Trustees meet to ease faculty concerns

The IU board of trustees will meet in an executive -- and therefore private -- session Saturday to discuss the job performance of IU-Bloomington President Adam Herbert and the structure of the chancellor position.\nTwo-thirds of the Bloomington faculty voted for two resolutions that ask for a review of Herbert's performance and a splitting of the jobs of chancellor and senior vice president for academic affairs.\nThe trustees will meet with University vice presidents and deans before their private meetings and will announce their findings at their business meeting at 3 p.m. \nSome faculty members say they expect change, but many say they expect business to proceed as usual.\nTrustee Cora Smith Breckenridge said a change for IU will come out of the meeting.\n"Oh, we'll take action," she said. "Now is the time to take action."\nOne of the changes that is most expected is restructuring of the chancellor position. Faculty and search committee members have said that many strong candidates for chancellor lost interest in the job because of the added responsibility of senior vice president of academic affairs. Some say that splitting the jobs or creating a provost position might make the job more attractive and allow for more attention to be paid to IU's other campuses besides Bloomington. Breckenridge confirmed that as a real possibility.\nStill, some faculty said splitting the positions isn't a solution to the larger problem.\nChemistry professor Ted Widlanski said the real problem is with Herbert's performance and that restructuring the job won't attract any better candidates.\nCriticism of Herbert has died down somewhat in the media, and the group of faculty that organized the emergency meeting in November has neither planned nor had any meetings since the resolution vote. \nStill, that doesn't mean the issues have gone away.\nOne of the faculty's most recent concerns is that the departure of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Kumble Subbaswamy, coupled with the loss of Joseph Steinmetz, executive associate dean of COAS, will result in ensuing problems for the University.\n"We are going to be with a vacuum of leadership and it makes me worry," said Mark Kaplan, chair of the philosophy department. "I hope they fix the problem soon."\nWidlanski, a supporter of Subbaswamy for Bloomington chancellor, said he thinks the dean was holding the University together and that under the "poor leadership" of Herbert more faculty will leave for other universities.\n"Every school will know we are ripe for raiding," he said. \nWidlanski said this "crisis" could have easily been resolved by making Subbaswamy chancellor, a job he was reportedly being considered for, but IU administrators have never confirmed.\n"By making such a terrible decision (not to pick Subbaswamy), they screwed us," he said. "We have a crisis coming in terms of the faculty. We will have less available faculty and it's because we have lost some of our best leaders."\nWidlanski said IU's faculty problems will continue due to a lack of leadership.\n"You can't recruit a good dean without a good chancellor and you can't recruit a good chancellor without a good president," he said.\nAnother complaint about Herbert that has intensified since the resolution vote is a lack of visibility from the president's office. Some have seen Herbert as not being open to the public for quite some time, but some faculty say recent silence following the faculty vote has been especially infuriating.\n"He needs to engage his critics and he needs to get into more concrete terms about what he hopes to accomplish in his presidency," said James Capshew, professor of history and philosophy of science. "Brand had critics, but he responded to them. Herbert is just invisible."\nSome faculty members have also complain that part of Herbert's lack of visibility can be attributed to the amount of time he spends at another home in Florida. Herbert used to be president of University of North Florida and chancellor of the Florida university system. Many faculty said he is building a new home there.\nIU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said he could not confirm if Herbert was building a home in Florida and would not release a schedule to show how much time he spends away from Bloomington. MacIntyre did say there was nothing wrong with Herbert spending his spare time in another state.\n"I don't believe the trustees ever expected Herbert to be here all of the time," he said.\nMacIntyre added many critics might assume he is in Florida, when in fact he spends time in Washington D.C. or any location working on behalf of IU to secure funding or advance educational issues important to IU.\nFaculty have also expressed concern that the damage to Herbert's reputation might affect his ability to lobby on behalf on IU.\n"Before this happened, people around the state -- including legislators -- knew he was an inadequate president and now everybody knows," Widlanski said.\nJ. Thomas Forbes, IU's executive director for state relations, admits that some legislators have discussed concerns about Herbert with him, but says that "we all have heard all of that in the media before." He added that it hasn't been a factor in his lobbying.\nFaculty members are split on whether Herbert will be able to move on after recent criticisms.\n"I think it will have very little effect on his job, but I also think he is just not capable of doing the job," Widlanski said.\nOthers, such as Cate, hope that the trustee meeting will resolve several problems, including issues of leadership.\nRegardless of whether Herbert can come out of the controversy unscathed, some faculty said "returning to business as usual" will not be an acceptable outcome.\n"So far, he is just a caretaker of the University," Capshew said, "but some people want him to be more. They want a leader."\nMacIntyre said Herbert did not wish to comment on the issues surrounding the trustees meeting and his job performance.