If fired, Ashley could stay on faculty, might find new presidency

By Stephanie Tavares (contact)

Monday, June 29, 2009 | 2 a.m.

If regents decide next month they are done with David Ashley as UNLV president, what will be his future?

If the regents decide to keep him around only through his contract — one more year — but not beyond, and to begin searching for his successor, Ashley would be the neutered head of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s largest campus. If his contract is revoked he’d be bumped down to faculty member. (He came here from the University of California, Merced, where he was the No. 2 administrator, with the promise of tenure.)

Or, another institution may snatch him up. Academic headhunters say that is likely.

“Job hopping of this kind happens all the time,” said Stephanie Rosenthal-Shirit, president of executive recruiting company Resource Associates, which works with academic and private sector clients. “It’s more common than it looks like. If you’re in that position (of having been let go), you just have to be upfront and honest during the interview process and it goes smoothly.”

She said that if Ashley hires a good go-between, a recruiter or headhunter with experience, he could find another executive position by the end of summer.

It’s happened before.

Carol Harter was offered a job by the UNLV Foundation before she was forced from her post as president of UNLV in 2006 by Chancellor Jim Rogers.

Other university presidents fired for a lack of flair, or personality conflicts, include:

• Former UNR President John Lilley, pushed out by Rogers in 2005, was picked up by Baylor University in Texas in January 2006. He was fired from that position in July 2008 after clashes with faculty.

• James Douglas, fired by Texas Southern University’s board of regents in 1999, was soon named distinguished professor of law at the university’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

• Barbara Hatton, fired by South Carolina State University trustees in 2005 over personality conflicts with faculty, was hired as president of Knoxville College — and then fired that year after staff complained they hadn’t been paid and the local utility shut off power to the school.

• Harold Lundy was fired as president of Grambling State University in 1994 and returned to a faculty position, later suing the school and board of trustees, alleging discrimination. His replacement, Raymond Hicks, resigned in 1997 under pressure from the trustees.

• Former Southern Illinois University President Fernando Trevino, fired in 2008 for “failing to perform basic job requirements,” was reassigned to a tenured faculty position.