Looks like the Colorado system will have a new president. He was turned down for the job at Univ of Central FL so now he’s coming to Colorado. I have more research to do but so far I am not hopeful.
He has not been offered the job, but seems pretty sure he will be. He still has to interview at the four U of Colorado campuses. Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs and Medical campus in Aurora.
https://calendar.colorado.edu/event/cu_presidential_finalist_forum_mark_kennedy
He was a professor at George Washington University, and holds an MBA from U of Michigan Ross, a very respectable business school. He was a Congressman from Minnesota for six years. He was a university president of U of North Dakota for the last three years. He is beating President Benson for education at least! President Benson holds a bachelors degree in geology and no advanced degrees.
https://www1.und.edu/president/bio.cfm
To compare, highly successful Bruce Benson was also a businessman.
That type of person often makes a good President of a university. Its budget management position,largely, not an academic position, although many pubic schools hire PhDs for that administrator, its doubtful the PhD actually helps a university president of a large public system.
https://www.cu.edu/office-president/more-about-president/cu-president-bruce-d-benson
And the ranting goes on about Mark Kennedy. He will do fine. its a business job, to balance budgets
on our four campuses, and keep donations rolling in.
https://cuindependent.com/2019/05/02/breaking-regents-vote-5-4-to-confirm-mark-kennedy-as-president/
Colorado traditionally has always hired a Republican to run the four campus public university system
and our fine Medical and Law school.
And we will continue in that vein, in spite of the ranting in Boulder!
@coloradmama I definitely agree with your sentiment on Mark Kennedy, but Boulder is Boulder and the wailing will continue at least until some other “thing” comes along.
I guess I feel a bit more negative about Mark Kennedy, in that he was a certified public accountant, and CU Boulder
is more of a science and engineering focused college now. I hope he can gain the respect of the CU faculty. Given that the CU College of Engineering is hiring away deans from Georgia Tech, it is a little surprising that we hired a non PhD leader, with a CPA background instead of a research background. CU Medical is a top medical research h campus, and Mark Kennedy must run that campus as well. CU Denver and CU Colorado Springs are more commuter schools, but Boulder is also a top research campus in physics, chemistry, chemical engineering and growing in compute science. I hope Mark Kennedy knows what he is getting into. U of South Dakota seems small, and not the same type of research school, at all.
I don’t really understand the political bent of our CU Presidents, why they have to be Republicans, but maybe another reader can comment.
The president of the entire CU system is more of a budgeting role. There is zero teaching or academics. I don’t know if Kennedy is the right person for the job, but having an accounting background is a positive.
DiStefano is the person who deals with the academics at CU Boulder.
Budget & finance = primary concern of UC system. Better to hire a CPA / finance & accounting person or a proven fund raiser, than an academic.
I tend to disagree, that an accountant makes a good leader for a world class public university, as the university needs to attract good artists, musicians, business and law leaders, and scientists, to continue down the path it has started. (See stated goals for CU Engineering, and understand the level of the physics department at CU ,is very high as is chemistry ).
See Georgia Tech’s new President for instance. Most top engineering and science colleges on the east and west coast hire in top talent Presidents. In Colorado, we seem to just take whoever we can get. I don’t understand that at all. We are not going to get to the next level if we keep this up, hiring in non academic political people like Kennedy. But we’ll see how he does.
Kennedy is in charge of the entire university system and DiStefano is in charge of CU Boulder. For your GT example Dr Wrigley is in charge of the entire GA university system and Cabrera is the president of GT. Cabrera has an academics background while Wrigley is a career bureaucrat.