Sunday, August 23, 2009

Some search committees take hiring a university president seriously

In the days before they interviewed Dr. Bruce Speck, members of the Presidential Search Committee visited the campus of Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tenn.

They visited with faculty, administrators, and students, and carefully checked the references of Dr. Bruce Speck, a candidate for university president at that point.

Unfortunately for the faculty, students, and patrons of Missouri Southern State University, it was not the MSSU Presidential Search Committee headed by Dwight Douglas that performed so admirably, it was the search committee for Missouri Western University in St. Joseph.

Less than two months before Missouri Southern hired Speck, one of only two candidates presented to the Board of Governors, and the only one who was actually interviewed (the other one dropped out when he was hired at another university), the St. Joseph Search committee not only visited Austin Peay, but also the campuses of the other two finalists, Dr Robert Vartabedian, at Eastern New Mexico University, and Dr. David Atkinson, at Manotick, Ontario, Canada. All three men were eventually interviewed by the board.

And incidentally, the Missouri Western Board of Governors discussed hiring a search firm in open session, unlike the Missouri Southern Board, which violated Missouri's open meetings law by taking the discussion behind closed doors.

During community sessions at St. Joseph, the public asked Speck and the other candidates any questions they wished. They did not have to write them out and have them pre-screened as was the case with the public session set up by Douglas at MSSU.

The Missouri Southern Board of Governors appointed the presidential search committee under a shroud of secrecy, again violating the open meetings law since there is absolutely no exception for appointing a committee.

The following passage is taken from a Sept. 20, 2007, Joplin Globe article written by Joe Hadsall:

In August, board Chairman Dwight Douglas said the meeting was not a violation of the Sunshine Law. He said the action behind closed doors was justified because the governors would be mentioning the names of prominent people. Douglas said the board wanted to be able to notify the committee members before their names were publicized.


While it is noble that Douglas, a lawyer who should have known better, was so solicitous of the sensitivities of "prominent people," it was still an obvious Sunshine Law violation.

In a news release, however, Douglas did make an accurate assessment of the effect Bruce Speck's hiring would have on Missouri Southern State University, even before Speck was hired:

“This undertaking is one of the more important events that will take place in the city of Joplin. It will shape the future of higher education for the area for years to come.”

***

From Saturday: MSSU Presidential Search Committee didn't do its job.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here are the six schools where Dr. Speck interviewed and left empty handed before coming to MSSU:

Dickinson State University (November 2007). Dr. Speck lost out to Dr. Richard McCallum, who was MSSU’s vice president at the time.

Missouri Western State University (December 2007). Dr. Speck lost out to Robert A. Vartabedian.

Henderson State University. (November 2007). Dr. Speck lost out to Dr. Charles Welch.

Austin Peay University (April 2007). Dr. Speck lost out to Dr. Timothy Hall.

Radford University (June 2007). Dr. Speck applied to be provost, but again didn’t get the job.

West Texas A&M University (November 2005). Dr. Speck lost out to J. Patrick O’Brien.

Anonymous said...

A loser at six schools!

That should have been enough warning, Douglas!

The search committee should be ashamed

Anonymous said...

The search process left a bad taste in many mouths around campus. First, we were told about a pool of numerous candidates. Then, we had two, and later just one. Speck's selection had the feel of a phony election in a communist dictatorship. The candidate was ushered around campus and protected from any hard questions. It was clear from the beginning that the fix was in and that Speck was little more than a puppet for Dwight Douglas. Here's to the day when Southern will be free of the Little Napoleon, and his stooge.

gmc said...

The Board of Governors has demonstrated incompetence in 3 ways: 1) not employing sufficient oversight when Dr. Leon was president to prevent the reserve spending that led to his untimely retirement; 2) conducting the Presidential search the way they did, violating the sunshine law, closing the search in spite of having all candidates except one withdraw from consideration; 3) failing to exercise sufficient oversight on Speck, to prevent all the Vice Presidents from resigning.

Speck is spectacular in his ability to destroy morale and programs at MSSU.

Anonymous said...

To GMC:

Members of the board of governors at MSSU are to be blamed for being LAZY and UNINVOLVED in allowing Mr. Douglas to control the affairs of the board and the college. No amount of the closest supervision by the board could have prevented the return to teaching of our vice-presidents. People don't like to work for stupid and incompetent leaders. Leon's vice-presidents left Southern to become successful university presidents somewhere else. That should tell us something.
The bulk of the college reserves (4 million) were spent by the board on the Banner software program that few of us around here like.