North Dakota’s State Board of Higher Education voted unanimously on Monday to buy out the contract of Chancellor Hamid A. Shirvani, ending his brief, turbulent tenure as head of the state’s 11-campus university system.
A statement on the board’s Web site said that the board “solidly supports” the changes that Mr. Shirvani had advanced.
However, the chancellor “felt that he had accomplished as much as he could, and asked us to release him so that he could move on,” the board’s president, Duaine Espegard, said in a written statement on the university system’s Web site.
In a telephone interview after the board’s decision, Mr. Shirvani said he had approached the board president about 10 days ago and offered him a choice: a three-year extension of his contract that stipulated the board’s full support for his leadership, or a buyout.
“I was actually surprised,” Mr. Shirvani said of the board’s decision not to renew his contract. “But I am relieved,” he said. “I’ve gone through a real four months of extremely unpleasant, personal attacks.”
Mr. Shirvani will be on administrative leave, serving as a consultant to the system, from July 15 to January 2, when his term will end, according to a copy of the separation agreement provided by the system office. He will continue to receive his full annual salary of $349,000 through June 30, 2015, including scheduled annual raises of 4 percent and 3 percent, and health and retirement benefits.
Mr. Shirvani isn’t sure what will happen after his term ends in January, he said: “I want to have a little peace with my life.”
Open-Meetings Violations
The board vote came toward the end of Mr. Shirvani’s first year as chancellor, during which time he and the board have fended off many criticisms and controversies, including allegations that the chancellor encouraged board members to violate the state’s open-meetings law.
While Mr. Shirvani was not directly faulted for the open-meetings violations, the state’s attorney general wrote in an opinion last month that “it is clear that violations of the open-meetings law by the board are pervasive.”
“There is evidence that some board members have a good-faith desire to comply with the open-meetings law but are unaware of the breadth of the statutes,” the attorney general wrote. “There is sufficient reason to conclude that, for some members, failure to comply may be intentional.”
A former campus president and system vice chancellor for academic affairs even filed a lengthy complaint with the accreditor that oversees the system’s institutions, accusing the board and the chancellor of violating the accreditor’s standards for governance by prohibiting the institutions and their presidents from participating in the development of policy.
The accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, has replied that it is looking into the issues because “the behavior of the State Board of Higher Education and its chancellor is relevant to determining whether the 11 institutions have appropriate governance that meets commission requirements.”
Disputes over the chancellor and board have also played out in the state legislature, which approved a ballot measure, for the 2014 elections, asking North Dakota voters to replace the part-time, eight-member board with a full-time, three-member commission.
Taking Credit
Mr. Shirvani, a former president of California State University-Stanislaus, defended his record as one of high accomplishment, given the difficulties he has faced. Lawmakers, he said, approved a generous increase in state appropriations, including a record amount of money to expand the system’s staff.
“I’m not taking all of the credit for that,” he said, “but I’m taking a major part of that credit.”
In addition, the board approved a plan, called Pathways to Success, meant to improve the universities’ academic performance. That plan met resistance from some at the campus level, who said they had not had enough input into the measure.
Mr. Shirvani said the resistance stemmed not from the substance of the plan but from the fact that it came from the chancellor’s office—part of a 23-year battle over authority between the system office and the campuses, he said.
If he is to blame for anything, Mr. Shirvani said, it is in not understanding the culture and politics of the state.
“I take the responsibility that I probably underestimated the political landscape,” he said, “or didn’t analyze it the way that I should have.”
Leadership Questions
Board members, too, have questioned Mr. Shirvani’s leadership style and capabilities, including concerns about the number of persistent vacancies on the chancellor’s staff. Until last week, for example, there had not been a permanent vice chancellor for academic affairs since the previous person in that position was reassigned to a campus job shortly after Mr. Shirvani took office. An interim chancellor had filled that role, commuting from his home in Illinois.
The system announced in late May that William C. Lesch, a marketing professor at the University of North Dakota, had been hired for the post. However, Mr. Lesch, who was a co-author of a newspaper op-ed supporting the chancellor, does not have a “minimum of five years ... experience at the provost or dean level,” which the system had advertised as one of the job’s minimum requirements. Two other applicants who met that requirement had previously rejected offers to take the job.
A Shouting Match
Some board members, too, were concerned about a controversial report from the system’s auditor, who examined allegations that Mr. Shirvani had presented misleading data to state legislators regarding the universities’ graduation and retention rates.
The auditor presented the findings of his investigation at a recent board meeting, followed by the system’s chief information officer, who offered the results of his own inquiry into the audit. Randall A. Thursby, the CIO who has worked under contract for the university system for several years, questioned whether board members or others had unduly influenced the auditor’s results through communications with him. Some board members expressed outrage and shock at Mr. Thursby’s report, and the fact that he had combed through the e-mails between staff and board members, and the meeting dissolved into a shouting match as the president announced its adjournment.
In an April 27 e-mail to Mr. Shirvani, obtained by The Chronicle, Mr. Thursby sought permission to see the e-mails of the auditor, William Eggert. Mr. Thursby said he had come across “information that links to concerns about possible irregular communications during the preparation of the report.”
Still, a majority of board members had remained supportive of the chancellor, voting to reject the auditor’s conclusions.
In the end, however, the cumulative weight of the controversies has taken a toll on the system’s reputation.
Earlier this year, an association that represents the system’s students approved a vote of no confidence in the chancellor, as did the faculty association at Minot State University.
The public debate and news coverage are “causing serious damage to the reputation and credibility of the board members individually and collectively—not to mention the damage to the system itself,” wrote a former system chancellor, Eddie Dunn, in a May 4 letter to board members.
