The pressure cooker

[chronicle_moderator]

The chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz apparently committed suicide late last month, after a tenure beset with harsh criticism from students, employees, government officials, and the public. Experts on university leadership say the life of a college leader has become more complex, exhausting, and lonely in recent years, and the job has become harder to succeed at. Should the structure of leadership be changed to put fewer demands on the president? What other kinds of support might be offered to college leaders?
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[bendedominicis]

Publication of the goals in relation to the institutional mission by which the President's performance will undergo periodic evaluation would assist much in facilitating effective communication throughout the institution among all stakeholders, in my view.  Unfortunately, at the American University in Bulgaria, the Board of Trustees has not publicized the criteria by which it will evaluate the new President which the Board hired in 2005.  The only information circulating consists of off-hand remarks that the President has to raise a certain sum of money in unrestricted funds.  I saw last year in another _Chronicle_ article that a California judge ruled that publication of the goals which the new President of a California state university campus should meet was not mandatory.  I can only wonder what the justification for such a decision would be.  Both AUBG and this California institution are US taxpayer-funded institutions, the former by the US Agency for International Development.