What would you ask the presidential candidates?

I haven’t heard much lately about the ongoing search for a new EMU president, rumor or otherwise. I have heard kind of mixed reviews on the finalists for the job– some good ones and some, um, not so good ones– and I have heard that the hope is to have these folks on campus yet this April. Why so very late in the school year? Well, someone in the know told me that the process just ended up taking a lot longer than the folks involved originally thought it would, but I have to wonder if part of the delay isn’t at least in part an effort to minimize campus involvement. If candidates come to campus in May, the number of students and faculty who attend these interviews is going to a heck of a lot smaller than if they had held these things in March or even April.

But it is what it is.

Anyway, EMU Faculty Council President Russ Larson sent around an email to faculty the other day where he and Jim Carroll (the other faculty representative on the search committee) asked for input for six or so common questions to be asked of each candidate when these folks finally do show up on campus. So, what would you ask these candidates?

I’ve got a couple ideas to get the ball rolling– I hope others chime in.

This is just off the top of my head

• It would seem that the current arrangement for administration right now is to have an “Executive Vice President” who is charged with running the day-to-day operations at EMU and for the role of President to be charged largely with fund-raising, public outreach, and politicking on behalf of EMU. What are your thoughts on this organizational scheme? Do you have any previous experience in an organization– preferably an academic one– with a similar organization?
• For better or worse, EMU is a heavily unionized campus with almost all employees in one “bargaining unit” or another; this includes faculty and lecturers, academic employees who are more traditionally not in unions. What sort of upper-level management experiences have you had with organized labor? What do you think characterizes a successful contract negotiation process? What sorts of strategies and policies would you like to put into action before the administration and the faculty enter contract negotiations again?
• A university president has to satisfy a lot of different constituencies, of course. Discuss how you think you will be able to satisfy both the faculty (and everyone else, for that matter) and the Board of Regents. Or, another way of putting it: do you see this position as one where you will work for members of the Board of Regents or of the university community as a whole?

Like I said, just to get the ball rolling.