On Her First Day at UNC, Margaret Spellings Prepares to Face Her Critics

Margaret Spellings has faced more than four months of near-constant criticism since she was named president of the University of North Carolina system. The former U.S. secretary of education knows that some opposition comes with the territory; she has spent decades in public life.

But “to see that visceral reaction before I’d even done one thing was a little surprising,” Ms. Spellings said on Monday in a phone interview with The Chronicle. She takes office as North Carolina’s president on Tuesday, at a $775,000 annual salary.

Since her appointment last October, students and faculty members have led regular protests of Ms. Spellings and demanded her firing. A demonstration in January led to four arrests, including three North Carolina students. Walkouts and rallies on at least six campuses are planned for Tuesday.

The protesters have criticized the system’s Board of Governors for selecting Ms. Spellings despite her nonacademic background and her lack of North Carolina ties — as well as her history as an architect under President George W. Bush of the No Child Left Behind Act, which made high-stakes testing the cornerstone of accountability in elementary and secondary education. They also say her past ties to corporations, including a student-debt-collection agency and the parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix, make her a poor choice to lead a public university.

Not all faculty members and students are protesting, however. Many say they don’t want to alienate the new president before she’s even started her job. Regardless of her ideology, they say, it’s tough to disagree with her arguments about educational access. Some hope she’ll be able to use her Republican credentials to improve communication between the university and state lawmakers.

Ms. Spellings stressed that the system’s board didn’t elect her to serve as an academic expert. “I am not a faculty member or a scholar — I don’t pretend to be at all,” she said. While she was education secretary, she created a Commission on the Future of Higher Education, and its 2006 report underscored her priorities of “creating universities that people can afford to go to and environments where they’ll be successful.” Driving public policy to reach those goals, she said, “is what I know how to do.”

Ms. Spellings is replacing a widely respected leader in Thomas W. Ross, who was pushed out by the board last year. That’s far from the only challenge she faces. She must repair a fractured relationship with state legislative leaders, restore public trust in the system’s board, and win over faculty members who fear that the system is losing its national stature after years of state disinvestment. Simultaneously, she’ll have to contend with the political baggage of her years in the Bush administration.

But Ms. Spellings isn’t one to shy away from such tests; she said she embraces them. And she’s starting off with a packed schedule during her first week: She’ll meet with her new colleagues in the system office, the chancellors, students, and faculty and staff leaders. She’s also visiting Fayetteville State University, a historically black institution and her first stop on what she’s calling a “world tour” of the system’s campuses between now and May.

She’ll ask the same questions of each administrator, professor, and student: What about your university makes you proud? What, in your opinion, are the most important issues facing your institution? And where does your campus have work to do?

‘A Terrible Chapter’

The system’s board, for one, is ready for Ms. Spellings to take the reins after a tumultuous year.

The board has been plagued by criticism since January 2015, when it suddenly forced Mr. Ross to resign but offered few reasons for doing so. Many observers have speculated that politics played a role in the decision. Since Mr. Ross, a Democrat, was hired, in late 2010, the board has experienced a nearly complete turnover and is now mostly made up of Republicans.

The search for his successor didn’t go smoothly, either. Faculty leaders and some board members complained that they had been shut out of the process. Questions swirled about how the board had chosen Ms. Spellings, and John C. Fennebresque, the board’s chairman at the time, resigned after she was named president.

“It’s been a bumpy year,” said Hannah D. Gage, a former chairwoman of the board who now serves as a nonvoting emeritus member. Ms. Gage led the search that ended with the hiring of Mr. Ross, and she called his ouster “a terrible chapter in our history.”

But she said she was excited about Ms. Spellings, particularly her focus on fundamentals in higher education: access, accountability, affordability, and making sure students succeed.

W. Marty Kotis III, a board member, said he perked up during Ms. Spellings’s remarks to the board last month when she talked about taxpayers, job preparation, and accountability metrics. “It was music to my ears,” Mr. Kotis said.

The board has recently seen a leadership vacuum, said W. Louis Bissette Jr., the board’s interim chairman. Mr. Bissette called Mr. Ross “a great friend of mine” but said that “he was essentially a lame-duck president for the past year.”

That might have led to the board’s taking a more-active role than usual in managing the system, Mr. Bissette said, for instance ordering the closing of three campus-level academic centers after a tense, divisive review.

Ms. Spellings said during her remarks last month that “we must set clear expectations of institutional leaders and then get out of their way.” For instance, she said in a later interview, she might negotiate with officials on a campus to raise its graduation rate by a certain date, “and then let them get there as they see fit.”

Her comments gave Ms. Gage the impression that the new president would focus on such broad goals as student success. “I don’t think she believes it’s her role to tell chancellors what they can and cannot do,” Ms. Gage said.

‘No Undergraduate Left Behind’?

But most hopes for Ms. Spellings’s presidency have been drowned out in the public sphere by her vocal critics. Ask them why the new president is such a problematic choice, and you’ll hear the familiar concerns about her background. They also fear she’s a product of the conservative takeover that has shaken up the legislature and the board.

Michael C. Behrent, an associate professor of history at Appalachian State University, said lawmakers and board members were the driving forces behind a series of disturbing trends across the state: no faculty pay raises, persistent budget cuts, and proposals that aim to distance the system from its public liberal-arts mission. Her references to students as “customers” have also sent a troubling message, said Mr. Behrent, who has participated in a protest of Ms. Spellings.

“I can’t imagine that the ultimate agenda of appointing this president of the UNC system is not in some way to continue to pursue that agenda,” he said. The most optimistic reaction he’s heard about Ms. Spellings: “It wasn’t Art Pope.” (Mr. Pope is a familiar conservative figure in North Carolina politics whose family’s foundation bankrolls a handful of right-leaning think tanks.)

The faculty at the system’s flagship passed a resolution last month calling on Ms. Spellings to commit to support programs related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. That vote came in response to comments she made about the LGBT community that drew a backlash.

Jeffrey P. Braden, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University, is an educational psychologist, so he’s familiar with Ms. Spellings’s work as secretary of education. He wonders whether she’ll try to craft standardized tests to measure skills like critical thinking. “The worry I would have is that she’d try to do ‘No Undergraduate Left Behind,’” he said.

Student and faculty organizers say they plan to protest Ms. Spellings during the board’s meeting at Fayetteville State this week. Still, Mr. Bissette, the board’s interim chairman, doesn’t think the negative views of Ms. Spellings are prevalent across the system. Most of the demonstrations have drawn 30 to 35 people at most, he said. “We’ve had a lot of loud voices,” he said, “but I don’t believe those voices adequately reflect the great majority of our faculty and students.”

By Ms. Spellings’s own estimates, “there are a lot of people who are in support of me.” She hopes professors and students “will give me a chance.”

3 Steps Ahead

Some faculty members say they plan to do just that. John McGowan, a professor of humanities at Chapel Hill, was taken aback by the board’s ousting of Mr. Ross. Still, Mr. McGowan said, “I don’t want to tar Margaret Spellings with any of that.”

Judging the new president harshly before she has taken office doesn’t make sense, said Stephen T. Leonard, an associate professor of political science at Chapel Hill and chair of the system’s Faculty Assembly. “That’s like denying someone tenure before they’ve had a chance to do any work,” he said.

Jon M. Young, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Fayetteville State, acknowledges the concerns of faculty and staff members at historically black colleges like his. Many wonder whether Ms. Spellings will be able to look past their enrollment struggles and understand their regional importance. But Mr. Young sees potential for her to create better channels of information between the university and lawmakers.

Some recent proposals that have come out of the state legislature — for instance, a program that would require some would-be North Carolina students to get a community-college degree first — “are not really based on any dialogue with the campuses themselves,” Mr. Young said. “I hope she’ll remedy that.”

Zackary King, president of the system’s Association of Student Governments and a nonvoting member of the board, has met with Ms. Spellings and said he appreciated her care for students’ input and her motivated mind-set. “She stares right at you,” Mr. King said. “She’s thinking three steps ahead constantly.”

Just how aligned she will be with Republicans in the legislature and in the governor’s office remains up for debate. Ms. Spellings described herself as “a data-driven decision maker” who won’t let politics interfere with policy. “We’re all mindful that the tide can turn,” she said, referring to which party is in power. “I want to make sure I’m an effective leader no matter what the state of play is with our elected officials.”

But Mr. Braden, the North Carolina State dean, has lingering questions. “What will happen if the legislature introduces a bill to require all professors to teach a 4-4 load [as happened last year]? How will she respond to that?” he asked.

The role Ms. Spellings is taking on “will test her extensive experience in politics to do it well,” Mr. Braden said. A lot is riding on her success, he added, because the university system is grappling with an identity crisis: How does it adjust to a new norm of lower state support while maintaining affordability and academic quality?

“We need a hero,” Mr. Braden said. “I hope she’s it.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.