[Vision2020] President Nellis: You Owe Us (at least) Three More Years

[lfalen]

Good riddance to Nellis. Maybe he will take Baker with him. Hire from within. Don Theophilius came up through the ranks and he was here for a long time.
Roger





-----Original Message-----
Subject: [Vision2020] President Nellis: You Owe Us (at least) Three More Years
From: "Nicholas Gier" 
To: vision2020 
Date: 03/11/13 20:39:00

Good Morning Visionaries,


It didn't take me too long to update some figures.  The average tenure has dropped from 8.5 years to 7; hence, the three years rather than five that I put in my White article.


This disruptive and expensive presidential merry-go-round must stop.


Nick


DEAR PRESIDENT NELLIS:
YOU OWE US ANOTHER THREE YEARS


          From 1986-2006 the tenure of an American university president increased from an average of 6.3 years to 8.5 years.  Since then it has gone back down to 7 years. By contrast, the terms of office of UI presidents are becoming shorter, and for former president Tim White and soon-to-leave Duane Nellis, alarmingly so.
Presidents Ernest Hartung and Richard Gibb remained in office 12 years, while Elizabeth Zinser and Robert Hoover were on campus for seven years.  White left after 4 years, and Nellis will match White's tenure when he leaves for Texas Tech this summer.
          The average tenure calculation obscures high turnover rates on other campuses. Eastern Michigan State has had four presidents in six years; Sierra Nevada College has had four presidents in 10 years; and Florida A&M has had two presidents in seven years. 
Since 1932 Texas Tech has had 16 presidents for an average of 5.6 years.  President Nellis said that he was going to retire at UI, but will he beat the odds and retire at Texas Tech instead?
Nellis' FY12 salary of $335,005 is 487 percent higher than Gibb's $57,115 in FY82, and Nellis held out a year until he got $40,000 more than White. When Hartung was president, he made three times that of new assistant professors, but Nellis'salary has risen to seven times that of new faculty.
Adjusted for inflation, average university presidential pay across the nation rose 35 percent from 1996-2006, while faculty salaries increased only five percent during the same period. Last Year Nellis' salary stood at 141 out of 199 public university presidents, but UI full professors were 25 percent behind their peers in all Ph.D.-granting institutions.
          The tenure for academic deans is growing even shorter.  Studies reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education indicate an average of three to five years.  The former UI science and liberal arts deans each lasted only three years. 
These outside deans come with automatic tenure and negotiated step-down agreements with a mere 15 percent reduction in salary.  These huge salaries burden departmental budgets, and they also skew salary calculations for determining how far departments are behind their peers.
The new deans of science and liberal arts are not only competent but know the UI well and have deep roots in the community.  Studies show that the best CEOs are those who work their way up within their companies, so why doesn't the UI choose capable administrators already on campus to lead the university?
          When the faculty union complained about exploding dean salaries and costly searches, UI Provost Doug Baker acknowledged that it was, in contrast to faculty, a very competitive market with very high turnover.  Since 1982, UI dean's salaries have risen 280 percent while full professor pay has gone up 207 percent.  The Consumer Price Index for the same period is 226. 
          The departure of a university president, especially so soon after he has been hired, disrupts the lives of faculty and staff as they are forced to adjust to an interim administration.  The vast sums of money that are paid to "head hunters" and on interviews mean less money for academics and campus maintenance.  New presidents spend lots of time "learning the ropes," and they sometimes bring in new management teams that further disturb the efficient running of the university.
          Out of all the UI presidents that I've known, I can say that I had the best personal relationship with Tim White.  He has excellent interpersonal skills and he is the best listener of any administrator with whom I've had dealings.  Once he excused himself from a very important meeting to meet with me about retaliation against a staff member.
          When I published a similar column "President White: You Owe Us Five More Years" (the average tenure was then 8.5 years), I received a lot of criticism from faculty who thought that White had done a poor job.  My impression is that Nellis has had a much better record with both the faculty and the State Board of Education.
After 39 years of handling grievances for the faculty union, my main complaint is that the UI does a very poor job of personnel management.  The UI could have avoided some of the legal cases we won by simply following its own procedures and offering better personnel training for its deans and department chairs. 
I do hope that the next UI president is more attentive to these personnel matters. I also propose that the contract of any external candidate hired will contain a clause requiring 10 years of service.  Such a clause might not be necessary if an inside candidate-I can think of several outstanding choices-is hired.
UI Professor Emeritus Nick Gier is the President of the Idaho Federation of Teachers.
 


=======================================================
 List services made available by First Step Internet,
 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
               http://www.fsr.net
          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
=======================================================



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20130312/94012309/attachment.html>