Hiring practices at the University of Saskatchewan were vigorously defended by senior administrators who said Thursday they were unaware of any faculty discontent with the appointment process.
U of S president Peter MacKinnon said the first time he heard of concern about the process of appointing college deans and senior administrators was when he read comments from the U of S faculty association (USFA) in The StarPhoenix.
“No complaint, formal or informal, has been made by the association to my office . . . or to my knowledge to any other administration office,” MacKinnon said in his Thursday address to university council, a campus governance body consisting of faculty and administrators.
MacKinnon, with provost and vice-president of academics Brett Fairbairn, spent about an hour addressing the council and answering questions from faculty members who were critical of administration. Previous to the meeting, the USFA distributed to its roughly 1,100 members an email that attacked the “small elite group of senior administrators” that believes “key decisions should be made by this same small elite group of senior administrators.”
The letter asked members for stories related to recent StarPhoenix articles that revealed senior administrators had made controversial appointments in two positions at the U of S. MacKinnon and Fairbairn, critics say, appointed candidates not chosen by volunteer search committees, subverting a long-standing convention of academic appointments at the U of S.
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MacKinnon told council that the USFA’s description of “elite” administrators was unfair.
“The charge that elite university administrators are making all the decisions is utterly without substance,” he said, citing projects such as the new College Quarter student residences as a cross-campus collaboration.
MacKinnon said he believed the administration had a good rapport with the faculty association, but after the recent developments he knows he “was apparently mistaken in this respect.”
MacKinnon and Fairbairn failed to address the concerns raised by the faculty and instead attacked those who criticized the administration, said USFA vice-chair and psychology Prof. Jim Cheesman.
“They tried avoiding the real issues by attacking the faculty association,” he said after the council meeting. “To launch an attack on the faculty for an email sent to members to start a discussion about the issue simply bypasses the issue.”
The council on Thursday heard from a committee that spent the past two years reworking the policy for “search and review procedures for senior administrators.” The committee’s report, which was distributed before the hiring controversy, makes 23 recommendations that aim to strengthen accountability of the appointment process, such as better communication about decisions and definitions for what constitutes a “failed search.”
Cheesman said he’s hopeful the report serves as a better guide for U of S administrators because their tough decisions have to be accountable and transparent.
“Tough decisions are very likely to be accepted with good process and decisions are likely to be viewed with suspicion with bad process,” Cheesman said.
Fairbairn defended the U of S against the news reports about the hiring controversy.
“There is information printed in The StarPhoenix that is flatly incorrect,” he told the council.
After the meeting, Fairbairn declined to identify the inaccurate statements.
“We don’t comment on individual searches because they’re personnel matters,” Fairbairn said.
Critics failed to point out that 14 of 15 searches for senior positions in the past five years have resulted in a consensus or a strong-majority choice candidate being offered the job, MacKinnon added.
“Our search process works well,” he said.
“Sometimes you do not get consensus. Sometimes you do not have a strong majority view. The board of governors is then left with the report, the diverse views of its members and the advice of senior administrators to make a decision. That is what is supposed to happen. That is what happened.”
jjwarren@thestarphoenix.com
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