BY AAUP WISCONSIN
The following statement was released today by the AAUP’s Wisconsin state conference in response to the announcement of a sole finalist for University of Wisconsin system president.
AAUP Wisconsin expresses its strong opposition to the selection of University of Alaska System President Jim Johnsen as the sole finalist for the position of UW System President. The faculty at both the Anchorage and Fairbanks campuses of the Alaska system voted no confidence in Johnsen’s leadership in 2017, and the Anchorage faculty called on their Board to suspend Johnsen in 2019.
These are disqualifying attributes in any candidate. Basic norms of decency and respect toward our colleagues in Alaska dictate that we oppose Johnsen’s candidacy in the strongest possible terms.
The problems here are compounded by the search committee’s decision to name Johnsen as the sole finalist. This is a departure from accepted academic standards. It suggests either a weak candidate pool or a fixed search. The Regents chose to pursue an unprecedented search process that excluded faculty, staff, and non-Regent students. This is its predictably egregious result.
We call on the Regents to withdraw Johnsen’s candidacy immediately and declare a failed search.
We will not allow a new system president to unilaterally pursue an agenda of consolidation and closure of programs and campuses. That is Johnsen’s track record in Alaska, and it will be his charge from the Regents here in Wisconsin. Should the Regents persist in installing Johnsen, we will advocate for him to be removed as soon as Walker appointees lose their majority on the Board next spring.
We reaffirm our commitment to the Wisconsin Idea and to bringing the fruits of higher education to the people of Wisconsin all over the state. We invite the Regents to join us in championing the mission of the UW System by working to improve rather than dismantle public higher education in Wisconsin.
The faculty at the University of Alaska have voted no confidence against more than one administrator, openly slandered the Board of Regents, and denied ultimatums from both the Governor and Legislature of Alaska who refuse to continue to fund UA with unrestricted funds as they have in the past. Faculty Senates have simultaneously voted against every single cost saving measure that has been proposed since the State of Alaska cut UA state funding by 41% last year.
President Johnsen has been transparent and candid about the need to make structural changes to address eight years of unmitigated enrollment decline and massive state funding cuts. His proposed plans have been public, his process open, and his intentions to save the maximum number of faculty jobs clear.
Meanwhile, the Chancellors of the UA campuses have engaged in a systematic misinformation campaign aimed to prevent consolidation of their campus administrations. They continue to placate the faculty with reassurances in public, divert their attention with sacrificial proposals for them to vote against in committees, while firing individual faculty behind closed doors with dubious attention to merit, no transparency, and little oversight of priorities.
Only recently have faculty at UA begun to wake to the fact that every dollar spent on administration, unpopular sports programs, and pet projects is a dollar that must be cut from faculty wages and academic programs. Unfortunately, they have yet to rectify their competing knee-jerk reactions against communal administration and high administrative costs. I would ask them here to consider the faculty that have already been fired by the Chancellors, look around at some of the budget items they have not cut, and subject these latent priorities to the same critical rigor to which they subjected President Johnsen’s open and transparent plans.
As the University of Alaska enters its second of three years of large funding cuts under the compact with the Governor, the only question that remains for serious individuals is whether the UA system will become three separately accredited universities with shared overhead administrative units, or one accredited institution. These were the same two viable options proposed by Johnsen and the Board or Regents of the University of Alaska two semesters ago.
Johnson is not a good president at all. He does not listen to faculty at all and does not respect shared governance. He should not be running any higher education institution.
Who to believe? For now, I’m going to trust Nanook One until I hear more from AAUP, which seems to base its position almost exclusively on the no confidence vote against Johnson — without any details.
How about some facts from AAUP and some rebuttal to Nanook’s claims,which seem to be buttressed by some argument,not just opinion.
Staff/student from UA, here.
The reason he received a vote of no confidence from faculty was the forced email conversion that destroyed many business processes at UAA (anchorage campus) and UAS (south east campus). He made an edicate that the university should be on gmail system for all communications and it must be done in 30 days.
No research.
No scope
No impact survey
No meeting with stake holders
nothing.
It was huge mess, normally a project of that magnitude would be a minimum 6 months in the planning stages alone. I could regale the details, but I don’t need to, the university commissioned an action report. read it here:
https://www.alaska.edu/files/oit/RLE_CF/After-Action-Report-UAGoogleApps.pdf
I can save you the time, it reads as a guide on how not to do an IT project, or any project.
But here is the kicker; Johnson job prior to coming to UA, was the CEO of ACS – an Alaska telecom company. Your telling me that the CEO of a telcom did not have the basic understanding of a major IT project? No he did it because he wanted to, consequences be damned.
Honestly, I’m glad when he is gone, but sorry for you guys.
Good! Thank you, Gary King. Now we all have some reasons, not vague opinions, about why Johnson is a less-than-ideal candidate.
UAA faculty here. Johnsen is an extremely arrogant individual, but UA faculty have also been unrealistic about the response to budget cuts. I have had several opportunities to interact with Johnsen. He definitely thinks he is the smartest person in the room at all times. He is one of those people that just talks at you and then glazes over when anyone else is speaking. His biggest misstep at UA was trying to jam through the transition to single accreditation. Apparently he didn’t realize that he actually needed buy in from the peons on that move and he got slapped down by the accreditor and had to do a mea culpa and retreat with his tail between his legs. The timeline probably aligns well with when he became a candidate at UW. To be fair, he is getting off a sinking ship and moving up the ladder, so good move for him. I wish UW the best of luck, but they could have done so much better.
A follow up, after that email fiasco at a meeting with UAA facutly/staff and Johnson, his respond was: “oops, my bad, shouldn’t have done it.” But that incident has been his template on how business gets done.
With the proposed merging all three campuses under one administration as a cost savings.
The Board of Regents requested plans for both systems; keeping it as is or merging under one, and how to reduce costs to handle the upcoming budget cuts under each. The three chancellors presented their plan to the BoR, it was very detailed, filled with numbers, it was a how we will make it work! It addressed the projected budget shortfall.
President Johnson’s 4 slide presentation to the BoR, had no hard numbers and no data, it was presented as just a broad “this is what we are going to do.”
This is after every time the UA system has looked at consolidation in the past, there has been no projected savings. I don’t’ have time to find the VoD on the BoR site, but the meeting took place within the last couple of years.
Last thing; one of my co-workers found this article yesterday and passed the link around, its how I ended up here. We just received an email yesterday morning from Johnson saying he is a finalist for this job.
-gary.
I’m no expert on the UA system but a merging of 3 campuses under one administration does not sound like a huge cost saving measure to me, especially in a state where travel among those locations may be difficult for parts of the year. Universities RARELY look at true ways to prioritize expenditures,which usually entail eliminating wasteful and unnecessary “compliance officers” and deadwood departments.
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