Succession Planning
As a first question, Winship asked those gathered what they were doing about mass retirement, especially at
the senior level.
“This was the number one topic of my board,” said Mike Nietzel, president of Missouri State University. He quoted his board members as saying, “We hire with the idea of the individual’s capacity for professional development, and we think you should do that with the faculty.”
Aaron Podolefsky, president of the University of Central Missouri, cited some important differences between uni- versities and businesses. As he noted, if a business hires a junior manager, that person is expected to grow into a senior management position. If a university hires a physicist, however, there is no natural path to provost. “I am not sure we want to lose that talent,” said Podolefsky of the star physicist. “That’s an important thing to keep in mind.”
As Benedictine College president, Steve Minnis, observed, the aging of America means that the young people being educated today will be put in roles of responsibility more quickly than the current leadership generation was. “It puts more pressure on us to do a better job of educating and preparing them,” said Minnis.
One of the changes Baker University has been trying to effect is increasing the transparency of decision-making. That way, said president Pat Long, “There are more people involved in the decisions and an understanding of how that decision is made.”
The University of Missouri–Columbia, observed Bruce Walker, dean of MU’s College of Business, has decided to look at some options in nurturing future leaders in-house. This is a change for MU, which has historically turned out of the state or outside of the university to look for administrators. “I thought that was very significant,” said Walker.
Winship questioned whether training implied the promise of employment. Not at Park University. What Park president Beverly Byers-Pevitts has found interesting about its center for leadership, however, is the diversity of applicants. They are not always those that one would expect to apply.
Pittsburg State, noted Steve Scott, the university’s vice president for academic affairs, is starting a leadership academy that includes sixteen individuals from across campus—twelve from academic affairs and four from outside of academic affairs—led by its dean of education. “One thing we are trying to do,” said Scott, “is honor and recognize leadership.”
Ottawa University, noted Ted Collins, the CEO of its Kansas region, will give an individual 25 percent leave time to act, say, as a vice president of marketing for its adult sites. If the experiment goes well, that person might choose to go full time into administration or continue the part time position.
“One of the things I have seen success with,” said Mark Salmon, vice president for academic affairs at the Kansas City Art Institute, “is decentralizing the institution so that there is more authority and responsibility at department level.” In this way, added Salmon, people can gain real experience at the department before moving up.
“It is a culture change we are in the midst of,” said Diane Steele, president of the University of Saint Mary, “teaching [our faculty] to, as you say, decentralize. We have to train our chairs to be chairs. That doesn’t come naturally.”
“We hope to grow some of our own,” affirmed Phil Roberts, president of Mid-western Baptist Theological Seminary,
“but we don’t want them all homegrown.” Roberts likes the cross-fertilization that European doctorates or those from other denominational orientations give the program.
Metropolitan Community College, noted Vice Chancellor Don Doucette, has internal programs for interns, both at the management and the administrative end of faculty ranks. One use of this internship program is to develop a more diverse staff. “The goal for every one of us,” added Doucette, “is to be replaceable and to embrace that rather than to fear it.”
Bill Haefele, Vice President for Aca-demic Affairs and Student Development at Rockhurst University, observed that Jesuit Universities have developed lea-dership programs for faculty, deans,and vice presidents. This, in turn, has created a much larger pool of admini-strators from which to draw. For a school that aspires to be faithful to its mission, as Rockhurst does, this is highly beneficial.
At Friends University’s, said Kathy Marian, director of the school’s Lenexa location, administration meets with faculty members as soon as they come on board to help them assess, “where their career is going academically as well as profes-sionally, and give them permission to do some of these things along the way through their evaluation process.”
Anne Dema, William Jewell College’s vice president for institutional effectiveness, spoke of the need to “reorient the conversation so that succession planning is important for the life and the strength of the organization, the institution.”
One of the ways to get faculty to think in terms of an administrative career, offered Mark Salmon, is “to pay ad-ministrators significantly more money so that what they do is perceived as being of value from a personal point of view.”
When asked whether the disparity in salary between faculty and administration creates friction on campus, Salmon suggested otherwise. The money “focuses their attention, absolutely,” said Salmon of aspiring administrators.
“We have to be very careful about that,” said Phil Roberts of the pay disparity. “There may be other ways that faculty can be rewarded apart from pay raises.”
“Clarifying the different roles and the expectations for those positions also shows why there are discrepancies in pay,” added Kathy Marian.
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