CHICAGO
In the first of two stories chronicling the controversial appointment of a new president to lead Chicago State University, faculty members, shut out of a ‘less than transparent’ selection process, call on the governor of Illinois to intervene.
Chicago State University’s newly appointed president Dr. Wayne Watson doesn’t officially assume his post until Aug. 1, however some CSU faculty already have a to-do list for him when he arrives on campus, which includes making a public apology for impugning their teaching abilities and producing documents outlining his views on shared governance. Not exactly a typical faculty wish list, but members of the CSU community say it has been far from a typical presidential search.
Following the 10-year tenure of CSU’s last president Dr. Elnora Daniel, who stepped down in June 2008 following allegations of mismanagement and questionable spending, faculty say the university needs particularly strong leadership and were hopeful that the presidential search would yield such candidates.
Instead, say several faculty members, the two finalists, Watson, chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago since 1998, and Dr. Carol Adams, who is currently secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services and was formerly executive director of the undergraduate and graduate Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University, are “local political insiders” and turned out to be the same two applicants whose names were floated more than a year ago to be the next president.
Dr. Phillip Beverly, associate professor of political science and an outspoken critic of the presidential search, calls the search “perfunctory at best” adding, “I don’t think either one is qualified to run a doctoral-granting institution; I’ll be very candid about that.”
Furthermore, the Presidential Search Advisory Committee (PSAC), made up of faculty, administrators, staff and two students, say they were shut out of the selection process by the board of trustees and were not allowed to perform their most basic of duties, which were outlined by the board.
