Board of Regents makes chancellor an undesirable position for job candidates
Imagine you’re a higher education administrator who’s looking to step up the career ladder. You’re talented, upwardly mobile and marketable — you have the experience and skills to take you virtually anywhere.
Would you be interested in becoming the next chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education?
Based on how the state Board of Regents treated Chancellor Melody Rose, who was let go Friday after leveling hostile-workplace accusations against several members of the board, the answer is almost certainly no.
In hounding Rose out of her job just 19 months into her four-year contract, the regents made the job virtually radioactive to potential candidates. The regents, as they’ve done often in the past, put their own political interests and their hunger for power over the interests of the public by chasing off a promising chancellor.
The problem? Rose chose to operate as if Nevada had a normal higher ed structure, in which chancellors are given some latitude to manage the system and the board serves to make policy decisions and provide direction when needed. Her approach worked for everyone but the meddlesome regents. She had no shortage of supporters in the central administrative office, the leadership of the state’s campuses and even in the governor’s office. Gov. Steve Sisolak has spoken favorably of her, and came out in her defense.
Nevada’s regents have a history of not staying in their lane, and instead choosing chancellors who are willing to act as puppets of certain board members who want to interfere in daily operations. These board members have no interest in having a chancellor who manages the system independently and pushes back against the regents’ direction when it’s in the best interests of college faculty, staff and students to do so.
Rose, in her accusations, said she was subjected to retaliation, including gender discrimination, based on political and policy differences with Mcadoo and Carter. She later accused regents Jason Geddes, Joseph Arrascada, Laura Perkins and Patrick Boylan of inappropriate behavior.
For those who experienced the forced ouster of former UNLV president Len Jessup, this felt like a new chapter in the same book. Jessup also was driven out after resisting micromanagement and intimidation by the regents, who responded by leveling trumped-up accusations of mismanagement against him.
Nevada can’t have a fully professional and forward looking higher education system when we’re burdened with backward regents intent on maintaining their fiefdoms.
For Rose, the writing on the wall had been in place since mid-february, when the regents voted to accept a third-party investigative report of her accusations and declare the investigation over. The regents then reinstated Mcadoo and Carter as chair and vice chair, respectively — positions from which they’d temporarily stepped down after being named in Rose’s accusations.
This was rank malpractice by the regents, who essentially regarded the report as an exoneration even though it was clearly not. Yes, the investigators said they found insufficient evidence of Rose’s legal claims, but they also reported that the regents possibly committed ethical violations and engaged in other inappropriate behavior in dealing with Rose.
Yet the regents blew right past those red flags and, in reinstating Mcadoo and Carter, essentially hit a reset button that returned the board to business as usual. For a board with a history of unwarranted interference, mismanaging and bullying, that wasn’t a good thing.
And sure enough, Rose was gone within less than two months. Now, the board will look to hire the fourth chancellor since 2016.
The situation is shaping up to be dismal for the higher ed system, the communities it serves, and the entire state. Nevada needs strong universities and colleges across the board, because their value to communities is enormous in terms of producing skilled workers, doing research, attracting businesses, and so forth. First-class states deserve first class higher education. Nevada’s regents obstruct that goal.
Yet again, the regents have shown vividly that the board needs to be restructured. It’s too large and unwieldy, with 13 members, and there’s not enough accountability baked into it. A better approach would be a hybrid model — common in other states — in which some members are elected and some appointed through a legislative confirmation process.
It’s well worth mentioning that members of the Nevada Board of Regents hold a number of different professional roles — attorney, physician, business operator, even retired postal carrier — but not one of them is a seasoned, top-level administrator of a higher education system.
Nevada needs a board of regents that understands this, and respects the need for a professional manager to operate the system.
This board, in casting out the highly capable Rose, has shown it is either incapable or unwilling to do that.