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August 31, 1995

Trustees hire outside experts to look at current state of University

Pitt has hired a team of outside experts to as- sess the current state of the University, recommend strategies for its future and suggest qualities Pitt should look for in its next chancellor.

The team will examine Pitt's academic programs, finances, fund raising, public relations, University governance and other faculty, student, administrative and alumni issues — including the role of the trustees themselves.

Board chairperson J. Wray Connolly, who last week announced the team's formation, told the University Times: "This review team will give us a good, objective view of where we are today as a University. Last year, when I was named chair-designate of the board, I sent a note to the trustees telling them that one of the things I wanted us to do was get a good focus on where we are as a university, then sit down and decide where we want to go.

"Once we identify the gap between where we are and where we want to be, we can make a judgment as to how realistic it is to get there and determine what needs to be done to fill that gap. That will help us set a lot of our goals for the future, plus sharpen our focus on the kind of chancellor we need to lead the University." The team will submit a report to the trustees in November or December, Connolly said. "I intend to recommend to the board that we make this report broadly available to the University community," he said.

Pitt has contracted to pay the team $50,000 for a completed study, Connolly said. But if University officials aren't satisfied with the consultants' work, they have the option of calling off the project prior to completion and paying a correspondingly lower fee, he noted.

Heading the team will be James L. Fisher, a psychologist with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and an expert on transformational leadership in colleges and universities. Fisher has written seven books and has been awarded 12 honorary doctorates for his work with higher education institutions.

Other team members include: * Paula Brownlee, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, former president of Hollins College, and a former dean at Rutgers.

* Peter Buchanan, president of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and former vice president for development at Columbia University, where he led capital campaigns in excess of $1 billion.

* Nils Hasselmo, president of the University of Minnesota and former provost at the University of Arizona.

* James Koch, president of Old Dominion University and former president of the University of Montana.

The team will base its report on written materials (including the "Toward the 21st Century" long-range plan approved by the trustees last October, as well as confidential position papers to be prepared by selected individuals) and confidential interviews with about 100 individuals on and off campus.

Interviewees will include faculty, staff, students, trustees, alumni, benefactors and potential donors, newspaper editors and publishers, elected officials, minority group leaders, officers of national and professional organizations, representatives of other colleges and universities, and randomly selected persons from Pitt, the local community and the state.

Interviews will be conducted over a 60-day period, but particularly during a four-day interval in mid-September when the team will do face-to-face interviews on campus and in the Pittsburgh area. The team will conduct other interviews by telephone. Information gathered during the sessions will be confidential, but might be used without attribution in the team's final report, according to Pitt officials.

Connolly said the team's report will build on ongoing planning initiatives and will not supplant faculty, staff and student participation in Pitt strategic planning. "What these people [the team] will be doing is, in effect, flying up to 40,000 feet and taking a long-range look at the University. While they will be going through, and gathering, an enormous amount of detailed information, they're not going to be running around with a calculator trying to figure out whether there are six people too many in the arts and sciences. They won't be saying, for example, that we should do away with such-and-such a school or department," Connolly said.

He added: "It's not like we're hiring outsiders to come in and tell us what we ought to do. They're going to tell us what we are and give us their thoughts. We are going to decide what we're going to do. That should be made very clear. Nobody is going to tell us what to do. We're running the place. (Interim Chancellor) Mark Nordenberg is running it, and (Provost) Jim Maher, and depending on the issue, the Board of Trustees." Last winter, a consultant hired by Pitt concluded that the University needed to address its public image problems before launching a planned $100 million fund-raising campaign. In contrast to that earlier consultant's work, the review team will evaluate the reality of Pitt's status and potential, Connolly said. "But a lot of times, the perception is reality. So, while this is not designed as a further study of our image, I'm sure that issue will come up as part of the study," he said.

— Bruce Steele

Filed under: Feature,Volume 28 Issue 1

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