum was disrupted by twin tragedies.
Tolk, who had been managing his Parkinson’s disease with Tuminez, suddenly suffered a pulmonary embolism climbing Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador. Overwhelmed by grief, Tuminez took a sabbatical.
She was still working through that trauma after her return when Kirk was killed at the start of a campus appearance on Sept. 10.
She told the Deseret News her decision to leave was the result of a long journey and was not made lightly.
“I just thought about what I wanted to do with my time, time being finite,” she said.
Tuminez said leaving is also easier because UVU is in a strong position.
“We are in such a good place,” she said. “I take solid comfort in knowing this is such a strong institution. Anybody would be so lucky to get to run this, because in all ways, we are just firing on all cylinders.”
“I didn’t realize how traumatized I was until I started to prepare a statement for the students,” she said.
She said her next step is not completely unknown.
“I’m talking to a lot of people and networks that I have,” she said. “It’s a little premature to say anything, but I think there will be some wonderful things that I get to do.”
Tuminez definitely will spend more time fishing the Provo River, one place she hasn’t found much success.
She joked during her presentation that she is the worst fisher of the river in its history. She has not caught a single fish in six tries.
“I want people to pray,” she said, “that my fishing gets better.”