Ohioan wins chancellor job at Fayetteville
Pay $700,000; board to vote
Ohio State University Provost Joseph Steinmetz is set to become the next chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with an annual salary of $700,000.
On Wednesday, University of Arkansas System President Donald Bobbitt offered Steinmetz a five-year contract with the six-figure salary, which includes deferred compensation and public and private funds, according to the offer letter. Should that amount stand, Steinmetz’s salary will eclipse those of all but one chancellor in the system — and even that of Bobbitt, who, with a recent raise, now earns $500,000 annually.
The University of Arkansas System board of trustees must still approve the hiring. The board is expected to call a special meeting for final approval, according to the offer letter.
“It was a long time between the visit and the phone call. But it is the right place for us,” Steinmetz, 60, said of the move for him and his wife.
Steinmetz will make the move from Ohio State University to begin in Fayetteville on Jan. 1.
He is replacing G. David Gearhart, 63, who retired in July after serving at the helm
of the state’s largest university since 2008. Gearhart, who is taking a year-long sabbatical before returning to the university to teach, had earned $645,346 annually with deferred compensation and other benefits, said Steve Voorhies, a spokesman for the university.
Steinmetz edged out April Mason, provost and senior vice president at Kansas State University. Jeffrey Vitter, provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of Kansas, had been one of three finalists but withdrew his application.
Steinmetz was one of 15 early applicants who sent their names to the University of Arkansas’ chancellor search committee — a panel of 17 employees and members of the university community. Mason and Vitter each sent applications Oct. 2, about a week after the committee had “conversations” with seven applicants and “people of interest” in an airport hotel in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Each of the three finalists had visited the Fayetteville campus in the past two weeks and were being courted by other “prominent institutions,” Bobbitt has said.
Earlier this week, the Mississippi Institute of Higher Learning named Vitter the “preferred candidate” for its chief campus, the University of Mississippi at Oxford. Vitter will visit with constituencies on the campus before an offer — including a proposed salary — is made.
Steinmetz applied for the president’s job at the University of Texas at Austin but later took his name off the list, he said. He also applied to be the next leader of the University of Iowa and was named a finalist but ultimately was not chosen. Steinmetz on Wednesday would not discuss any other possible job offers.
“Really, it’s the point in your career — at age 60 — with the experience I’ve had in administration to look at the next level: to lead an institution,” Steinmetz said. “I wanted to find a place where I thought the students, faculty and staff were very interested in moving the institution forward. There’s a certain sense of complacency that sets in sometimes.”
At Fayetteville, Steinmetz said he was impressed by the enthusiasm of the students and faculty. The students care about academics, and the faculty members want to increase research and scholarship, he said, adding that he also saw the state’s commitment to the university.
“This struck a chord,” he said. “All of those check marks were made.”
Dan Ferritor, the interim chancellor at the Fayetteville campus, broke the news with an email to faculty and staff members and students Wednesday morning.
“I wanted you to hear the news first,” he wrote, including a link to a Web page to get to know Steinmetz.
Alumni, donors and parents of students also received the news before a public announcement later in the morning, said Laura Jacobs, chairman of the search committee.
On Wednesday, many relayed how impressed they were at Steinmetz’s background and experience.
He’s held in high esteem among his peers and made a favorable impression, said UA System board Chairman Ben Hyneman.
“We were really excited when Dr. Steinmetz accepted the offer,” he said. “He’s going to bring a lot of energy and enthusiasm with his academic background and his reputation. He’ll be the right man at the right time for the Fayetteville campus.”
A neuroscientist with a doctorate in psychology, Steinmetz first had administrative stints as chairman of psychology studies and later as executive associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.
After some 20 years in Indiana, Steinmetz moved to lead the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Hendrix College President Bill Tsutsui was on the search committee that helped to get Steinmetz to the Lawrence campus.
“I give him so much credit about how to deal with people, organizations and budgets,” Tsutsui said. “I think he’s a genius. I have never seen him get angry at anyone. Wonderful people skills. Very open and transparent. He’s not telling you stories. He just tells it the way it is.”
In 2009, Steinmetz became the executive dean of arts and sciences and a vice provost at Ohio State University in Columbus.
“He was brought in at Ohio State to combine five colleges into one,” Bobbitt said. “Not only did he do that, he did it without the people affected by it feeling that the entity was worse or some lesser entity. To [do that] speaks volumes of his ability to explain what needs to be done and how it needs to be done.”
Steinmetz was promoted to executive vice president and provost of the Ohio university in 2013. In that role, he — along with the faculty, the staff and students — helped move the university forward in the rankings by the U.S. News and World Report magazine’s Top 50 public research universities and in the Association of American Universities, Bobbitt said.
In the latest rankings, Ohio State is ranked 16th by U.S. News. The Fayetteville campus — which wants to move into the U.S. News’ Top 50 public research universities by 2021 — was ranked 62nd in a five-way tie.
The rankings are tied to certain metrics, including retention and graduation rates, alumni giving, faculty resources and other measures.
“They’re an external view of what the world thinks of you,” Bobbitt said of the rankings. “Probably more important than the end result is the process one uses to improve seeking that ranking. I expect that you will see him, within a year or two, develop, in conjunction with faculty and staff, a plan, much like a self-improvement plan.”
Both Bobbitt and Jacobs, the search committee chairman, described Steinmetz as personable.
“I was mesmerized,” Bobbitt said. “He had the ability to relate to people independent of their station in life. He has this ability to make everyone feel equally valued and important.”
Jacobs said she also took note of Steinmetz’s sense of humor.
“He’s funny in, I think, a self-deprecating kind of way,” Jacobs said.
Steinmetz is a “good, strong, clear thinker” who has his finger on the opportunities and challenges at the university, Ferritor said. The two talked about graduation and retention rates, he said.
The Fayetteville campus has the highest graduation rate in the state, with 60.8 percent of 3,127 students entering graduating within six years, according to the Arkansas
Department of Higher Education. The department calculates the measure using first-time students, part-timers and students who enrolled in the spring semester.
The university — which measures only first-time, full-time students — calculates its six-year graduation rate at 62.3 percent. It seeks to increase that rate to 70 percent by 2021.
At Ohio State, 83.1 percent, or 5,590, of 6,727 first-time, full-time students entering in 2009, had graduated six years later, the university’s website said.
Tanner Bone, president of the Fayetteville university’s Associated Student Government, said he hopes to work with the new chancellor to improve graduation rates and campus safety.
“He had a good sense of humor. He definitely seemed comfortable,” Bone said.
Neil Allison, chairman of the university’s faculty senate, said the group was excited to have Steinmetz as its new chancellor.
“[He] has a broad view of what a university is about and how to move it forward,” Allison said.
Steinmetz, a Marine City, Mich. native, is to be formally introduced as chancellor at a news conference in Fayetteville at 3 p.m. Oct. 30. He and his wife, Sandy, will make the move into the Fowler House on the Fayetteville campus.
With the $700,000 annual salary including deferred compensation, he can decide how much to put aside in deferred salary, according to the offer letter.
Of the annual salary, Steinmetz will earn the line-item budget maximum of $291,478, Bobbitt said. Arkansas Code Annotated 6-63-309 allows colleges and universities to pay 25 percent more of the budgeted salary levels for certain positions, including the chancellor, to recruit and retain “exceptionally well-qualified academic personnel.”
Anything above the 25 percent mark — $364,347.50 — will be paid by private funds through the University of Arkansas Foundation, Bobbitt said.
Steinmetz currently has an annual salary of $470,261.04, with 20 percent, or about $94,052.20, in deferred compensation, according to Ohio State.
Gearhart, the former chancellor, earned $339,010 in base salary and set aside $225,000 annually in deferred compensation, said Voorhies, the university spokesman. In total, his salary — including benefits — amounted to the $645,346, he said.
Among UA System administrators, only University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Chancellor Dr. Dan Rahn will earn more than Steinmetz annually at $900,000. Rahn has a base salary of $630,000, with $270,000 in deferred compensation, said Leslie Taylor, vice chancellor of communications and marketing at UAMS.
Steinmetz’ salary amount is in the middle of the pack among other Southeastern Conference schools, Bobbitt said.
The leader among the group was Texas A&M University Chancellor Michael Young, who earns $1 million a year in base salary, plus $200,000 annually in deferred compensation, and got an $800,000 signing bonus.
On the other end, University of Tennessee at Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Cheek earned $434,452 annually, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Ferritor said the pay for Steinmetz came as no surprise.
“We have a really strong person, I think, coming in, and if that’s what it takes to be able to hire that person, I am more than willing to say that we’re fortunate to have him,” Ferritor said.
Steinmetz’ offer also includes a company vehicle, reimbursement for moving expenses and expenses associated with trips to Fayetteville before his official January start.
In one of his first congratulatory emails, Steinmetz heard word from an old colleague and friend, Tsutsui.
“You’re an unlikely Arkansan,” Tsutsui said.
Steinmetz admitted that he knew very little about the Fayetteville campus before applying for the job.
“The excellence of the university became much, much more apparent on the campus, talking to people and looking at documents,” he said. “It’s a well-kept secret.”