Presidential Search Has Faculty Members Fuming at Kentucky State

Rosalind Essig, Kentucky State Journal

Presidential searches can be messy affairs. A search at Kentucky State University has been especially so.

The university announced the search in May, after the resignation of the president, Raymond M. Burse. The historically black public institution hired a search firm to assist in the process.

Kentucky State’s financial problems are well known. In 2014 it kicked out a quarter of its students for not paying tuition; later it readmitted 70 percent of them after they paid their bills. Last year, fears arose that state-budget cuts would force the Frankfort campus to close its doors.

The continuing search has added tension to the situation.

Over the past few months, a faculty petition was circulated to cancel the search, a warning was made to faculty members not to discuss the search in the classroom, and steps toward a vote of no confidence in the Board of Regents leadership were taken. Critics have also questioned he university’s efforts to keep the search process a secret.

The situation at Kentucky State reflects broader anxiety in higher education about how much shared governance extends to the picking of presidents.

“I think this is all a part of the corporate model being brought now to universities,” said Rudy Fichtenbaum, president of the American Association of University Professors, referring to universities’ reliance on search firms. “I don’t think that model works in an academic setting.”

Around Thanksgiving, some faculty members at Kentucky State became concerned that the nine-member search committee, along with Academic Search, the firm it had hired, was not doing its job.

The professors, who said they saw no notices for the open position listed on major jobs boards, were worried that the university would miss out on good candidates. Fifty faculty members sent a petition to the Board of Regents, asking that it call off the search and restart it later.

In a statement from the general counsel, Gordon A. Rowe Jr., the university responded that the search was going according to schedule.

“The best practice in regard to the search is to conduct a national, competitive search, designed and guided by an experienced, well-respected search firm,” Mr. Rowe wrote. “The process allows for input by all university stakeholders,” although “not everyone participates at every stage.”

Kentucky State and the search committee did not respond to requests for comment from The Chronicle.

Limited Faculty Involvement

Mr. Rowe and the administration are not alone in the belief that independent firms are the best way to conduct a fair presidential search, especially at historically black colleges.

“I am ecstatic to see that Kentucky State University is going against a frightening trend among HBCUs where leaders are retained or appointed without the benefit of a comprehensive search,” Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, wrote in an op-ed essay.

But some academics remain wary of search firms and how their use affects faculty involvement.

“The model seems to be changing, and actually not for the better from our perspective,” said Mr. Fichtenbaum, a professor of economics at Wright State University. “In a number of cases, faculty have been largely excluded from the process, or the faculty that do participate have been chosen by administrators and not by faculty.”

Often, he added, committee members are sworn to secrecy, so even though faculty members are involved in the search, they are not allowed to talk about it with the people they represent on the campus.

A lack of transparency is apparent in the search process at Kentucky State, said Kimberly Sipes, president of the Faculty Senate.

Looking for more involvement, faculty members asked the Board of Regents for additional representation on the search committee. Of the panel’s nine members, only one was a faculty member: Elgie McFayden, an associate professor in the School of Public Administration, Social Work, and Criminal Justice. The request was denied, Ms. Sipes told The Chronicle. (Mr. McFayden did not respond to emails seeking comment.)

The search committee announced its finalists on February 9, but conspicuously missing from the list, to the dismay of the faculty, was Aaron Thompson, the interim president, who many in the university community believed should have been included.

“First it was disbelief that he wasn’t there,” said Ms. Sipes. “We listed a lot of different reasons why he should be considered, so it was hard for us to believe that out of 68 applicants, he would not be one of the top three.”

As faculty members became more vocal and tensions on campus grew, the interim provost, Candice Love Jackson, told faculty members to “immediately” refrain from discussing the search in their classrooms.

“This is unacceptable and an inappropriate forum in which to have these discussions,” she said.

That didn’t sit well with faculty members. “Faculty are understandably upset and believe this is a violation of academic freedom,” Ms. Sipes said in an interview.

Last week, the three finalists, M. Christopher Brown II, a former president of Alcorn State University; Said L. Sewell III, most recently provost of Lincoln University, in Missouri; and Tom Colbert, the first black chief justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, visited Kentucky State and held public forums where they discussed the how they would lead the university.

According to the search firm’s timeline, the new president is expected to be announced by mid-March; some observers expect the announcement as early as this week.

Adam Harris is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @AdamHSays or email him at adam.harris@chronicle.com.