As Michigan State University’s trustees gathered virtually early Friday morning to hire their new president, a sense of hope surrounded the outcome. Maybe the new leader would be the solution to years-long conflict and scandal.
Seven hundred miles to the south, the mood at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill isn’t as upbeat. Students, faculty, and staff are wondering whether political discord between the campus and the system administrators would increase.
After weeks of speculation, Kevin M. Guskiewicz announced that he’s jumping from the chancellorship at UNC-Chapel Hill to the presidency at Michigan State. He appeared at MSU’s virtual board meeting wearing a Spartan green tie a colleague gave him Thursday night.
“I’m not running from a terrible situation,” Guskiewicz, who has been at UNC for nearly 30 years, working up from a faculty position to being chancellor, told The Chronicle in an interview Friday morning. “I’m not looking backwards. I’m looking forward. You just reach a point where you ask yourself if you can take what I’ve learned in the roles here and bring it to somewhere else.”
While Guskiewicz was reluctant to reflect on his time in North Carolina, university insiders paint a picture of discord between him, the system president he reports to, and the system’s governing board. Sources previously told The Chronicle that Guskiewicz and system leaders had informally agreed that he would leave by the end of the academic year, allowing them to preside over the search for his replacement.
The Chronicle previously reported that most expect Lee Roberts, a member of the system’s governing board and a former state-budget director for a Republican governor, to be named interim chancellor and to hold an inside track to the permanent post. No official announcement of an interim has been made. System officials did not return requests for information on a timeline for an announcement.
For over a decade, the state’s Republican politicians have moved to seize control of the UNC system’s governance, making for politically charged controversies. The American Association of University Professors condemned the politicization of the system in a report last year, and the state’s Democratic governor has pushed for reforms.
There is deep concern about the next chapter. Our campus community is really craving stability and consistency.
“The governance is in a meltdown,” said Holden Thorp, a former Chapel Hill chancellor and editor in chief of the Science family of journals.
“For the time being,” Thorp added, North Carolina Republican politicians want “the chaos to go on there so they can compete with Florida for conservative kudos,” he said, claiming that the Board of Governors made it so Guskiewicz had to leave. “They wanted credit for pushing him out.”
What’s next has many worried. “There is deep concern about the next chapter,” said Kathryn E. (Beth) Moracco, chair of the faculty. “Our campus community is really craving stability and consistency.”
Of immediate concern is who gets selected to be the interim when Guskiewicz leaves in mid-January (he starts at MSU on March 4). UNC system president, Peter Hans, will appoint the interim chancellor.
That person should be someone with experience in higher education, Morocco said. “This is not something you can learn on the job.”
In a statement, the chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees echoed that sentiment. “A university of the stature of UNC-Chapel Hill deserves a thoughtful and thorough national search for its next chancellor, beginning immediately upon the appointment of an interim chief executive,” John P. Preyer said Friday. “The trustees, the faculty, and other key members of the Carolina family stand ready to participate fully in the search. My hope is that President Hans will consider interim candidates with strong Carolina ties and stellar credentials who would keep the university moving forward on all fronts until a new chancellor is appointed. Given the challenges and opportunities the university faces, a steady hand through the transition will be important for everyone involved.”
After an interim is named, the search for a permanent chancellor will start. In May, the system’s board adopted a new process for such searches that places much of the authority in the hands of the system president. He names the search committee’s members (including its chair) after consulting with the chairman of the campus’s board; develops the criteria the new chancellor should fit; interviews the finalists selected by the search committee; negotiates the new chancellor’s contract; and presents the pick to the system’s board for sign-off.
That is a modification of a previous policy that allowed Hans to directly pick some finalists unilaterally. The new process also allows Board of Governors members to serve on search committees, which present candidates to the campus board, which then sends a list of three unranked finalists to the system president. However, the policy says that Hans can interview any of the finalists, or none of them, before sending his pick to the Board of Governors.
The new chancellor needs to be someone who can “build bridges between the university and the outside community, between the university and the Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors,” said Mark McNeilly, a professor of the practice of marketing in Chapel Hill’s business school. He said that while a nonacademic appointee would make many faculty members nervous, not having higher-education experience isn’t necessarily a drawback or disqualification.
“It needs to be someone who can openly communicate and maintain communications with a wide variety of stakeholders,” Morocco said, noting Guskiewicz had that ability.
While Guskiewicz is leaving the uncertainty and political fights of North Carolina, he’s jumping into a university with its own share of troubles, including a board that has been openly at war with itself. The last permanent president resigned, saying he had lost confidence in the board’s ability to govern.
Guskiewicz said that during the interview process, board members were open about the issues.
“I like the fact that they acknowledged they’ve had problems,” he said, adding he and the board talked about the need to hire a consultant to work on the relationship between the board and the president. “They convinced me they are willing to work” on the issues. “We all agreed to stay in our lanes. I’m very optimistic about what we can accomplish together.”
