Search for New College President : List of Finalists for CSU San Marcos Stirs Dismay

If the names of the five finalists for the presidency of the new state university in San Marcos raised some eyebrows and more questions than answers, little wonder.

During the search for the president, there was substantial ballyhoo over the number and quality of candidates who reportedly sought the job, and high expectations were formed among the political and civic leadership in North County.

One hundred and eighty-seven candidates were nominated for the job. Fifty were presidents at colleges and universities elsewhere. Imagine, some thought, the talent pool that would surface in the screening process--ultimately leading to just that right man or woman whose leadership and vision would shape a new, 21st Century university in North County!

For many observers with a vested interest in the search, the bubble burst 10 days ago with the naming of the five finalists--each of whom will be visiting San Marcos this week as the screening process nears an end.

State Sen. Bill Craven (R-Carlsbad), the new university’s godfather for having shepherded legislative support for the state university system’s 20th campus--and the first new campus in more than 20 years--looked at the list of names last week and shook his head in disappointment.

“I was underwhelmed,” he said. And now, instead of talking excitedly of his high hopes for the university getting off on the right foot, he talks instead of having to “bite the bullet,” of resigning himself to the fact that the charter helmsman of the San Marcos university will come from a campus he had never before heard of.

One is the president of Rhode Island College. Another, the president of Southeast Missouri State University. One is president of Frammingham State University in Massachusetts. One is the vice president of academic affairs for the small Flint campus of the University of Michigan. And Craven saves his greatest scorn for the fifth candidate: the former chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts who resigned in controversy and who currently has no campus to call her own.

“I was led to believe by the search committee that I should be looking for something of a higher order,” says Craven. “I’m sure they’re all quite educated people. But I can’t see a lady who’s been operating a fine arts and music school taking over a university which I hope will be a veritable generator of engineering students.”

Craven says he will reserve final judgment of the finalists until he meets them this week, when each will spend a day in San Marcos meeting community leaders, staff, faculty and students at the existing North County Center of San Diego State University, the genesis of the new university.

Ken Lounsbery, chairman of a North County citizens’ advisory committee for the new campus, said he, too, would hold final judgment on the candidates until he meets with them over lunch this week. “The thrust of my questions will be in determining the relevence of their background and experience to the San Marcos challenge,” he said. “But I don’t know if what we’ve seen on paper produces the kind of potential we were looking for. Certainly nothing jumps out at me and cries ‘Hurrah!’ ”

Others say Craven, Lounsbery and fellow critics should not be displeased by the background and qualifications of the five finalists and were unrealistic to expect otherwise.

“It’s common for communities to have high expectations about who they want to run their universities, and then be disappointed because the finalists don’t match those perceptions,” said an official with the Post Secondary Education Commission in Sacramento who asked not to be identified.

No one should have expected the high-ranking administrators of mainstream, “top-rung” universities to apply for the San Marcos job, the person said.

“They’re not likely to want to come to an emerging campus in a multi-campus system where they’re under the thumb of (the CSU headquarters in) Long Beach,” the person said. “Most folks from the first-tier institutions expect to be able to run their own shop and do what they want to do.

“You’ll need a risk-taker who is willing to go along with all the ambiguity that comes in being the part of a large system,” the official said.

Robert Corrigan, former chancellor of the University of Massachusetts campus at Boston who was named last year as president of San Francisco State University, says he’s not sure he would have applied for the San Marcos job.

“Of course, there are very few times in your career when you get a chance to start a campus from scratch, where you can define goals, set the mission and--the most exciting part of all--go after the best and brightest faculty,” he said.

On the other hand, he said, California is wallowing in an unsure fiscal environment, given the expenditure limits of the Gann Initiative and last year’s passage of Proposition 98 which earmarked funds for education from elementary schools through the community college level--but did not provide priorities for UC or CSU system funding.

“Candidates--especially sitting presidents--will look very carefully at the public funding base,” Corrigan said. “It’s one thing if you’re going to become president of San Diego State, which has a good firm budget even if it will still get monkeyed with a little bit. But if you’re starting a new place like San Marcos, one of the real concerns will be in getting the dollars you will need for faculty, equipment and buildings. That will concern anyone, especially if you’re currently in a state where the funding is better or less constrained.”

Level of Funding

Furthermore, he said, faculty salaries within the CSU system are not competitive with many other teaching posts in the nation and recruiting may be difficult--especially to San Diego County, where housing costs are high.

Overall, a candidate might wonder--given the competition for funding from the UC system as well as the other CSU campuses--”if the state is prepared to give the new campus the level of funding necessary to make it a distinguished institution. No president I know of wants to invest a lot of time and energy in an academic enterprise that won’t be distinguished,” Corrigan said.

He was attracted to San Francisco State, Corrigan said, because of its existing nationwide academic reputation--something San Marcos can’t boast--and because of its particular mission as an urban university serving its immediate community--much as did his university in Boston.

Corrigan said he personally knows two of the five finalists for San Marcos--and a third by reputation--and gives each high marks.

Curtis McCray was selected last year as president of Cal State Long Beach, coming there as the president of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville--part of a statewide system which, he said, used CSU as its role model.

McCray is on the search committee for the San Marcos presidency, and said he would have applied for the San Marcos job himself had he still been in Florida, because of the opportunity “to be on the ground floor of a university for the next century.”

He said his appointment in Long Beach also raised eyebrows in that community “because I came from a campus of 7,000 students to one with 35,000. But in terms of our mission, of being a public school and of being liberal arts, the two schools were apples and apples,” he said.

There was some surprise among observers that none of the five San Marcos finalists currently work within the CSU system--albeit two have had past experience in the system. Of the six previous presidential openings within the CSU system, three were filled from within the ranks of CSU’s campuses. The other three were Corrigan, McCray and John Moore, who was executive vice president at Old Dominion in Norfolk, Va., when named to head Cal State Stanislaus.

One of the 15 semi-finalists for the San Marcos job was Robert Detweiler, who was a dean of the college of arts and letters at San Diego State University and most recently vice president of academic affairs at Cal State San Bernardino. “I was dancing up and down after we interviewed him,” said one search committee member. “He was our man.”

But Detweiler had also applied for the presidency at Cal State Dominguez Hills--and was appointed to that post last month by CSU trustees.

Four others among the 15 semi-finalists withdrew their names from consideration as the search narrowed. “While we were trying to find out about them, they were trying to find out about us as well, and they decided they didn’t want the job after all,” said a search committee member.

John Phillips, who specializes in recruiting top educational administrators for the executive search firm of Korn-Ferry International in New York, said he was not surprised by who--and who did not--show interest in the San Marcos job.

“People may be dissatisfied with their current job and have a ‘push factor’ to want to leave, but they also need a ‘pull factor’ to attract them somewhere else,” he said. “Unless there is something distinctive about San Marcos for you--its location or its role in the system--then it’s probably not a huge draw,” he said. “There is nothing academically or institutionally wrong with the CSU system, but it still might not be attractive to someone who already has a budget, a faculty and students in place.”

Phillips noted that Carol Guardo, one of the five finalists, is currently heading Rhode Island College, which operates under the shadow of several labor unions, “and it doesn’t surprise me she’d be interested in making a move.”

Likewise, finalist Paul Weller, the president of Frammingham State University, is a victim of Massachusetts’ beleaguered state budget and may see California as a relative breath of fresh air. Weller is experienced with the CSU system, having served as the academic vice president at Cal Poly Pomona for two years before going to Frammingham.

Another finalist is Victor Wong, who is the vice chancellor of academic affairs at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan and has yet to serve as a president of his own campus. “The San Marcos job might be attractive to someone who hasn’t been a president and wants an opportunity to prove his mettle,” noted Phillips. For his part, Wong says he is drawn by the challenge of starting a new university but admits, “I’ve never been in that (presidential) seat before, so I don’t know how I would function.” Others who know him consider him an academic wizard, but one who may have shortcomings in dealing with the public.

Bill Stacy, president of Southeast Missouri State University, said he--like Wong--is drawn to the challenge of developing a new university, and is not surprised that larger universities are not represented among the finalists.

“There’s no question that if this was the presidency of San Diego State, you’d have gotten a great deal of high-profile university presidents and provosts applying for the job,” Stacy said. “San Marcos, on the other hand, is a place without tradition and without prestige and there will be a wait-and-see attitude before the place is taken seriously by others. That might account for why some didn’t apply for the job.”

The most controversial of the five finalists is Jane Milley, who resigned as chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts last month in the wake of criticism of her management style by administrators, faculty and students.

Milley said her critics were persons unwilling to help in the assignment she was given by the system’s chancellor to convert the small school, which she characterized as a European arts conservancy, into a more traditional university with greater emphasis on academics.

Milley previously served as a dean of the school of fine arts at Cal State Long Beach and was the arts adviser to CSU Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds, and the two are said to be close friends.

For their part, CSU officials say they are delighted by the list of finalists, although they emphasize that the most important part of the screening process--the on-site visits and the background checks--are still to be completed.

Caesar Naples, vice chancellor for faculty and staff affairs at the CSU headquarters, said each of the finalists come from institutions roughly similar to San Marcos. Each is publicly funded. Each offers master’s programs but not doctorates, as will be the case in San Marcos. Three of the five belong to statewide systems in their respective states. And while none of the five finalists has helped develop a university from scratch, each has had some experience in developing schools or significant programs, indicating some experience in development.

Some otherwise-impressive candidates for the job were handicapped, he said, because they had not have demonstrated experience in such areas as collective bargaining and affirmative action. Others were culled from consideration because they had previously applied for other presidencies in the system, had been interviewed by other search committees and were found to be deficient for one reason or another, he said.

Naples said the overall pool of candidates for the San Marcos job was stronger than those screened for the presidencies at Long Beach, Dominguez Hills and San Francisco.

“I’m surprised by the (negative) reactions,” Naples said of the critics. “I think once people meet them, they’ll be impressed.”

Still, there is talk festering among some search committee members that the best person for the job still hasn’t come forward, and that the names of the five finalists should be shelved and the search--with more active recruiting--be continued.

“We need a superstar, a super salesman, to get this university rolling and I’m not sure there is one in the bunch,” said a search committee member who insisted on anonymity.

Such a decision to reopen the search is unlikely; trustees are scheduled to make their appointment next week after they conduct their own interviews with the finalists. To delay the appointment, observers note, would delay the hiring of the core faculty--a step needed toward the accreditation of the campus. A dozen core faculty members already are being interviewed and have been asked to be ready to move on board by July 1--along with the new president--and if the search is delayed, some of those professors may withdraw their names, thereby setting back that process as well. That, in turn, would delay the accreditation which would, in turn, mean students would not be eligible for some financial aid opportunities when the university opens to upper-division students in the fall of 1992. “The domino effect would be tragic,” Lounsbery concedes.

CSU Trustee Ralph Pesqueira, a San Diego businessman who chaired the search committee, is convinced the best possible candidates have come forward.

“I don’t think there’s any likelihood we’d look for more,” said Pesqueira. “This was a nationwide search. It’s always conceivable that one guy hesitated beyond the deadline (for applying) and that if we opened up the search again, he might apply. But that’s not the way to run a railroad. Everyone’s had the same opportunity.”

Pesqueira said he is frustrated by the criticism. “How many universities and colleges are there in the United States? Of those, how many can you name? There are thousands that people don’t recognize--probably because they don’t have a good sports team.”

And there’s something to be said, Pesqueira suggests, for hiring an administrator from a smaller campus.

“A president of The Big College, because of its size, may never have had an opportunity to do the things that will be required at San Marcos, because of the bureaucracy of where he’s now at, surrounded by staff and resources.

“In these five, we’re looking at people who are the chief cooks and bottle washers at their campuses, and they may be even more qualified for the challenges at San Marcos.”

Frank Aleshire, another member of the North County advisory committee, said he was disappointed in the names of the finalists, but “we’re hopeful that maybe we’ll find a diamond in the rough.”