President John V. Lombardi of the University of Florida agreed to resign last week, reportedly at the behest of state higher-education officials who had lost their tolerance for his often-obstreperous management style.
Mr. Lombardi, who is credited with bolstering the university’s reputation during his nine and a half years at the helm, issued a statement saying he would resign, effective November 1. He plans to remain on the campus as a tenured professor of history and the director of the university’s Center for Florida Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He will be paid $225,000 a year, 10 per cent less than his current salary.
Mr. Lombardi’s announcement followed more than a week of private negotiations with the chancellor of Florida’s University System, Adam W. Herbert, Jr. The talks culminated in several days of confusion, during which University of Florida and system offices issued conflicting accounts of Mr. Lombardi’s job status and plans.
Chancellor Herbert raised additional questions last week, when he confirmed that the system’s Inspector General was investigating alleged misspending at the institution. He said the state’s whistle-blower-protection laws precluded him from elaborating on the investigation, but it had not brought Mr. Lombardi’s resignation.
Both Chancellor Herbert and President Lombardi denied reports that Mr. Lombardi had been under pressure to resign. Mr. Lombardi said he had been contemplating the move “for some time,” and Mr. Herbert said he agreed that “this is the right time for him to make the transition back to the faculty.”
Although Mr. Herbert said he had an “excellent working relationship” with Mr. Lombardi, sources within the university system said Mr. Herbert had grown weary of having to rein in the maverick president and mend fences that he had damaged. They said several recent missteps by Mr. Lombardi had prompted the chancellor to suggest that the university president might be wise to move on, especially with his annual performance review looming this fall.
“Unfortunately, some of the qualities that made [Mr. Lombardi] a successful and visionary leader also caused him some problems -- in terms of his interpersonal style and his communications skills -- with his superiors and peers,” observed Dennis M. Ross, the chairman of the university system’s Board of Regents.
Among the problems he cited, Mr. Lombardi had approved pay raises of $25,000 to $39,000 for four top university administrators, apparently without the knowledge of Mr. Herbert, who was asking Mr. Lombardi about the raises as of last week. One of the four administrators -- the university’s provost and vice-president for academic affairs -- was due to earn about $270,000 annually, substantially more than Mr. Herbert, Mr. Lombardi, or any of Florida’s other public-university presidents.
Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, was among those who voiced concern about the pay increases.
In an August 23 letter to Mr. Herbert, Mr. Lombardi explained that each of the four administrators had taken on new responsibilities, mainly because of the recent consolidation of offices in the university and its Health Science Center.
Mr. Ross noted, however, that Mr. Lombardi had been chastised for giving a similar raise to the provost a year ago. “It was an action that had a history,” he said.
Mr. Lombardi also had been accused of verbally abusing two law-school deans from other institutions who were reviewing the university’s law school. Last spring, he alienated some of his law school’s donors and alumni by naming the school for a big benefactor with a controversial past. And in early 1998, he nearly lost his job for using the term “Oreo” in reference to Mr. Herbert, who is black.
But Mr. Lombardi also is credited with several accomplishments. Those include increasing the university’s endowment almost fivefold, to nearly $500-million; doubling, to nearly $300-million, what the university takes in for sponsored research; and helping bring about significant jumps in the university’s national rankings, graduate-school enrollments, and graduation rates.
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