At Occidental, opinion is mixed on departing president’s performance

The day after Occidental College’s president of only 17 months resigned, faculty and students expressed a mixture of anxiety about instability at the Eagle Rock campus and hope that the next president would stake out a higher public and fundraising profile than Susan Westerberg Prager did.

“We are paying $200,000 for our college education and we are getting inconsistency” in leadership, said senior Rozell Hodges, who was among about 200 students attending a Tuesday meeting at which trustees described plans to appoint an interim president by Jan. 1. A national search will then be conducted to find a new president by July 2009.

Prager, the first female president at the 1,877-student school, cited a lack of strong compatibility with the college trustees and senior administrators and said she would leave office Dec. 31. A former dean of UCLA’s law school, she is expected to become a history professor at Occidental in 2009.

Although the school’s trustees insisted Prager was not fired, many on campus said they had no doubt that she had lost the confidence of the governing board’s leaders. Some complained that the trustees did not give Prager enough time to prove herself, while others said the nationally competitive nature of academia did not allow for her often slow, deliberative style.

Occidental faculty President Movindri Reddy described Prager as a disappointment in her fundraising and in her decision-making manner. The campus endowment is respectable -- at $377 million as of July -- and the school hit a record of $25.7 million in donations last year. But Occidental still lags well behind the resources of such rivals as Pomona and Oberlin colleges, and some of the gains last year were the fruit of efforts initiated before Prager took on the presidency, officials said.

“We didn’t see as much progress as we expected” on fundraising, said Reddy, who is a professor of diplomacy and world affairs.

Prager also had trouble with Occidental’s governance structure, sometimes not consulting or listening enough to faculty wishes about, for example, which department should add professors, Reddy said. Prager had strong opinions about hiring issues but at the same time “she took so long to make decisions,” Reddy added.

However, another well-placed faculty member who requested anonymity said many professors were pleased with Prager’s leadership and were angry at the way trustees treated her. Prager inherited a relatively weak fundraising office and was trying to improve it, he said. “She was out there hustling and knew how to raise money, but the trustees did not give her a chance to do that,” the professor said.

Prager, 64, did not return phone calls seeking a comment.

Citing confidentiality issues, most trustees declined to discuss Prager’s resignation in detail.

“Occidental will prevail and we will move forward and put this matter behind us,” said trustee Ronald Estrada, who is a dentist. Of Prager, he said only that “the compatibility we needed to have probably was not there.”

Trustee Susan Schroeder, a compensation consultant, described Prager as a hardworking president “who had the best interests of the college at heart.” But Schroeder said she hoped the next president would have more proven fundraising ability and more sense of strategic planning.

About 100 faculty and staff gathered Tuesday morning to listen to trustees Chairman Dennis Collins and Vice Chairman John Farmer speak about the situation. Prager was present but did not speak. Collins, former president of the James Irvine Foundation, thanked Prager for her work and asked professors to work with the administration.

“I wouldn’t classify that we are in a state of emergency,” he said. “I would classify us as needing to join together.”

Much of Occidental’s fundraising occurs in December. Farmer, a retired investment banker, said he did not think Prager’s departure would discourage alumni donations, though he acknowledged that “it’s unfortunate that we have a resignation right before this period of annual giving.”

While Collins characterized the upcoming search for a president as a chance for the college to move forward, some faculty questioned why they were not told of the impending resignation earlier and complained that trustees rarely consult them.

“This is a huge failure. Characterizing this as an opportunity is like a drug addict characterizing their latest binge as an opportunity,” Adrian Hightower, an assistant professor of physics, said as other faculty broke into applause.

Hightower, who said he had high regard for Prager, recalled the campus president often working until 2 a.m. on letters of recommendation for students. “That’s not something a president has to do. She went the extra mile,” he said.

Some students also said they were sorry to see Prager leave. “She’s an amazing person. She was so supportive,” said Jodie Sasaki, a senior.

William G. Tierney, director of USC’s Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis, said such a fast departure, particularly in mid-year, was rare in academia. But he noted that presiding over a well-regarded liberal arts college, such as Occidental, has become more difficult because of financial pressures and competition with other schools in Southern California and nationwide.

Occidental has risen several slots in recent years to be 36th among the nation’s liberal arts colleges in rankings by U.S. News & World Report. In addition, it has lifted its national profile so that 61% of freshmen this year are from out of California.

Still, Tierney said it was “often hard for an institution like that to mark out its territory and identity.” A president must balance the drive for tuition dollars with the need to keep the academic quality of students. That can be difficult if the trustees, faculty and president don’t “work aggressively together to create a clear strategic plan,” he said.

larry.gordon@latimes.com

jason.song@latimes.com