Presidential hire and the TK tie in

Interesting notes for historical perspective.

Re: D'Alemberte nominates Thrasher for FSU president

DemocraticNole
5/22/2014

"Thrasher is already starting out in a huge hole with the faculty. The faculty is universally against this move. Now, I don't think the university should just hire whoever the faculty want. However, the intense opposition amongst them is a huge problem. T.K. didn't have this kind of ardent opposition from the faculty prior to his hire; it was his leadership as university president that made him universally reviled.

I have linked a 2002 article from the Jacksonville Times-Union about the hiring of T.K. Allow me to provide some snippets:

Many observers saw Wetherell, 56, as the insider candidate because of his ties to trustees and experience with the university and the Legislature. His resume listed three pages of references that included FSU football coach Bobby Bowden, incoming Senate President Jim King, incoming House speaker Johnnie Byrd and several current and past Florida university presidents. -- Sounds a lot like Thrasher
Wetherell also has personal connections to some trustees: He described trustee Stanley Marshall as a mentor while he was in college, has known trustee Ann McGee for years and worked with trustee Chairman John Thrasher as a lobbyist at Southern Strategy Group. -- Thrasher has numerous personal connections to the BoT and PSAC.

Some faculty members had threatened via e-mail messages to Uhlfelder to resign if trustees chose Wetherell, saying he lacked the academic experience of the other finalists. Yesterday, Faculty Senate President Valliere Richard Auzenne said before the final selection was announced that the Senate was pleased with all three candidates.

Wetherell defended his academic credentials, which include a doctorate in education administration from FSU. He said 20 FSU alumni are four-year university presidents. "What are you telling our grads if you say: 'You're good enough to go there, but you're not good enough to come here?'" -- T.K. had a Ph.D. and had a least been president of a community college. Thrasher has neither qualification. 

Bloch said choosing a president was a turning point where FSU could move to national prominence or maintain its statewide reputation.

"What is the issue is national visibility," he said. "I would prefer somebody like Dr. Jennings be president. He understands the national scene." -- Under T.K., someone with far more academic experience and credentials than John Thrasher, our academic reputation took a huge dive. We also failed to have the appropriate growth in research funding that a university like ours should have.

John Thrasher is not T.K. Wetherell. T.K. had far more qualifications to be the university president, and yet he failed. How can one logically think that John Thrasher, someone with far less qualifications, is all of a sudden going to be able to hit the ground running and improve our academic reputation? How is someone with zero respect from the academic community going to raise our academic profile amongst other industry professionals? I hope some of you understand that peer review and judgment is a huge component of many academic rankings metrics, including the flawed U.S. News and World Report. The minute John Thrasher is selected, our peer rankings will take a nosedive. Even if Thrasher can repair that damage, it will take years to do so, and by that time we will have gone through another faculty brain drain and the next president will have to spend time like Eric Barron did in cleaning up the mess.

At least with T.K. we had a true search and interviewed other candidates. How anyone can justify a scenario in which the PSAC brings in one single wholly unqualified candidate for interview first is beyond my comprehension. This process is a total embarrassment to the university.

We often compare ourselves both academically and athletically to UF. Look at the way UF is conducting their search process. Are they claiming the Sunshine Laws are preventing from getting quality candidates? Are they allowing a state senator with no qualifications to hijack the entire search process? The answer to both of those questions is no. Why? Because the University of Florida at least wants to strive for academic excellence. The people running for FSU apparently have no desire to achieve excellence. "