Less than five months after Carson-Newman College’s faculty approved a vote of no confidence in the college’s president, James S. Netherton, he is resigning to become an executive vice president at Mercer University.

The faculty’s 129-to-71 vote on October 5 came as some professors and alumni sought to blame Mr. Netherton for enrollment declines and faculty demotions at the college, a four-year Baptist institution in Jefferson City, Tenn. A report in the Knoxville, Tenn., News Sentinel said that the college’s trustees had since held a series of meetings around the state with alumni, faculty members, and others to discuss the situation at the college, and that the board planned to discuss the president’s future at a March 23 meeting.

Mr. Netherton had been president of the college since 2000. The News Sentinel said that enrollment had fallen from 2,230 to 1,948 during his tenure, and that the “final straw for many faculty members came after graduation in May 2006, when teaching contracts for the current academic year were handed out in the bookstore.” Some faculty members learned that they would not be rehired only when bookstore clerks did not have contracts for them.