System chief plans series of meetings

By LYNN FRANEY The Kansas City Star

University of Missouri system President Elson Floyd will visit the Kansas City campus today to hear what professors, staff, students and trustees think of Chancellor Martha Gilliland.

His visit comes days after several faculty groups voted overwhelmingly to say publicly that they lacked confidence in Gilliland's leadership.

Representatives from University of Missouri-Kansas City faculty, staff, students and its board of trustees will meet separately with Floyd in closed-door meetings to share their reasons for supporting or criticizing Gilliland.

Gilliland has led this 12,000-student university, which has campuses southeast of the Country Club Plaza and on Hospital Hill, since April 2000. UMKC is an important part of Kansas City, turning out hundreds of doctors, dentists, pharmacists and lawyers every year, along with graduates in many other subject areas who fan out into local workplaces.

Floyd asked Jakob Waterborg, an associate professor of biological sciences who heads the UMKC Faculty Senate, to arrange a meeting with professors, Waterborg said Monday.

Waterborg said Floyd would hear a “diversity of opinions” and get “a sense of what is true and what is not true, what is felt widespread and what are minority views.”

Last week, 166 professors in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Bloch School of Business and Public Administration, the School of Law and the School of Biological Sciences approved resolutions expressing a lack of confidence in Gilliland.

Only 30 professors in those schools expressed confidence in Gilliland's leadership, and fewer than 10 marked “abstain” on their ballots. Some professors in those schools did not vote at all, and professors in several other schools — such as education, music and computing and engineering — have not indicated collectively how they feel about Gilliland's leadership.

UMKC employs about 500 tenured and tenure-track professors and about 1,900 employees who have some type of academic appointment, said Jennifer Spielvogel, an assistant vice chancellor.

Law professor Ed Hood has said he doesn't remember such broad professor dissent about a chancellor's leadership during his 35 years on campus.

The two other groups that have voiced dissatisfaction are the UMKC chapter of the American Association of University Professors and an organization of part-time faculty.

Gilliland has had some proud moments, such as when the campus' first dormitory in 40 years opened in August and when the school recently broke ground on a new home for the schools of nursing and pharmacy on Hospital Hill.

But she also has suffered setbacks. For example, Floyd had to ask Gilliland to slow the planning for an Institute for Urban Education after some community leaders and education professors said they were not being included in the decision-making.

The faculty unrest stems from several factors. Some accuse Gilliland of failing to seek their input on important matters, such as a recent paper distributed by her provost that made suggestions for radically restructuring the university. They blame Gilliland for high turnover among deans and top administrators, which they say hurts academic progress.

And they don't like a budgeting change that took 5 percent from each school months into the school year and returned it to central administration for building projects. Some professors also are angry that Gilliland backs a move to decide part of a school's performance bonus on whether 80 percent of the school's professors and staff say they enjoy working at UMKC.

Besides hearing from one representative of each of UMKC's faculty groups, Floyd also plans to meet with staff members.

Kelly Limpic, president of the UMKC Staff Council, told The Kansas City Star in an e-mail message, “Regardless of where they stand on these issues, all employees have been encouraged to come forward and either make their voices heard, or to simply be present to listen to the dialogue that takes place.”

Tom Kernan, executive vice president of the Student Government Association, said he has been surprised at the level of student interest in the faculty unrest, especially in what professors think of the restructuring paper.

“I'd say (opinion) is a little divided among students,” said Kernan, a senior in the Conservatory of Music. “There are students, particularly in the College (of Arts and Sciences), that have remained very aware of the (restructuring) paper because there are students and faculty talking about it a little bit more together. That's a good thing if there is to be progress made.”

A powerful constituency that Floyd also wants to hear from is the UMKC board of trustees, a private fund-raising group that provides advice and support to the chancellor and the university.

Trustee Hugh Zimmer backs Gilliland.

“I sympathize with her in some of the difficult situations that have arisen with some of her faculty and staff,” Zimmer said. “I think that when she came in to her position with the university, she came in with the understanding that the community and UMKC's supporters wanted her to build this university into something that would be very, very important culturally, educationally and economically to Kansas City. I think Martha has devoted her energies to doing that.”

To reach Lynn Franey,

call (816) 234-4927 or send e-mail to lfraney@kcstar.com.