By Dan Frazier

Tea Party Editor 

Owen Cargol, the newly hired president of Northern Arizona University, has come a long way from his days as a public relations official for Texaco. And he’s made a giant leap from his last job as the president of tiny University of Maine at Augusta to become the president of NAU.

For Cargol, the road to NAU has been long and winding. These last few miles have been bumpy ones. Faculty leaders overwhelmingly recommended against his selection, citing his lack of research or teaching experience and the fact that he has never managed a residential campus the size of NAU.  Nonetheless, the Arizona Board of Regents selected Cargol. The Regents cited his leadership and fundraising skills as well as his experience with distance learning as important assets. Cargol’s selection has sparked a heated debate that has pitted a sizable portion of the faculty of NAU against the Arizona Board of Regents over the question of shared governance and the direction of the university. The controversy has undoubtedly worsened pre-existing morale problems at the university.

The controversy surrounding Cargol could not have come at a worse time for NAU. In April, the NAU Faculty Senate released the results of survey that collected the comments of some 400 full- and part-time faculty members. Eighty-three percent of respondents indicated morale was a problem at NAU. Eighty-six percent said faculty participation in university decisions was a problem. Many of the comments seemed to foreshadow the presidential crisis on the horizon:

“This is the worst climate I have ever witnessed at NAU,” wrote one instructor. “All decisions are made at the top and faculty is seldom consulted. …Never have I seen faculty so scared or administrators so arrogant. Most of the problems seem to stem from faculty alienation (lack of meaningful input into the decisions which affect their lives).”

Another professor wrote: “I don’t believe our faculty input is even wanted, though the administration goes through a process that makes it look like they do — then they ignore or overturn faculty decisions to the benefit of the administration.”

Faculty members also repeatedly voiced concern about distance learning, or the increasing use of Web-based courses and interactive television to reach students in rural areas. One professor wrote:

“In every respect, the way we are being railroaded into distance learning is a disaster. … We are … cannibalizing the NAU programs to increase our capacity for distance learning … requiring that on-campus students, who pay big bucks to come and live here, must take some of their course work through distance learning offerings … offering courses, and even planning to offer whole degree programs — (such as) the doctorate in nursing  — of inferior quality, whose only justification for being is that they make use of distance technology.”

The fact that Owen Cargol was hired in part because of his experience with distance learning has only heightened the concerns of some faculty members about NAU’s increasing emphasis on distance learning.

If Cargol is having any second thoughts about his new $180,000 a year job at NAU, he is keeping them to himself. He recently told the Greater Flagstaff Economic Council that he was in the process of buying a house in Flagstaff. He has shown considerable diplomacy in handling the controversy, telling the Chronicle of Higher Education, “The challenge for the successful candidate is always to address the concerns of the constituents who didn’t support him.” He also said he was heartened by supportive messages he has received from some faculty members.

Cargol has said that the NAU presidency is a “destination position” and that he hopes to stay at NAU for 10 years. He told Minnesotans exactly the same thing late last year when he was being considered for the chancellorship of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. So it seems NAU was not necessarily Cargol’s first choice. In fact, in the last year, he has also been a contender for top university posts in Michigan, Ohio, and Nevada.

He might not have become one of the top three candidates in the search for an NAU president had it not been for a story published in the Arizona Republic on the very day that the search committee shortened the list of finalists from six to three. The story concerned one of the six candidates, Roger Bowen, president of State University New York at New Paltz. The story reported that Bowen had created a “major flap on a New York university campus three years ago when he allowed a women’s studies conference that had ‘how to do it’ topics on sadomasochism, sex toys and lesbianism.” The conference was derided by New York conservatives, including Governor George Pataki, but “praised by others, including feminist groups, for supporting academic freedom.” Bowen was not one of three candidates recommended to the Regents by the search committee. The three candidates who were recommended were Owen Cargol; Denise Trauth, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, Central Michigan University; and John D. Haeger, provost at NAU.

The process of finding a new NAU president was set in motion in late October when Clara Lovett announced that she would step down June 30, at the end of her term. By January, a search committee had been formed, a search firm hired, and a rough timeline for the search developed. Before long, the committee would be wading through more than 80 applications, and ultimately fan out across the country to meet with 15 prospects.

Kay McKay was appointed to head the search committee by Don Ulrich (pronounced Ulrick), then-president of the Arizona Board of Regents. McKay began her one-year term as Regents president on July 1. She says she was chosen to head the search committee because she lives in Flagstaff and is involved with NAU. She has lived in Flagstaff since 1961. McKay is the executive director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Northern Arizona. NAU students often work in her office. For the last 11 years, she has been the chair of the Bachelor of Science and Social Work program, a task force at NAU. Among other things, she serves on numerous boards including that of the Flagstaff Medical Center. She was appointed by the Governor as a Regent 1998. Her term will expire in 2006.

McKay explained that search firms are routinely used in presidential searches in part because they allow interested applicants a chance to ask questions about the position, selection criteria and the university without officially declaring their candidacy. Once they make their interest known to the search committee, their candidacy becomes official. The identities of official candidates applying for the presidency of public universities must be made public under Arizona’s Open Meeting law. But many candidates are reluctant to make their interest known publicly until they have additional information about the position. Hence, search firms are used as intermediaries. Search firms also assist with collecting information about the candidates and may help to screen out some unqualified applicants during the early stages of the selection process.

One of McKay’s responsibilities was to select those who would serve on the 24-member search committee. She said Regent Ulrich made only a few suggestions with regard to committee members, and she accepted his suggestions. McKay said that members of the search committee were very carefully chosen so as to represent a diversity of groups.

Nonetheless, complaints have surfaced about the lack of faculty representation on the search committee. Robert Yowell, chair of the NAU Faculty Senate, writing in the Arizona Daily Sun, indicated that only one elected NAU faculty member was a part of the search committee.

McKay does not agree that members of the NAU community were underrepresented. She counts no less than seven individuals on the committee representing the university. She alluded to five of the seven: A dean (who is also a faculty member), a faculty chair, a faculty member (who is a Regent’s professor), a student, and a staff person.

Grenetta Fink, an NAU graduate student has her own take on the makeup of the search committee. Fink served on the search committee as the chair of the NAU Classified Staff Advisory Council, a group representing nonfaculty staff —  including everyone from janitors to computer repair technicians. Fink is also the administrative assistant to the director of the NAU multicultural center. She is a doctoral student in the Political Science department. Fink said, “The community members far outweighed the faculty representation. And there was absolutely zero representation for … graduate students. And just because I happen to be a graduate student … I took on that role in the committee. … I would … raise my hand and say, ‘OK, I’m commenting as a graduate student now, as opposed to a classified staff member.’” 

 Most other members of the committee came from the ranks of business leaders around the state. Several business leaders came from Flagstaff including former Mayor Chris Bavasi; David C. Maurer, President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce; and Steve Karlson, President and COO of the Flagstaff Medical Center. A complete list of members of the search committee, along with biographical sketches, is available at www.abor.asu.edu. The Web site also includes information about the Regents.

In February, the search committee put together a “working draft of desirable characteristics for NAU’s next president.” The list of 26 desirable traits, which was not necessarily presented in the order of importance, began with “A collegial leadership style that is marked by shared governance and a respect for and partnership with faculty and staff to advance the mission of the university and attain excellence in teaching and research.” Second from last on the list was “A commitment to strengthening initiatives, distance education and the multi-faceted delivery of education.”

Four public forums were held at NAU in an effort to refine this list of desirable traits. One forum was for the general public, two others were for NAU faculty, students and staff. The fourth and final forum was conducted by interactive television to solicit comments from statewide sites. According to reports in the Daily Sun, the forums drew small crowds — in some cases as few as 20 people.

Kay McKay estimates that in all, fewer than 50 faculty members had input at the February forums. But she does not believe more input from faculty at the forums would have made any difference in the final selection. She says that the search committee had enough information from faculty to understand their concerns. Furthermore, she notes that the concerns voiced near the end of the selection process, after the finalists were known, were somewhat different from the concerns voiced early on, before candidates were introduced to the faculty.

During the forums, humanities professor Marcus Ford was prominently quoted in the Sun, saying, “There’s widespread consensus that we don’t want someone from the corporate world. The faculty doesn’t see (NAU) as a business.” Two months later, when the three finalists were announced, the Sun reported that Chamber President David Maurer had voiced the opinion that “two of the candidates have exceptionally strong academic backgrounds, though he didn’t specify which. Cargol, he said, represents a ‘true CEO.’”

On May 7, after two days of intensive interviews, the search committee, in its final official act, pared the list of six finalists down to three. (The regents would later make the final selection.) At the end of this process, the finalists were announced. McKay told reporters that the selection of the final three was by a unanimous vote.

Grenetta Fink was surprised to hear news reports characterize the selection as unanimous. “We went down to Phoenix and interviewed the six final candidates in person. … At the end of the two days, we debated. … We went around the room and everybody had their say about candidate number one. And then we took a vote. … Then we talked about candidate two, took a vote, candidate three, took a vote … all the way down to the sixth candidate. The top three vote getters were moved forward. That was what the unanimous vote was … to move the top three vote getters ahead. It was not that the selection committee was unanimous about all three of the final candidates. …

“We had already fought the battles. … It was now, OK, ‘Do you all (who have opposed Cargol) want to dissent?’ And I should have. … I should have because then moving him forward could not have been called unanimous. Calling it unanimous created a false impression about the level of support for all three of the finalists.”

Search Committee member Judy Sellers, one of the faculty representatives, told the Sun that three faculty representatives lobbied to have Cargol removed from the list of finalists each time the list was narrowed.

Stan L. Lindstedt, an NAU biology professor who was also on the search committee, later indicated his opposition to Cargol when he told The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Do I wish him well? Of course I do. I have a lot invested in this university. Do I think he’ll succeed? Hell no.”

During an interview, McKay was reminded of reports that “faculty members and other university members on the committee … repeatedly voiced their preferences or view that Cargol should not move forward in the process or shouldn’t end up being a finalist.”

 “That’s not true,” said McKay.

“That’s not true?” asked this reporter.

“No. They did voice concern. Faculty did voice concern that he didn’t have the traditional track. They did voice that. I want to be very clear. But when the final vote came they supported the three candidates moving forward. And they voted as part of it. It was a unanimous vote and it wasn’t coerced.”

In mid-May, each of the three finalists had their own two or three day whirlwind session of meetings on the NAU campus. Each of the candidates separately attended 10 meetings apiece to meet with different representatives of NAU groups. Among these meetings were two two-hour public forums, one of which was broadcast by interactive television to locations around the state. Published reports indicate that as many as 60 people attended some of these forums, with faculty making up the lion’s share of those in attendance. At the forums, participants were encouraged to submit comments in writing.

The Sun published profiles of all the candidates, with separate stories about the how faculty members and others viewed each candidate. Stories often ended with information about how to get comments about the candidates to the Arizona Board of Regents.

In an editorial, the Sun said there was no clear favorite, though the Sun speculated that Denise Trauth might get the nod from the Regents in part because she was a female candidate seeking to fill a position vacated by Arizona’s first woman university president. A story published two days later, on May 22, was titled “Haeger may have edge,” and cited support for John Haeger from campus representatives.

Finally, on May 24, after the 11 members of the Arizona Board of Regents had conducted lengthy private interviews with each of the three candidates, ABOR took a vote behind closed doors.  When the decision was announced, the Regents reported that the vote was unanimous.

“Doesn’t that say something?” said McKay, recalling the unanimous vote.

The Sun reported, “Regent Kay McKay of Flagstaff said that the input she and others received from the NAU faculty and Flagstaff community showed they were looking for a particular leadership style, specifically, someone who can “build bridges.”

According to the ABOR Web site, Cargol, 50 served five years as the president of the University of Maine at Augusta. The campus is Maine’s “foremost provider of technology delivered courses.” Before that, he was president of Cleveland State College for three years and vice president for academic affairs at Highline College in Seattle for six years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Louisiana State University. He also holds a bachelor’s in horticulture and a master’s in adult and higher education administration from Oregon State University. He holds a doctorate in higher education administration from Pennsylvania State University. In 1992, Cargol held a Fulbright Fellowship to the Federal Republic of Germany for German Higher and Technical Education Systems. He is married and has two sons.

The size of UMA has been variously stated during discussions of Cargol’s qualifications. ABOR’s press releases have consistently indicated the campus “serves 6,000 students.” In a recent interview, McKay confidently put the figure at 6,500. The Sun has for the most part been using the figure of 2,000, with at least one story indicating that few students live on campus. The College Board Handbook 2001 and Peterson’s Guide to Four-Year Colleges put the figure at 4,000. A call to the UMA suggested the current figure may be closer to 2,250.

Whatever the exact figure, there is no doubt that UMA is far smaller than NAU, which had a spring enrollment of 18,672. Peterson’s puts the number of faculty at UMA at 266 (38 percent full-time), compared to 1,077 at NAU (64 percent full-time).   

McKay, asked about the concerns raised by the different sizes of the schools, said, “Yeah, I think (Cargol) has a learning curve. … I think he can do it because he’s a leader and he’s demonstrated that in every arena he’s been in.”

After the selection, the Sun obtained copies of letters and e-mails sent to the regents by faculty members prior to the selection. The letters were public records. (According to Matt Ortega, assistant executive director for public affairs for ABOR, the e-mails have since been deleted and he did not know if paper copies of letters could be located for the benefit of Flagstaff Tea Party. “The overwhelming majority of letters found Cargol unacceptable,” reported the Sun.

One of the most damning letters, representing the views of the Academic Chairs Council — the chairs of the nearly 50 NAU academic departments — was reprinted in the Sun. The letter unequivocally stated that Cargol was “unacceptable” while either Trauth or Haeger would be acceptable. The letter read in part:

“Candidate Cargol … received an ‘unacceptable’ rating from 90 percent of the group and was seen to have numerous weaknesses: lack of academic success; lack of administrative experience at a university the size and complexity of NAU (UMA has only 14 bachelors programs, including only one in the sciences); lack of understanding of graduate programs and the research they generate; lack of a vision for NAU and its role in Arizona; lack of sophistication in national and global trends; a reported penchant for making decisions without proper consultation; and a slick and manipulative personal style. Responses to his interviews were uniformly negative.”

After Cargol was selected, the Sun obtained new letters congratulating Cargol and ABOR on the selection. In several cases the letters came from some of the same groups and individuals who had recommended against hiring Cargol. That the letters were public records was apparently not widely understood at the time. The Academic Chairs Council sent Cargol a letter stating the council “look(s) forward to great years under your leadership.”

Responding to the concerns raised about Cargol’s academic experience, McKay said, “I think his academic background really is quite good. I don’t think he’s a tenured track professor with the … research component that’s very important to an academic. …” She added that NAU’s provost is a strong academic, and she described him as a kind of “internal president” managing the campus, while Cargol is expected to be an “external president” reaching outside of the university to the legislature and other sources of funding. “That’s becoming more and more the model,” said McKay.

Grenetta Fink thinks NAU could easily have had a more multi-talented president.

“The fact of the matter was, we had over 80 files. Eighty files full of people who had come with strong academic credentials and administrative experience and fundraising abilities. … This guy’s file was like one of the first 10, and I knocked him out of the loop like in the first week,” said Fink.

Nonetheless, Fink said of Cargol, “I actually personally like him a lot. I think he’s a really charming fellow and sincere guy … and I wish him well. …

“But I objected to ABOR’s handling of this. …

“The chairs came together, 51, unanimously signed a letter saying, ‘Look, you have three candidates. She’s acceptable, he’s acceptable, he’s unacceptable.’ They pick the unacceptable one. Then you have the Faculty Senate writing a letter, ‘She’s acceptable, he’s acceptable, he’s unacceptable.’ They go with the unacceptable one. Do you see what I’m saying? Mike Johnson, who is President of the student body, sat down and met with ABOR — he sat down personally and met with them and said, ‘The students support John Haeger.’ Period. Not even, ‘John Haeger or —’ So, you’ve got chairs, you’ve got faculty, you’ve got students. … not to mention all the individual staff who went out there and did the same thing, ‘She’s acceptable, he’s acceptable, he’s unacceptable.’ OK, so who is ABOR listening to, if they’re not listening to the chairs and the faculty and the students?”

McKay, when asked why the Regents solicit faculty input if they are not going to listen to it, explained that the Regents are responsible to a number of constituencies.

“A faculty member said to me, ‘We are the university.’ That’s his perception and that’s fine but I don’t look at it that way. I think the students are the university. … I think it’s actually a conglomerate frankly. It’s students, it’s faculty, it’s community, it’s taxpayers, it’s many people. … We could not provide the institution without the faculty. We could not provide the education without the students. We could not provide either one of them without the taxpayers and the business community. They wouldn’t be there, not public universities,” said McKay.

Fink is not alone in her disappointment. On June 1, some 200 members of the faculty met to draft a letter of protest that was to be read at the Regents meeting held at NAU on June 28 and 29. 

At the Regents meeting, faculty representatives were greeted by Arizona Board of Regents President Don Ulrich. In a strongly worded statement, Ulrich chastised faculty members for their dissent, saying, “The venom, the character assassination, the arrogance, the pettiness and lack of professionalism with which you have approached this situation leaves me sick.” Nonetheless, seven faculty members went to the podium to voice their concerns about the selection of Owen Cargol. (ABOR provided a tape of Ulrich’s remarks to Flagstaff Tea Party . The full text of his remarks are available at www.FlagTeaParty.org. Click on “Recent Headlines.” A tape of remarks by NAU professors who spoke at the same meeting could not be supplied to Flagstaff Tea Party in time for this story.)

The Daily Sun added fuel to the fire when it ran an editorial on July 5 titled “Time for NAU faculty to get over it,” admonishing faculty to “get clued in to the realities of the politics of higher education. …

“The Owen Cargol train is about to leave the station, and faculty risk marginalizing themselves even further if they don’t get on board,” concluded the Sun . 

Robert Yowell, chairman of the NAU Faculty Senate, responded on July 22 with an editorial of his own, titled “NAU faculty deserves shared governance.” In addition to voicing concern about the lack of faculty representation on the search committee, he noted that the candidates’ visits to campus (which took place the week after spring graduation ceremonies) seemed to be timed so as to minimize faculty interaction with the candidates. He defended faculty understanding of the changing needs of higher education and stressed the importance of improved communication between the faculty and the Regents.

McKay defended the timing of the candidate’s visits, saying that she believes most faculty were still in town a week after graduation, as they finished grading, etc.

Though the debate over Cargol has rekindled the debate over the pros and cons of distance learning, McKay insisted that distance learning was not the only reason Cargol was hired.

And Fink insists that all faculty are not opposed to distance learning.

“Faculty is not opposed to distance learning,” said Fink. “I think that’s a very unfair characterization of them. However, there is a lot of money inside NAU that gets directed to those (distance learning) efforts. … Which means that … other things get cut. … We’re spending all this money out here but the staff can’t get a decent wage. … If your mission is to be the premier residential campus in the nation and the most advanced as far as distance learning, it seems like an odd thing to try to reconcile. I think it can be done, but it has not been clearly articulated exactly how, and many faculty concerns on the topic have not been addressed. It would be to the new administration’s advantage to fix this.”

Fink also noted that distance learning will not succeed without strong academic leadership.

“Strong faculty support will give a tremendous boost to distance learning strategies. I don’t care how good Cargol is on distance learning. … You’re not going to have a distance learning program across this state, if, when the kids turn on the TV, there isn’t a decent faculty member on the other end of the thing teaching it. The point being that keeping talented faculty at an institution is crucial to success. One way to lose good faculty is to not listen to them and make them feel like you don’t care what they think.”

McKay admits that distance learning “causes great consternation” for many faculty members but sees distance learning as “the great equalizer,” allowing NAU to increase its enrollment and thus increase its funding, which has long lagged behind the state’s two other public universities. The other universities, Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, are better funded in part because of their emphasis on research. McKay also said that distance learning can make a real difference in the lives of those who live in rural communities.

“What do we do with the people out on the reservation who can’t get in? What do we do with the people down in Eloy, Arizona who can’t come to a university? They’re place-bound. That’s the term. And does that mean we deprive our constituents in this state of education because they can’t get to our schools?” asked McKay.

Asked if the controversy surrounding the selection of Owen Cargol would lead to changes in the way future presidential searches are conducted, she said, “No. I think it’s going to be duplicated. … I’m only speaking for myself. I don’t want to speak for the Regents. … I felt the communication was good. … But unfortunately … there certainly wasn’t agreement. I think it’s a whole lot more than reasonable people differing. I think it’s a whole lot deeper than that. But I also believe there was a systemic problem going on that this is reflective of, of a whole morale issue and many things. I hope that it certainly is not going to repeat itself. But the process itself, in my belief, was not flawed. The process was good.”

Fink is not so sure as she recalls all the time and energy that went into providing comments and suggestions to the search committee and the Regents.

“What they should have done is, they should have paraded these people onto campus and said, ‘Here you go, they’re going to talk to you and you get to listen to them, and then we’re going to make our choice.’ Not, ‘Listen to them. Give us feedback. And then we’re going to make our choice.’ Because the feedback didn’t matter.”