<p>She is going to be hard to replace.</p>
<p>I met her in Dubai four years ago. She was a tough little cookie…but very sweet. I wouldn’t mind seeing Teresa Sullivan return to Ann Arbor as president. I am sure we will get a good president to replace Coleman.</p>
<p>thank goodness… she’s practically a hippie. Lets hope for a more sane president next. Addition by subtraction the way I see it.</p>
<p>Too bad, but Michigan will attract a top replacement.</p>
<p>Coleman presided over the loss of a very large number of accomplished senior faculty members and more importantly “junior senior” faculty, which are the lifeblood of any university. She was, in a sense, the anti-Shapiro. U of M would be hard pressed to do worse. I hope the regents take this opportunity to take a long-term view of the health of the university.</p>
<p>When it comes to salaries, Michigan is a market matcher, not a market leader. Our peers pay their faculties 20% more. If we want to retain our professors, we had better pay them a lot better.</p>
<p>I am confident that U-M will attract a qualified candidate and I think we can improve upon what we had with Ms. Coleman even though I thought she was OK. I just hope the new person isn’t asked to deliver the commencement address in Spring 2015.</p>
<p>MSC was considered one of the top ten university leaders in all of academia. It is not an easy job and not everyone is always going to be satisfied with the end results. Nevertheless, Michigan is in much better shape financially then most universities.</p>
<p>I understand that each leader will have her detractors but to state that “U of M would be hard pressed to do worse” is nonsense.</p>
<p>During her tenure, MSC oversaw:
- the worst recession in decades, declining state funding and a year in which UM lost hundreds of millions in endowment. When she retires, UM will be more financially solvent than ever
- kept building and hired new faculty when many other universities were contracting
- test scores have improved every year
- the acceptance rate will be about half of what it was when she started
- the only $100 million donations in UM history (Munger and Ross)
- raised $3.2 billion for the university between 2004-2008, many billions more since then
- named one of 10 best university presidents by Time Magazine
- hired Dave Brandon who righted the athletic ship and returned Michigan sports and, in particular, basketball and football, to elite status
- UM maintained its elite reputation among academia, world and national rankings (it’s hard to go up when you are near the top)</p>
<p>I never met MSC, it’s possible we do better. Can we do worse? Hell yes, we can do worse.</p>
<p>I should have been more clear. My comment – that Michigan “would be hard pressed to do worse” – was addressed only to the issue of retention of faculty. (There are many dimensions on which I think Coleman has done a fine job.) Michigan still has a world-class faculty in almost all areas, especially the social sciences, but it has lost many important people even in those departments. Such losses tend to have a spiraling effect, as good people are attracted to a university to work with other good people – and leave as other good people leave. Michigan does not have the money to throw at, say, economists in the way that Washington University or NYU have in the last decade, but the fact that Michigan is, indeed, a “market matcher” has long been the case. It is bothersome that the draw of ISR and similar institutions on campus don’t seem to be a compensating factor in the way that they used to be.</p>