Presidential Search

I attended Clif Smart’s open forum this week and wanted to make some comments about his presentation/candidacy.  I was not able to attend the open forum for the second candidate, Randy Dunn, due to illness.  There is a widespread perception on campus that Mr. Smart is the preferred candidate by the board.  This is partially because the current chair of the board, Gordon Elliot, announced publically when Mr. Smart was hired as the Interim President that Mr. Smart was the right person to be the permanent President.  But the perception also exists because of the limited pool of candidates in the current search as well as the fact that only 2 candidates are being presented to the University community.

I currently serve on the President’s Executive Budget Committee so have had personal interactions with Mr. Smart during his tenure as Interim President.  I also, as I noted in my questions to Mr. Smart during the open forum, met with him and Dr. Cofer as a member of an ad hoc Faculty Senate Committee investigating the possibility of unionization on campus.  At that meeting, Mr. Smart was serving as University Counsel.  So I have a few observations to make regarding his candidacy for President and his tenure as both University Counsel and Interim President.

The Open Forum

I won’t comment on the entire open forum other than to note that it is available on MSU’s YouTube web site:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l8nkxl5Lcc

The entire video is a bit over an hour long and worth watching.  The forum consists of an introduction of Mr. Smart, an opening statement by Mr. Smart, and then a question and answer session.  I’ll talk about three questions that were asked and Mr. Smart’s answers:

1.     At about 35 minutes a student asked, essentially, How would you help the university to grow into the MSU name and move from being a regional university to a statewide university?  I’ll note that given the long and involved answer Mr. Smart gave, it appeared that this might be a planted question.  Mr. Smart had obviously thought a lot about the answer at the very least.  His answer included the following points:

·       Grow Signature Programs – he had talked about this previously and reiterated it.

·        Grow Enrollment

·        Partnerships with Entrepreneurs for Development purposes.

·        Growth in the Arts.

·        Partner with K-12 across the state to enhance teacher education.

·        Grow Internationally.  Mentioned several initiatives take to visit countries besides China including countries in Eastern Europe, Vietnam, and South America.

·        Attract students within the Midwest, the larger U.S., and internationally.

·        Increase “the game” in Athletics

·        Increase the diversity of students/faculty/staff

·        Marketing to potential students with the goal to improve MSU name recognition

·        Signature Events.

2.     At about 47 minutes, Kent Ragan, Head of Finance, asked Mr. Smart about whether he would have a clause in his contract, were he hired as President, allowing him to have faculty status/tenure and “return to the faculty” if he were to stop being President as past Presidents have done.  Mr. Smart’s answer is long but the upshot was “no” I am not qualified to be a faculty member, I have no business teaching students.

3.     Beginning at about 49 minutes I asked two questions of Mr. Smart:

·        I noted that Mr. Smart was present as University Counsel in a meeting with Dr. Cofer by the Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee Investigating Unionization several years ago, so we had already had a discussion about collective bargaining.  I wondered what his current views as a Presidential candidate were on unionization and collective bargaining.

Mr. Smart basically said two things in response to this question.  First, he noted that the university currently negotiated with 2 staff unions and typified those negotiations as being fair, pleasant, and in good faith by both parties.  He said that if the faculty decided to unionize that the university would do the same with a faculty union.

Second, he also said that his opinion was that we did not “need” a faculty union.  That he felt that faculty and all employees, through university rules and guidelines (Faculty Handbook, etc.) had sufficient protections and that changes he had instituted by opening up decision making processes (e.g., budget committees with faculty representatives) meant that faculty were already real partners in decision making on campus.

·        I also noted that in his answer to “how do we grow into the MSU name”, he had thought about the answer, gave a long and detailed answer, which unfortunately totally ignored the role of academics in growing the stature of MSU.  I noted that the two universities in Missouri with the most stature in the state – MU Columbia and Washington University – were preeminent because of their academic reputation.  What role do academics – research – play in your vision of MSU and why did you forget to mention it in your original answer?

Mr. Smart said that research was an important part of a university like ours.  However, it is not realistic to think we will become like MU or Wash U in that sense.  We don’t have Ph.D. programs and can’t have them currently.  However, research is important.  He began talking about workloads that may be differentiated by faculty preferences, as has been discussed by all previous administrations in my tenure at MSU.  Continuing to do research and have grant opportunities is a piece of this out of probably 2 dozen pieces.  I apologize for leaving that one out.

4.     My responses.

·        There are some positive qualities that would be brought to the table by Mr. Smart were he hired as President.  He mentioned most, if not all, of these at various points in the open forum.  He does have good contacts with local business leaders, donors, and the local community, which would be a net positive.  He also has good contacts with politicians both local and statewide, another net positive.  All of these positive traits are in sharp contrast to both of the past 2 presidents, especially the immediate past president.

·        As I noted above, I, like many other faculty, have observed Mr. Smart in his service as Interim President.  My observations have been a bit closer than some because of my service with him on the Executive Budget Committee.  I have been an active member of that committee and I think it fair to say both that he has not always agreed with suggestions that I have made (in fact, I would venture that he has on occasion been annoyed with them to the point of commenting to that effect) but that he has tended to listen respectfully.  Actual listening must include the willingness to change decisions and that has occurred to the benefit of both faculty and staff on occasion.  That method of doing business stands in stark contrast both to how past Presidents have behaved but also to the way Mr. Smart behaved in the past as University Counsel.  Because of this past behavior there is rightfully some fear on campus of the Mr. Smart’s masque falling after the application stage and once he has the permanent position. 

·        Mr. Smart’s response to my question about collective bargaining is perhaps about what one would expect from a potential President.  We’ll bargain in good faith if you decide to have union but you don’t really need collective bargaining because I’m such a good guy.

My response to his answer is to say the following:  Faculty should not have to rely on the President being a good guy to have fair treatment and open and transparent university decision making and processes.  In point of fact, as is discussed in other posts on this blog, the original push to unionize the faculty was because other Presidents were not reasonable guys and because Mr. Smart as University Counsel advocated, counseled, and I think it fair to say, bullied faculty into changes to the Faculty Handbook that were resented by faculty and  formally objected to by the Faculty Senate via resolutions, a vote of no confidence, and ultimately a vote to formally accept the resolution recommending unionization of the faculty.  The main advantage of Collective Bargaining, again as discussed elsewhere in this blog, is that fair treatment of faculty and open and transparent processes is required/negotiated rather than occasionally bestowed by benevolent and magnanimous Presidents.

That is, given the recent history at MSU, Mr. Smart’s answer is both insufficient and misleading.  I do think that his answer that under him the university would bargain in good faith is an improvement to the answer of the immediate past President to the Faculty Senate Committee that met with him and Mr. Smart.  The answer from Dr. Cofer and Mr. Smart at that point was both pugnacious and insulting and included implicit threats to not bargain in good faith with any union.

·        Mr. Smart’s response to the question about his vision to the university and my question regarding why his vision did not include academics may be even more troubling, however.  Over the past four or five years the Faculty Senate has produced a number of reports detailing the decline in importance of academics at MSU.  These reports include the staffing report linked on this blog presented to the Senate in May 2011 but also include a number of other reports as well.

These reports detail that far from enhancing academics and taking steps toward academic excellence and enhancement, the university is already moving to debase its academic mission and instead enhance other priorities that often have little to do with either the business of MSU or fulfilling its statewide mission of producing educated persons or public affairs. 

More importantly, there is a growing body of evidence (academic research) that U.S. universities in general are failing in their primary mission to educate students.  Including, the well-regarded series of studies contained in Academically Adrift, these studies illustrate that cognitive learning by students at U.S. universities is decreasing and in some cases non-existent.  More importantly, the evidence from these studies that it is exactly the emphasis by university administrations nationwide on Mr. Smart’s articulated vision of how to grow MSU that are directly responsible for the failure of higher education in the U.S. to teach our students.  It would not seem difficult to grasp that shrinking academic budgets to pay for peripheral and sometimes trivial aspects of University life will have negative consequences on learning.  Let me note that in answering a follow-up question from another faculty about class sizes and academic quality, Mr. Smart made clear that academic quality had little importance to him.

It is troubling that in an obviously well thought out and, perhaps, planned answer to the question about his vision of what it means to be MSU, that Mr. Smart did not even think it important to mention academics, the key component to both a successful and well regarded MSU and enhanced learning by MSU students, while mentioning a whole list of other less important aspects of the university.  That suggests that the trend of a decreased emphasis on academics at MSU, declining academic budgets included, is likely to continue and even to accelerate under a Smart Administration.  This likely outcome is not acceptable to me either as a faculty member or as the President of the MSU Faculty Association.

Recommendations

I have not written my evaluation of Randy Dunn, primarily because I think it unlikely that he will be hired as President.  I agree with the wide consensus on campus, that Clif Smart will be hired as President as originally predicted by Chair of the Board, Gordon Elliot over a year ago when Mr. Smart was originally hired as Interim President.  I would not recommend that Mr. Dunn should be hired instead of Mr. Smart.  Rather, I would recommend that the university follow the normal course when the pool of potential candidates is so small that the campus community is presented with an inadequate pool of candidates. 

That is, the Board should announce a failed search and take steps to assure in the next search that an acceptable pool of applicants is assembled.  That would require at the least that the Board assure the taxpayers of Missouri and potential candidates that they intend to do an actual search where all qualified candidates will be carefully considered, that they will bring on campus an acceptable number of those qualified candidates and that the Board not pre-announce the winner of their Presidential sweepstakes.  I think under the current circumstances it will be difficult for a President Smart to be successful and, though painful, a credible search is the only reasonable solution.