Rogers one of two left in job search

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 | 10:54 a.m.

Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers now has only one competitor left in his race for the permanent position -- the current chancellor of the State University System of New York.

Robert King, 58, oversees the nation's largest community college and university system in the country -- a 64-unit, $8.5 billion behemoth that serves more than 413,000 students and employs 81,000 people.

The University and Community College System of Nevada, by comparison, has eight institutions, an annual budget of about $660 million with 100,000 students and 8,665 employees.

A search committee of the UCCSN Board of Regents voted 4-2 on Monday to bring the two men back for interviews on Thursday morning after reviewing seven total candidates. Both Rogers and King rose to the top of the pack after an initial vote by the advisory committee of institutional presidents, faculty and students and by the regents committee.

Like Rogers, King is an attorney who came to the SUNY chancellor position with little direct management experience in higher education, search consultant Jan Greenwood of Greenwood and Associates said. King does, however, have extensive political and management experience as the former state budget director to New York Gov. George Pataki, as a former Monroe County executive, a former state assemblyman from Rochester, and as a former prosecutor. He has served in the chancellor position for five years.

Rogers, 66, has extensive business and legal experience as the chairman and owner of Sunbelt Communications Co., parent company of Las Vegas TV station KVBC channel 3, and previously as a partner in his own law firm for 24 years. Rogers is also chairman of the board for Nevada First Bank.

Rogers' initial experience in higher education was as a philanthropist and foundation chairman, raising $1.2 billion for the University of Arizona capital campaign and $160 million for the Idaho State University capital campaign. He and his wife Beverly have given or pledged about $275 million to various colleges and universities.

Rogers received nods from all 18 people voting save one -- Regent Howard Rosenberg. Fifteen people voted to invite King back for an interview.

King earned an invitation back from every voting regent except Steve Sisolak, who voted only to bring Rogers back.

Sisolak said he had spent 10 to 12 hours over the weekend reviewing the candidates, and after learning more about them on Monday he said he didn't see one who could rival Rogers for the job.

"No one is going to say something based on what I have read here that is going to change my mind," said Sisolak, who earlier this month had rallied to keep the search process going when some regents moved to just give Rogers the job.

Other regents, however, vehemently disagreed. Rosenberg and Jill Derby, both Northern regents, said that it was essential that regents review the "broadest range of people possible."

Rosenberg also questioned some of the votes Rogers' received.

"I cannot for an instance ... think of any president not putting one candidate down," Rosenberg said.

Regents deadlocked twice over whether to also bring in the next two top candidates in for interviews -- Irving McPhail, chancellor of the Community College of Baltimore County, and J. Jay Noren, a medical doctor and executive vice president and provost of the University of Nebraska with previous experience as a system leader in Minnesota.

The advisory committee of institutional presidents, faculty and students voted 8 to 4 to bring the top four candidates back, with several arguing that there is no way to know if a candidate is qualified for a position without meeting that person. McPhail received 10 votes, and Noren received 11.

Regents split on the issue until Regent Doug Seastrand changed his vote to break the deadlock. Seastrand said afterward that his preference was to bring all four back but that he was comfortable with interviewing just King and Rogers because of the margin between them and the other candidates.

Regents and presidents did raise several questions over King's tenure in SUNY because of his uniqueness as a non-academic and because of recent controversy in New York over his transition plan out of the chancellorship and over some of his job perks, including the use of a chauffeur to drive him to the 64 campuses he oversees around the state. King has been getting a lot of negative publicity since January.

"These are the sensationalist-type headlines we've gotten away from," Sisolak said.

King said many of the media reports have been false or overexaggerated, such as the story about him having three private chauffeurs. He utilizes a driver when traveling across the state to allow him to do other work, but the others are system employees who pick up visitors or serve as runners for system administrative needs.

Some of the bad press also related to the incident of his 21-year-old son being arrested and charged with an assault that occurred outside of a nightclub. King said the incident was "unfortunate" but that he couldn't discuss it because the criminal case was still pending.

King resigned from his position earlier this month because he said he and the Board of Trustees feared that his close ties to Pataki could possibly damage the system if Pataki doesn't run for a fourth term. A plan to transition him out of the position through a six-month sabbatical earned King several negative editorials in the press, he said. His subsequent appointment to a tenured professorship at Potsdam also generated controversy because of the $206,000 a year salary he would earn.

King's appointment to chancellor coming out of the governor's cabinet was initially suspicious to faculty and staff, Greenwood said, but her background interviews indicated that they are now some of King's biggest supporters. She cited his success in developing a strategic plan for each of SUNY's institutions and his success in raising outside dollars, including a successful $1 billion private capital campaign and the near doubling of the state's outside research dollars.

"He could certainly be your next chancellor," Greenwood said.

King said he's interested in Nevada because of its growth, its emphasis on utilizing higher education for economic development, and its higher education structure, which is similar to SUNY's.

Regents spent little time looking at Rogers' resume, as they have seen him in action for the past year as interim chancellor.

Regents have credited Rogers with unifying and brining credibility back to the system, bringing stability to Nevada State College through private fundraising, restructuring the system's legal office and settling several open meeting law related lawsuits.