by Joe Sullivan
Scene 1: Wednesday, February 27
Several hundred folding chairs and a theater-sized screen have been set up in the ballroom at UT's University Center so the campus community can watch as a presidential search committee interviews the two ostensible finalists for the post. But only five of the seats in the cavernous room are taken as the clearly anointed one, University of Louisville President John Shumaker starts fielding questions. Adding to the surreal effect, none of the members of the search committee are visible on the screen, just Shumaker standing in isolation in a conference room in Nashville.
His words are well chosen, but in this setting they have a hollow ring. "Being president of a university is very much like being mayor of a small city," he says at one point. "You have to listen to various constituencies, depend upon persuasion, build consensus."
Yet the videocast (also accessible as a webcast on campus computer screens) is the only exposure that Shumaker is due to have to any of his Knoxville constituencies before being selected by a search committee made up of trustees that doesn't include a single administrator, faculty or student representative. The other purported finalist, the provost of University of Northern Colorado, Marlene Strathe, is obviously being interviewed solely to create the appearance of a competitive selection process.
At the conclusion of the Shumaker interview, one of the handful in attendance at the Student Center, veteran English professor and former provost Joe Traherne, shakes his head in sadness and dismay. It's not that he's been put off by anything that Shumaker had to say, but rather by the exclusionary selection process.
Separately, astute political science professor Bill Lyons has ventured earlier in the day that Shumaker will be placed behind an 8-ball unless he comes to Knoxville for campus meetings before accepting the search committee's preordained selection.
Scene 2: Friday, March 1
The much larger auditorium at the University Center is packed to overflowing. Shumaker has insisted on just such a meeting, and he starts it off by saying, "I thought it was essential that I be here today before making the most important decision of my career."
It's a career that looks impressive to the academics in the audience. From classics professor at Ohio State University to dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Albany to president of Central Connecticut State University, he's worked his way up the ranks before becoming president at Louisville in 1995.
What impresses nearly everyone in the audience all the more is the manner of the man. Over an hour-and-a-half of fielding barbed questions coming from all directions, he evinces both a seriousness of purpose and a remarkable wit and verve. He even manages to evoke laughter when he defends the secretive presidential search by saying wryly, "I think the search process had a quality result...If it hadn't been private, I wouldn't have been there."
Students, especially black students, join faculty members and hourly workers in eliciting his views on everything from affirmative action to tenure to a living wage to benefits for partners of gay, lesbian and transgendered employees. Shumaker's responses invariably reflect his experience in dealing with these issues at Louisville. But on more than one occasion, he cautions that, "It would be disingenuous to say it will be easy, but we will address it."
Toward the end, one of his earlier antagonists, the president of the Black Student Alliance, Aneisha Davis, rises to say, "I feel like you ran the gauntlet through our questions. I thank you for being here." To which another student voice adds, "Are you going to come?"
At this point, Shumaker brings down the house and then brings them to their feet in a standing ovation by responding with a question of his own: "Do you think I should?"
Afterward, a converted Traherne concludes, "He won me over 100 percent. He's going to come in with the strong support of the faculty." Lyons reinforces the positive impressions by reporting that the feedback loop from the president of faculty senate and other peers at Louisville is totally positive as well. (This feedback contrasts with a barrage of negatives from the faculty at Marshall University toward Shumaker's ill-fated predecessor, J. Wade Gilley, when Gilley was picked three years ago.)
Reflections
* The Shumaker show may have been staged, but it was a virtuoso performance all the same. Anyone who can engage such a disparate and contentious audience as effectively as he did can represent the university well in any setting. The fact that Louisville's endowment has nearly tripled to more than $500 million while he's been there (and now exceeds the University of Kentucky's) attests to his fund raising prowess.
* One reason he's undaunted by the state's fiscal crisis that impinges on UT funding is the fact that he's been there and dealt with that before. While he was at SUNY, he told the search committee, "The system went through a budgetary upheaval and unprecedented calamity. We lopped off Ph.D. and undergraduate programs and faced serious morale problems. But the long-term result is that SUNY's four research campuses are stronger today than they ever were before." At Louisville, he initiated a $25 million reallocation process that has reduced or combined 34 programs, mainly to free up funds to make faculty salaries more competitive. UT can expect more of the same, building on the $8 million reallocation process that Provost Loren Crabtree has already ably set in motion.
* In sum, Shumaker has succeeded in turning what had all the makings of a shotgun wedding into a true romance. Even the matchmaker who arranged the marriage, Bill Funk of Korn Ferry, deserves credit for recruiting a candidate of Shumaker's caliber.
March 7, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 10
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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