Las Vegas Sun

June 4, 2012

Currently: 98° | Complete forecast | Log in

HIGHER EDUCATION:

Gentler process might emerge from ouster of UNLV’s Ashley

By

Thursday, July 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Board of Regents meeting

UNLV President David Ashley listens to public comment during a regents meeting at the Desert Research Institute Friday, July 10, 2009. The regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education decided to demote Ashley from his position as president and return him to the university faculty. Launch slideshow »

How some others do it:

The chancellors, presidents, lab directors, provosts and other top administrators at colleges in the University of California and California State University systems are evaluated annually through a process that includes public input. But the final reports are private.

The same process is used for presidents in the Arizona System of Higher Education.

Presidential evaluations are also held in closed sessions in the University of New Mexico system, although a summary of its board’s conclusions is made available to the public.

Many Eastern systems, including the University of Virginia’s, make the reports private, but decisions on compensation are made in public.

The Pennsylvania System of Higher Education and the University System of Florida go a step further by making the reports public documents and discussing decisions about firings or salary changes in public meetings. But the systems differ from Nevada’s in that the discussions are based on the evaluation reports presented to governing boards and not on additional testimony or private investigation by regents.

Ashley Speaks Out

Ashley Speaks Out, seg. 2

Viewing video requires the latest version of Adobe's Flash Player

  • Ashley Speaks Out, seg. 2
  • Ashley Speaks Out, seg. 3
  • Ashley Speaks Out, seg. 4
  • Ashley Speaks Out, seg. 1

Wanted: UNLV President

Wanted: UNLV President, seg. 2

Viewing video requires the latest version of Adobe's Flash Player

  • Wanted: UNLV President, seg. 2
  • Wanted: UNLV President, seg. 3
  • Wanted: UNLV President, seg. 1
  • Wanted: UNLV President, seg. 4

Sun Archives

Sun Coverage

Beyond the Sun

Related Documents (.pdf)

When it comes to evaluating college presidents, no state does it more publicly than Nevada.

The fallout from the very public ouster of UNLV’s president this month, however, is likely to lead to a few changes in how evaluations are conducted, leaders of the state system of higher education say.

James Dean Leavitt, the new chairman of the Nevada Board of Regents, says he and other regents plan to propose tweaking the evaluation process at their October meeting. The goal is to reduce the likelihood of another public spectacle like that of the demotion of David Ashley from UNLV president to professor.

“What happened” with Ashley’s case “is going to be something that produces a better process,” Leavitt says.

The way Nevada and the regents handled the evaluation shocked many in the higher education world.

Leavitt, along with the new chancellor of higher education and other key Nevadans, however, sees the evaluation process as a work in progress. After all, they say, it was only four years ago that the Legislature expanded the Open Meetings Law to include the evaluations of university presidents.

Within higher education circles, private evaluations are generally considered the better way to go, according to several national experts. They contend that when boards discuss a president’s performance, they tend to get less forthright information from peer administrators and faculty in a public forum. And, the experts say, bombshells are not usually dropped during public comment periods.

Most public colleges keep at least part of these proceedings confidential for those and other reasons.

National experts also say public evaluations make it harder for universities to recruit top administrators.

Raymond Douglas Cotton, a national higher education personnel lawyer based in Washington, D.C., is among those who say some top-notch applicants shy away from jobs in states where all or part of the evaluation process is conducted openly. Cotton and others tend to agree with those applicants.

Nevada legislators and advocates of open government say any applicant who can’t stand the heat isn’t wanted in this kitchen. A completely public evaluation ensures that everyone, including taxpayers and parents of students from out of state, has access to just about every aspect of a college president’s performance review. The people who are paying the bills have a right to know, they say. And, they add, it’s the best way to keep the regents accountable for the leaders they hire.

But don’t count Nevada’s chancellor, lawyer Dan Klaich, as an enthusiastic supporter of the all-public, no-holds-barred process.

“Whether it’s the best law or not can be debated, and quite frankly I don’t think it lends itself to the best evaluation,” Klaich says.

It didn’t appear to be a problem until Ashley’s hearing, however.

The Nevada System of Higher Education has evaluated the heads of three institutions under the provisions of the Open Meetings Law. The first two evaluations — of Desert Research Institute President Stephen Wells and University of Nevada, Reno, President Milton Glick — were uneventful. Outside evaluators were hired; they spoke with students, staff, faculty and community members; and they turned in reports that were swiftly accepted by the Board of Regents. Contracts were extended and everybody moved on.

But the third, Ashley’s, played out more like a public execution. None of several other national experts contacted by the Sun could recall another higher education system putting an administrator through such an “inquisition,” as Claire Van Ummerson, vice president of the Center for Effective Leadership at the American Council on Higher Education, put it.

The regents lobbed heavy criticism at the outside evaluators’ report. They said it glossed over significant concerns, and some dismissed it as whitewashed.

(Leavitt says in the coming months he will push to alter the way outside evaluators are selected.)

The faculty survey that showed support for Ashley was closely examined and the meaning of the figures disputed.

The board attempted to compensate for the allegedly incomplete report and disputed survey results by encouraging public comment, seeking testimony from the former chancellor and inserting into the public record conversations they say they had with unidentified community members.

Ashley’s allotted time to respond to the public testimony and to a written critique from the former chancellor was cut short when regents decided to further question him and offer their own critiques.

An argument could be made that the problem wasn’t so much the public nature of Ashley’s evaluation but what was said and done in public.

In all three public evaluations, regents based decisions not just on faculty surveys and evaluators’ reports, as other universities do, but also on outside information and opinion.

That last aspect was particularly prominent and contentious in Ashley’s evaluation, and much of the outside criticism Ashley’s situation focuses on that.

“Boards rarely think of how they’re going to hire the next guy when they’re firing a president,” Cotton says. “If the decision has to be made in public, I urge them to be generous and gentle, even if the guy doesn’t deserve it because the next day they’re looking for another president.”

“If you’ve poisoned the well, it’s extremely difficult to bring in someone from the outside. That person won’t want to be picked apart in the public arena the way the last president was.”

Another major difference at other university systems that have public evaluations: Many, if not most, follow a regimen.

Their university presidents are provided outlines of goals, and when it’s time to evaluate those leaders and decide whether to extend their contracts, they are graded based on their success in meeting the goals. Nevada doesn’t use the goal system — yet.

Leavitt says he will propose a requirement that the chancellor provide Nevada’s university presidents with goals and bench marks.

But even with that change, the key will still be how the regents handle their role, national experts say.

Governing boards in other states tend to make decisions based mainly on the evaluation reports submitted to them. Nevada’s regents have taken the evaluator role upon themselves.

In other states, governing boards act more as decision-making bodies, not as investigators.

Leavitt and Klaich, both of whom are lawyers, contend the regents handled the Ashley hearing as best they could given system policies and laws. They had an obligation to taxpayers to perform a rigorous evaluation, one which under state law must be held in public no matter how uncomfortable it makes people.

It’s just the way we do it in Nevada, they say.

“It’s the law we have and when people come and apply for jobs here they understand what our laws are,” Klaich says.

Post a comment

Commenting requires registration.

Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy.

If you would like to submit your comment as a letter to the editor, you may submit it here.

Most Popular