When Harvard University president Claudine Gay stepped down on Jan. 2 amid swirling plagiarism charges, it was a win for her conservative political opponents and a blow to her many supporters.

Gay cast herself as a victim of right-wing forces that pushed her out for political reasons, taking minimal responsibility for the flawed scholarship, ineffectual leadership and bungled performance at the congressional hearing on antisemitism that contributed to her downfall.

While some of her conservative critics crudely took credit for the takedown, Gay’s decision to resign over plagiarism charges follows what has largely been the trend for presidents accused of such actions—even when those claims are not accompanied by a political sideshow, as hers were. Some scholars have suggested that plagiarism allegations are being weaponized against college presidents, but Gay did what many of her peers have done in the past when confronted with similar accusations: she resigned.

Now, in the wake of her exit, questions abound about Harvard’s vetting process for Gay, how institutions should assess a presidential candidate’s academic work during the search and how plagiarism may be deployed as part of the culture war between liberals and conservatives.

Before Gay resigned, she submitted corrections to several past articles, despite disagreement about whether the work qualified as plagiarism, as her critics have argued, or simply academic sloppiness, as others have claimed. Harvard has also come under scrutiny for its opacity on the issue; now the institution must answer to Congress for the way officials handled the plagiarism claims.

Whether issues with Gay’s scholarship should have been caught during the presidential search is unclear. Harvard has remained silent on the matter, and Gay’s work was peer reviewed. But given the highly public nature of the scandal, search committees have surely taken notice—though it’s too early to say what that means for future presidential searches.

Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, believes the evolution of presidential searches is “inevitable and salubrious for higher education,” especially at a time when public confidence in the sector is low and many institutions are struggling to attract students.

Poliakoff described the Harvard issue as a “reputational crisis within a reputational crisis.”

To avoid the same fate, he urged governing boards at other institutions to do their own due diligence in presidential searches, rather than delegating those responsibilities or relying too heavily on search firms.

“The academy needs to restore public trust, and one of the ways they can do this is by taking all steps to ensure that its members—faculty and administrators—are operating at the highest ethical standards. It should not be that difficult to find people who are worthy of that trust,” he said.

But evolving the presidential search processes will likely be neither easy nor cheap.

Larry Ladd, a senior consultant at AGB Consulting, noted that candidates for college presidencies are already subject to extensive background and reference checks. Colleges and search firms review academic credentials, work history, legal records, credit scores, research records and more to ensure that candidates don’t have skeletons looming in their closets.

“It’s a pretty thorough background check. Whether that background check might extend to the content of academic research, we don’t know yet. If it does, it will be very time-consuming,” he said. He questioned whether “the technology is sufficient” to police academic integrity.

To illustrate the challenges of identifying such issues, Ladd pointed to Stanford University, where former president Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned last year after an institutional investigation into research misconduct determined that he “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record” related to articles he had co-authored dating back to the early 2000s.

The investigation lasted eight months, Ladd noted.

“It takes a lot of work, even with improvements in technology,” Ladd said.

As politically motivated as the charges against Gay may have been, the claims were valid enough to force corrections from the short-lived Harvard president. A look at other cases of alleged plagiarism by college presidents from the past 20 years show that such accusations were often career ending.

In more than a dozen instances where presidents were accused of plagiarism, the outcomes followed similar patterns. In some cases, the presidents were cleared of the charges. But when plagiarism was proven, presidents retired or resigned, or their contracts were not renewed; some decamped for another job.

After Gay, the most high-profile presidential plagiarism case in the past few years is arguably that of Robert Caslen, who stepped down from the University of South Carolina in 2021 after he admitted to swiping a quote for a commencement speech without proper attribution. (Caslen was already under fire for mistakenly congratulating “University of California” graduates in a commencement speech.)

Similarly, Gregory J. Vincent resigned as president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 2018 after the institution opened an investigation into claims he had plagiarized his dissertation.

Those who didn’t have their contracts renewed include West Liberty University president W. Franklin Evers in 2021 and LeMoyne-Owen College president Andrea Lewis Miller in 2019—though both were also plagued by other issues.

And some presidents simply retired when accused of plagiarism.

Malone University president Gary Streit retired in 2010 “in response to recent concerns about the use of unattributed materials in some of his speeches,” the university announced at the time. Blandina Cárdenas retired as president of the University of Texas–Pan American in 2008, making no mention of a plagiarism investigation into her academic work. Central Connecticut State University president Richard Judd also retired in 2004 after his superiors determined he had plagiarized an op-ed for The Hartford Courant. Both Cárdenas and Judd emphasized health issues in their respective retirement announcements.

A rare few have managed to continue their presidencies despite plagiarism allegations.

William Meehan was hit with plagiarism accusations in 2007 and again in 2009 when he was president of Jacksonville State University, a position he held until he retired in 2015. Saint Louis University’s president the Reverend Lawrence H. Bondi was accused of borrowing significant portions of a homily he delivered in 2005, only to shrug off the allegations and serve until 2013.

Ladd noted that presidential resignations over plagiarism claims are typically about doing what’s best for the university, given the potential for reputational damage.

“When you see presidents resign, sometimes it’s fair to the president and sometimes it’s not fair to the president, but it’s always in the best interest of the university,” Ladd said, emphasizing that instances of academic dishonesty by presidents are fairly rare.

In any case, presidential plagiarism allegations don’t always stick.

Weymouth Spence, president of Washington Adventist University, was accused of plagiarism in 2019 but later cleared by the Board of Trustees after an outside investigation. Glenn Poshard, who served as president of Southern Illinois University from 2006 to 2014, was accused of plagiarism in 2007. A faculty panel found Poshard was careless with citations but ultimately stopped short of declaring him a plagiarist.

Some scholars and news organizations have warned that the attack on Gay’s scholarship is likely just the beginning of the coming plagiarism wars. Bill Ackman, a billionaire Harvard graduate who repeatedly called for Gay to step down over her citation issues, has signaled an appetite for toppling other academics over similar missteps.

Ackman threatened to review the academic work of the entire faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after his wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor, was exposed as a plagiarist.

“We will begin with a review of the work of all current @MIT faculty members, President [Sally] Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism,” Ackman wrote in a social media post on X earlier this month after his wife’s work was exposed. Ackman also threatened to review the work of reporters at Business Insider, which published the story on Oxman.

Jonathan Bailey, founder of the website Plagiarism Today, who has served as an expert witness in plagiarism cases, argues that weaponizing such allegations has a long history. But he believes the plagiarism war is changing, moving away from metaphorical guns and into its nuclear phase, in which the tools are used primarily to advance a political agenda.

“Plagiarism has been weaponized for as long as there’s been plagiarism in politics. Because when you’re calling someone a plagiarist, you’re fundamentally calling them a liar. You’re calling them someone who can’t be trusted. It’s a convenient way to disparage an opponent’s name,” Bailey said.

To illustrate his point, Bailey referenced plagiarism allegations leveled against Barack Obama, John McCain and other public figures accused of lifting various materials. But he noted that those charges rarely derailed campaigns or altered careers. Yet in academe, as Gay’s experience shows, “plagiarism is often a career-ending sin.”

Still, Bailey is skeptical of Ackman’s threatened review, noting the sheer amount of time and money investigating MIT’s faculty would require, even with a billionaire’s resources; the website lists 1,080 faculty members as of fall 2022.

Bailey also stressed the need for clear policies so institutions can deal with such allegations when they arise. In the case of Harvard, he suggested the initial review of Gay’s scholarship was not thorough enough, given the continual drip of plagiarism allegations.

“One thing I would encourage schools to do when they get [plagiarism] allegations is to find someone independent of the school to examine them,” Bailey told Inside Higher Ed. “Someone who is not beholden to that individual or president in any way should be the ones examining the claims and making a decision about whether or not the claims are valid, whether they point to any corrective action as needed, and whether they point to the need for a further investigation.”

In the end, he argued, everyone will benefit.

This article appeared on Inside Higher Ed on January 12, 2024.

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Gay announced Tuesday she would resign as president after only five months on the job and return to teaching at the Ivy League institution, blaming in part “racial animus” for her decision in a statement that ignored controversies that engulfed her presidency over the last three months.

Harvard’s first black, female president resigned after shrugging off the deadly terrorist attacks that targeted Israeli civilians Oct. 7 and the rabid antisemitism on campus that followed, then telling a congressional committee in December that calls to annihilate the Jews do not necessarily violate Harvard’s codes of conduct.

In recent weeks it came to light that Gay’s scholarly work contains dozens of instances of plagiarism, and what’s more, the Harvard Corporation, the 13-member board in charge of the nation’s most prestigious institution, was likely complicit as university brass tried to cover it up by threatening the New York Post with a defamation lawsuit and claiming an investigation found the plagiarism did not amount to academic misconduct.

The months of controversy has cost Harvard a parade of billion-dollar donors who have pledged to stop giving money to the scandal-plagued school.

That fact has not gone unnoticed by observers and watchdogs who say members of the corporation are ultimately responsible for the entire affair, first for hiring Gay despite her mediocrity to advance a left-wing agenda and then for allowing an attempt to cover up her shoddy research and scholarly dishonesty, which in late December after everything came to light prompted a congressional probe.

“The Harvard Corporation that so recently appointed her president should resign,” famed civil liberties attorney and Harvard alumnus Harvey Silverglate told The College Fix on Tuesday. He called the entire situation a “disaster” and said he will continue his efforts to be elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers to clean house.

“Claudine Gay’s problem was that she was never suited to be president of Harvard,” Silverglate said via email. “Her career has been mainly that of an academic bureaucrat. She famously devised programs to inculcate students and even faculty members in the mantra of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ in which students would look different but think alike.”

Silverglate isn’t the only one who argues the buck stops with the Harvard Corporation, which the New York Times reports is a cadre of rich and influential progressives, mostly wealthy business owners, attorneys and philanthropists.

“There is no indication from either the Gay resignation letter or the Harvard Corporation follow-up that the university is moving away from identity-based scholarship, hiring, and admissions,” wrote scholar Heather Mac Donald for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. 

“…If the Harvard Corporation had learned anything from the Gay debacle, it would have left out that coded rhetoric of ‘inclusiveness.’ Unless the board itself undergoes a revolution, nothing at Harvard will change,” Mac Donald wrote.

University of Tennessee College of Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, on his personal Substack, wrote Tuesday that “Next to go should be Penny Pritzker, senior fellow (essentially chair of the board) of the Harvard Corporation.”

“The fellows of the Harvard Corporation hire the president,” Reynolds wrote. “Pritzker had a responsibility to learn if Claudine Gay had a history of plagiarism, and if she had the personal and intellectual qualities to lead a top university. (The answer to both questions is now clearly ‘no.’)”

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni also weighed in, arguing in a statement posted Tuesday on X that the “whole sordid episode is not really about Gay and it isn’t over because she has stepped down; it is about the misguided governance at Harvard, the trustees who put her in this untenable position, thinking that they were inoculated against any scrutiny and criticism because … Harvard.”

“They have a lot to answer for.”

Billionaire businessman and Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman agrees, writing on X in a lengthy statement Jan. 2 that Harvard’s embrace of DEI is behind the mess and the board needs to be completely revamped.

“The Board Chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done,” wrote Ackman, one of the wealthy donors who yanked support early on.

“…The new board members should be chosen in a transparent process with the assistance of the 30-person Board of Overseers. There is no reason the Harvard board of 12 independent trustees cannot be comprised of the most impressive, high integrity, intellectually and politically diverse members of our country and globe.”

This post appeared on The College Fix on January 3, 2024.

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Kevin Guskiewicz, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said Thursday he is ‘weighing’ the opportunity to depart for Michigan State University.

Guskiewicz sent a statement Thursday morning to WRAL News.

“I am focused on serving the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a special place I have lived, worked and loved for 28 years,” Guskiewicz said. “I am very proud of what our university accomplishes every day as one of the best public universities in the country. Through the years, a variety of professional opportunities have been presented to me. My family and I must weigh each one, and we are weighing this one.”

Guskiewicz has served as chancellor since February of 2019, after the university’s previous chancellor, Carol Folt, was forced out.

UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees Chair John P. Preyer provided a statement on the matter.

“We wish Kevin and his family well as they consider this important decision,” said Preyer. “In the meantime, our focus as a Board remains on the excellence and continued progress of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The success of our university and the promise of its future is bigger than any one person. The momentum and leadership of our state’s world-class university will continue.”

Public records show the base salary for the president position at Michigan State University pays $70,000 more than what Guskiewicz currently makes.

During the four years he served as chancellor, Guskiewicz faced his own set of controversies and challenges.

In February 2021, a group of professors at UNC called for Guskiewicz to resign. The local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) said there had been several breaches of trust and dishonesty displayed by the chancellor and his associates.

Part of the controversy was due to the UNC System’s plan to turn the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument over to the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which many faculty members believed was an immoral decision.

In July 2021, there were rumors that Guskiewicz would be fired and replaced by UNC System President Peter Hans, but nothing ever came of that rumor.

Since 1945, UNC has seen a total of 12 chancellors. There have been four chancellors since 2000 alone.

Guskiewicz has held his current role for four years. Before him, Carol Folt was in the role for six years, Holden Thorp for five years and James Moeser for eight years.

WRAL News spoke with Armand Alacbay, the chief of staff for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a non-profit focused on promoting academic freedom and accountability.

“A university CEO is probably one of the hardest jobs in America, period,” Alacbay said. “That’s why the average tenure is just under six years.”

Alacbay said selecting a new president or chancellor is the most important job for a trustee.

“A presidential search requires a governing board to take a hard look at its strategic plan and what its expectations are for the next 10 years of the university,” Alacbay said.

In July of this year, Guskiwiecz made the announcement that UNC would provide free tuition for incoming undergraduates whose families make less than $80,000 per year. Although several board members supported the decision, the announcement was also met with criticism from some members of the UNC Board of Governors.

The new policy starts in fall of 2024 for incoming students from the state.

The student newspaper at Michigan State University has reported Guskiewicz is the only remaining candidate for president after another finalist dropped out.

WRAL News reached out to the third-party firm helping with that search but has not yet heard back.

This article appeared in WRAL News on November 16, 2023.

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Over the course of a week, presidents stepped down at Stanford University, Texas A&M University, Seton Hall University, Thomas Jefferson University and Berklee College of Music. Their reasons for resigning are as varied as the institutions they led, with some departing amid scrutiny and scandal while others left shrouded in mystery.

Only Marc Tessier-Lavigne at Stanford had been on the job for more than five years.

The resignations come as the sector faces a long list of challenges, from the growing politicization of higher education to the shrinking number of students to go around. And while certain institutions may be more affected by these issues than others, experts believe that a difficult environment is likely driving presidents away.

G. David Gearhart, chancellor emeritus of the University of Arkansas who has written books on higher education leadership, argues that the college presidency has become an increasingly hard job due to challenges that only seem to be increasing.

“I personally believe that being a college or university president may, in fact, be the toughest job in America, or for that matter across the world, but certainly in this country. It’s become a very difficult position to do the right way,” Gearhart said. “There are so many groups out there that a college president has to try to appease, and it’s almost impossible to do that with all of the political machinations that are happening these days, not to mention the huge decline that we’re going to be seeing over the next several years in enrollment, which has already started.”

Sudden Changes

The two resignations that generated the biggest headlines came at Stanford and Texas A&M.

Tessier-Lavigne announced his resignation on July 19, following a months-long investigation into alleged research misconduct that cleared him of personal misconduct but found that he had not corrected mistakes in scientific papers.

The scandal hit hard at Stanford, one of the most prestigious research universities in the world, leading Tessier-Lavigne to conclude it was in the institution’s best interest for him to depart the office he has occupied since 2016. He will officially exit his role on Aug. 31 but remain on the faculty.

Texas A&M University has been embroiled in a series of recent scandals related to academic freedom, but it was a hiring debacle related to a nascent journalism program that led President Kathy Banks to quit. She retired abruptly on July 21 as questions swirled about the botched hiring of Kathleen McElroy, a Black academic and former New York Times editor who claimed that her offer of a tenured position to lead the revived journalism program was changed to a one-year contract with no tenure provision.

McElroy, who has conducted research on diversity, equity and inclusion, was set to join Texas A&M at a time when DEI initiatives have faced pushback from state lawmakers who have passed legislation to bar DEI offices at public universities and to crack down on various DEI practices.

Banks claimed she did not revoke McElroy’s offer, but she provided little information about the controversy during a Texas A&M Faculty Senate meeting on July 19. Banks told faculty she was “embarrassed” and “saddened by the negative attention” around the scandal.

When she retired two days later, she cited “negative press” related to the hiring debacle.

But a review of the Faculty Senate meeting, which ran more than three hours, revealed clear distrust from members who accused Banks and other leaders of resisting transparency.

“It is outrageous to come here and provide insufficient information,” Dana Gaddy, a professor in the university’s veterinary program, said at the meeting, arguing that leaders chose not to collect the information needed to answer their questions about the botched McElroy hiring.

Gaddy’s comment was just one of many scathing remarks made by furious faculty members in a meeting that suggested Banks had clearly lost their support over the hiring flap.

(Reached by phone, Banks said, “I’m not speaking with the press” before hanging up.)

That scandal has since been surpassed by another controversy at Texas A&M, in which system leaders suspended a professor for reportedly criticizing Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick in a speech. Local news reports indicated that Texas A&M system chancellor John Sharp had discussed the professor’s suspension in text messages with Patrick, who is a powerful figure in the state Legislature.

The sudden exits of the other three college presidents may not have generated as many headlines as the departures at Stanford and Texas A&M, but they are no less wrenching for the institutions involved.

At Seton Hall, a Catholic university in New Jersey, President Joseph Nyre stepped down on July 24 after four years on the job.

Local news outlets reported that Nyre resigned amid conflict with the university’s Board of Regents over an embezzlement scandal at the Seton Hall Law School in which employees stole nearly $1 million. Nyre reportedly sought more oversight of the law school in the wake of the incident, which some regents resisted, creating irreconcilable differences that appeared to prompt his resignation, according to The Asbury Park Press.

University statements related to his departure made no mention of the embezzlement incident.

“In the coming months, the University will complete its three-year strategic plan, Harvest Our Treasures, which has elevated Seton Hall to greater eminence in Catholic higher education. With the conclusion of Harvest Our Treasures in sight, I believe this is an appropriate time for new leadership to help write the next chapter of Seton Hall’s remarkable story,” Nyre wrote in his resignation announcement. “As such, I have informed the Board of Regents that I will be taking a sabbatical during the upcoming year and then plan to relinquish my position as President.”

(Nyre declined an interview request from Inside Higher Ed.)

An email to the Seton Hall community from Board of Regents chairman Hank D’Alessandro praised Nyre, highlighting his accomplishments and making no reference to law school issues.

At Thomas Jefferson University, located in Philadelphia, Dr. Mark Tykocinski resigned after only a year as president.

In that time, Dr. Tykocinski sparked outrage for liking posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that criticized coronavirus vaccines, gender-confirmation surgery and college diversity, equity and inclusion offices. Critics told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the president’s activity on the social media platform “sent an anti–public health message.” Dr. Tykocinski later apologized and told the newspaper that he used the like function to bookmark posts for further research.

Like Seton Hall, the university did not address the underlying controversy in a statement on Dr. Tykocinski’s resignation.

“With the search process for a new Dean of Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College nearing conclusion and his cancer immunotherapy research having reached a pivotal stage, Dr. Mark Tykocinski has made the decision to step down as President and Dean of Thomas Jefferson University to focus on his research. He will be a member of the Jefferson faculty as a full professor,” a Thomas Jefferson University spokesperson wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

The departure of Erica Muhl at Berklee College of Music is perhaps the most mysterious of the abrupt exits, coming after the president took a sudden leave of absence in June. Berklee’s board has offered little explanation for that leave or Muhl’s abrupt break with the college.

At the time of her departure, Muhl had only been on the job for two years, making her the shortest-serving president at an institution that has only had four top executives in 78 years.

The Big Picture

The sudden resignations of five presidents over the course of a week this summer reinforce a theme that emerged from the latest American College President Study from the American Council on Education: presidential terms are shrinking across higher education.

Each of ACE’s last three surveys has shown a decline in length of service. In this year’s edition, respondents from a broad range of institutions told ACE they had been on the job for 5.9 years. Prior surveys found an average of 6.5 years in 2016, seven years in 2011 and 8.5 years in 2006.

Some experts worry what that turnover means for institutional stability.

“I think institutions, whether they’re journalism institutions, business institutions or higher ed institutions, benefit from stability and continuity that comes from long-term relationships with leadership. And if there’s excessive turnover, I think, the institution suffers,” said Bob Dickeson, a higher education consultant and former president of the University of Northern Colorado.

Dickeson, who served in that role for a decade, suggested that presidents have to hit the ground running, which he believes makes it difficult to do the job. Oftentimes leaders need at least a year or two to get their bearings and figure out the institution’s inner workings. At the same time, if they stay too long, it can mean that the university stagnates due to a lack of fresh ideas from the top.

The perfect range for a presidency, he believes, is between seven and 10 years.

Reasons for presidential resignations are as abundant as colleges themselves, experts say. Sometimes presidents are pushed out by scandals, other times by politics or business issues.

Gearhart noted that leaders of public universities can face unique political challenges. Their boards are often stocked with partisan trustees representing the views of the governor who appointed them, and legislatures are increasingly creeping into classrooms to dictate matters of curriculum, putting academe at the center of many culture war clashes.

And board turnover can abruptly transform the extent of a leader’s support, meaning the results of state elections can have direct professional consequences for presidents.

“You can come in with a board that is fully supportive, and after a period of time, that changes,” Gearhart said.

Dickeson said that when institutions struggle, the blame usually falls on the president.

“We tend to look to the president of any organization as responsible for what goes on there, whether that’s fair or not. But I think that goes with the territory. The person who assumes the presidency is going to have to accept responsibility for what goes on there under their watch,” he said.

But Dickeson—who recently wrote a guide on the presidential search, screening and selection process for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni—also noted that boards have to take responsibility for failed presidencies, given their role in finding and hiring college leaders.

“If I was on the board, I would say, ‘OK, what went wrong? How did we screw up?’ Because the fact that the person has left is as much our fault as theirs, if there is fault to be assigned,” Dickeson said.

In the aftermath of a failed presidency, Dickeson said trustees should interrogate their search processes to understand what went wrong. And while some failures may be inevitable, Dickeson argues that board has to take responsibility and ask hard questions to guide trustees forward: “What are the lessons learned? And how do we prevent that from happening the next time?”

This article appeared on Inside Higher Ed on August 1, 2023.

The post Why Are So Many College Presidents Resigning? appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

One of the most important duties of college governing boards is to select the university president. According to a study by the American Council on Education, the average tenure of a college president is now under six years, 2.6 years less than in 2006. While there are many factors at play in the shortening of presidential tenures, in many instances, the problem stems from an inadequate fit between trustees’ expectations and the executive’s performance. Presidential searches are time-consuming and often costly, so governing boards must carefully clarify their vision and map out the search process to ensure they make the right decision.

ACTA’s guide, Assuring a Successful College President Search, covers all the essential steps, from pitfalls to avoid, to interviewing candidates, to negotiating contracts. It offers several practical resources, including a presidential search checklist, a draft search calendar, a request for proposals from search firms, and more.

As an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting accountability at America’s colleges and universities, ACTA is uniquely positioned to provide clear, unbiased guidance on this important topic. Hard copies of the guide will be distributed to every board chair in the country, and it is available to all at no cost on ACTA’s website.

Mr. Dickeson and ACTA Chief of Staff & Senior Vice Present Armand Alacbay are available for interviews. Contact ganglin@GoACTA.org to schedule an interview.

Read the complete guide.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org
PHONE: (202) 798-5425

The post ACTA Delivers New Guidance for Assuring a Successful College President Search appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

What follows are a dozen elements of the process that are intended to improve the chances for a successful presidential search.

CONTENTS

1. Preparation: Setting Realistic Expectations

2. Pitfalls to Avoid

3. Presidential Search Checklist, a Start-to-Finish Plan

4. Drafting a Search Calendar

5. Constructing a Search Budget

6. Appointing a Search & Screening Committee

7. Selecting a Search Firm

8. Protocol for Checking References

9. Questions to Ask During Finalist Interviews

10. Negotiating a Contract

11. Ensuring a Successful Transition

We hope this guide helps you navigate the complex route to selecting the right president for your institution. Your engaged service as trustees is essential to the success of American higher education.

Best wishes going forward!

The post Assuring a Successful College President Search appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Now the University of Maine system, of which UMA is a part, will reboot the search—with some tweaks to the process and a chancellor in the hot seat for admitted missteps in the last search.

Faculty members argue that the changes are little more than window dressing, suggesting it’s not the processes that are the problem but rather the system officials who withheld information about Michael Laliberte, the candidate who was tapped to be UM Augusta’s next president. Laliberte had twice been the subject of no-confidence votes in his former post as president of the State University of New York at Delhi—a detail the search committee leadership failed to disclose…”

“Armand Alacbay, chief of staff and senior vice president of strategy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said that a presidential search falls within the board’s authority, and it is uncommon for trustees to cede that power to constituent groups, such as faculty members.

Though Alacbay said trustees should “own the search,” he noted that they must consult with various campus groups—including faculty—for input. In this case, he said it makes sense that faculty are wary of the search process, after system leadership refused to share certain candidate details…”

To read the full article, visit Inside Higher Ed here. (Email registration may be required.)

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The unusual candidacy of the former regent, David J. McMillan, has raised conflict-of-interest concerns and intensified months of simmering conflicts over the governance and leadership of the university system, and over the pay and contract of its president.

One expert condemned McMillan’s decision to resign as regent and seek the chancellorship. Armand Alacbay, vice president for trustee and government affairs at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said in a statement last week that members of university governing boards’ primary responsibility is to the public, which “requires that a regent avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in carrying out his or her fiduciary obligations. To do otherwise undermines public trust in our nation’s institutions of higher education, which are vital to the long-term civic and economic health of this country.”

To read the full article, visit the Chronicle of Higher Education here. (Registration may be required.)

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An 18-person committee of university staff and officials earlier this week “unanimously and enthusiastically” recommended David McMillan, a former longtime executive at Minnesota Power and its parent company, Allete, to be UMD’s interim chancellor. That recommendation is set to be considered by the broader university system’s board of regents at their meeting on Wednesday, July 13 .

McMillan resigned from the board of regents on June 14 to pursue the UMD job. He was the only applicant of six whom committee members selected for an interview, according to a July 6 letter they wrote to regents.

“No other candidate is more suitable for this interim role than Mr. McMillan,” committee members wrote. “His candidacy aligns well with the qualifications and personal characteristics identified in the position profile, which was informed by several listening sessions held in January and February with UMD students, faculty, staff and alumni as well as Duluth business, civic, and community leaders. Additionally, his qualifications and situation make him well suited for the short-term nature of the interim position.”

Search committee members said McMillan has a “strong business sense” in strategic planning, fiscal management and community relations, among other areas. They also approved of his strong ties to the Duluth region and UMD in particular that, they feel, would make him immediately ready to benefit the school. They also lauded McMillan’s emotional intelligence and willingness to collaborate, among other qualities.

“Mr. McMillan is the right leader at this time,” committee members wrote, “and he has our full endorsement and support to serve as UMD’s interim chancellor.”

Conflict of interest allegations

The decision on an interim chancellor would otherwise rest with Joan Gabel, the university system’s president who initially planned to select someone by the end of June. But Gabel stepped back from that amid claims of a quid pro quo between her and McMillan, who, while he was still on the board in December 2021, was one of nine regents who voted in favor of a hefty compensation increase for Gabel.

Gabel’s move put the decision partly in the hands of the committee, members of which interviewed McMillan late last month and forwarded his name for consideration on Wednesday, and partly in the hands of the regents, who are set to formally approve — or not approve — the committee’s recommendation next week.

In a June 22 campuswide letter , Gabel said she was available to consult with the search committee if they asked for it, but would not play “any role in their review of the applicants and their recommendation” to the regents.

McMillan strenuously denies that a deal for the interim job exists between him and Gabel.

“I have never been promised anything,” McMillan said Thursday. “I put my board of regents seat behind me and stepped up and took a swing here and we shall see what happens. But there was never, ever, ever, any quid pro quo. I find that set of words pretty disgusting, actually.”

Staff at Gabel’s office did not respond to a News Tribune request sent Thursday evening for an interview with Gabel.

Regardless, Darrin Rosha, another U of M regent, is skeptical.

“As a rule, members of boards of regents of regents or boards of trustees should not be converting that relationship into a compensated position,” Rosha said.

He noted that McMillan has no professional experience in academic administration and that the board’s code of conduct calls for members to avoid “actual individual or institutional conflicts of interest,” to disclose potential ones, and to “ensure personal relationships do not interfere with objective judgment in decisions” that would affect university employment.

“I don’t know if there was a pre-arranged arrangement,” Rosha said. “The bottom line is: The code of conduct and the history and responsibility of the board of regents is to avoid any circumstance that even raises the question of whether there is.”

He also pointed to a statement put forward by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni , a conservative-aligned nonprofit, that denounced McMillan’s actions and asserts that university governing boards’ responsibility to the public “stands above any other constituency and requires that a regent avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in carrying out his or her fiduciary obligations.”

Earlier search didn’t ‘yield’ a new chancellor

The search for an interim, rather than a more permanent, UMD chancellor is the result of a failed search earlier this year with a six-figure price tag. The same committee recommended four people to Gabel last spring, and university staff published the names and resumes of three of them shortly before each conducted an on-campus interview in April.

But Gabel announced in late May that the search had failed to “yield” a new chancellor at the school. It’s unclear, exactly, how that happened, and university officials haven’t disclosed many details.

Shortly after the failed search, university staff put together a form for UMD students, faculty, and staff to nominate someone to be the school’s interim chancellor, who’d hold the job for the next two years while school leaders conduct a second search during the 2023-2024 school year. That yielded 53 nominees, eight of whom applied for the job, according to university system staff.

If regents agree with the committee’s recommendation, McMillan would succeed Lendley Black, who’s been UMD’s chancellor since August 2010 and announced in November 2021 that he intended to retire from that post.

This article originally appeared here.

The post McMillan recommended for interim chancellor job at UMD appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

After an initial search for the next chancellor came up empty and an alleged “high level discussion” took place between Mr. McMillan and UMN President Joan Gabel regarding the chancellor position, Mr. McMillan stepped down from the board of regents. The timing of his resignation—one day before the deadline to submit candidacy—along with his role in approving President Gabel’s newest five-year contract has caused some to allege a conflict of interest or quid pro quo between Mr. McMillan and President Gabel. Former Minnesota governor Arne Carlson has called for a legislative audit of Mr. McMillan’s application and nomination process as well as the power structure of the board of regents.     

In reaction, Armand Alacbay, ACTA’s Vice President of Trustee & Government Affairs, remarked, “Members of university governing boards—particularly those that oversee state flagship systems like the University of Minnesota—have a primary responsibility to the public. This duty stands above any other constituency and requires that a regent avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in carrying out his or her fiduciary obligations. To do otherwise undermines public trust in our nation’s institutions of higher education, which are vital to the long-term civic and economic health of this country. Public confidence in higher education requires that board members treat their role not as an honorific but as a solemn duty.”

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org
PHONE: (260) 609-3486

The post ACTA Denounces Actions Taken by Former University of Minnesota Regent in UMN–Duluth Interim Chancellor Search appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.