Category Archives: Administration

The Chronicle News Blog: 20 Professors Cite Response to Murder in Calling for President’s Ouster

Twenty professors at Eastern Michigan University have signed a letter asking the Board of Regents to fire the president.

The president, John A. Fallon III, is “ill suited to run the university,” the letter says, referring to an independent investigation of how Eastern Michigan responded to the murder of a student, Laura Dickinson, in December.

Although Mr. Fallon may not have consciously misled the campus about Ms. Dickinson’s death — the university maintained publicly for two months that there was no suspicion of foul play — he did not pursue the truth, the letter says.

“Poor leadership at the top of the administration has needlessly, repeatedly, and seriously harmed EMU in recent years,” it says. (Last fall, a faculty strike delayed the start of classes, after negotiations between professors and administrators collapsed.)

Mark D. Higbee, a history professor, read the letter at a regents’ meeting on Tuesday, according to a local news report. Also at the meeting, Mr. Fallon offered his first public apology for the university’s conduct in the murder case. “Never again will such a confounding series of mistakes be made on my watch,” Mr. Fallon said, according to the report.

The board has announced that it will not make any personnel decisions until it receives a report from the U.S. Education Department, which is also investigating the university’s handling of Ms. Dickinson’s murder.

Rocky Mountain News: Community college chief put on leave

The Community College of Denver will be looking for a new leader after its president, Christine Johnson, was placed on administrative leave Tuesday amid revelations of financial and procedural problems at the campus.

The New York Times: Some Colleges to Drop Out of U.S. News Rankings

The presidents of dozens of liberal arts colleges have decided to stop participating in the annual college rankings by U.S. News and World Report.

The Chronicle News Blog: Embattled Official at Eastern Michigan U. Says He Is ‘Scapegoat’ in Crime Scandal

A veteran administrator at Eastern Michigan University says the institution’s president and public-safety director “focused blame” on him for its faltering response to a murder on the campus.

In a letter to Eastern Michigan’s Board of Regents on Wednesday, a lawyer for James F. Vick, vice president for student affairs, said the officials had made his client the “designated scapegoat” for how Eastern Michigan had handled information about the death of Laura Dickinson, a student who was killed in her dormitory room last December.

The letter rebutted the findings in a recent report by the Detroit-based law firm Butzel Long, which concluded that several officials, including Mr. Vick, knew that Ms. Dickinson had probably been murdered but concealed that information from top administrators and students, violating federal law and personal trust.

In the letter, Mr. Vick’s lawyer, Thomas C. Manchester, said his client had taken a polygraph test to prove that he had not withheld any information. Eastern Michigan’s board plans to make personnel recommendations based on the report in the next few days. —Eric Hoover

Inside Higher Ed:

A messy and high-level personnel dispute at Coastal Carolina University is playing out in public because various documents in a normally confidential grievance process are being mailed to reporters and others, The Sun News reported. Among the charges: Richard Weldon, who was fired as vice president of finance, says that his warnings about possible financial wrongdoing have been ignored and he was dismissed for reporting his concerns to trustees. He also says that the university has much more money than it wants legislators to know about and is trying to give the impression that it is worse off to get more state funds. University officials have denied wrongdoing and defended Weldon’s dismissal as appropriate.

Houston Chronicle: Finding takers to lead TSU won’t be easy

Even before finance scandal, few had opted to seek a spot on the board

Richard Holland knew little of the problems at Texas Southern University until friends urged him to be part of the solution.

Because the idea of public service appealed to the Ivy League-educated management consultant, Holland applied to be a regent. Six months later, he is at the table as the state’s largest historically black university ponders difficult choices for its future.

Las Vegas Sun: Trouble coming to a boil among university leaders

Like a restless volcano, tensions between university system Chancellor Jim Rogers and the elected Board of Regents are stirring and may vent a lot of steam this month.

Regents and Rogers maintained a fragile peace over the past four months so that infighting wouldn’t jeopardize lobbying efforts for higher education programs. But with the end of the legislative session, officials are braced for harsh words between Rogers and his critics on the board.

The Eagle Times: Top administrator told to leave college after DWI arrest

Mark Andrews, vice president of administration at Northern Essex Community College, has been asked to leave the institution after his arrest on drunken-driving charges, The Eagle-Tribune reported. Andrews did not respond to the newspaper’s request for an interview. The Eagle-Tribune reported that it was his second drunken-driving arrest in 15 months.

The Boston Globe: UMass-Boston faculty pass no-confidence vote against system president

Faculty leaders at the University of Massachusetts at Boston today voted overwhelmingly to approve a no-confidence measure against UMass president Jack Wilson, handing him his second rebuke for a proposal to restructure the five-campus system.

Inside Higher Ed: No Confidence Votes at Cal State

Spurred by a coalition of frustrated professors, 73 percent of faculty members at Sonoma State University who responded to a referendum have registered no confidence votes in their president, Ruben Armiñana.

Part-time lecturers and full-time professors were asked to evaluate the president’s leadership, and nearly 7 in 10 eligible voters cast ballots. The vote comes just weeks after faculty members at another Cal State institution, Sacramento State University, sent a similar message about the performance of their president, Alexander Gonzalez. Roughly 77 percent of voters (about two-thirds of eligible faculty took part) there disapproved of Gonzalez.

The Boston Globe: UMass Amherst faculty votes no confidence in system president, trustees

Faculty and librarians at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst this afternoon cast a near-unanimous 214-1 no confidence vote in the board of trustees and system President Jack Wilson.

The faculty is outraged by a proposed overhaul of the school’s leadership that calls for their chancellor to retire in a year. They initially planned only to include the trustees in a “lack of confidence” vote, but added Wilson to the motion.

The trustees are under fire for not consulting the faculty on the leadership changes and for holding a secret meeting to discuss the proposal at a dinner at the UMass Club in Boston on May 3. Eleven voting members of the trustees – two more than the minimum number for a quorum – were present at the dinner, where they heard a presentation from Wilson and Chairman Stephen P. Tocco.

The Chronicle: Ivy Tech Will Pay $191,000 to Former Administrator Who Was Passed Over in Presidential Search

The Ivy Tech Community College system has agreed to pay a year’s salary to a former executive vice president, Carol A. D’Amico, to avoid a possible lawsuit over her not being chosen as the system’s next president.

The Boston Globe: UMass shake-up draws cheers, disappointment

A shake-up in leadership at the University of Massachusetts brought both disappointment and jubilation yesterday to campuses across the system. It also sparked a trustee’s resignation and faculty criticism for shutting them out of the decision.

SGVTribune.com: Faculty, students, staff quit Rio Hondo president search

WHITTIER – Between the increased numbers of California community college presidents who are retiring, the small pool of candidates qualified to replace them and the local politics of appointing a new leader, it seems Rio Hondo College already had two strikes against it when it started looking for a new president.

And with just a couple of days left before the college holds an open forum Wednesday with its top finalists for president, three of the campus’s most important constituents – students, faculty and staff – have thrown in the towel and are refusing to participate in the process anymore.