After Friday’s selection of the former U.S. secretary of education Margaret Spellings as the new president of the University of North Carolina system, some faculty members and students across the state expressed guarded hope for her leadership. But many of them remained concerned over what had been a messy and divisive search process.
Ms. Spellings will replace Thomas W. Ross, who was pushed out by the system’s Republican-led Board of Governors this year in what many observers called a politically motivated ouster. She will take office on March 1 and will be paid $775,000 annually — $175,000 more than Mr. Ross’s salary.
Ms. Spellings served as a secretary of education under President George W. Bush and is perhaps best known in higher-education circles for creating the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which ushered in a new focus on college accountability. Her sudden emergence this month as the top contender to succeed Mr. Ross amplified criticisms many had aired about what was already a tumultuous search.
Many faculty-governance leaders were reserving comment on Ms. Spellings’ fitness for her new role, given that they had not yet been granted their request to meet with her. They had repeatedly asked the search committee for the opportunity to speak with presidential candidates before Mr. Ross’s successor was chosen. No such meetings were ever scheduled, though faculty members have not been closely involved in past presidential searches in the state.
But faculty leaders continued to be vocal in condemning the board’s handling of the search, which has been fraught with public criticism and sharp disagreements among board members. The system’s Faculty Assembly released a fiery statement on Thursday describing the board’s attitude toward faculty members as one of “ill-informed indifference.”
Several members of the assembly read out a statement after the announcement saying that the board had “yet to explain why it removed the current president” and had “yet to explain why students, staff, and faculty were precluded from the review process. We think most citizens would agree with us that this is probably not a good thing.”
At a brief news conference after the announcement of her appointment, Ms. Spellings was asked about how politics would influence her decision making as she makes the transition into higher education. She responded that “these are all political settings” and “that’s the fun of it.”
She acknowledged faculty members’ concerns about the search and her selection. But she said that “higher education is changing, and we have to change with it. The faculty know that. We all know that.”
‘I expect the faculty to react well to my appointment,’ Ms. Spellings said. ‘I have skills that are different from theirs. I’m not an academic, and I’m not a teacher. I’m not a researcher. I’m somebody who understands public-policy making.’
She added, “I expect the faculty to react well to my appointment. I have skills that are different from theirs. I’m not an academic, and I’m not a teacher. I’m not a researcher. I’m somebody who understands public-policy making.”
James C. Moeser, a former chancellor of the system’s Chapel Hill flagship and now a professor of music there, said Ms. Spellings must understand that running a system of campuses is not akin to running a single institution. She should resist micromanaging each campus, he said. The North Carolina board’s intervention at the campus level, he said, has increased “to an alarming degree in the last two to three years.”
David A. Green, a professor of law at North Carolina Central University, said he wanted to see Ms. Spellings show immediate appreciation for the unique missions of the system’s five historically black colleges, and for maintaining affordability and accessibility for minority students. Mr. Green was part of a committee that conducted statewide public hearings early in the search.
Mr. Ross has been a stout defender of the system’s historically black colleges, Mr. Green said. The president helped beat back an attempt by the state legislature, in 2014, to close Elizabeth City State University, a small campus that was struggling financially. Now that a leadership transition has begun, faculty members and administrators at such institutions feel uneasy, Mr. Green said.
John Steen, a former visiting assistant professor at East Carolina University and an advocate for adjuncts, hoped Ms. Spellings would reach out to contingent faculty members and bring them more fully into the system’s tradition of shared governance. Professors off the tenure track “are the heart and soul of this university’s teaching mission,” particularly at regional campuses that are less focused on research, said Mr. Steen, now program director for a group called Scholars for North Carolina’s Future.
Ms. Spellings — who is known as a champion of efficiency in education — also must recognize that cuts in campus budgets and resources tend to hit contingent faculty members harder than those with tenure, Mr. Steen said. Making faculty salaries a priority is critical, he added.
Mr. Ross has more of a “grass-roots appeal” among students than Ms. Spellings probably will, said Zackary King, president of the system’s Association of Student Governments and a nonvoting member of the system’s board. Mr. Ross, he said, “really is held by student leaders as an idol and a hero.” But he was encouraged by Ms. Spellings’ desire to spend time on each campus in the system right away.
Still, an air of suspicion will most likely follow Ms. Spellings for some time, said Charlotte Fryar, a graduate student on the Chapel Hill campus. She raised concern about what she called the president-elect’s record of taking accountability in education too far and said any positive qualities Ms. Spellings brought to the role would be overshadowed by that.
“It just reeks of juvenile behavior to me to have these factions within the Board of Governors quarreling childishly” over such an important decision, Ms. Fryar said. “I’m a student, and for a student to be calling the board’s leadership juvenile, that’s saying something.”
