University of Northern Iowa faculty to conduct side survey on presidential finalists

CEDAR FALLS - Just like the University of Iowa faculty who fought to be heard in the waning hours of their presidential search last year, University of Northern Iowa faculty - in the midst of a presidential hunt at the school - have announced plans to create an independent mechanism for gathering feedback on four finalists.

'Faculty must have information that will help hold the (Board of Regents) accountable for its selection decisions,” reads a letter from United Faculty President Joe Gorton delivered Friday to UNI faculty.

The faculty union's 'quantitative survey to collect meaningful data on faculty preferences regarding each candidate” aims to supplement a search committee questionnaire that also seeks feedback after each of the four finalists visit campus between Nov. 29 and Dec. 2.

According to Gorton's letter, the questionnaire being developed by the 21-member presidential search committee is going to ask open-ended questions - 'similar to short answer essay questions.”

That raises timing and methodology concerns, in that feedback is going to be hard to quantify in a short period of time, according to Gorton.

'It is unlikely committee members will have time to read and interpret meaningfully so much written information prior to their Dec. 5 meeting with the board,” Gorton wrote in the letter.

That raises another issue. The search timeline has the final candidate visiting UNI on Dec. 2 and the search committee meeting with the Board of Regents to share feedback three days later.

'You are probably wondering about the reliability of a deliberation packed into such a compressed time frame,” he wrote. '(United Faculty) is wondering the same thing.”

Gorton said the committee, during its Dec. 5 meeting with regents, plans to share views on strengths and weaknesses of each candidate.

'Presuming multiple candidates are rated ‘acceptable,' the board will have total discretion to make their decision without meaningful input from UNI faculty,” Gorton wrote in the letter. 'In short, they can pick whomever they want without knowing the rank-ordered preferences of the committee or the faculty as a whole.”

UNI professor Dan Power, a past United Faculty president who is co-chairing the UNI search with Board of Regents President Pro Tem Katie Mulholland, said some information in Gorton's letter to faculty is inaccurate.

For starters, he said, the committee questionnaire is to request structured responses to 11 criteria for qualification.

'It will allow us to say the respondents perceive them as strong or weaker on different dimensions,” he said.

The survey is being conducted 'scientifically,” Power said. 'We will know what percentage strongly agreed and what percentage strongly disagreed on the qualifications. We will break it out to see if there are differences by faculty, staff and students.”

But, Power conceded, the committee is not planning to rank candidates based on UNI community feedback.

'That's just not within our charge,” he said. 'We will be providing information on strengths and weaknesses.”

Power said he thinks the committee - which already has interviewed the candidates and pored over their resumes - is going to have plenty of time to review the feedback before meeting with the board.

And, he said, United Faculty should feel free to conduct its own survey and provide its findings to the board - like UI faculty did last year for the search that landed Bruce Harreld.

'We are not going to try to squelch anybody's voice,” Power said.

The United Faculty survey is being designed for completion in five minutes, according to Gorton's letter. It is to be sent out immediately after the last candidate leaves and gives respondents just 24 hours to respond.

'Without these data, the faculty as a whole will not have reliable and valid input into the selection process,” Gorton wrote.

UI faculty last year also created its own mechanism for collecting feedback on each of its four presidential finalists after learning the search firm hired to facilitate the process was gathering input through open-ended questions.

Based on the UI faculty survey that ranked candidates based on qualification preferences and opinions, faculty leaders were able to report that a majority of the campus respondents disapproved of Harreld.

Still, the Board of Regents unanimously agreed to hire him, leading to campus protests, faculty and student votes of no confidence and a sanction from the American Association of University Professors.

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