The Chronicle: Interim President of Mississippi State U. Resigns Over Landscaping Scandal
Vance H. Watson resigned today as interim president of Mississippi State University, according to a university news release. Mr. Watson had been under fire for authorizing $12,333 in landscaping work last year at the home of the state’s higher-education commissioner, Thomas C. Meredith.
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer: WSU releases report on provost dispute
Washington State University officials on Thursday released a confidential internal report detailing a tense, hostile senior staff meeting that ended in profanity and a hallway shoving match.
The report, written by Senior Assistant Attorney General Antoinette Ursich, includes conflicting e-mails written to WSU President Elson Floyd and interview notes from conversations with everyone in the room when Steven Hoch’s provost career at WSU began to unravel.
Ursich said witnesses described Hoch’s behavior at a Sept. 10 staff meeting as “disrespectful, rude, condescending and arrogant.” The meeting veered out of control during a discussion of a proposed new budgeting model for the university.
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Moscow-Pullman Daily News: WSU provost says he was assaulted by vice president
Washington State University Provost Steven Hoch claimed Wednesday he was “assaulted” last month by WSU Vice President for Business and Finance Greg Royer.
He said the incident is insignificant compared to another major issue at the university. He declined to elaborate.
Hoch said he has discussed the matter with a lawyer. He has been on paid personal leave since Sept. 23. He will step down as provost Oct. 31 and assume a tenured faculty position in the department of history Nov. 1.
Royer was placed on administrative leave from Sept. 13-22. He did not return calls seeking comment.
WSU spokesman James Tinney said President Elson S. Floyd was not available for comment.
WSU officials have declined to provide the reasons for Hoch and Royer’s leaves. The university plans to release more information Oct. 22 in response to a pair of public records requests.
In an e-mail, Tinney stated that the “situation” was reported internally, as required by university policy.
“It was looked into,” he said. “When the records are released, I believe they will show that the university took appropriate steps to respond to the situation.”
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Seattle Times: WSU provost to return as professor — at $245,000 per year
Steven Hoch will not return to Washington State University as provost — but he will return to Pullman as perhaps one of the nation’s best-paid history professors.
Hoch has been at the center of mystery and controversy for two weeks at WSU’s Pullman campus. On Sept. 23, after just seven weeks as provost, he sent his staff a 3 a.m. e-mail announcing he was taking an open-ended leave. He returned to Lexington, Ky., on full pay.
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Seattle Times: Questions linger after WSU Provost Steven Hoch leaves
Washington State University Provost Steven Hoch left abruptly on paid leave two weeks ago, leaving students and facultywondering what happened. Sources say a power struggle and physical altercation preceded the departure.
At 3:13 in the morning — just seven weeks into his new job as provost of Washington State University — Steven Hoch dashed off an e-mail to his inner circle:
“Dear All, I have requested personal leave as Provost and Executive Vice President. President Floyd has approved my request. We have not established any expressed ending date for this leave. I should like you all to know how much I enjoy working with you. Cordially, Steve.”
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The Chronicle News Blog: President of Southwestern Oregon Community College Resigns Hastily
Judith M.L. Hansen, president of Southwestern Oregon Community College, resigned on Wednesday, effective immediately. The leader of the college’s governing board described Ms. Hansen’s abrupt departure as the result of a mutual agreement with the board, according to The World newspaper of Coos Bay.
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Montgomery Advertiser: AUM’s Faculty Senate censures leaders
The administration at Auburn Montgomery has been censured by the school’s Faculty Senate over the hiring of Mehmet Sahinoglu as professor/director of the new Informatics Institute.
AUM Chancellor John Veres and Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs Janet Warren both apologized to the faculty for how the hire was handled.
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Green Bay Press Gazette: UW regent: More info needed on job finalists: UW-Parkside hire resigned after investigation was made public
MADISON — A regent involved in the failed University of Wisconsin-Parkside chancellor search said Friday he and his colleagues lack enough information to make good hiring decisions.
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Michael Falbo of Milwaukee said regents recommend who to hire for top campus jobs after interviewing the finalists, which does not provide them with an understanding of who would be best for the job.
“I’ve found that I didn’t feel capable of making a decision after spending about a half hour or 45 minutes with each candidate one right after another,” Falbo told his colleagues on the 18-member Board of Regents during a meeting at UW-Stevens Point.
At another point, he added: “I think we all know we are not prepared when we are called on to do that job — enough — and we have to do a better job in the future.”
Falbo chaired the regents committee earlier this year that recommended University of Louisville dean Robert Felner to be the UW-Parkside chancellor. The committee was unaware that Felner had been the subject of a no-confidence vote by the faculty in 2006 and an ongoing federal investigation was looking into whether he mishandled grant money.
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Courier-Journal: U of L creates office to help resolve disputes
Plan to help settle disputes follows Felner controversy
The University of Louisville says it will create an interim office to assist its employees in resolving conflicts, disputes and complaints.
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The office’s creation is a response to concerns raised over the handling of grievances and complaints involving former U of L education Dean Robert Felner, who is the focus of a federal investigation into the alleged mishandling of grant money.
During Felner’s five-year tenure at the College of Education and Human Development, faculty and students filed 31 complaints and grievances against him, ranging from challenges to annual reviews to intimidation. …
The university has several other reviews under way. They include: an internal audit of the finances of the education college; an external audit of the university’s grants-management and contracts practices; a review of managerial and administrative practices at all the university’s schools and colleges; a review of the conflict of interest policy; and a review of circumstances surrounding the awarding of a doctoral degree during Felner’s tenure.
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TradingMarkets.com: Parkside chancellor search was flawed, Reilly says
(The Wisconsin State Journal – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) —
The people involved in the failed search for a chancellor at UW-Parkside could have done a better job of sharing information about the top candidate, University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly said Friday.
Reilly commissioned a review of the search process used to choose chancellors at all System schools after Robert Felner, who was hired as chancellor of UW-Parkside last spring, resigned amid a federal criminal investigation in Kentucky.
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The Badger Herald: System looks to improve chancellor searches
Following a failed chancellor search at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, a consultant released a range of suggestions Friday for the system to improve future searches.
After UW System officials discovered that Robert Felner, the candidate slated to be UW-Parkside’s new chancellor, was under federal investigation for allegedly misappropriating funds during his previous position at the University of Louisville, they decided it was time to investigate ways to prevent such issues from occurring again, said UW System spokesperson David Giroux.
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The Tampa Tribune: Chancellor’s Exit Means Tough Search For State
A lot was at stake last spring: The leader of Florida’s public universities warned top lawmakers that his schools were weakened by budget cuts and that a planned move by the Legislature to overhaul his system of higher education would erode its credibility.
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Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Consultant urges UW screening changes
UW-Parkside fiasco brings scrutiny to vetting process
The UW System hired consultant Stephen Portch and paid him $12,500 to review the process for hiring chancellors. The move came after Robert Felner, who was supposed to take the reins at Parkside on July 1, resigned from that appointment in the midst of a federal probe involving his use of funds at the University of Louisville’s College of Education and Human Development.
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WHAS11.com: U of L talking about Robert Felner and alleged misuse of grant money for first time
Louisville, Ky. (WHAS11) – Major new developments have surfaced in the Robert Felner investigation.
For the first time the University of Louisville is talking about former dean Robert Felner and the alleged misuse of federal grant money and other problems with his employment.
But as that was going on, WHAS11 News learned that Felner has paid back some money to the university and we’ve also learned more about an associate of his who got a PhD in four months.
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Posted in Administration, Corruption, Legal issues
The Chronicle News Blog: U. of Iowa Fires 2 Vice Presidents Over Handling of Rape Accusations
The University of Iowa has fired two senior administrators who were singled out for criticism in an outside law firm’s investigation of the university’s response to an alleged sexual assault. President Sally Mason had asked the two men — Phillip Jones, vice president for student services, and Marcus Mills, vice president for legal affairs and general counsel — to resign, and when they declined, she fired them, according to a statement on the university’s Web site.
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The Chronicle News Blog: Higher Education’s Career Ladder May Be Broken, Study Finds
There aren’t enough young junior-faculty members in the professoriate, and most of them won’t have enough time to rise through the ranks in academe to become a college president, a recent study says.
“Too Many Rungs on the Ladder? Faculty Demographics and the Future of Leadership in Higher Education,” a new report by the American Council on Education, highlights demographic trends that suggest that the traditional career ladder to top administrative jobs in higher education may be in need of repair.
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Courier-Journal: Weaknesses seen in U of L grant monitoring system
Officials admit rigor of the system varies
Last year, the University of Louisville received $77 million in federal grants — just a small chunk of taxpayer awards that flow to universities each year for research in fields ranging from medicine to education.
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At most universities, including U of L, a mix of federal regulations, financial accounting and administrative monitoring provides oversight for those grants and is typically sufficient to deter misuse, experts and grant administrators say.
But a federal criminal investigation into the potential misappropriation of a $694,000 federal education grant has raised questions about whether gaps exist at U of L — at a time when grant funding at the university has risen sharply.
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Inside Higher Ed: Trustee Romances Raise Tensions
Oh, the things we do for love.
After 28 years as a board member at Greenville Technical College, George Bomar resigned from his post last week, accepting that his 2005 marriage to a high-level administrator violated the college’s nepotism policy. But a committee of Bomar’s fellow board members deliberated on the issue for nearly a year before they signaled him to bow out, highlighting the sensitivity – and perhaps reluctance – they felt while exploring the implications of their colleagues’ campus romance.
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St Louis Post-Dispatch: Truman State U. president says she is resigning
Barbara Dixon, who led Truman State University as president for five years, said Tuesday she has decided to resign because of a difference in opinion with the Board of Governors over the duties and priorities in her role as president.
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The Louisville Cardinal: don’t say the f word
On June 20, 2008, federal investigators marched into the College of Education and Human Development, emerging hours later with boxes of information pertaining to the activities of former CEHD Dean Robert Felner. Felner is now under federal investigation for allegedly misappropriating approximately $694,000 of the college’s federal grant money.
This was just the first of many dark days the University of Louisville would see. Nearly four months later, the charges haven’t stopped.
This past week, it was discovered through university records that John Deasy, then a California school superintendent, was awarded a doctorate in philosophy from U of L in 2004 after having only studied there for nine credit hours. This violates a university policy that says all doctoral candidates must study at U of L for at least two years, including one in full residency. Felner was the advisor on Deasy’s dissertation committee and had received a $375,000 contract from Deasy in 2002 for a research center that he was running.
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