Metro Pulse/Insights/UT Presidency

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by Joe Sullivan

Before the UT Board of Trustees launches a search for a new president, it needs to do some soul searching of its own. The most obvious question for trustees is how to prevent a recurrence of the improprieties that led to the downfall of two presidents in two years and sullied the university's reputation. But there are many other questions that need to be addressed. To wit:

* What are the attributes UT should be looking for in a new president? Should the emphasis on enhancing UT's stature as a research university that led to the selection of Wade Gilley and John Shumaker be continued, or is some other set of priorities more appropriate under present circumstances?

* Does the role of the president need to be refined, if not redefined? Should the president remain in the academic forefront, as Gilley and Shumaker were, or should these responsibilities be delegated more fully to campus chiefs with the president concentrating on administration abdexternal matters such as government relations and fund raising?

* How should the search for a new president be conducted so that it can stand up under the intense scrutiny it is bound to receive in the wake of the Gilley and Shumaker debacles? Can the need for a completely open process be reconciled with the private recruitment of top candidates who aren't willing to have their names divulged unless they are virtually assured the job, as was the case with Gilley and Shumaker?

* How can the Board of Trustees repair the damage to its own credibility that has resulted from the perception that trustees bear responsibility for the debacles of the past two years? This damage has been compounded by Gov. Phil Bredesen's slam that a recent trustee meeting he attended reminded him of "bad non-profit boards I've been on."

There are no easy answers to these sorts of questions, but the trustees must provide clear definition not only to the search process but also to what the university is searching for before a new search can be expected to succeed where the past two have failed. Moreover, finding someone who fits the desired profile is going to be all the more difficult because of the huge handicaps under which the search must be conducted.

For all its good qualities, UT now has a bad reputation in academic circles, and prospective candidates are going to be wary of considering a post that's been so fraught with controversy. Who wants to be subject to the kind of invasive scrutiny of their private lives that any seriously considered candidate is bound to get? Yet the primacy now being placed on assuring the integrity of UT's next president means that any frailty or instance of bad judgment could outweigh an exemplary record of professional accomplishment and lead only to personal embarrassment.

Another handicap to attracting candidates is the way in which search firms have been discredited, in the public's eye, because the one engaged in the Shumaker search failed to bring out any negatives about him. Yet search firms have a valuable role to play in identifying, evaluating and even recruiting candidates who wouldn't otherwise be prepared to seek a new position lest it compromise their present one. No one has a better reputation in this field than Bill Funk of Korn/Ferry, who recruited Shumaker. But amid all the glowing references about Shumaker from the University of Louisville that Funk adduced, he failed to bring out the bizarre instance in which Shumaker obtained a license to marry the Chinese woman who was serving as a nanny to his two young sons as part of an effort to keep her from being deported. Never mind that Shumaker, then a widower, never married the woman, nor was there any intimation of official misconduct on his part, Funk is now being vilified to the point where it's debatable whether any search firm would want to, or can be, involved in the next UT presidential search process.

In any event, the search process that begat Shumaker was flawed in other ways that cannot be repeated. Under a two-track approach, actual applicants for the presidency were screened publicly by an advisory committee that was broadly representative of the UT faculty, administration and alumni. The advisory committee selected as its top candidate Marlene Strathe, who was then the provost at the University of Northern Colorado, and her name was submitted to the actual search committee, comprised of 101 trustees. Meanwhile, Funk was proceeding separately with his private recruitment efforts in which the advisory committee had no involvement. By the time Strathe and Shumaker were interviewed by the search committee, Shumaker had all but been assured the job, making a sham of the advisory committee's role and any semblance of an open selection process.

Unless trustees provide for a totally open search process this time around, they will have a faculty rebellion on their hands. UT's academicians are justifiably convinced that they should have a major voice in the selection of a president. Indeed, many contend that they can do a better job of screening candidates than a search firm, by using their networks of colleagues at other universities. But opening the process runs the risk of limiting the candidate pool to the likes of Strathe. With all due respect to her, she lacked credentials for presiding over a research university, let alone one with a medical school that looms large in UT's scheme of things.

All of this leads back to the issue of defining the mission and role of UT's next president. Prior to Gilley and Shumaker, UT had been led for many years by career administrators with scant academic credentials who had moved up within its ranks. In the search that led to Gilley, trustees Jim Haslam and Bill Sansom took the lead in seeking someone from outside with both academic stature and experience presiding over a research university that also included a medical school. The goal, also manifest in the Shumaker selection, was to boost UT into the top ranks of public research universities. And one issue facing trustees now is whether that goal can or should be perpetuated.

Even among research-oriented administrators on the Knoxville campus, there's a widespread belief that Gilley's and Shumaker's lofty goals were unrealistic and their methods counterproductive. "Gilley and Shumaker came in assuming everything here was wrong, and that they were going to have to save the institution by themselves. They attempted to start programs without knowing what we really were or developing relationships that could help them succeed," says one veteran administrator.

Given the severe budgetary constraints facing UT for the foreseeable future, perhaps a president with a less ambitious mission is needed at this time. A good administrator with strong fundraising and government/public relations skills could fit the profile. If trustees tap former president Joe Johnson, who embodies those skills, as interim president, then he might become a model for the search for a successor. Yes, it would mean a reversion to the basics of times past, but after UT's horrific experience with Gilley and Shumaker, those times don't look so bad.