Within the last six years, the University of Oregon has been governed by four presidents with an average shelf life of only around 1.7 years. These guys have nothing on a Twinkie.
For those of us graduating in the spring 2015, we will have seen three different presidents to date. Meanwhile, student bodies at other colleges can’t remember a time when their president wasn’t in office. Portland State University’s President Wiewel has occupied his post for six years. Oregon State University’s President Ray has been in office for 11 years, a Methuselah-esque timeline by our standards.
But here on UO campus, the presidency has come furnished with a banana peel. President Richard W. Lariviere lasted nearly 2.5 years before the state Board of Higher Education decided he was a tad too independent for their liking and let him go. Michael Gottfredson, who stepped down after just two years over so-so fundraising totals and a poorly handled sexual assault investigation, followed him. Provost Scott Coltrane was appointed interim president in August. At press time, he was still there.
According to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the average tenure for a college president in 2012 was seven years, down from 8.5 years in 2006. The American Council on Education (ACE) found that a “typical” college president is “a married white male who is 61 years old” and most commonly holds a doctorate in education.
ACE also determined that female presidencies constituted only 26 percent of top leadership in American colleges, an increase from 23 percent in 2006. When you consider that female graduates now account for 60 percent of all American baccalaureate degrees, that’s a rather sobering statistic. Equally bothersome, racial and ethnic minority presidencies slipped from 14 percent in 2006 to 13 percent in 2011.
By my count, Oregon has had 16 university presidents in its 138-year history. Guess what? All white. All male.
Now, to be fair, most UO students wouldn’t be able to pick the university president out of a line up. Perhaps, that’s okay. But on the other hand, maybe it’s not. The university president is supposed to be a visible leader, move UO forward, raise money, build buildings, support great research and increase our visibility and prestige.
That is why we need to be aware of who is in charge. We need to pay attention to who is picked as our new president and who is picked to do the picking. A presidential search committee has been appointed. They are reportedly hard at work trying to find someone to lead the university. According to UO’s home page, “The 14-member committee includes representatives from the board, the faculty, academic leadership positions, another Oregon public university and the public at large.”
Beatriz Gutierrez, the ASUO president, will be a part of the decision making process alongside the esteemed alumni, business owners and administrators. One undergraduate student and one graduate student will accompany her, though neither has been announced yet.
Julie Brown, University of Oregon’s Media Relations Director said, “Students should care about the presidential search, because the university president is the chief ambassador for the university – with donors, elected officials, other universities, etc.”
“It is the top position to get additional support for the teaching and learning environment students are immersed in every day,” Brown continued.
Brown is right. We should care. We need to care. We need to become involved. We may never meet our president, but the decisions he or she makes every day directly affect us. From keeping our tuition at a reasonable price to advocating on our behalf to hiring faculty, our president has an important job and we should take our role in the hiring process seriously.
Student involvement in the search is vitally important. The board wants our help, and we owe it to the university that we love to find a great person who will stick around and push the University of Oregon forward.
What if that great person turns out to be a woman? What if we decide to do something lasting and make history at the same time? What if we did something different this time?
Because if we go down the same trail we’ve gone down in recent years, then I’d suggest that a Velcro nameplate accompany the next president.
Follow Bayley Sandy on Twitter @BayleyJSandy