News U of I President Tim White has helped stem the problems that beleaguered the school University of Idaho President Tim White didn't know the depth of problems that choked the school when he took over in 2004. But he found people at U of I who were tired of the status quo and seemed eager to turn things around. In a question and answer session with Idaho Statesman education reporter Bill Roberts, White said: He never contemplated leaving the school, despite the problems. A major challenge was creating a cohesive university that worked together after a lack of vision for the school caused U of I to splinter into groups. Day-to-day life for students didn't appear to suffer as the university worked to stitch itself back together. Q: What kind of a mess did you walk into when you came here in 2004? A: I don't think I, or anybody else, knew the depth and the breadth of the crisis of the University of Idaho. It was a crisis of leadership, no doubt. It was a crisis of vision - not having one. It was a crisis of financial mismanagement, of low integrity and loss of trust with our public, with our faculty on and off campus, the Legislature, the governor, the (state) board. The university was at her knees. For a guy like me, I like challenges, so I said OK, we are going to do this one, and we are going to do it in a way that is going to be quick, and we are going to take the hill just once on the really tough stuff and then we are going to start reinvesting in areas that matter for Idaho. Q: Did you ever think about leaving? A: Never. Q: During that crisis time, what was your darkest moment? A: I don't feel like I had a darkest moment. People were ready for change. It's not like I had to push a string uphill. I inherited a place that was ready for renewal. That was the silver lining in all this. So we did a couple of things very quickly - certainly within the first 6 or 7 months - that really did kind of grab this place by the horns and say this is where we are going. I had lots of people be part of that process so there was real ownership and buy-in. It wasn't just the new guy from Oregon coming in and saying this is what you need to do and I know more than you. From that, we have created a very specific renewal plan. Q: Let's make sure we are talking about the same - $14 million in deficits, cutbacks in state money, and University Place. A: During those tough times, various academic units and business units said, "Holy cow, we better take care of ourselves." So a lot of silos got started. We weren't a university. We are today. But then we were a federation of individual units protecting themselves, hoarding resources, not wanting to share ideas. The interdisciplinary stuff ... just stopped. So it was a very a la carte university. Rather than a university that builds on the strength of other parts of the university. That was a part of the crisis - the lack of goodwill. You could see our alums who cared deeply about this place sort of holding back and wondering about the new guy and wonderingwhether the problems were really over. The one thing that didn't get beat up was the student experience. During those dark days I think the day-to-day student experience really remained pretty darned solid. Q: I talked to students who were here as early as the fall of 2003. For the most part, they told me day-to-day life was OK. But you could detect a cynicism in the faculty. A: We have such wonderfully dedicated faculty. There was an enormous sense of betrayal and anger because they cared so deeply about this place and its students. In many respects, that was appealing to me. It sounds a little perverted. But it ... told me people really did care. If nobody was ticked off by that stuff, I think we would have had a much bigger problem to solve. Q: I want to get a sense of what you thought the image of this university was among Idahoans. A: A wonderful institution that lost its bearing, stubbed its toes and seemed to not have its act together. What we've done now is a better job of pointing out its strength and importance. We've got our act together and we've raised our aspirations. Q: So there you sat at the head office of a university you define as having lost its bearings. You said you needed todo some things relatively quickly to make a difference. Tell me about two or three key things you did within the first few months that began to try and turn this around. A: Even before I came here I commissioned the Visions and Resources Task Force. I didn't know anybody here. I went toWeb sites. I did some reading. I looked at (resumes). I asked some people - not the leadership who was here - people on campus I recognized as strong academics. Pretty soon the same names started coming up. (I) asked them to do a 360-degree analysis. This became to me a very vital piece of information. There is something in there that everybody on this campus and around the state can love and hate. Q: What did this tell you? A: That we have wonderful programs and we need to focus. We need to think about running our business practices in a much more sophisticated way and transparent way. I asked the then-leadership to comment on it publicly without collusion. I got 600 inputs (from) people commenting on this. I read every one of those. I made the cabinet read everyone of them. So that was sort of the physical first six months. On the first hour of the seventh month I started writing (a plan for renewal). I wrote for about three or four days. The morning that I gave that talk, I was still writing at my desk. When I grabbed that thing to go deliver it to the campus, I have never been more assured and confident that what I was about to deliver was exactly what this campus needed.I felt very relaxed, very focused and went and spent the next hour and a half discussing the plan for renewal. In (the plan) there was a series of actions. I took out a bunch of (jobs). I took out a bunch of money. From that wereinvested in the five multidisciplinary areas. We also put some money in to help the compensation packages of faculty. There hadn't been a state action (on pay raises) for a while. Nobody had said "thanks and here's a pittance." We moved 4 percent into salaries. We took the hill once. We made all those cuts - 67 positions and lot of money. But it worked. Q: Those cuts were really felt deeply by the faculty. They talked about mushrooming class sizes and not getting time to do research. A: We didn't cut a single academic (position). There were unfilled (positions) that we froze. Where we actually cut most of the positions was on the administrative side. I wanted to protect the student experience. My guess is people who lived through this time are thinking of the impact not so much as the plan for renewal but of the two- or three-year period of hitting the crisis and then coming out of it. Certainly it did flatten the number of new faculty as student numbers were starting to go back up a little bit. I don't disagree their lives were miserable. I must tell you that we're back now to student-faculty ratio of 18 to 1, which is really striking for a public research university. Q: An accreditation report in 2004 signaled a lot of problems. A: The site visit team came in 2004 and said, wow, there are some significant issues that need attention both academically and in the business practices. Our finances weren't transparent or clear. There were 18 or 19 recommendations. Those are things you basically have to fix. We had such significant issues that they've come back twice. And in both cases, they've looked at different standards. (On the last visit), the first word out of their mouths was "Wow!" You don't get that from accreditators. They went through all the recommendations and said: done, done, done. Q: In the time you have been here you have hired virtually all new administrators and virtually all new deans. What have been your marching orders to the people you have brought on? A: First of all, quality, excellence leadership really matters. The transparency of process, the transparency of data, integrity in decisions - every transaction we do at this institution has to pass those tests. Q: What is working and what needs work? A: The University of Idaho is working well. What needs work is our ability to engage more resources at this institution from multiple (sources). That is why we are doing the comprehensive campaign. What needs always to be done is to attract the resources that support our enterprise. Additional Information: But three years later, the school is starting to rebound. A 10 percent slide in enrollment has all but leveled off. Declining faculty numbers are just about back to their pre-financial-problem days. A drop in research grant awards is rebounding. But challenges still remain. Enrollment - which furnishes much of the money to run the school - hasn't turned around. U of I is expected to launch a capital campaign of up to $300 million that could be a test of how well the school has improved its sagging image and a way to provide more student financial assistance, which could help boost enrollment. Quotes on White MEG CARLSON, Boise, U of I class of 1976 "I think he was the man who came in and cleaned up and did the things that had to be done when all the chips were on the bottom. (But) there is still work to do." MILFORD TERRELL, State Board of Education president "More than anything else, he excels in getting people involved from across campus and listening to what people have to say - not just on a token level but actually taking time to say, 'That is interesting.'" JON GAFFNEY, U of I student body president "Given the circumstances of the problems that existed in those years, White has done quite well. I don't know that they have the problem totally resolved. They have made good decisions." REP. FRANK HENDERSON, R-Post Falls
Bill Roberts: 377-6408 |