CSU’s Reynolds : Chancellor’s Blunt Style Perils Goals

Wynetka Ann Reynolds, 49-year-old chancellor of the sprawling California State University system, is an intelligent, energetic, hard-working educator whose administrative lapses and blunt, sometimes abrasive, personal style have sometimes undercut her finest achievements.

That impression emerged from interviews conducted in recent weeks with present and former members of the Cal State Board of Trustees, campus presidents, faculty and student leaders and state officials who frequently deal with the state university.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Cal State trustees will meet at the system’s Long Beach headquarters to evaluate Reynolds’ performance over the last 4 1/2 years. Although at least half a dozen of the 23 trustees (the chancellor is the 24th) are strongly opposed to Reynolds and would like to replace her, she is expected to keep her job.

Even so, her problems are not over.

‘Calming of the Waters’

“There’s been some calming of the waters in recent weeks,” one trustee said. “The immediate momentum to remove the chancellor has abated, but the issues of concern (to some trustees) are certainly not going to go away.”

This is so despite widespread agreement around the state that Reynolds has managed to move the massive Cal State system (19 campuses, 19,000 faculty members, 335,000 students) forward on several fronts since taking over as chancellor in September, 1982.

Admission standards have been raised. Teacher education has been improved. Special efforts to recruit minority and female faculty, staff and students are beginning to pay off. Campus building programs have resumed after a lull of several years.

“She has been very active,” said Ellis E. McCune, president of Cal State Hayward. “More has happened in the past four or five years than in the previous 10.”

‘Rocked the Boat’

Along the way, “she has rocked the boat quite a bit and that has irritated some people,” said George M. Marcus, a Palo Alto businessman and one of Reynolds’ supporters on the Board of Trustees.

But the complaints about Reynolds go beyond boat-rocking.

Critics say she is a poor administrator who sometimes makes key decisions without consulting important constituencies and who selected an ineffective deputy to run the system during her absences.

They also say Reynolds has a hot temper, administers tongue-lashings to subordinates in the Long Beach headquarters or on campuses and tends to take criticism personally.

“That’s the most harmful aspect of her style,” said a state agency head who has had many dealings with Reynolds and who, like many people interviewed for this article, asked not to be identified. “You can’t have a policy argument with her because she takes it personally. It causes the stakes on each issue to get so high that people lose their tempers and nothing gets done.”

Some Reynolds defenders say these are sexist criticisms that would not be directed at a male.

Former Cal State trustee Blanche C. Bersch, a Beverly Hills attorney, said sexism is “an important part” of the campaign against Reynolds.

“People will take action or language from a man and not think about it twice,” Bersch said. “But if a woman does or says the same things, people think she’s a crazy. That kind of criticism is definitely sexist.”

Replied a Reynolds critic: “That cuts both ways. To some extent she’s been protected because she’s a woman.”

The personal side of Reynolds’ administrative style became an issue when Richard Butwell, president of Cal State Dominguez Hills, died of a heart attack in February, two weeks after Reynolds urged him to resign.

‘Kind and Decent’

Although Reynolds insisted that she “was very kind and very decent to Richard Butwell” when she suggested that he might want to resign because of declining enrollment, a budget deficit and other problems on the Dominguez Hills campus, others have been harshly critical of her behavior.

“I have, myself, been through such sessions with the chancellor,” said San Diego State University President Thomas B. Day in a letter to trustees’ Chairman Dale B. Ride. “So have other presidents. They are brutalizing and extraordinarily stressful. One never forgets the experience.”

“There is no doubt in my mind, Day added, “that such behavior contributed to (Butwell’s) distress.”

Reynolds replied that she has had several “man-to-man” discussions with Day but has never been “brutal” to him.

President Stephen Horn of Cal State Long Beach, also in a letter to Ride, described several telephone conversations he had with Butwell between Butwell’s meeting with Reynolds and his death 15 days later.

“In my judgment, the treatment of him, as described by President Butwell, is unconscionable and unprofessional,” Horn wrote.

Rallying Point

The Butwell incident “fanned the flames” of opposition to Reynolds, said President Donald R. Gerth of Cal State Sacramento, and has become a rallying point for those who would like to oust her.

The campus presidents, like the trustees, are divided over Reynolds. Gerth, McCune and President James W. Cleary of Cal State Northridge have banded together in support--”defenders of law and order,” Gerth called the group--while Day, Horn and several other presidents are opposed to her.

At the center of all this excitement is a tall (5 feet, 8 inches), slender woman whose unusual first name has been in the family since an ancestor walked from Illinois to Texas in the 1840s, fell sick and was cared for by a Cheyenne Indian woman named Wynetka.

After a childhood in Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas, she graduated from Emporia (Kan.) State Teachers College (where her father was the president), earned a doctorate in zoology from the University of Iowa and began a career as a professor of biology and a researcher in developmental biology and embryology. Much of her research was performed with monkeys, as the scars from bites on her hands attest.

In 1977, Reynolds followed her father’s example and moved into academic administration, as vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago.

‘How Much Stress’

Her father “was pleased when I went into academic life,” she said, “but he had some misgivings when I became an administrator. He knew how much stress there was, how much you were in the public eye.”

Reynolds’ rise in higher education administration has been meteoric. After two years in the Illinois post, she moved to Ohio State University in 1979 as provost, the top academic job on that 50,000-student campus. In 1982, she was picked to head California State University, the largest higher education system in the nation.

The selection process, conducted in the final year of the administration of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., was chaotic. Faculty opinion was largely excluded. Bizarre personal candidates, some with few apparent qualifications, were put forward by Brown and others. Several well-regarded out-of-state candidates withdrew. In the end, Reynolds was named on a split vote.

“I was well aware that some (trustees) were unhappy about my selection,” Reynolds said recently. “I hoped some of them would become more enthusiastic as they got to know me, and some have. But some have not.”

Reynolds has two children from her first marriage, which ended in divorce--Rachel, now a 19-year-old junior at the University of Iowa, and Rex, 15, a 10th-grader at University High School.

State-Owned House

Four years ago, Reynolds married Dr. Thomas H. Kirschbaum, former chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Michigan State University medical school and now on the faculty at the USC School of Medicine.

They live in a three-bedroom state-owned house in an expensive Westside neighborhood. The property has a swimming pool, a tennis court and a guest house and is valued at about $1.75 million. (Some early news reports said Reynolds was driven to her Long Beach office in a limousine, but the chancellor said she drives herself--in a 5-year-old Buick.)

Reynolds’ salary is just under $120,000 a year, about $70,000 a year less than David Gardner is paid for running the University of California. She also earns about $20,000 a year for serving on three corporate boards of directors.

At Cal State, Reynolds inherited some built-in problems, not the least of which is the size of the system.

The 19 campuses sprawl from Arcata to San Diego, with additional “off-campus centers” in such places as Stockton and the Imperial Valley.

They range in size from Cal State Bakersfield (enrollment 4,320 last fall) to huge campuses like San Diego State (35,010 students), Cal State Long Beach (33,586) and Cal State Northridge (29,880).

They also vary greatly in quality--both between campuses and among academic departments on a given campus.

Since the separate “state colleges” were organized into a statewide system 25 years ago, there has been tension between the campuses and the central offices, which were located first in Los Angeles and are now along an estuary in Long Beach, facing the Queen Mary.

Some of the older and larger campuses--San Francisco State, San Jose State and San Diego State in particular--have never wanted to be part of the system.

Some campus presidents, Day and Horn especially, make no secret of their dislike for the position of chancellor, quite apart from the individual holding the job. They and some other campus chiefs sometimes ignore the central office and try to cut their own deals with trustees or with influential legislators.

“Tom Day (the San Diego State president) is a damned secessionist,” growled a trustee who supports Reynolds, “but he’s also a hell of a good president.”

The chancellor sometimes is caught between 19 demanding campus presidents and the 24 trustees, some of whom are equally demanding.

“There’s no organizational chart in the world that could support that system,” Marcus said.

Communications Problem

But Reynolds seems to have aggravated some of the problems that inevitably arise between the statewide office and the local campuses by not consulting with campus officials before making important decisions or by not communicating decisions and the rationale behind them to local campus officers.

“Sometimes the communications have broken down,” Ride said.

Reynolds also selected a chief deputy--William E. Vandament, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs--whose ability to run the statewide machinery during the chancellor’s frequent absences from Long Beach has been widely questioned.

Vandament, according to several people who have worked with him closely, is an excellent long-range academic planner who has trouble with day-to-day administration. “He’s too much of a perfectionist,” one source said. “He looks at an issue from all sides before deciding and, as a result, he got backlogged on a lot of things.”

Vandament plans to leave his job by June 30 to become a professor at Cal State Fullerton.

“I wish she had recognized the problem a little sooner,” Marcus said. “While she’s out there in the community, where she has to be, someone has to run the store, and he just wasn’t doing it.”

Despite these difficulties, Reynolds can point to a sizable list of accomplishments during her tenure as chancellor.

36.1% Salary Increase

Faculty salaries have risen 36.1% since fall, 1982, more than twice the rate of inflation. Annual construction spending has increased from $22 million to $110 million in five years.

State operating support for Cal State has risen by 43% in the last four budget years, although it is the general view in Sacramento that the system has benefited from Gardner’s very effective lobbying effort on behalf of higher education. State support for UC has increased 50.2% during the same period.

Still, Reynolds seems to be doing far better with the governor and with the Legislature than her predecessor, Glenn S. Dumke, who hated to visit Sacramento because he was so often skewered by hostile legislators. A registered Democrat, Reynolds wins praise from members of both parties.

“I’ve found her very easy to deal with,” said state Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno). “She’s much more visible than Dumke. She seems to handle herself real well in the political arena.”

Said John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, “She’s very positive, very bright, very committed and hard working. . . . I like her and I trust her.”

May Lose Major Effort

One of Reynolds’ most important Sacramento initiatives--an attempt to gain authority for Cal State to grant a limited number of doctoral degrees--appears, however, to be headed for failure. Both the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which advises the governor and Legislature on higher education matters, and a blue-ribbon group that is studying the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education have recommended that the Legislature reject the proposal.

Several Sacramento observers said Reynolds and other Cal State officials underestimated the state’s devotion to the Master Plan, which assigns primary responsibility for undergraduate instruction to Cal State and limits doctorates to the University of California.

Reynolds also failed in an effort to gain the same kind of constitutional autonomy for Cal State that is granted to the University of California, a step that would have relaxed legislative control over the system’s budget.

She has met with more success in her efforts to increase minority and female representation on the faculty and staff and in the student body. The percentage of women among tenured and tenure-track professors rose from 21.7% in 1981 to 23.6% in 1985, the last year for which figures are available, and racial minorities among tenured faculty members rose from 10.6% to 12%.

Special efforts to increase Latino enrollment have produced a 31% increase in first-time freshmen in the last four years, but the dropout rate for these students remains high and overall Latino enrollment stands at about 10%, little changed from 1982.

Admissions standards have been raised.

Minimum Requirements

Five years ago there were no course requirements for admission to a Cal State campus. Starting in fall, 1988, the requirements will be roughly similar to those for UC: four years of English, three of math, two of a foreign language, one each of history and lab science, one of either visual or performing arts and three years of “approved electives.”

This change has been widely praised.

“I would say it’s an enormous symbolic achievement,” said Michael Kirst, professor of education at Stanford University and one of the leaders of the California educational reform movement. “Kids don’t get very much counseling in many high schools, but at least now they’ll be presented with the formal requirements--’Here is what you’ve got to take if you’re interested in going to college.’ ”

Others, notably in the Latino community, are less pleased. Susan Brown, higher education director for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the new requirements will reduce Latino and other minority enrollment.

“We have a de facto segregated higher education system in California,” she said, noting that more than 80% of the Latino students who go to any college attend a two-year community college and that “few of those manage to transfer and graduate with a baccalaureate degree.”

Only 10.6% of the 27,761 students who transferred from a community college to a Cal State campus last fall were Latino, and 70.1% were white, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

‘Even Worse’

“These new requirements will make it even worse,” Brown said.

A report by the Postsecondary Education Commission has questioned whether the state’s high schools, especially those in rural areas and mostly black or Latino schools in inner cities, will be able to offer enough sections of college prep classes in time to meet the new standards.

Although Cal State officials insist that the high schools are capable of gearing up fast enough, some legislators are doubtful. A bill introduced by Assemblyman Robert Campbell (D-Richmond) would postpone implementation of the admissions requirements until 1991 or 1992.

Another Reynolds achievement--one that is less controversial--has been the strengthening of Cal State teacher education programs, which graduate about 80% of California’s public school teachers and 10% of all those in the United States.

Entrance requirements have been stiffened, “teacher education institutes” have been started on the San Diego and San Luis Obispo campuses and Reynolds has made teacher preparation an “all-campus responsibility” by preaching the gospel that an institution’s overall reputation can be no better than that of its teacher training.

Reynolds noted proudly that teacher preparation enrollments in the system have increased by at least 30% in the last two years.

A ‘Market Phenomenon

Some observers say this is simply a “market phenomenon” that is taking place across the country as better salaries and more job opportunities draw more and better students into the profession.

Lee Shulman, professor of education at Stanford and a national authority on teacher preparation, said, however, that Cal State’s teacher education programs “are on a very encouraging upward trajectory, and Ann Reynolds has played a substantial role in bringing this about.”

Despite these accomplishments, Reynolds faces strong opposition from some trustees, campus presidents and others in the Cal State system.

One reason, according to some trustees, is that she spends too much time away from her Long Beach office.

“Her style of management is not to be in the home office as much as many people think she should be,” said trustee Dean S. Lesher, a Northern California newspaper publisher. “She loves to be on national committees and that kind of thing. She loves to go to Sacramento. . . . I run a business, and I want my people to be on hand, taking care of business, not running around the country.”

Reynolds insisted, however, that she spends only one or two days each month out of state and that her California travels are part of the job.

‘I Must Get Around’

“It is not possible to be chancellor of the California State University system and sit in your office all the time,” she said. “I would love not to travel so much, but California is a very large state, and I must get around to the campuses.”

Perhaps the most damaging criticisms of Reynolds, however, are the personal ones.

Some say she does not always tell the truth. “I have . . . seen circumstances where I know that untrue information has come from the chancellor’s office,” Day wrote to Ride.

Said a trustee who is opposed to Reynolds, “I am personally discomfited by her selective memory.”

And although the chancellor has insisted, “I honestly don’t have temper tantrums,” others disagree.

“I happen to like her, but there’s no question she has a temper, a short fuse and a pretty rich vocabulary when she’s hot,” said one campus president.

Two faculty members at Humboldt State University reported that Reynolds, on a visit to that campus, took offense at an editorial in the student newspaper, marched into the newspaper office and upbraided the startled editor.

‘Pretty Dumb’ Act

“I thought that was pretty dumb,” one of the professors said. “Most people would have ignored it (the editorial).”

A former statewide official said the chancellor’s “flat-out tantrums” have the effect of “drying up information sources and making it impossible for her to get a balanced view of anything.”

Some critics see Reynolds as arrogant--”Queen Ann” is a label that has followed her from Ohio to California--but others contend that this is another sexist criticism.

Reynolds has not raised the sexism issue and says she has been quite free of it for most of her career, especially when she was doing medical research.

“If you’re quick on your feet and you can handle biting monkey heads and don’t get upset by blood and gore, then you’re accepted,” she said.

Before joining Cal State, “I had forgotten about sexism in higher education,” the chancellor said, then admitted, “I probably haven’t been as sensitive as I might have been to the fact that in today’s America--although I think it is diminishing--there are still some men in senior positions who aren’t accustomed to working with a woman.”

The trustees will try to sort through these claims and counterclaims about Reynolds during their meetings Tuesday and Wednesday. The results of a three-month, $15,000 evaluation by Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co., the accounting and management consultant firm, will be available to the board.

A report from a four-trustee committee looking into the Butwell affair also was supposed to be available for board study, but the trustees fell to quarreling among themselves over how the inquiry should be conducted, so no useful report is expected.

Rounding Up Votes

A few weeks ago, it appeared that there might be enough votes to oust Reynolds. The chancellor and her supporters have worked hard to round up votes and to neutralize opponents, however, and they seem to have succeeded, at least for now.

Three Democratic officeholders who are ex officio voting members of the board but who seldom attend meetings plan to attend this one--Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and schools Supt. Bill Honig. All are Reynolds supporters.

“It’s blown over for now,” a pro-Reynolds trustee said, “but the people who are determined to get her won’t give up. This will come up again.”