Hazel R. O’Leary, the embattled president of financially strapped Fisk University, will retire from her post in December, the school said in a surprise announcement issued late Friday.

News of O’Leary departure comes as the school manages to maintain a small, solid academic program while continuing to lose enrollment and thirst for a huge infusion of money to keep its door open. O’Leary was appointed president of Fisk in August, 2004.

A member of the university’s board of trustees says the search for a successor to O’Leary would begin immediately.

In recent years, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) increasingly expressed concern about the university’s long term viability, sending one signal after another. It placed the historic institution on warning status then, last December, placed Fisk on probation.

Fisk has been given until this fall to file its fourth monitoring report to the SACS Commission on Colleges (COC) demonstrating sufficient financial footing to ensure its long-term financial prospects and evidence that it has a qualified leadership team in place to run the school.

Some critics have pointed to O’Leary and her board of trustees as key reasons for the school’s troubles.

SACS says it will decide at its December 2012 meeting, whether the school has made a case for removal from probation or if harsher sanctions are in order. The person selected to succeed O’Leary is likely to weigh heavily on the minds of SACS’ decision makers in reaching their conclusions next fall.

“President O’Leary stands as one of the most accomplished American women of her generation,” Robert W. Norton, chairman of the Fisk Board of Trustees is quoted as saying in a statement released by the university.