June 26, 2009
Hiring and Firing Bytes
Here’s the latest appointment news …
- Brooklyn College has picked Karen L. Gould, provost and vice president for academic affairs at California State University at Long Beach, as its next president, The New York Times reports.
- The president of Bucknell University, Brian C. Mitchell, said Wednesday that he will step down next June, Philly.com reports.
- Warren D. Wolfson, a justice on the Illinois Appellate Court, has been appointed interim dean of the DePaul University College of Law, which is still reeling from the sudden dismissal last week of respected Dean Glen Weissenberger, the Chicago Tribune reports.
In other news …
- The wait is over. Harvard University announced this week that it is laying off 275 staff members and trimming the hours of another 40 workers, thanks to its tanking endowment, The Harvard Crimson reports. No faculty jobs will be cut. Meanwhile, many Harvard students and employees are wondering why the university is firing people when, despite its endowment losses, it’s still sitting on a big pile of money, the Boston Globe reports: “The fact that this is happening at Harvard, who is still sitting on a chest of billions and remains the richest university in the world, shows it is pursuing this incredibly narrow path of naked self interest,’’ said Geoff Carens, a library assistant and union representative who [organized a rally this week] to protest the cuts. “They’re using this drop in the endowment as an excuse to justify really terrible cuts that will have a disastrous impact on the surrounding communities.’’
- Another Ivy League university — Princeton — will offer early-retirement incentives to workers 55 and over, who have at least 10 years of service at the university and whose age plus tenure equals 80 years or more, the Associated Press reports. The move is part of an effort to slash expenditures in the face of an expected 30-percent drop in the university’s endowment.
- Washington State University will kill three academic programs and eliminate 360 positions as it tries to slice its budget by $54-million over the next two years, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports. Of those jobs due to be cut, about 167 are vacant, while another 116 are currently occupied, the newspaper notes. In addition, another 47 employees have opted to retire early and others will have their hours cut.
- The University of Nevada at Reno is slashing 279 positions in response to a 15-percent reduction in its state budget, the Associated Press reports.
June 18, 2009
N.C. State's New Leader Revokes Added Pay for Provost Who Resigned
The former provost of North Carolina State University who resigned last month as controversy grew over the hiring of a former governor’s wife won’t get to keep enhanced pay that was added to his severance package by a chancellor who has also resigned, the Associated Press reported.
The university’s new interim chancellor, James H. Woodward, said in a letter released today that the deal was “invalid.” According to the campus newspaper, The Technician, the letter was dated June 11 and addressed to the former provost, Larry A. Nielsen.
The salary enhancements were arranged by the former chancellor, James L. Oblinger, one day before Mr. Nielsen stepped down. But in the letter, Mr. Woodward wrote that Mr. Oblinger did not have legal authority to change the former provost’s 2005 employment agreement. Mr. Nielsen instead will receive the severence package dictated in his original contract.
Mr. Oblinger, Mr. Nielsen, and a former chairman of the university’s Board of Regents all resigned in the scandal over the hiring and promotion of Mary P. Easley to a $170,000-a-year university job while her husband was in office. A federal grand jury is investigating dealings involving the former governor, Michael F. Easley, a Democrat who served from 2001 until this January.
By Charles Huckabee | Posted on Thursday June 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]June 17, 2009
Texas A&M Regents Name an Interim Leader for Flagship
One day after Elsa A. Murano announced her resignation as president of Texas A&M University’s main campus here, the university system’s Board of Regents on Monday appointed R. Bowen Loftin, leader of the system’s Galveston branch campus, as the flagship’s interim president.
In choosing Mr. Loftin, whose title at Galveston is vice president and chief executive officer, the board avoided the fireworks that might have exploded if it had chosen someone who had been involved in the recent power struggle between Ms. Murano, the university’s first female and Hispanic president, and the system’s chancellor, Michael D. McKinney.
Ms. Murano was forced to step down after the chancellor released a scathing evaluation that accused her, among other things, of not being a team player.
The board accepted Ms. Murano’s resignation, which was effective Monday, and appointed her the status of president emerita. A nationally recognized expert in food safety, she will take a year’s leave at her current salary of $425,000 and receive an additional payment of $295,000 by June 18. She will then return to her position as a tenured professor in the nutrition and food-science department of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at a starting annual salary of $260,000. The departing president will also have a departmental budget of $100,000 per year for four years, and her legal fees will be reimbursed up to $25,000.
Officials with the Texas A&M System released the details of the transition agreement, which included a stipulation that she would not sue the university, on Monday afternoon.
By Katherine Mangan | Posted on Wednesday June 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [4]Florida State's President About to Retire
T.K. Wetherell, Florida State University’s president, will tell the Board of Trustees this week of his impending resignation, according to two university officials who spoke with the Associated Press.
Mr. Wetherell, who became president in 2003, was the first alumnus of Florida State to hold the job. He received bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the university.
His retirement comes at a difficult time for Florida State, which on Friday is scheduled to consider more than $56-million in budget cuts over the next three years.
Mr. Wetherell served in Florida’s House of Representatives from 1980 to 1992, before becoming president of Tallahassee Community College, in 1995.
By Marc Beja | Posted on Wednesday June 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]5 Colleges Make List of Best Places to Work in IT in 2009
Five colleges and a research organization have been named to Computerworld’s list of the 100 Best Places to Work in IT in 2009.
The University of Pennsylvania placed fourth, recognized for good benefits and the diversity of employees. The University of Miami was ranked 10th; it was also recognized for diversity and benefits, as well as retention and career development.
The Online Computer Library Center, and Cornell, Temple, and George Washington Universities also made the list, which looked at surveys from 27,812 employees from the top 100 companies nominated for the honor. The evaluation focused on salaries, promotions, retention, training, benefits, and the makeup of staff members.
By Marc Beja | Posted on Wednesday June 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]Nevada's Chancellor Says President of UNLV Should Be Fired
If Nevada’s feisty higher-education chancellor, James E. Rogers, has his way, David B. Ashley will leave the presidency of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas before his contract ends next year. The chancellor, who steps down himself at the end of this month, wrote in a letter to the system’s Board of Regents on Tuesday that Mr. Ashley should be fired, the “Las Vegas Review-Journal‘:http://www.lvrj.com/news/breaking_news/48195557.html reported.
The chancellor and others increasingly have raised complaints about the president’s performance in recent months. Mr. Ashley cut short a trip to Singapore last week to deal with the controversy.
In his letter to the board, Mr. Rogers wrote: “I recommend that Dr. Ashley’s contract not be renewed and that you consider immediate termination of the contract as president.” Among six specific concerns mentioned in the letter, the chancellor listed “treatment of UNLV employees by the president’s wife and by extension the president,” whether Mr. Ashley had been engaged enough in campus events, and whether he had taken “appropriate and timely action in response to concerns that were raised.”
The regents had been scheduled to discuss this week whether to renew Mr. Ashley’s contract, which runs through June 2010, but the board’s chairman has postponed that discussion until August. Mr. Ashley was hired with tenure and could become a professor of engineering if he leaves the presidency.
Chancellor Rogers has pressed Mr. Ashley in several recent meetings to step down, according to the Review-Journal. Mr. Rogers told the newspaper he thought he and the president had reached a deal under which Mr. Ashley would resign. Mr. Ashley disputed that. “We had several discussions, and we were not close to an agreement,” he said.
Mr. Ashley also questioned how the news media have portrayed the controversy surrounding his job, saying the public isn’t getting the whole story. He said he believes he has done “a great job as president,” and would welcome a public hearing before the board.
By Charles Huckabee | Posted on Wednesday June 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [2]June 15, 2009
Hiring and Firing Bytes
In other news …
- Elsa Murano, the first female and first Hispanic president of Texas A&M University, resigned abruptly on Sunday, just one day before the A&M System’s Board of Regents was meeting to discuss her job, The Chronicle reports.
- The University of Central Arkansas’s governing board voted last Thursday, by a margin of 5-2, to offer Allen C. Meadors, the longtime chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the job of UCA president, ArkansasOnline reports.
- The University of Wisconsin at Madison has picked Paul M. DeLuca Jr., vice dean of the university’s School of Medicine and Public Health, as its next provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, according to a university press release.
- The University of Minnesota is planning to cut a total of 1,240 faculty, administrative, and staff positions next year as part of an effort to plug a projected $95-million budget hole, Minnesota Public Radio reports. While many of the job cuts are expected to come from attrition and jobs left unfilled, UM President Robert Bruininks predicts that there will be at least 400 layoffs, MPR writes. The only good news: Student tuition will rise only $300 next year.
Long-Serving President of U. of Virginia Will Retire Next Year
John T. Casteen III, the longtime president of the University of Virginia, announced last Friday that he would step down at the end of the 2009-10 academic year.
Mr. Casteen, who is 65 and has been president of the university since 1990, is known as a forceful advocate for increasing the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the university’s Charlottesville campus, which for much of its history has been mostly white, male, and privileged.
He announced his decision to retire in an e-mail message to the university community and in a statement on the university’s Web site. “These 19, soon to be 20, years feel today like a very short time,” Mr. Casteen wrote in the message to alumni. “These years have been magical times for me.”
Mr. Casteen was 17 when he arrived in Charlottesville, Va., as the first member of his family to go to college. He went on to earn bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in English from the university, and became its dean of admissions in 1975.
In the years before he was named president, in 1990, Mr. Casteen taught English at the University of California at Berkeley, was the Commonwealth of Virginia’s secretary of education, and served a five-year term as president of the University of Connecticut.
When he returned to Charlottesville as Virginia’s seventh president, it was a welcome homecoming, he recalled today. “Despite adult occupations that showed me other places,” he wrote, “my thoughts and aspirations always returned to the Rotunda, the Lawn, the Library.”
But the university Mr. Casteen encountered decades ago was quite different from the one he will leave behind next year, after stepping down on August 1, 2010. The changes were hardly accidental.
For most of his tenure, Mr. Casteen was a vocal advocate for bringing more members of minority groups, women, and students from low-income families to the campus. In addition to using the bully pulpit of one of the nation’s oldest and most tradition-bound universities to advance that cause, Mr. Casteen employed his exceptional skills as a fund raiser to gather money for scholarships.
“He was one of those white males who was here with very few African-Americans at his time,” said Michael A. Mallory, who was director of minority recruitment in the university’s admissions office from 1989 to 1996. “So for him to bring alumni and others to his way of thinking — that was tremendous.”
Mr. Mallory, a UVa graduate who now directs the Ron Brown Scholar Program, also in Charlottesville, said Mr. Casteen’s commitment to changing the face of the university was more than lip service. “Whatever I wanted as director of minority recruitment in terms of fund raising or support, he was there,” he said.
In 2003 the university started AccessUVA, a full-need financial-aid program for low-income students. The program offers loan-free packages and is among the top priorities of the university’s $3-billion capital campaign. Mr. Casteen’s departure falls one year shy of the campaign’s scheduled end, in 2011, but he has said he will remain active in fund raising.
In the fall of 2008, the university’s student body was 63 percent white, 9 percent African-American, 11 percent Asian-American, and 4 percent Hispanic. Forty-seven percent of students received some type of aid. In 2006-7, about 8 percent of undergraduates received need-based Pell Grants, according to a Chronicle analysis.
In addition to being one of the longest-serving university presidents, Mr. Casteen is among the highest-paid presidents in the country. In a recent analysis by The Chronicle of the compensation of college presidents, Mr. Casteen ranked third over all among presidents of public universities in total compensation, taking home $797,048 in 2007-8. (Of that amount, $487,000 was a base salary.)
Like most public universities, Virginia has been hard-hit by the recession. Its endowment lost more than $1-billion, and Mr. Casteen took heat for decisions to put money into alternative investments some viewed as too risky.
But modern times come with modern problems, and Mr. Casteen — the “father of our modern university,” as W. Heywood Fralin, Virginia’s rector, put it — is credited with ushering Virginia into a global era.
“John Casteen will be remembered as the person who understood Jefferson’s vision of this place and catapulted it into the 21st century,” Mr. Fralin said in a written statement. “He will leave an indelible mark.”
By Libby Sander | Posted on Monday June 15, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]June 12, 2009
UNLV's President Faces Possible Ouster
David B. Ashley, president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, cut short a trip to Singapore this week to deal with mounting questions about his future, the Las Vegas Sun reported.
The university system’s outspoken chancellor, James E. Rogers, recently told Mr. Ashley that he had lost the support of the Board of Regents, which he said was unlikely to renew Mr. Ashley’s contract.
Mr. Rogers told the president to cancel his trip to Singapore, the highlight of which was the first commencement ceremony on UNLV’s branch campus there. Mr. Ashley left last week on the trip but went back to Las Vegas on Wednesday, three days before his scheduled return.
Mr. Ashley has been president for three years. He followed Carol C. Harter, who had clashed with Mr. Rogers and suggested that the chancellor ruled with a heavy hand.
Mr. Rogers, who is in a continuing feud over budget cuts with the state’s governor, James Gibbons, will step down at the end of this month.
Grumbling that Mr. Ashley is a disengaged leader has built for months, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His wife, Bonnie, has also come under fire for allegedly bullying university employees. She sent an apology on Friday to the board and Mr. Rogers, and said she would cease her “hostessing role” until university leaders determine what her duties should be.
Mr. Rogers is scheduled to meet with Mr. Ashley on Monday morning.
By Paul Fain | Posted on Friday June 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]June 11, 2009
Martha L. Minow Named Dean of Harvard Law School
Martha L. Minow has been appointed dean of Harvard Law School, effective July 1, the university announced today.
Ms. Minow, who has taught at the law school since 1981, will succeed Elena Kagan, who became U.S. solicitor general this year.
Ms. Minow’s scholarship has covered a host of topics, including cultural pluralism, educational equality, and post-genocide reconciliation. Her newest book is an edited volume on government contracting and democratic control.
In a 2002 interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Minow criticized the idea that democratic deliberation must be purely secular. “I don’t think the Constitution is allergic to religion, and I don’t think the public sphere should be allergic to religion,” she said. “We can’t say to people for whom religious identity is important that they have to check that part of themselves when they walk into public spaces.”
A footnote: In unpublished small talk during that 2002 interview, Ms. Minow predicted that her former student Barack Obama, who was then toiling in relative obscurity in the Illinois State Senate, would someday be president. (Ms. Minow’s father has also been a mentor to Mr. Obama.) We heard it there first.
By David Glenn | Posted on Thursday June 11, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]