Poshard calls for campus input in chancellor decision

By Gus Bode

All members of the SIUC community will be given the opportunity to grill chancellor finalists this month, but the decision as to who will lead the university in the upcoming years is on the shoulders of one man.

SIU President Glenn Poshard said Monday he plans to present his chancellor recommendation to the Board of Trustees at its June 14 meeting, but will enlist the help of a variety of sources, including the entire campus community, in determining his choice.

“This is an important decision for me,” Poshard said. “The more information I get from all of the groups as well as the search firm, then the better I think I can make a decision with respect to who this person will be.”

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One factor in the decision, Poshard said, comes from surveys filled out by the various people who meet with each finalist during their on-site visits.

On Monday, it was in the form of an open forum with faculty for finalist Sue Hammersmith, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

About 25 faculty members attended the meeting with Hammersmith, the second of four finalists to visit campus in search of the top post. In the hour-long session, Hammersmith described her strengths as bringing diverse members of the campus community together and getting them to work as a team under a common vision.

Hammersmith said she may not be able to pick out flaws in every aspect of the multiple departments and groups in the university, but would trust skilled individuals to further a collective vision.

“You depend on good people and you support them and you learn fast and you have a system where the planning takes place,” she said.

Hammersmith tackled a variety of issues, highlighting the importance of fundraising and the need for cross-campus collaboration in ongoing, comprehensive strategic plans.

“You have to have a planning process that is continually monitoring what you are doing, looking for fresh ideas and opportunities, recognizing what isn’t working anymore and figure out graceful and respectful ways to divert some resources to something that is more needy,” she said.

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Hammersmith emphasized creating a balance in terms of how these strategic visions – specifically the Southern at 150 plan to make the university a top 75 research institution by 2019 – will function and thrive.

Hammersmith said she was familiar with the document and discussed it with Poshard in terms of his vision.

“When I read it over there are things in there that I think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool, that makes sense,’ but what I would do as chancellor is to be able to spend a lot of time talking and listening with the various constituencies on the campus community to learn more about what reflects the university best,” she said. “There may be parts of it that I think, ‘Oh, that’s not workable from a practical point of view,’ but it’s up to me to learn a lot more first.”

Michelle Miller, an associate professor of sociology, said Hammersmith came off as an effective collaborator with an emphasis on shared governance.

“There is an existing vision on this campus, but as an outsider she hasn’t yet been privy to those priorities we hold, and because she wants to bring the constituency groups to the table as the chancellor – which she should – that would become a shared vision,” Miller said. “She wouldn’t be coming in trying to transform SIUC, but rather be building what we’ve already done and be building on what we already are.”

Miller said she is waiting until she sees all four candidates to form her opinion, but said Hammersmith seemed more in tune with her idea of what a chancellor should be than last week’s finalist John Frederick, executive vice president and provost at the University of Nevada in Reno.

“I found his examples he used to be very top down, very driven by an administrative view of the world rather than a collaborative view,” Miller said. “He knows what he’s supposed to say, but has not engaged in those actions, so I’m a little bit more concerned about whether he would be as collaborative.”

Faculty Association President Marvin Zeman said Hammersmith said many of the right things and gave educated answers, which he expected for all candidates.

“That’s what people who apply for these jobs do – they try to say the right things. Whether that will translate into the right actions is another matter,” he said.

Zeman said he saw the same thing when former Chancellor Walter Wendler interviewed for the post in 2001.

“He gave very good impressions, but it was very clear after he came here that he had no intentions of doing that, because he didn’t,” Zeman said.

Zeman said it is more effective to focus on what a candidate has done in previous work and relay that to the decision makers.

“Certainly I’m not going to be shy about letting President Poshard know what the leaders of the Faculty Association have found out about people and give him my advice whether he likes it or not,” he said.

Miller said the opinion of the collective groups should be taken into account in trying to determine the validity of the candidates.

“We are at a place we need to see the leadership of the university is willing to turn things around and transform our campus into what we should be or could be, and that needs to be a question we should all have some input into,” she said. “They need valued input. They don’t need rumor, innuendo, et cetera.”

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