New CSCU interim chancellor sits down for first interview since taking job amidst leadership crisis

HARTFORD, Conn. (WFSB) - CSCU, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, has a new interim chancellor. Natalie Braswell started the job on June 18^th. She was hired to help stabilize the system as CSCU searches for a permanent chancellor. The previous two chancellors stepped down amidst controversy.

A state audit found former chancellor Terrence Cheng spent thousands on questionable things like food and entertainment. He stepped down and then became a special advisor to the board of regents. In that role, he prepared a report on national best practices. The I-Team discovered a majority of that report was written by artificial intelligence.

After Cheng stepped down, John Maduko became interim chancellor. Maduko resigned in April 2026, days after a sexual harassment complaint was filed against him. The I-Team has learned four women filed complaints against Maduko during his time in leadership. CSCU has hired a firm to do an independent investigation into the allegations and how the system responded.

Consumer investigative reporter Cassidy Williams sat down with Braswell for her first interview since becoming chancellor to talk about the controversies and Braswell’s vision for CSCU.

Below is a transcript:

Cassidy Williams: “You’ve been on the job now, a little over a month. How are things going so far?”

Natalie Braswell: “I think things are going really well. I’ve spent the last 30 or so days, like, going around, meeting all of the presidents and their staff, visiting and touring the campuses, talking to folks here at the system office, really just trying to get a feel of sort of what’s working and what’s not working, and trying to assess and prioritize, you know, what we need to do in the next 12 months.

Cassidy Williams : “Have you found anything that’s not working that you’re ready to change?”

Natalie Braswell: “I don’t think there’s been, I’m not at the point yet to say things are not working and there are things that I’m ready to change. I have gotten to a point where I’ve sort of developed what I think our priorities need to be for the next 12 months. One of the big areas, I think, that we need to focus on and really establish is governance. Governance between the board, the chancellor and the system office, the presidents, like, really sort of figuring out roles and responsibilities. Who’s, you know, who’s supposed to be in charge of what? Who’s the decision maker? So we’ve started, like, really looking at what governance for the system looks like, so that’s a big priority for me. Biennium budget season is coming up faster than we probably expect, so really putting together a budget, you know, for when legislative sessions start, so that we’re really trying to look at meeting the needs of the system and making sure that we have a good budget in place, and really looking at shared services in terms of how the system office is optimizing, you know, efficiencies and scale in order to really be able to see some real cost savings when we’re looking at what shared services look like, so those are sort of like the top three priorities. Not necessarily sort of what would you be changing right now, but what are the things that we really need to be focusing on.

Cassidy Williams: “You know, when you talk about governance and setting clear responsibilities, is there an example of something where when you came in where you felt it wasn’t clear kind of, is it the board? Should it be me? Should it be someone else?

Natalie Braswell: “I think that, you know, for me, there’s, you know, because I’m in this assessment phase, because we’re sort of looking at where there’s been like a vacuum in leadership and in management, especially the last couple of years and the variety of things that have occurred, has really just sort of been, you know, what is the board’s responsibility in terms of overall oversight of the system and strategy and looking at budget and looking at finance and the chancellor’s responsibility in terms of, you know, being the chief executive officer of the system and managing the system and what that looks like. For the presidents, you know, what are their responsibilities when it comes to how they’re governing and running the institutions? You know, figuring out what those roles and responsibilities are for is important for a number of reasons, but the number one reason that it’s important is accountability. We need to all be accountable for the things that we’re responsible for, and without having those clearly defined roles and responsibilities, it’s very hard to hold people accountable for the things that they should be doing.”

Cassidy Williams: “I know your statement when you were hired for this role made it clear, you know that you’re stepping in at a controversial time. The two people who held this job before you both stepping down. Why take on this role in this time?

Natalie Braswell: “I think one of the things that was really important to me is the stability of our public university system. I can’t sort of emphasize how important I think the CSCU system is, not just to the state of Connecticut, but to the students who attend the system, to the faculty and staff that keep the system going. You know, I’m very much aware of what the demographics are of the students that go here, and what the system offers in terms of access and affordability. I very much believe in the transformative aspect of education. I myself am a first-generation college student, first-generation master’s degree holder, and a first-generation law student, and so saying that education provides access and is transformative is not sort of paying lip service to it. It’s like a lived experience for me, and it’s very important to me that that vision, that spirit of what public education is, especially public higher education, is something that’s sustained and needs to be stabilized right now because the students in this system deserve that in terms of what the system can do for them and what it can do for their lives in terms of transforming it. I think it’s important to be able to come in and lend my skillset where I think I can and help to put the system back in a place where people feel that they can believe in it again, feels that there’s credibility there, feels that there’s stability there. I think that’s an important thing for the students here.

Cassidy Williams: “A number of campuses have passed no-confidence votes in the system office after everything happened this past spring. How do you rebuild that trust?

Natalie Braswell: “I mean, trust is not just something that, you know, appears. You have to earn trust, and I think the way that we earn trust is by showing and proving, right? Like, we have to be able to do the things that we say that we’re going to do and actually execute on the things that we say that we’re going to do, and it’s going to take time. You know, people don’t know me, like, I’m going out there and I’m, you know, meeting with folks. When school starts back, I’ll be on campuses, like, meeting with the students and really trying to understand sort of where the no-confidence comes from with the faculty, with the unions, with the staff, and really trying to figure out, like, what can we do in order to rebuild that trust. It’s going to take time ‚and it’s going to be a work in progress, but the way that we’re going to show and prove is that we’re going to actually accomplish the things that they want to see in terms of stabilizing the system and getting it to a place. I think people right now are just sort of exhausted. They’re exhausted from all of the things that have been happening. They don’t think that it’s a true reflection of the system. They don’t think it’s a true reflection of the work that they do, and we need to sort of refocus and recenter on what this purpose of this system is all about, and it’s about the students, and it’s about student success, and it’s about making sure that students have the resources in order to be successful in order to graduate, in order to be able to get the jobs that they need, to provide for their families, to provide for themselves, and that’s the direction that we’re going in.”

Cassidy Williams: “You said part of rebuilding that trust is following through on what the system says it’s going to do. Is there anything that you’d like to say that you plan to do by the end of your term? Any way that you want to try to measure success when you get to the end of your time?

Natalie Braswell: “I think it goes back to the three major priorities that I talked about before when you’re looking at the governance structure and making sure something is in place that really points to, I think, for the folks in the institutions, the folks here in the system office and our regents, points to what the roles and responsibilities are, so there isn’t any confusion about who has decision rights and who has the authority to make decisions over any given thing. You know, looking at resources for our institutions, looking at what the ask is going to be to the legislature this session in terms of what we need. You know, not just to close deficits and things like that, but also to look at the future of the system, and, like, how are we going to be investing in our system in a way that’s going to be developing programs and classes and different partnerships in order to make the system better? We’re looking at all of these things. We’re looking at capital improvement projects on campuses. Like, sure, there’s deferred maintenances and things like that that needs to happen on campuses, dorms that need to be built, business schools that need to be either refurbished or rebuilt. There’s a lot of things that we can be doing from a capital projects perspective, and all of that has to do with sort of planning and what our ask is going to be to the legislature. So putting together a really good budget and getting that through this legislative session, I think, is really going to be a huge part of that. Then again, sort of from a shared services perspective, looking to see how the system office in particular can help the system to save money so that the institutions can be reinvesting in the students. I think those are sort of like three very big things that, if we can get that accomplished in the next 12 months, is going to show a lot to the students and the faculty and others, externally and internally, that we’re serious about what we say about stabilizing the system and investing in CSCU.”

Cassidy Williams: “When you talk about making kind of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, what will your role be when it comes to the independent review looking into what happened with former interim chancellor John Maduco and how the organization responded? What’s your role in that review and what happens after?

Natalie Braswell “I think my role in that review is really going to be looking at sort of anything that affects the system office, anything that affects personnel in the system office, taking a look at whatever the recommendations are, at whatever sort of factual, you know, things they have discovered and put in the report to support the recommendations that they make and looking to make sure that we follow through in terms of what those recommendations are. A big portion of this, and I’ve talked to the board chair specifically about this, is to be transparent and when the report comes out, making sure that that report is made public, so that at the same time we’re looking at sort of what it is that we need to be doing that the public also has an understanding of what those recommendations are.

Cassidy Williams: “Will the entire report be made public? Natalie Braswell “That is my understanding, is that the entire report is going to be made public.”

Cassidy Williams: “Will you be involved in implementing any of those changes that it recommends?”

Natalie Braswell: “I assume to some extent I am going to be involved, not knowing what the recommendations are. I can’t say to what extent, but I imagine that there are going to be recommendations that are specific to the system office.”

Cassidy Williams: “You keep mentioning kind of this shared, making sure, you know, who does what, who’s responsible for what. Does that mean that there was maybe some of that missing previously? Do you think that may have contributed to some of the leadership issues that have been here in the past?”

Natalie Braswell “I won’t speak as to whether it contributed to the leadership crisis, because I don’t have enough information or facts at this point to really make that type of assessment. Was a governance structure missing in terms of making sure that folks knew like who was responsible for what and what their roles and responsibilities were in a way that was, you know, clearly defined and approved by the board and meeting all of those sort of specifications? Yes, that was missing, like an established governance system in terms of having those roles clearly defined was something that was missing. Whether or not that contributed to the recent events, you know, I can’t necessarily speak directly to that.

Cassidy Williams: “I want to talk a little bit about the report on national best practices that Terrence Chang put together. Have you read it? Do you plan to implement any changes based off of this report?”

Natalie Braswell: “So that report, as you know, was something that was commissioned by the board for the former chancellor to develop, and they’re in the process of evaluating that. I am waiting on them to sort of make an evaluation as to, you know, what pieces of that report or if it’s the entire report, you know, they plan to sort of put forward as, you know, we should be looking at this from a strategic perspective, from a governance perspective, to look at how we can implement certain pieces of it, like as a part of the system or whatever recommendations that they’re going to make. But I don’t want to get ahead of the board because, again, it is a report that they commissioned in terms of, you know, making a determination as to what actually is going to happen with that report.” Cassidy Williams: “We reported on that the report, he used AI heavily in putting it together. Does CSCU have any policy about AI use when it comes to administrators or people that work in the system office?”

Natalie Braswell: “So we’re starting. We’re in the process of developing an AI policy, and as you can imagine, there’s a lot that goes into that specifically, and this isn’t in response necessarily to this report, but in general, it’s something that higher education is grappling with in terms of looking at what an AI policy should look like, especially when AI is progressing exponentially, like so much, making sure that the policy that you develop is able to keep up and keep pace with how it’s developing, and so we’re in the process of putting that together.

Cassidy Williams: “Are there any other measures you want to put out there of ways that we can track and measure to see if CSCU is meeting kind of the goals that you want to meet at the end?

Natalie Braswell “I think as we, you know, as I get further along in this position and, you know, transparency is one of the things and open communication is one of the things that I’ve been talking internally about and externally as we’ve been meeting with different stakeholders, so I plan to update, you know, not only our staff and the people that work in the system office, but the folks that are at the institutions and students, legislators, the governor’s office, like to update, you know, our stakeholders and where we are in various different stages of the process as we go along. I think there will be a lot of different opportunities that we communicate out to the public as to how we’re progressing especially with the different priorities that we’re putting in place.”

Cassidy Williams: “I think one of the critiques from the unions has been that they feel like they are approached or talked to after decisions are already made, almost to just kind of give the stamp of approval instead of being involved in the decision-making. Do you have any plans to change that or involve them more?”

Natalie Braswell: “No, I definitely think that they are one of our most important stakeholders I plan to within the next couple of weeks now that I’ve gotten sort of the meetings with our presidents and their staff members, you know, and I have with some of them, but not all of them, touch base with our union representatives to really talk about, you know, some of the issues that they see and how we can work together collaboratively. in terms of moving forward.”

Cassidy Williams: “The independent review, I know the initial report we got on June 30th said that the firm actually thinks they’re a little bit ahead of schedule. Any update since then when they plan to think they may have it finished?” Natalie Braswell: “We have been told that I think we will have a final report probably around mid-August, so like around the second week or so in August is where we’re on track to have a final report.

Cassidy Williams: “How do you make sure a report and a review like that is truly independent when it’s being paid for by the organization that it’s investigating?”

Braswell: “ I think it’s really about making sure that the entity that’s managing this process has their own sort of professional responsibility in terms of managing the process. Right now the process is being managed by our chief compliance officer, and that’s somebody who, you know, has in terms of what his role and responsibility is, a vested interest in making sure that the process, you know, is done with a certain amount of integrity in terms of making sure that there are no undue influences as a part of the process. He’s been very good in making sure that that process is run smoothly and run in a way that it’s not being influenced by others.”

Cassidy Williams: “I think those were all my questions. Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you wanted to talk about? Anything you think I was missing?

Natalie Braswell: “I mean, my plan is to be here until a permanent chancellor is in place. Hopefully that’s 12 months, but, it could take longer depending on just sort of the market and who applies for the position and what happens in that sense, but the board is confident that they’ll have a process set up and ready to go. I think the usual timeframe for this type of stuff is about a year. I think that’s the schedule that they’re working on.”

Cassidy Williams: “My understanding is part of the reason they picked you for the job is because you’re not interested in it permanently.”

Natalie Braswell: “I’m only interested in doing the work for the next 12 months that, you know, the board brought me on to do, which is really to sort of like stabilize the system.