Closed-door UW, WSU presidential searches prompt transparency bill

Behind closed doors, the Board of Regents at the University of Washington and Washington State University have vetted candidates to lead schools with tens of thousands of students and employees. 

The new presidents will command higher salaries than the state’s top elected officials, oversee multibillion dollar budgets and guide workforces that are economic engines for their regions and the state.

Selecting such influential leaders deserves more public scrutiny, said State Rep. Gerry Pollet, who is proposing a law that would require public disclosure of the finalists vying to lead public colleges and universities.

UW started its search for a new president last spring after Ana Mari Cauce announced she would step down in June of this year. Last week, Board of Regents President Blaine Tamaki began negotiating with two finalists. During recent public meetings, the board members have referred to the finalists as “Candidate 1” and “Candidate 2.” 

There is no timeline yet for making a final decision, said Balta. 

Similarly, WSU’s Board of Regents is in the final stages of selecting the university’s 12th president at “some point in the next few weeks,” said WSU spokesperson Phil Weiler. Kirk Schultz, who has led the university since 2016, plans to retire in June.

Traditionally, the hiring process for these positions is largely secret. University governing boards keep finalists’ names secret until a new leader is announced. The colleges say the closed-door process is necessary to ensure the candidates’ current employers don’t know they’re looking for work elsewhere. 

“We have strong concerns” about the bill, said Victor Balta, a spokesperson for UW. 

Pollet, D-Seattle, argues that this is exceptional treatment. Finalists for other high-ranking academic and public offices, such as school district superintendents and university provosts, are routinely disclosed. That approach allows the public to assess the candidate, he said. 

He added that this proposed law still allows confidentiality to be baked into the process. The bill only requires that finalists be disclosed, not all the candidates. Theoretically, a university or college could name only one person as a finalist to minimize exposure. 

Both universities say they’ve offered “significant” opportunities for their campuses to share what they’d like to see in a new leader. This includes creating search committees to advise university governing boards on the best hire and listening sessions on campus for a broader audience. 

This isn’t the first time concerns about transparency have come up. In 2017, UW settled a lawsuit with the Washington Coalition for Open Government over a claim that the Regents took a secret vote before publicly approving Cauce as president, violating the state’s open public meetings law. 

Later, it came out that all other candidates had withdrawn from the process, making Cauce the de facto winner. UW did not admit wrongdoing but agreed to change its bylaws and pay $25,000 to help with the group’s legal costs. 

However, at UW, faculty and students have been critical of who has a voice in decision-making. Most notably, the student and faculty representatives on the Board of Regents have not been voting on measures related to hiring the university president. 

Balta said this is because state law prohibits student and faculty board members from voting on matters related to hiring, firing or disciplining faculty members. The president usually holds a faculty appointment of some kind. Cauce, the current president, has taught during her tenure. 

However, Pollet, who worked to add faculty members to university governing boards, says this is a misinterpretation of the law. 

“It makes a mockery of adding a faculty and student regent to say they can’t participate in the single most important decision about the university,” he said. 

He said he may add a provision to the bill protecting the faculty member’s right to vote for a presidential candidate. 

Some faculty members and students have also raised concerns about the composition of UW’s presidential search advisory committee. Over the summer, the student body presidents of every UW campus wrote to the Regents, asking for representation from each university branch on the committee. 

The amount of faculty representation on the committee has shrunk since the last time UW searched for a president, said Eva Cherniavsky, a professor and chair of the University of Washington’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

“The message everyone received is that faculty input is not relevant to the process,” she said. 

Cherniavsky argued that the university’s attempts to gather feedback beyond the advisory committee have also fallen short. The listening sessions, for example, were hosted during the fall, when many professors were swamped with the start of classes. Cherniavsky, who had been monitoring the process, was not able to attend because of workload.  

The president is of great consequence to the thousands that work on the academic side of UW, said Amy Hagopian, the UW-AAUP’s secretary. 

“This person chooses so many important administrators, including deans, the provost and various vice deans. Those people have a daily influence over what our working lives are like — they choose to administer policy about academic freedom, how they make budgetary decisions,” said Hagopian. “We would like this person to have a serious academic standing and background of their own in research … not a corporate-style president.” 

Balta said faculty have had significant input into the process through a survey and listening sessions conducted on campus. The UW chancellors, who lead the other branches of the university based in Tacoma and Bothell, also serve on the committee and hold faculty positions. 

A hearing on the bill is not expected for another week. Pollet said he is willing to compromise with colleges to get it passed. 

“Openness will almost always mean that you have a greater assurance that you’ve picked the right candidate,” he said.