Genshaft’s decade at USF

This weekend's Tampa Tribune profile of Judy Genshaft follows a similar story in July by Rick Danielson in the St. Petersburg Times. There was one comment attributed to me by the Tribune's Lindsay Peterson that I think could be read in a way that is not consistent with what our conversation was about. Since the snippets that reporters use of various sources is usually a very small portion of each interview (life as a reporter and as an interviewee), I'd rather not focus on that, and it might be more appropriate to outline what I told both reporters about Genshaft's 10+ years as president of USF:

• Genshaft's ties to the business community have been a priority for her and is something unique to her administration at USF; that's something fairly credited to her. I think the only other university leader in the region who has had leadership roles in the area chamber of commerce was the former Vanderbilt chancellor Joe Wyatt. 
• On the other hand, the attribution to her of USF's national research prominence is less warranted: Genshaft is the third president at USF who has emphasized research, anyone chosen by the old Board of Regents in 2000 would have had similar priorities, and in the end it's faculty (and to a lesser extent deans and provosts whose personnel decisions shape the faculty) who are responsible for the increasingly national research profile at USF. 
• The exception to my conclusion about the long-term trend towards research is USF Health. USF Health's prominence has risen substantially since Genshaft hired Steve Klasko. He is a controversial figure on campus (I certainly hear about him from faculty, including from faculty in the College of Medicine, which my union does not represent), but I know several people who otherwise butt heads with him who also recognize that he has raised USF Health's profile nationally. (What I did not say in the interviews: In several high-profile positions, Genshaft went through a few people initially before finding someone she was more comfortable with. I think Karen Holbrook is the third or fourth VP of Research since Genshaft arrived at USF. Ralph Wilcox is the third provost. I think Steve Klasko is the third Dean of Medicine and second VP of USF Health, which was carved out as a separate VP area a few years before Klasko arrived. So Klasko fits into this profile of the third or fourth person in a key position.)
• Genshaft deserves significant credit for having protected most areas of the faculty from layoffs in the last few years. At least in the bargaining unit represented by my union (i.e., outside the College of Medicine), there was only one layoff notice to a faculty member, an instructor who was then recalled into another position for which he was eligible. The benefits of this buffer have been significant–we have had fairly deep candidate pools for the searches we have been able to conduct–and if we can get through 2012 without layoffs, USF will be in a much better position for the future than I would have predicted a few years ago. 
• A large open question is the overall structure of the university, which Genshaft and others call a "system" with four campuses. In 2001, then-state senator Don Sullivan proposed to carve away the St. Petersburg campus into a new university, and part of the compromise that ended that battle was the agreement to set the St Pete campus off into a separate semi-autonomous unit that would remain part of the university but seek separate regional accreditation. Other lawmakers in the area then wrote similar language in later years for the other smaller campuses in Sarasota and Lakeland. Technically, because there is a constitutional body overseeing the whole public university system in Florida, I suspect those mandates are unenforceable… except by the power of the purse (or threat thereof). The separations have been awkward (to say the least) in two of the three cases, the lines of authority have been jiggered every so often, Genshaft or others have made claims to faculty in a few instances that they could not stand by in the end, and right now the best way to describe the system, such that it is, is that it's in its Articles of Confederation stage. 
• Two of Genshaft's major mistakes came in her first two years, and one of them is nationally known–her acquiescing to outside pressure not just to marginalize then-computer science associate professor Sami Al-Arian but to have a public hearing ending in the recommendation to fire him for being controversial, which led to a two-year stretch of torture for faculty observing the lack of process. That is a permanent stain on her career.
• The other early mistake came after she was picked but before she formally started work–serving as a conduit in March 2000 for a message from legislators to a dean to fire a USF employee who was running against a lawmaker from Pinellas County (in the area–St. Petersburg is in Pinellas). I think that helped set up Sullivan's attempt to pick off the St. Pete campus, sending a message that USF was especially vulnerable to political pressure.
• A more subtle mistake has been her keeping significant distance from most faculty. I think she has visited my department faculty meeting once in the last decade, probably on par with her contact with most departments… and technically her appointment is in my department (her background is in school psychology, one of the department's programs). At a large institution, university presidents spend a great deal of time in fundraising, politicking, etc., but if you discover faculty think you have a bit of a tin ear for either symbolism or substance (which Genshaft knew or should have known, especially after the Al-Arian controversy), you need to address it somehow. I always thought the easiest way to address it is to have regular contact with faculty, both with putative leaders of faculty organizations (faculty senate, faculty union) and with a smattering of other faculty in relatively informal circumstances. At least on one side of the faculty-organization issue, Genshaft has not met in a sit-down fashion with the faculty union leadership since late 2001. As the faculty union chapter president since April 2007, I haven't felt a particular psychological need for significant face-time with university administrators, but this lack of meetings has always struck me as avoidance behavior and a mistake. I don't bite, and I am a source of information about faculty perceptions. 

Peterson asked me how faculty balanced credit for the lack of layoffs against the legacy of the Al-Arian controversy. I didn't think that question made sense: when people screw up and also do creditable things, you don't put it all in a blender to evaluate the whole. Those decisions are just there, period. I said something that led her to conclude I said faculty "have mostly gotten over it" (Peterson's language). That could be read either as academics have busy lives or have forgiven Genshaft; the first is true, but it would be inaccurate to conclude that faculty who forcefully disagreed with her handling of Al-Arian have forgiven her. I suspect either a substantial minority or the majority of faculty at USF today were hired after the firing of Al-Arian, another substantial group have retired between spring 2003 and today, and those of us who were at USF then and remain have a range of views. 

When Danielson and I talked in the summer, the Board of Trustees were in negotiations with the staff union (and the other unions, including mine), and I pointed out to Danielson that the Trustees had not set aside any money for raises to staff salaries since their creation in 2001 — previous raises had come through legislative mandates only. So his profile includes a discussion of staff disappointment. Since then, the staff union and the Trustees have settled a contract with the first locally-funded raises for staff. Many staff are still very low-paid. 

At this point, Genshaft's legacy in the long term depends greatly on the state budget in 2011-12. One side of that is employment: If she can maintain the no-layoff practice at least in the bulk of the university (i.e., outside the College of Medicine), I think she'll earn significant plaudits in the long run barring another major mistake. The other side is how state budgeting handles the notion of a "system." If the legislature doesn't play one campus of USF off against another in appropriations, we'll probably survive the minor grumblings that happen when bits of a university rub against other bits. 

(Note: I've changed some of the description above after corresponding with Lindsay Peterson.)