With the ink still fresh on her new contract, Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor now faces a required review from faculty and students.

This review falls into a communication gap between the university’s two governing bodies: the Board of Trustees, who granted Cantor’s new contract in June without comprehensive faculty or student feedback, and the University Senate, who is required to conduct the review.

“My assumption would be the Board felt they had all that information without our report,” said Bruce Carter, an SU associate dean and chair of the Senate committee charged with reviewing the chancellor. “As a faculty member and a member of the university community, I would assert that they needed our input.”

A review of the chancellor, which measures faculty and student opinions, is required every five years by the bylaws of the University Senate, SU’s governing body composed of faculty and staff. Under these bylaws, the review can recommend renewal or even dismissal of the chancellor. The trustees are not obligated to abide by the recommendations, but the review process and the recent renewal creates at least a potential for a collision between the bodies. And the situation has surprised some senior faculty members and frustrated others.

“I’ve talked to a good number of faculty, and I’ve yet to find one who thought the Board’s decision was appropriate,” said a senior faculty member who asked for anonymity for fear of repercussions. “Many thought it was inappropriate.”

But several trustees and Cantor downplayed any potential for conflict with the University Senate and defended the contract renewal without awaiting the Senate review.

“Everybody views that as something that feeds into the regular reviews by the Board of Trustees’ compensation committee each June,” Cantor said when describing the Senate review.

The faculty discontent is rooted in the timing of the renewal and the contrast with past practices. The chancellor’s contract would have expired in 2010, after the Senate review was complete. But at a new trustee chairman’s first meeting, the Board of Trustees’ compensation and executive committees unanimously extended Cantor’s contract through 2014. Several trustees told the Daily Orange that they were unaware of the required Senate review.

The communication gap extends to the highest level of the university – the board’s executive committee.

The 2007-2008 outgoing board chairman, John Couri, said he knew the review was in the works for this year. The Senate’s review “would not have influenced us in any shape, way or form, because that review would simply be for us to take into account when we review the chancellor’s compensation on a yearly basis,” he said.

But John Chapple, who succeeded Couri and chaired the June meeting, at which Cantor’s contract was renewed, said he did not know of the upcoming review until he received a letter from the review committee chair in late September.

That was three months after his board had renewed Cantor’s contract.

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As the Senate committee continues with the chancellor’s evaluation, the reviewers’ ability to recommend reaffirmation or dismissal could potentially set up the trustees and Senate for an unprecedented collision between the report’s findings and the Cantor’s locked-in contract.

The contract will have her at the helm of SU for at least 10 years – one and half years more than the average university president.

Chapple, the chairman of the Board, said the review would be taken into account in the Board’s annual evaluation of the chancellor. “If there were a set of findings that made a case to have them reviewed with Nancy, we would certainly do that,” he said.

But it is unclear whether Cantor’s contract could be broken regardless of the report’s findings.

Typically a contract includes terms stating the conditions under which it can be terminated, said Robert Rabin, a labor contract law expert in SU’s College of Law. If terms are not stated, the contract can only be broken if it is bought out.

Cantor’s contract details are not made public because it is a personnel issue.

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With campus in the lulls of summer, the news of Cantor’s extension surprised many SU faculty members.

Carter, the head of the review committee, said he was “as surprised as everyone else at the university.”

“Do I find it surprising? Yes, I do,” said Carter, associate dean of the College of Human Ecology. He was especially taken aback, he said, because he knew the Senate committee was about the begin Cantor’s review.

Carter confirmed that the review would continue despite the board of trustees’ actions.

It is required that a Senate committee must be assembled to review the chancellor every five years. The committee conducts interviews with the chancellor’s cabinet and surveys the deans, faculty and students. The data results in a report articulating the university community’s perception of the chancellor’s performance.

“It’s a process that’s built into the institution,” Carter said.

The report, which is never seen by the public, is given to the board of trustees with a request for a response as to “whether the board has accepted or rejected any recommendation for reaffirmation or dismissal,” according to Senate bylaws.

Yet, without this comprehensive report, the board of trustee’s compensation and executive committees agreed to extend Cantor’s contract. While the board is not obligated to wait for the review, both review committee members and senior faculty have questioned the decision.

‘The timing of the new contract and the traditional review of the chancellor by the University Senate raises legitimate, awkward questions,” said Robert McClure, a political science professor and former associate dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. McClure stopped short of criticizing Chapple. “But, I have known the chair of the board of trustees since he was a student here at the university, and I know him to be a man of judgment, experience and integrity.”

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It’s unclear whether the entire executive committee knew a review would be complete before Cantor’s original contract had expired.

“I don’t know that the board, frankly, knew that we were in the process of doing this,” Carter said of the review. “Maybe that’s part of the issue, too.”

Executive board member Joyce Hergenhan said she did not recall being told about a Senate review. At the June meeting, the executive committee was presented with a researched recommendation from the compensation committee to give the chancellor a new contract. The executive committee members then discussed their peers’ recommendation and unanimously voted to approve it.

“It was a pretty simple process,” Hergenhan said.

Of the faculty Senate review of the chancellor, Hergenhan expressed surprise. “Here I am, totally unaware of this,” she said.

Fellow executive committee member Deryck Palmer said he also did not know specifically of the Senate review. But he added that he assumed periodic reviews did occur.

“There’s a periodic review that goes on on an ongoing basis,” he said. “It’s a pretty standard operating procedure.”

Joe Lampe, a former chairman of the board, said he did not hear anything about the review until it was mentioned in conversation with a University Senator. “I can only assume that some of the trustees were surprised with it because they didn’t know about it – they didn’t know there was going to be a review,” Lampe said. “I only heard about it as a rumor that they had scheduled a subcommittee.”

In response to questions about the early renewal, Couri, the immediate past chairman, said the board was afraid of losing Cantor to another university. “We didn’t want to take any chances of having someone else, another university, entice her to move away from Syracuse,” he said.

In an interview, Cantor said she had not been looking elsewhere.

The chancellor said she did know the Senate review was in process. She downplayed the awkward timing of events, describing the Senate review ‘as a separate process from the contract. It could come up at any point,’ she said.

To Cantor, the Senate’s responsibility does not extend to influencing her contract decision – even if the bylaws say differently.

The review, she said, will be used by the trustees in their annual review of her salary next summer.

“As the chair has said, it will be taken very seriously,” Cantor said. “As of course, I will.”

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Cantor’s employment relationship with the university stands in sharp contrast to that of her predecessor, Chancellor Kenneth ‘Buzz’ Shaw. While Cantor now has a second multi-year contract, Shaw never had a long-term contract.

Lampe, who chaired the board of trustees during Shaw’s 13-year tenure, described the former chancellor as having “a year-to-year contract” with salary renewals being granted each June. “We could terminate him at any time,” Lampe said.

With Cantor’s arrival in 2004, the SU board of trustees adopted a contract culture for its chief executive, part of a trend at universities across the country.

“Times have changed. I think they are a lot more competitive than they used to be,” Couri, the former trustees chair, said of the academic world.

Several senior faculty members have described this change as an indictor of a shifting philosophy. They describe a corporate approach under which boards and their chief executive officers engage in hierarchal decision-making. That’s different from how universities typically operate, faculty members said.

A university is a different creature than a publicly traded company, said one senior faculty member who wished to remain anonymous in order to speak freely about the atmosphere at the university.

In academia, multiple constituencies – from the faculty, to the administration, to students and alumni – have a say in setting the direction and determining the culture. Renewing the top leader without consulting these groups – or waiting for the Senate review including such opinions – is an indicator that university is moving toward the corporate model, the professor said.

Some faculty members see this as an inappropriate shift.

“There is something quite unhealthy about the culture,” said another senior faculty member. “Because people seem reluctant and unwilling to raise questions.”

But neither the evolution nor the new process provoked alarm among members of the Board of Trustees.

Couri compared Cantor’s renewal to the customs of the financial world. “When a high-powered individual moves from one entity to another, they require a contract,” he said.

Fellow executive committee member Hergenhan, a former executive at General Electric, described the process as “very similar” to her experience in corporate America.

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At the Oct. 8 University Senate meeting, review committee chair Carter updated the Senate on the status of the chancellor’s review. He read a letter from Chapple, the current Board chair. The letter assured the Senate that the review would not be in vain, despite the chancellor’s new contract having already been granted.

“You can be sure we will welcome the review committee’s findings and factor them into our annual evaluation process,” Carter read from Chapple’s letter.

At the review committee’s first meeting in September, Carter said, committee members had questioned the value of the review, wanting to ensure they would be collecting data for a report that would be taken seriously.

But Carter is adamant that the content of the report will not be affected by the status of the chancellor’s contract. The reviewers, he said, are committed to gathering unbiased data that will reflect the SU community’s assessment of the chancellor’s performance.

Whether the review can have an effect on the chancellor’s status, it is going forward.

Patrick Cihon, a professor and review committee member, said the committee thought the board would have waited for its report, but that it continues to hope the review will be taken seriously.

“We wouldn’t want to be engaged in a meaningless exercise,” Cihon said.

 

Published on October 22, 2008 at 12:00 pm