The News-Gazette.com: Herman resigns; Ikenberry, Easter to assume duties

Herman resigns; Ikenberry, Easter to assume duties

By Paul Wood and Julie Wurth

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 1:41 PM CDT

URBANA – The University of Illinois made it official Tuesday: Chancellor Richard H. Herman will resign his campus leadership position effective Oct. 26 and return to teaching.

Meanwhile, Interim President Stanley Ikenberry and interim Provost Robert Easter will assume many of Herman's duties, possibly for several months.

"At least for a period, Bob Easter and I are going to make sure nothing falls between the chairs," Ikenberry said. He said that period will probably extend beyond three months.

Herman's decision follows an admissions probe that also forced the resignations of most UI trustees and President B. Joseph White.

Herman will join the faculty, where he will continue to work with the campus's Illinois Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Initiative.

He will be giving up a $300,000 bonus due next summer.

University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman at a meeting of the newly appointed UI Board of Trustees at the Illini Union on the UI campus in Urbana on Sept 10. By Darrell Hoemann/The News-Gazette

Herman's current contract as chancellor would have expired June 30, 2010. Upon resignation as chancellor, and pending approval of the UI board, Herman, 68, will serve as special assistant to Ikenberry until June 30.

Herman also expects to take a sabbatical year off.

His departure means the UI will be searching for a new president, chancellor and provost, with a board of trustees composed mostly of new members.

Herman submitted his letter of resignation Tuesday to trustees Chair Christopher G. Kennedy, who accepted it pending board approval. The board's executive committee is scheduled to meet Friday to act on the resignation and a revised employment agreement.

Ikenberry had nothing but praise for the chancellor.

"I think Richard overall had 11 great years on this campus, and he has lots of very good friends; I would count myself among them. I think the entire community admires what he has accomplished and wishes him well," Ikenberry said.

Herman said serving as provost and chancellor of the Urbana campus has been the great privilege of a 40-year career in higher education, but that he is stepping aside to enable a newly constituted Board of Trustees to select new university and campus leadership.

"Ours is a great institution with its brilliant and hard-working faculty and staff, and its smart and ambitious students, and I plan to continue to contribute to ensuring the bright future of the University of Illinois," Herman wrote in his letter to the board. "Thank you for the honor to serve the university. I have enjoyed every minute, in fact, every nanosecond."

Herman joined the UI in 1998 when he became provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, the campus's chief academic officer, at the Urbana campus. He was named interim chancellor in June 2004 and became chancellor of the campus in May 2005.

He was dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland from 1990 to 1998. He was chair of the Department of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University from 1986 to 1990.

"Richard Herman has made significant contributions to the Urbana-Champaign campus and to public higher education. The shared commitment that Richard and his wife Susan have made to the university and community is commendable," Board of Trustees Chair Christopher G. Kennedy said in a press release.

Herman will work at an initiative he helped create. In November of 2008 he launched I-STEM, an initiative to increase the number and quality of science, technology, engineering and math teachers who graduate from the Urbana campus, along with improving student recruitment and retention rates in science and technology-affiliated programs.

"My hope is to promote partnerships between the entire university and Illinois businesses and industries, governmental agencies and other educational institutions, including community colleges and the Chicago Public Schools, to better understand the STEM pipeline," Herman said.

Ikenberry will become interim president of the university on Jan. 1, taking over from B. Joseph White, who announced his resignation last month.

During his tenure as chancellor, Herman was instrumental in the creation of the Illinois Promise scholarship program for students from low-income families.

Herman graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1963 and earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Maryland in 1967.

An investigation this summer by the Illinois Admissions Review Commission, prompted by media reports of admissions abuses, found that scores of politically connected students over five years were admitted over more-qualified applicants under pressure from trustees, legislators and others. The university kept a "Category I" list to track undergraduate applicants with powerful backers. Testimony before the admissions commission showed 33 of the 160 students on the 2009 list had their initial rejections overturned and were admitted over more-qualified applicants.

An ad hoc committee of the board of trustees has been reviewing top UI administrators and their role in the Category I system.

Herman has publicly apologized several times for his part in Category I and vigorously defended his overall record as chancellor and provost. He has said he was trying to insulate academics from outside pressure when he personally handled admissions requests from trustees and legislators.

Despite his appeals, the campus faculty-student senate voted 98-55 last month to call for White and Herman to step down in an "orderly transition."

In an Aug. 31 speech to the senate, Herman said he had considered resigning because of the admissions scandal but decided his accomplishments outweighed "my failings this summer." He said he believed he didn't have the power to "end a system that was long in the making and was ingrained in our state's political culture."

"I believed that the best I could do was shield others at the university from these behind-the-scenes maneuverings. I truly believed that I was serving the greater good of the university by doing something that, in retrospect, was sometimes not so good. I still believe that for all the hundreds of inquiries from well-connected people over many years, only a small percentage ended up being mishandled," he said.

Dozens of prominent UI faculty wrote a letter of support for Herman, and some also criticized the senate's actions. Similar letters from UI alumni in Chicago and local business leaders praised Herman's fundraising abilities and his promotion of Champaign-Urbana as "an incubator of new ideas in technology, sustainability and the arts."

But in another letter, eight employees who worked closely with former provosts and chancellors said their bosses did not admit applicants because of outside pressure or clout, contrary to Herman's assertions.

Herman was grilled by the admissions commission about several admissions cases, including a 2006 e-mail exchange with former law Dean Heidi Hurd. They discussed the possibility of obtaining jobs for law school graduates in exchange for admitting less-than-desirable students pushed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, through former UI Board of Trustees Chairman Lawrence Eppley. Hurd and Herman both testified that no jobs were awarded, and Hurd described the discussion as "facetious."

Law school officials said the university had forced the College of Law to admit 24 politically connected students over four years who wouldn't have been accepted otherwise. Hurd also requested from Herman, and received, about $350,000 in scholarships to recruit top students to the law school to offset the effect of accepting students with lower credentials.

Herman, a widely published scientist and mathematician and native of New York, was hired as UI provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs in 1998. He came here after eight years as dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland.

He was named interim UI chancellor in July 2004 following the departure of former Chancellor Nancy Cantor, then was tapped for the permanent job in April 2005.

As provost, Herman was a finalist for the university president's jobs at Iowa, Texas A&M and Florida in 2002-03.

Herman has said he is proud of his record, listing his efforts to promote racial and gender diversity on campus, the hiring of 100 "faculty excellence professors," a doubling of private sector research money, the globalization of campus, and the Illinois Promise program, which guarantees that low-income students will graduate from the UI debt-free. He has cited specific projects such as the new Blue Waters petascale supercomputing facility, the Center for the Study of Democracy in a Multiracial Society, a $500 million biofuels and biosciences project with energy giant BP, and the Advanced Digital Sciences Center in Singapore, a partnership with the government of Singapore.

Comments

How about this guy as a new president?

Steven B. Sample, President

University of Southern California

1991–Present

Sample earned B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has received honorary doctorates from the State University of New York at Buffalo (2006), the University of Notre Dame (2005), Northeastern University (2004), the University of Nebraska (1995), Purdue University (1994), Hebrew Union College (1994), the University of Sheffield, England (1991), and Canisius College, Buffalo (1989).

Posted by laillini on October 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM Suggest Removal

The cleansing continues. Now we need to know which legislators put pressure on University officials to accept those less qualified students. We need that information before election time.

Posted by concernedvoter on October 20, 2009 at 1:46 PM Suggest Removal

About time.

Posted by jgrout on October 20, 2009 at 6:05 PM Suggest Removal

Chancellor Richard Herman contributions were mostly negative.

Chancellor Herman main effort was to promote racial diversity, which is a bad idea since diversity is known to greatly increase racial tensions.

Due to his contributions we find our campus much more antagonized along racial and ethnic lines, because different races tend to compete, frequently aggressively.

Chancellor Herman also worked hard to suppress freedom of speech and freedom of expression on campus. Student groups, which tried to opposing illegal immigration from Mexico, were intimidated and some disciplined, thanks to Chancellor Herman efforts.

Posted by GoGoGo on October 20, 2009 at 6:58 PM Suggest Removal

I am all for getting rid of ethically challenged administrators who have betrayed our trust. Accordingly, lets not forget the mess over at UIS. In a 2005 report, the State of Illinois Auditor General noted that the dean of the B-School at UIS improperly billed and collected money from MBA students (for a trip to China). What's wrong with that? First of all, only the Bursar is allowed to send bills and collect payments. Worse yet, despite the fact that the expenses were paid for out of State accounts, the dean deposited students' checks into a private Foundation account, thus creating a slush fund that could then be used at his discretion. UIS administration tried to cover up this scandal by blaming it on the dean's secretary. However, their explanation was NOT consistent with the facts. When questioned early on by MBA students, Dean Ron McNeil wrote in an e-mail that he was following UI accounting procedures, and was doing things in this manner to ensure that students' payments were deposited back into the appropriate State accounts. But that is NOT what happened! Seems that the dean got caught in a lie! Unfortunately, in their zeal to get accreditation UIS administrators let this particular dean get away with things that would not be tolerated at most places. Good thing that a former faculty member alerted the Auditor General to this scam! Just like Joe White and Richard Herman had to ultimately pay the penalty for their misdeed, its time for those involved in this particular scandal to held responsible as well. How can we credibly teach ethics in the B-School when we let the Dean get away with this type of egregious behavior? Lets hope the Board of Trustees is serious about restoring the integrity of the U of I.

Posted by FormerFaculty on October 20, 2009 at 8:56 PM Suggest Removal