Even as University of Connecticut President Philip Austin handed out diplomas for the last time in early May, UConn kicked off the search for his replacement by hiring the recruiting firm that managed Trinity College”™s unsuccessful search five years ago.
Boston-based Isaacson Miller Inc. specializes in leading searches for institutions of higher education. The firm has a recent track record at UConn, having led the search that resulted in former West Hartford Town Manager Barry Feldman becoming chief operating officer at UConn.
Isaacson Miller founder John Isaacson declined to comment on the UConn search and search-committee members and trustees said they could not comment as the process is in the early stages.
The nation”™s universities rely on just a few search firms to identify candidates, with the short list including Los Angeles-based Korn/Ferry International, Atlanta firm Heidrick & Struggles Inc., and AT Kearney Inc., whose primary university recruiter is based in Dallas.
Academic recruiters live in a precarious position compared with their headhunting corporate cousins. Many universities adhere to a practice of identifying finalists in advance, inviting criticism from faculty, students and alumni.
The open search process can also ruffle candidates”™ feathers ”“ after the University of New Hampshire solicited additional candidates for its own search late last year, the two initial finalists both withdrew.
Identifying a candidate who does not pan out can scar a school. Isaacson Miller led Trinity College”™s presidential search that resulted in the 2002 hiring of Richard Hersh, who previously had led Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y.
Less than 18 months after joining the school, Hersh resigned after faculty members complained about his leadership style, which many saw as abrasive.
One industry professional familiar with Isaacson Miller described the Trinity fiasco as “painful” for the firm”™s principals.
While private colleges like Trinity can suffer a tempest in a teapot over a presidential appointment, it is nothing next to the uproar spawned by searches at state university systems, which are subsidized by taxpayer money.
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Evan Dobelle, the man Hersh replaced at Trinity, lasted just a few years in his subsequent job as president of the University of Hawaii, with the system”™s regents firing him for a range of perceived offenses, which he publicly disputed. Dobelle is now president of the New England Board of Higher Education, a Boston-based group that advocates on behalf of universities and colleges.
Austin is widely credited with shepherding UConn away from its one-time perception as a “cow college,” overseeing a $1 billion, publicly funded construction campaign while increasing the school”™s visibility through its basketball and football programs.
During the Austin era, UConn expanded undergraduate enrollment 45 percent to 20,800 as of last fall, with SAT scores up significantly.
Austin”™s successor will oversee another $1.3 billion in construction, not including a new hospital for which the school hopes to win state funding. The new president also will have to fix perhaps Austin”™s greatest failure ”“ not hiring sufficient faculty to keep pace with the school”™s exploding enrollment. Faculty shortages impact not only average class sizes, but also a school”™s ability to recruit top researchers who dread spending more time at the classroom lectern at the expense of the lab bench.
UConn has increased the size of its faculty just 10 percent during Austin”™s tenure, a net gain of 110 professors. UConn freed up cash to add 51 professors in 2005; in 2006 it set a goal of hiring 35 faculty members annually for the next five years, but hired only 13 in the first year. The school is asking the Connecticut General Assembly to allocate more than $4 million to support the annual salaries and support costs of new faculty.
In a 16-page document, UConn outlined its desired traits in its new president, including a history of scholarship, fundraising prowess and managerial effectiveness.
UConn has also dangled a tangible goal for whoever takes the top slot: gaining entry to the Association of American Universities, a group of 60 schools renowned for their research capabilities. Brandeis University was the most recent New England institution accepted into the association, in 1985. The only other New England members are Yale University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brown University.
It is not unusual for search firms like Isaacson Miller to recruit for presidential posts from the same cadre of candidates. Jack Burns, a former University of Colorado administrator who was one of the finalists that withdrew from the University of New Hampshire job, also was a semifinalist in the University of Nevada”™s 2006 presidential search. In 2004, he was beaten out for the University of Tennessee job by former UConn provost John Petersen.
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Bob Smith, UConn”™s former vice provost, has also been a candidate for multiple positions, most recently at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Perhaps unexpectedly, no school in the nation has served as a better springboard to a state university presidency than UConn. Besides Petersen at the University of Tennessee, former UConn President John Casteen III has been president of the University of Virginia since 1990; former provost Mark Emmert is president of the University of Washington.
Like John DiBiaggio, who held successive presidencies at UConn, Michigan State University and Tufts University, Austin has led three schools. He became UConn”™s 13th president on Oct. 1, 1996, having spent seven years as chancellor at the University of Alabama; before that, he was president of Colorado State University.
Colorado State in Fort Collins was the most recent stop for Peter Nicholls, who in 2005 replaced Petersen as provost, though the Austin and Nicholls tenures did not overlap at Colorado State.
While Austin and Nicholls were recruited from other schools, UConn also has a history of promoting from within in the past few decades. Harry Hartley became president in 1990 after 18 years serving in various administrative roles. DiBiaggio led the UConn Health Center in Farmington before becoming president in 1979.
While Isaacson Miller has a former college president on its staff who lives in Connecticut ”“ Peter Stanley, who led California”™s Pomona College for a dozen years ”“ for the UConn search the firm assigned Michael Baer, a former Northeastern University provost who more recently oversaw American Council on Education programs that coached women and minorities for senior university positions.
UConn has never had a woman or a minority as president, a status that the region”™s Ivy-level schools have been scrubbing from their own legacies the past few years.
Earlier this year, Harvard promoted a woman dean named Drew Gilpin Faust as president, with former President Larry Summers”™ early departure precipitated by remarks he made deemed demeaning to women academics.
In 2004, former Yale University provost Susan Hockfield became the first woman president at MIT.
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