Meet the ultimate administrative power couple.
They are often described as the sharp-tongued patriarch and matriarch of one of the nation’s largest chiropractic colleges, forging what many former employees and alumni characterize as a co-presidency. George A. Goodman has spent nearly two decades as president of Logan College of Chiropractic University Programs, and his 2001 marriage to Elizabeth A. Goodman, a chiropractor and former Logan trustee, solidified a partnership that appears to grant Ms. Goodman powers far greater than her dean-level title would suggest.
Ms. Goodman’s influence at the nonprofit college, in a western suburb of St. Louis, is apparent to anyone who walks into the president’s office. That’s because she moved her desk in there years ago.
The Goodmans’ control of Logan, their critics argue, threatens the long-term stability of the institution, associating the college with a “mom and pop” tradition that is out of step with its efforts to secure legitimacy among more-established institutions of higher education. While the couple’s story is unique, it raises the kinds of management quandaries that have confounded many campuses where personal relationships and loyalties among administrators appear to obscure the chain of command or compromise sound governance.
College presidents’ spouses are frequent targets of criticism, and many institutions still struggle to determine their appropriate roles. But Ms. Goodman is particularly enmeshed in the operations of Logan, and her role invites questions about whether a president’s spouse can ever join a college’s central administration without alienating the cabinet’s other members.
Ms. Goodman holds the title of dean of university programs, but she communicates under what could be described as the modern presidential seal. She has access to her husband’s e-mail, sometimes invoking the royal “we” when sending directives to other administrators, including those who outrank her, documents provided to The Chronicle show.
“She basically is running the school as the de facto president,” Nicholas J. Gatto, a former Logan trustee, said of Ms. Goodman.
Mr. Gatto, a Logan alumnus, resigned from the college’s board in October. He said he was frustrated with the trustees’ tepid response to numerous letters from alumni and former employees, who complained of governance problems and nepotism. The president’s son, stepdaughter, and daughter-in-law are also employed at Logan.
To investigate the complaints, The Chronicle interviewed 15 people who have been employed by Logan or attended the college; reviewed more than 20 letters sent to board members; and obtained e-mails written by the Goodmans, among other internal documents.
Most people who spoke with The Chronicle would talk candidly about their experiences only if they were assured anonymity. They uniformly said Ms. Goodman holds boundless powers at the college, reports to no one, and joins her husband in publicly excoriating employees.
Logan officials maintain there is nothing confusing or untoward about the roles of the president and his wife, calling any characterization of Ms. Goodman as a co-president “inaccurate.”
“And, to the extent it may be coming from former employees who are no longer working at the college, we hope your story will note that.”
Current faculty at Logan did not respond to interview requests. The Goodmans and the board’s chairman also declined interviews, but the college did reply to written questions submitted to a public-relations firm hired by Logan. In those responses, college officials said Ms. Goodman’s role was “thoroughly reviewed” by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Logan’s accreditor, “without recommendation for change.”
Mr. Gatto filed a formal complaint in December with the commission, which reaffirmed Logan’s accreditation in February. The complaint remains under investigation, however, and the reaffirmation does not preclude the commission from acting on a finding of noncompliance at a future date, Sylvia Manning, the commission’s president, said in an e-mail.
‘A Real University’
Logan, which was founded in 1935, has charted a course over the last decade toward mainstream acceptance, which sometimes eludes the nation’s 14 chiropractic colleges. To that end, the college has expanded its curriculum beyond those courses traditionally offered by chiropractic colleges, adding “university programs” to its title in 2000.
In the past 10 years, Logan has increased revenues and enrollment while most other chiropractic colleges have struggled to do either. The college has done both while holding annual tuition at about $16,000, below the median of $23,000 for chiropractic colleges.
It is in the context of Logan’s growth that Ms. Goodman’s role appears even more anachronistic to her critics.
Allen M. Schwab, former dean for academic affairs at Logan and a scholar of Herman Melville, said the college’s continued reliance on familial hires sets it apart from the broader academic landscape the Goodmans hope to inhabit. When he interviewed for a job at Logan, in 2006, Mr. Schwab recalls that Elizabeth Goodman told him his traditional academic credentials were “going to help us become a real university.”
“The issue of nepotism and of family associations with the historic development of chiropractic as a profession is strong, and that’s not true of other colleges,” said Mr. Schwab, who was dean of Eureka College before he came to Logan and now teaches part time at Washington University in St. Louis.
Ms. Goodman, who resigned from Logan’s board in 1997, took a position at Logan as an unpaid consultant in 2001, the same year she married the president. She earned a Ph.D. in educational-policy studies at the University of Kentucky in 2003, and Logan’s board approved her hiring as a dean in 2008.
Mr. Gatto, then on the board, said he did not recall signing off on Ms. Goodman’s hiring, but Logan officials said he was present at the meeting when her employment was approved.
Ms. Goodman is one of only two Logan employees to hold both a Ph.D. and a doctorate of chiropractic, college officials said. Beyond her volunteer work at Logan, though, Ms. Goodman had no formal experience in higher-education administration before her appointment. Her position was created for her, so there was no competitive search to fill it.
“We have a strong culture and a strong talent pool at the university, and as often as possible we promote from within,” college officials said.
Jason C. Goodman, Mr. Goodman’s son from a prior marriage, was also hired as an instructor without a formal search process. Conducting a search for the position would have been atypical, Logan officials said.
None of the familial hires at Logan have been documented on the college’s Form 990, an annual federal tax form that is filed under penalty of perjury by all nonprofit organizations. The 2009 form shows that Mr. Goodman earned $791,418 in total compensation, making him the highest-paid chiropractic-college president in the nation, but the document provides no indication that his wife and family were also on the payroll.
Marcus S. Owens, a Washington lawyer who served for 10 years as director of the Internal Revenue Service’s exempt-organizations division, said Logan’s failure to report the earnings of the president’s family is “probably a material omission.” The omission is significant, he said, because the IRS considers all benefits flowing to a family when assessing whether compensation is excessive.
Logan officials said the college would take any necessary steps to comply with federal reporting requirements, but declined to provide The Chronicle with compensation information for the whole Goodman family.
Who’s Her Boss?
In recent history, few people have lasted very long in a position that requires supervising the wife of Logan’s president.
Robert M. Scott was vice president for academic affairs for only about a year before he was fired last June. He is among five men to hold the position in less than six years. There was considerably less turnover in the position before Ms. Goodman was hired, in 2008. William L. Ramsey, who held the post until 2006, served Logan in that capacity for 23 years.
Logan officials said turnover was not a problem. They cited longer-serving administrators, including Mr. Ramsey, now deceased, as part of the college’s “strong record of retaining qualified staff.”
College officials said Ms. Goodman reports to the vice president for academic affairs, although accounts from former employees and other evidence suggest that she actually reports to her husband. For instance, The Chronicle obtained a screenshot from Logan’s electronic payroll system, which states that Ms. Goodman “Reports to George Goodman.”
That reporting structure would appear to violate Logan’s nepotism policy, which states that “relatives may not report to each other.”
Logan officials said they could not verify the authenticity of the payroll chart, but said the language from the screenshot “does not accurately describe Dr. Elizabeth Goodman’s reporting relationship.”
As a practical matter, Elizabeth Goodman appears to readily give orders to her supervisor, e-mail records indicate. Writing from her husband’s e-mail account on November 6, 2009, Ms. Goodman told a vice president that her supervisor, George T. White, had not been sufficiently responsive to her requests.
“We have received nothing from George White this week relative to the dean’s list,” she wrote. “This concerns us.”
A Volatile Temper
Standing at least six feet tall, George Goodman is described by those who know him as an imposing figure who is prone to intimidation and fits of anger.
Thomas M. Huebner Jr., who resigned in 2010 as Logan’s vice president for enrollment management after less than a year, told several trustees in a letter that the Goodmans frequently and publicly dressed down other administrators.
“The president is, to say the least, volatile,” Mr. Huebner wrote, “and his volatility is matched only by the instability of the environment created by his office mate,” Ms. Goodman.
Mr. Goodman’s temper was on public display several months ago, when a video of the president briefly aired on YouTube. Through clenched teeth, Mr. Goodman repeatedly hurled crude profanities at a Logan alumnus, telling him to “shut up.”
Mr. Goodman sent a letter of apology to Logan faculty, students, staff, and alumni after the video surfaced. Elaborating to The Chronicle, Logan officials described the alumnus in the video as a “convicted felon” with whom the college had “severed its relationship.” The edited video does not show Mr. Goodman’s repeated attempts to defuse the conflict, Logan officials said.
“After a prolonged attack, Dr. George Goodman reacted emotionally,” college officials said.
The reactions displayed in the video, however, are not out of character for Mr. Goodman, Mr. Huebner told The Chronicle.
“The world is now seeing what we saw routinely,” said Mr. Huebner, who is now dean of student services at Shelton State Community College, in Alabama.
Students say they were not off-limits from the Goodmans, either. Four Logan graduates wrote separate letters to trustees about the Goodmans’ visiting a class to discuss a controversial curricular change, only to march out in anger when pressed for details. One woman was “openly mocked, ridiculed, and yelled at by Dr. George Goodman, to the point where the student was in tears,” Rachel Sefton, a 2010 graduate, wrote in a letter to trustees.
Mr. Goodman and other staff were unaware the student ever “became emotional during that discussion,” Logan officials said. “After reviewing the facts, the board reiterated its support for Dr. Goodman.”
Another former employee, who asked not to be identified, said the Goodmans often criticized other administrators in cabinet meetings. On one occasion several years ago, the former employee recalled, Ms. Goodman encouraged an unnamed administrator to step forward and admit to his failings before his colleagues.
“You know who you are, so you might as well raise your hand,” the employee recalls Ms. Goodman saying.
The hand that was raised was that of Mr. White, who was then Ms. Goodman’s supervisor, according to Logan’s organizational chart.
Mr. White was fired without public explanation in 2010, after fewer than 14 months on the job.
Asked if he recalled the incident from the cabinet meeting, Mr. White said he had signed a legal agreement that prohibits him from making any disparaging remarks about Logan. He said, however, that he had been “blinded by money” when he agreed to work at Logan for nearly a quarter-million dollars.
“With all roses there are some thorns,” said Mr. White, who is now an assistant professor of health, kinesiology, and recreation at Southern Arkansas University.
The ‘Vendetta’
Something akin to an uprising began at Logan last spring. Under fire from alumni and former employees, Mr. Goodman believed a coup was afoot, Mr. Gatto said.
The president informed trustees on a conference call that he planned to snuff out the conspirators with the help of a company called SpearTip. Led by a former U.S. counterintelligence agent, SpearTip promises to “assess and neutralize the threats to an organization.”
“They thought there was somebody in the college, an employee, that was coordinating this from the inside,” someone with “a vendetta against the Goodmans,” Mr. Gatto said. The company searched through employees’ computers and trash for evidence, he said.
College officials would not discuss the investigation’s findings, but said SpearTip had been hired to look into a “suspected data breach,” adding that a violation of college policies would warrant “disciplinary action.”
“As an employer, the institution has a responsibility to know how Logan equipment is being used,” Logan officials said.
Shortly after the investigation began, Glenn A. Bub, Logan’s chief of health-center administrative services, and Mr. Scott, vice president for academic affairs, were fired without public explanation. Both declined interview requests.
Mr. Gatto said he was unable to attend the June board meeting where the investigation’s findings were discussed, adding that he was disappointed the board did not hire an outside counsel to review the complaints against the Goodmans.
“The board has turned a blind eye,” Mr. Gatto said.
Steven C. Roberts, the board’s chairman, issued a statement to The Chronicle that called the board’s review “comprehensive,” pointing out that Mr. Gatto was “the only board member who chose not to participate.”
To the Goodmans’ critics, it is disappointing, but not altogether surprising, that the visible successes of Mr. Goodman’s presidency are significant enough to overshadow any misgivings that may exist in the minds of board members.
But behind that success story, one employee said, there is a human toll.
“They have done wonderful things for the campus in building buildings, and beautifying the campus, and making it a first-class chiropractic college,” he said. “But they’ve done it on the backs of people that they have just beat down.”
