Sucession Planning and University Governance

A recent post,  On the Termination of the University of Virginia's President--More Aggressive Boards, Politicians, and Faculty May Reshape Governance of Public Universities,  and the sudden termination of Penn State's President Graham Spanier, remind us that the dynamics of presidential succession at public universities is both critically important and may be changing.  As great U.S. public universities begin to consider issues of sucession, it may be useful to consider the insights that may be useful from succession planning in the great U.S. public companies.  "Given the importance of the CEO role within a corporation and the potential disruption that can result from an unexpected loss or change in top leadership, succession planning is considered one of a board’s most important oversight responsibilities."  Melissa Aguilar, CEO Succession Planning:  Current Developments, Shareholder Activism, and Disclosure Practices, Director Notes:  The Conference Board, No. DN-V4N12 (June 2012).   

(From 7 Secrets To Successful Executive Succession Planning)

The Conference Board  "is a global, independent business membership and research association working in the public interest. Our mission is unique: To provide the world's leading organizations with the practical knowledge they need to improve their performance and better serve society. "  Conference Board, About Us.  Referencing Melissa Aguilar, CEO Succession Planning:  Current Developments, Shareholder Activism, and Disclosure Practices, this post suggests that university Boards of Trustees may be well advised to consider the importance of both creating a succession plan and to involve important university stakeholders participate in a transparent process of development.

On the Termination of the University of Virginia's President--More Aggressive Boards, Politicians, and Faculty May Reshape Governance of Public Universities

Penn State's former President, Graham Spanier, is not the only high level and once highly regarded university administrator to lose his job in the face of a loss of confidence by a governing board.  Teresa Sullivan of the University of Virginia has also just stepped down.  See Jack Stripling, Teresa Sullivan Will Step Down as UVa's President After 2 Years in Office, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 10, 2012.

(Former U Va Prez Teresa Sullivan, From Teresa Sullivan Will Step Down as UVa's President After 2 Years in Office)

 It should be noted that Sullivan, like many other university Presidents were substantially affected by the Penn State Board's removal of Graham Spanier:

 Sullivan wasn’t afraid to confront controversy. The day after Graham Spanier was ousted as Pennsylania State University’s president because of the handling of allegations of child sex abuse by a former assistant football coach, Sullivan spoke at a U-Va. board meeting. An outspoken advocate of transparency, she said universities need to foster a culture in which it is okay to question authority and to flag wrongdoing.

“I also must be willing to accept feedback, positive or negative, if I am to lead effectively, and I must set a tone that says bad news can rise to the top of this organization without any messenger being shot for bearing it,” Sullivan said. (Daniel de Vise, Jenna Johnson and Anita Kumar,University of Virginia president to step down, The Washington Post, June 10, 2012)

In both instances, and for two very different reasons, boards of trustees have begun to exercise long atrophied muscle in the oversight of the highest level administrators of a university.  In the process boards appear poised to take a more prominent role in helping shape the character and nature of the American university.  The governance template of the last generation--with a deferential board and a strong president may be giving way to a model with a more activist board and a more collaborative president.  Each in their own ways, Presidents Spanier and Sulliven are exemplars of the old model; they may not fit emerging realities.  This emerges most clearly in the statement the Rector of the University of Virginia, Helen Dragas, reprinted below, along with the Statement of the University of Virginia Faculty Senate.

Without Comment: Ex-Penn State Officials May Face More Charges

The trial of Jerry Sandusky has started.  See Colleen, Jerry Sandusky Trial: The Major Players, ABC News, June 11, 2012. (For Penn State's Statement at the start of trial CLICK HERE).

(Pix of Messrs Curley, Spanier and Schultz 

from Ex-Penn State officials may face more charges, Today--MSNBC, June 11, 2012)

But the attention of public officials and private litigants may now shift to members of the administrative apparatus of the university. This morning, MNS-NBC aired on its Today Show a segment on possible developments that might lead to more scrutiny of and possible charges against Penn State officials.  Reproduced below are the transcript of the Today Show segment and the University's response.

A More Engaged and Transparent Board of Trustees at Penn State

Karen Peetz, the Chair of the Penn State Board of Trustees has just released a letter to alumni.

(Board of Trustees Chair Karen Peetz; Image from Penn State Live)

The letter, which is reproduced below, is worth reading.  It provides an indication of the emergence of a new governance culture on the Board of Trustees, one that should be translated into the operations of the university as an institution, including not just the highest levels of Penn State's administration (where substantial progress is being made) but more importantly at the operational level--chancellors and deans, where progress varies wildly from substantial to none--and  University Faculty Senate, where a similar approach is needed. But the letter also provides some clues about the Board's sense of the challenges that lie ahead, and the importance of each.  

In the coming months, I hope this sort of engagement becomes more interactive.  I look forward to the Board's assessment of the alumni opinion survey (more on that in a later post).  I also welcome greater board involvement in the strategic planning process and in helping shape, improve, and protect, the reputation and operation of the university. An educational institution ought to respect its past and its traditions, but it ought as well to avoid becoming nothing more than a shrine to the past bundled in a collection of endlessly repeated rituals offered as a substitute for forward movement. This university is poised to become a global leader in a world quite different in its expectations of leading educational institutions (and its institutional stakeholders) from that in which most of us were acculturated and some of us are more comfortable. There is much to be done to make this happen. This is part of a good start.  

Penn State and Chevron Forging Closer Links

Education is no longer merely an exercise directed internally, that is, directed toward the inside stakeholders of an institution--students, faculty, administration, and board. It now appears that mass communication in traditional media--like newspapers--also serves as an important venue for cultivating the image of a university and its partners. 

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2012)

 Both that, and the announcement of the deepening of an important relationship between Penn State University and Chevron was recently the subject of a two page advertising spread in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  See, Henry C, Foley and Jill DePompei-Morales, Companies that Work Here Should Develop Talent Here; We Agree, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, June 3, 2012, at A-8 to A-9.

Made to Market Education and Professionalization in University Education

I had earlier considered the issue of "professionalization" in education, focusing on many people's favorite stalking horse--athletics.  I suggested that the University of Kentucky coach, who was moving aggressively toward a new model for his players, focused more intensely on market ready players (that is ready for employment in the sports player market, though perhaps less so for supporting labor market roles in the sports industry), might suggest an unfortunate exaggeration but not an aberration in the movement of university education toward a more "made to market" approach to program and course development.   (Irony and Incoherence in the "Professionalization" of University Education, May 22, 2012).

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2012)

The issue of professionalization (as the term is applied to sport), then, is part of a larger movement toward a different kind of relationship between education (and the way in which it develops its "product") and the global wage labor market. I write now only to suggest that this dynamic relationship is evidenced not merely in sport but also most acutely in the professional schools.  My focus today is on that effect in the field of law studies and its effects on the development of pedagogy, course content and programs for law schools.   It touches on the role of labor markets in the construction of educational programs, made more complicated (though not exceptionally so) when public regulators also have a power to intervene in the development of programs of education delivery.

Opening Access: Course Proposals Archive at Penn State

I have started writing about open access recently (Between Scholar and University--Sharing Knowledge, Protecting Revenue and Control--Is the UCSF Approach Worth Considering, May 28, 2012).  Now comes news of an important step forward, in the form of access to the archive of course proposals at Penn State.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2012)

The project was a number of years in the making and would not have been possible without the collaboration of the libraries, the Faculty Senate and critically the financial support and encouragement of the Provost. 

Without Comment: Former President Sues Penn State

This version of the Associated press report from the Williamsport Sun Gazette, worth reading carefully both for what it says and what it says between the lines

(Former Penn State President Graham Spanier, Pix from Iowa State University Alumni Association Website)

Between Scholar and University--Sharing Knowledge, Protecting Revenue and Control--Is the UCSF Approach Worth Considering

It has become something of a truism that information is power; it is also true that power is money, or at least income.  These truisms speak to a larger issue now confrontation academic institutions--contests over the control of knowledge produced by academics. 

 (Pix from Happy 3rd Birthday, Open Access Directory!, Charlotte Law Library News, May 26, 2011)

But should a faculty to make each of their articles freely available immediately through an open-access repository, and thus accessible to the public through search engines such as Google Scholar?  And should a Faculty Senate spearhead such efforts?  The Faculty Senate of the University of California San Francisco has answered both in the affirmative.  It would be useful for Penn State's Faculty Senate to consider the same.

Regulating the Market for University Provided Distance Education--Administrators and Politicial Figures Aplenty But No Role for Faculty

This from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and the State Higher Education Executive Officers have organized a commission that will explore the regulation of postsecondary distance education. The commission will craft recommendations on the challenges that colleges face when they offer programs in multiple states. The group includes the Clinton administration’s education secretary, Richard W. Riley, as well as the lieutenant governor of Colorado and a former governor of Wyoming. Its first session will be in June. (Public-University Groups Form Panel on Distance-Education Regulation, The Ticker, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 23, 2012).

On the one hand this may be good news as the free market approach to the development of distance education has increased competition among universities and provided a host of distinct models.  Standardization may be useful for students so that they might have confidence in choosing among programs and understanding what each offers and lacks. On the other hand, these efforts to control and manage distance education suggests a certain degree of collusion in the control of markets for students even as they impose market discipline and standardization on the product offered. 

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2012)

And, as appears to be usual in these endeavors, no one had thought to include in the Commission a space for the institutional voice of faculty.  As a consequence, while there will be much discussion about the management and shape of markets for distance education, and standardization of its form and content, all of this will be done without the bother of consulting with the stakeholder that will bear the largest share of responsibility for its implementation and success (or failure).