Vice Presentation

By Dr. Mark Golden, UWFA Member-at-Large

Somewhere amidst the Dark Matter that makes up so much of our universe a committee is meeting. Made up of representatives of the Board of Regents, support staff, students, senior administrators and UWFA members, it will at length recommend a new Vice-President Academic to Lloyd Axworthy.

There is a lot not to like in this process. The committee makes use of headhunters and these do not come cheap. Senate will have no role in ratifying what is after all an academic appointment. But what I find most galling is its secrecy. Are we choosing a colleague or an undercover agent?

Other Canadian universities are more open, from sea to shining sea. At UVic, the two final candidates for the most recent competition for a Vice President of Research gave public presentations. So too the four short-listed for VP Academic at UPEI last year — and their CVs were posted on the university website as well. We used to do something similar here. But the first presentation by a candidate to succeed Mark Leggott as University Librarian was cancelled on the morning it was to be delivered and ever since senior positions have been filled in secret.

Administration apologists explain that secrecy is required to attract the best candidates, who would otherwise be unwilling to show their present employers that they have itchy feet or be embarrassed if we failed to scratch them. But I’d bet that all those in positions of leadership already suspect their peers are as ambitious as they are. If this were a real problem, universities would simply refuse to consider applicants who would have to leave a job before its term had expired.

As for embarrassment, of course it’s no fun to be passed over (unless you’ve taken the precaution to smear a lamb’s blood on your doorpost), let alone publicly humiliated, but teaching faculty need to put themselves at just that risk whenever we apply for a new job. And our job — unlike that of a senior administrator — rarely involves public presentations before audiences who don’t have to listen to us or even pretend that they do. Our recent history here ought to indicate how important a part of a VP Academic’s job public performances can be. Two recent presidents, Marsha Hanen and Connie Rooke, were replaced by their VPs Academic for part of their terms. Surely the university community, as well as the selection committee, should get some idea of candidates’ skills in that area.