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No
cause of death was given. Local news media reported Epps
collapsed on stage during the campus event, which university
officials described as a memorial tribute to the late Charles
Blockson, curator of a prestigious collection of
African-American artifacts at Temple.
Epps appeared to have "suffered a sudden episode" and was
"promptly attended to by emergency medical" personnel at the
scene, Dr. Daniel del Portal, chief clinical officer for the
Temple University Health System, told an afternoon news
conference.
She was then taken to Temple Hospital, "where resuscitation
efforts continued but were unfortunately unsuccessful," del
Portal said. She was pronounced dead at 3:15 p.m. EDT.
Epps, a longtime academic, administrator and former prosecutor,
was named to Temple's top post on a provisional basis in April
by the university's Board of Trustees following the resignation
of then-President Jason Wingard in a shakeup over campus safety
and enrollment problems.
Her 30-plus years on Temple's faculty included more than 15
years in leadership positions at the 135-year-old institution,
including dean of the university's law school, executive vice
president and provost and chief academic officer.
"Temple has been a part of my life for as long as I can
remember," Epps said in a statement when she was appointed
acting president in April. She recalled then that her mother
worked as a secretary at the university for more than four
decades and that her first job as a teenager was in the campus
bookstore.
Temple, whose enrollment consists of some 37,000 undergraduate,
graduate and professional students, is a public state-related
research university that also ranks among the world's leading
academic institutions in the training of professional educators.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Kanishka Singh in
Washington; Editing by Michael Perry)
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