John Snyder, the most recent recipient of OffBeat’s Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement Award for Music Business Education, has reportedly resigned as head of the Music Industries Program at Loyola University in New Orleans.

Kern Maass, Dean of the College of Music + Media at Loyola, said in a statement “Over the last 15 years, John has pioneered Loyola’s nationally-recognized Music Industries Studies program, the backbone of the new School of Music Industry studies in the College of Music + Media at Loyola. He has been an incredible colleague and champion of students. We are forever in his debt, not only for his gifts to his students and Loyola, but for his commitment to growing the cultural economy of New Orleans. While we are sad to see him leave, we are happy to see him start the next chapter in his life and look forward to making sure that the legacy he started continues to flourish.” Maass said that Loyola would likely appoint an interim head of the MIS programs, and do a national search for a replacement for Snyder.

In January, Snyder was recognized by OffBeat for his decades-long career in education. At the time, John Wirt wrote the following:

“Snyder’s 14 years of preparing Loyola students for music careers more than qualify him for the Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement Award in Music Education. Prior to his tenure at Loyola, he’d already made vast contributions to music, producing nearly 350 original recordings and more than 400 compilations and reissues. His productions have won five GRAMMY Awards and received 32 GRAMMY nominations.”

Snyder told OffBeat, “One of my early goals was to prevent brain drain, to keep the kids in New Orleans, keep them from going to Los Angeles and New York,” Snyder said in his office at Loyola’s Communications/Music Complex. “Now that’s happened. We run clubs here. We run management companies and agencies here. Our students are part of the fabric of the music industry in the city.”