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Active board members...and their opponents
As trustees who follow ACTA's work know, not everyone appreciates their fiduciary role in higher education. A recent -- and still notorious -- incident in the charter school world hasn't reverberated in higher education circles, but its lessons apply there as well.
Last fall, the CEO of Imagine Schools, one of the nation's largest charter school management organizations, shared his annoyance at school boards with his top execs and school principals. The CEO wrote:
Don't we want local boards to be grateful and helpful and take ownership of the school? "Yes" and "No". I do not mind them being grateful to us for starting the school (our school, not theirs), but the gratitude and the humility that goes with it, needs to extend to the operation of the school.
He continued, "Before selecting board members we need to go over the voting process and our expectations that they will go along with Imagine...if they can't convince us to change our position, we expect them to vote for our proposal." He suggested getting "undated letters of resignation from the start" from board members -- in case, presumably, a quick defenestration would be advantageous.
Heard any of this before? In higher education, it is probably packaged more artfully under a euphemism like "board discipline" or "board unity." But it's the same toxin.
The truth is, trustees need to fight for the interests of students, parents, and taxpayers -- for priorities beyond the protection of academic turf and administrators' perks and prerogatives. To those trustees reading this: Be bold and be active. There has never been a time when your institution needed your wisdom so urgently.
Posted by Michael Poliakoff on March 02, 2010 at March 2, 2010 06:06 PM
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Comments
Our college has recently conducted "re-education" sessions to get us "in line" with the Administration and "asked" that we no longer contact senior staff with ideas, suggestions, thoughts. All communication to go through the President.
Posted by: Dick Leslie at March 8, 2010 09:12 AM
Thank you for sounding an alarm that may need to be rung on a number of campuses.
"Reeducation" of the governing board. A most interesting and frightening concept! Are trustees to be viewed as nothing more than yes men -- fed limited information and expected to toe the party line? No, says Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. the former and highly successful president of Carleton College in an article appearing in this month's Change Magazine (January/February 2010). It's all about mutual respect between board chair and president, a big part of which is the free flow of information on campus. President emeritus Lewis lists restriction of information as a prime cause of unhealthy relationships: "There are many possible contributions to such dysfunctional interactions: presidents who are arrogant or who insist on trying to be the only source of information for their boards..." Lewis observes that trustees' personal contacts are to be welcomed, but also shared (respecting, where appropriate, confidentiality) with the president.
And Lewis is not alone. Richard Chait, an expert on higher ed governance, in a piece entitled "How To Keep Trustees From Being Micromanagers," also eloquently calls for board/president engagement and interaction. "The ultimate antidote to micromanagement is macro-engagement," he writes. "[P]residents, more than anyone else, direct a board's focus and steer a board's energy....For presidents concerned that their boards may be insufficiently wise, knowledgeable, or competent to be a source of leadership for the institution," Chait notes, "...it might be well for them to remember that those same trustees were smart enough to recruit, reward, and retain them as presidents."
Boards properly engaged and working with presidents and senior administrators, can identify what the university's goals and objectives are; allocate resources thoughtfully; ensure accountability; and do all of this in an inclusive way that reduces distrust among affected constituencies. ACTA believes that getting the balance right should be a goal -- for both trustees and their presidents.
Posted by: Michael Poliakoff at March 12, 2010 12:21 PM