University Times

Pitt's next chancellor should be trustworthy. Collegial. Hard-working. A good fundraiser. Committed to excellent teaching. In touch with the local community. Willing to "rein in" the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. A Renaissance man or woman of integrity and substance — not "another witty, charismatic, good-looking guy." That composite sketch emerged from a Sept. 21 hearing held by the committee searching for a new, permanent chancellor. Fourteen people made statements and another 30 sat in on the hearing, which was held to give the University's 40,000 Pittsburgh campus students, faculty and staff the opportunity to tell the search committee what qualities to look for in chancellor candidates.

Despite committee chairperson James Roddey's plea that nominations and applications be made in writing, not at the public forum, the name of one applicant came out. Joan Sonnenberg of Wexford said her husband, C. Frederick Sonnenberg, a director with Toshiba America, has applied.

Several other people made pitches for Interim Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, who has not said yet whether he will seek the job permanently.

Attorney John Mulroy, who was a graduate student assistant to Nordenberg in the law school from 1987 to 1990, warned the committee against what he called "grass is greener-itis" — the assumption that the best candidates will be found outside Pitt. "In this case, the grass is not greener on the other side. Mark Nordenberg is the man to lead us into the 21st century," Mulroy said.

After the hearing, Roddey said the campaigning for Nordenberg "was to be expected. Whenever you have a public hearing, unless you operate it like a dictator, you have to allow people some freedom to speak. I have the utmost respect for Mark Nordenberg, and maybe in another setting I'd be doing the same thing on his behalf." But Roddey rejected suggestions that the search committee is just going through the motions of a national search, that Nordenberg enjoys the support of key Pitt trustees and that the job is his if he wants it. "This is truly a serious search," Roddey said. "If Mark Nordenberg is one of the candidates, then he will be seriously considered along with other serious candidates." Roddey said he was "disappointed, but not surprised" by the low turnout for the hearing, which was scheduled for two hours but was twice suspended when no more speakers stepped to the microphone. "I had hoped we would have more people here today," he said. "But perhaps by the time we've finished with our hearings at the [University's four] outlying campuses and there's been more publicity about the process, then we'll get written statements that represent people's views. I understand that the attendance today was similar to the turnout for the hearings that were held during the last chancellor search." In fact, last week's hearing was in many ways a rerun of a pair of Pittsburgh campus hearings held in October 1990 during the search that yielded J. Dennis O'Connor as Pitt chancellor. Five months ago, O'Connor announced his resignation, effective Aug. 1. In January, he will leave Pitt to become provost of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

During the two chancellor search hearings in 1990, 35 people spoke. Virtually all of them were from the so-called "lower," or non-medical, campus. Similarly, no one from the medical center or the Health Sciences schools spoke at last week's hearing.

Today, as in fall 1990, Pitt faces the possibility of a faculty unionization vote in the near future, a fact referred to by several speakers last week. One was English professor Philip Wion, treasurer of the United Faculty organization seeking to organize Pitt faculty. Wion argued against the notion that the best candidates shun universities with unionized faculty. He said Pitt's next chancellor should be someone willing to work within either a collective bargaining system or the current governance structure.

In 1990, a number of speakers had harsh words for the outgoing chancellor at the time, Wesley Posvar. Last week, it was O'Connor who came under attack. Several speakers called him an accomplished scientist as a professor, but an empty suit as a chancellor. Roger Campbell, a graduate student in Medieval and Renaissance studies, said: "I suggest that what we don't need is another witty, charismatic, good-looking guy who drops all of the right buzzwords and doesn't have a lot of content." Campbell urged the search committee to consider candidates with humanist backgrounds. "You might think about going outside the obvious sources [of candidates]. You might consider someone who's done a superb job as president of a small college," he said. Campbell also said Pitt's next chancellor should be a good fundraiser, an advocate for high-quality teaching, someone willing to fight what Campbell called "European cultural suicide under the guise of political correctness," and someone who would either bring the medical center "under control" or spin it off into a separate legal entity from Pitt. The medical center "is not now effectively part of this University. It is the tail that wags the dog. It has its own development organization. Its library system operates separately. It is a fiefdom," Campbell said.

Several other speakers agreed with Campbell's suggestion of requiring serious candidates to publicly release vision statements outlining, in writing, their ideas about Pitt and higher education generally. But Mark Ginsburg, a professor of administrative and policy studies, said: "I don't think there is any individual who is going to bring the vision for the University of Pittsburgh. I don't think there is any individual who is going to be a white knight, as some people described our former chancellor [O'Connor] as coming in and saving the place. What we need is somebody the community and the various University constituencies can feel comfortable with, can feel energized by, and who can help make this institution the greater institution that it can be." Finding such a person will be more difficult if the search committee is working with a rigid, pre-determined set of characteristics it is looking for in a chancellor, Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg's "white knight" comment echoed a statement made earlier in the hearing by Arden Melzer, a faculty member in the School of Social Work. "I do not think we will get somebody who will walk on water, who will be the saviour of the University of Pittsburgh," Melzer said.

Melzer said the search committee and Pitt's Board of Trustees should reject the view of the chancellor as the chief executive officer of the University. The chancellor should "bring people together" through a system of shared governance, not rule over them in the adversary role of a CEO, Melzer said. He added that the new chancellor, in addition to advocating teaching and research, should see to it that Pitt rewards public service growing out of the University's academic mission.

Frank Tabakin, chairperson of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, endorsed the idea of hiring a humanist and Renaissance man (or woman) as the next chancellor. Tabakin cited the model of John Donne, the 17th-century poet, scientist and clergyman. "I think, for example, that someone who was a math major as an undergraduate and a law professor subsequently — such as Mark Nordenberg — would understand that having a university means having a universe of different topics and different understandings," Tabakin said.

Bill Lohman, a former student in the Africana studies department, described Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Jack L. Daniel as a man with the courage and vision to be a good chancellor. After noting what he called a pattern of neglect by Pitt's administration of Africana studies, Lohman said the next chancellor must appreciate that the department can do much to help the University achieve its goals of increasing cultural diversity and improving relations with the African-American community.

Theatre arts department chairperson W. Stephen Coleman said the next chancellor should give higher priority to fine arts units than the University has given them in recent years. "Pitt is fast becoming a cultural wasteland…I keep expecting that we're going to add the word 'polytechnic' after the title of the University," Coleman said. As for the argument that local students of the fine arts can always go to Carnegie Mellon University, Coleman said: "That's nonsense, because CMU's sister universities are not Penn State in the middle of the state and Temple in the eastern part of the state [as Pitt's are]. We are the state-supported institution in western Pennsylvania. We have an obligation to provide the most well-rounded education possible." Some speakers said Pitt needs a chancellor who is willing to meet with faculty, staff and students — a willingness they said O'Connor showed early in his administration but soon lost. "I want someone who understands me and reaches out to students," said Tanita Harris, a senior who chairs the Black Action Society. Dental school professor John Baker said O'Connor refused to meet with him and other dental faculty members who are dissatisfied with the school's dean, Jon Suzuki.

Marie Capezzuto, the only Pitt staff employee who spoke at the hearing, said staff "are looking, I think, mostly for integrity and honesty" from the University's top administration. Many staff members, she said, feel as if they're third-rate citizens who lack a real grievance procedure and risk being blackballed if they apply to transfer to better-paying jobs within the University. Capezzuto, a programmer analyst in the Housing office, said she and many other employees resent Pitt spending thousands of dollars on a chancellor search "when perhaps we have the right man in the position now." Capezzuto suggested that bad morale among employees was largely to blame for the low attendance at the hearing.

Robert Hazo, director of Pitt's American Experience program, spoke at length about the importance of teaching and urged the search committee to examine the record of each candidate "with regard to his or her view of status, dignity, rewards, and University obligations with regard to undergraduate teaching." Acknowledging that he was reading nearly word-for-word from the same written statement he presented to the Pitt chancellor search committee in 1990 — another example of the deja vu quality of last week's hearing — Hazo said he was "fully aware of the necessity and desirability of research, what there is of it that is solid, honest and not trivial, but I am also aware of how universities and departments are rated." He noted, for example, that last week's issue of U.S. News and World Report rated Pitt's new undergraduate business college as the 16th best in the country, even though the survey was conducted before the school had even opened.

"I respectfully suggest that the emphasis on research in virtually all American universities, as opposed to some small liberal arts colleges, has resulted in the relative downgrading of teaching. This, I am sure, is a familiar complaint, but it is no less valid because we are so familiar with it. If the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is the heart of the University…then I suggest, however unintentionally it may have come about, that the allocation of this resource has resulted in a condition of anemia — simple, chronic or pernicious, depending on one's standards."

— Bruce Steele