Besides setting “a new tone,” what else should Martin do?

Even though I subscribe to and actually read this past weekend the paper version of the Ann Arbor News, I missed this editorial suggesting that incoming EMU President Susan Martin ought to set a new tone– here’s a link to it. On the whole, I agree with the points this editorial makes, but this line kind of made me snicker: “Any leader of a public university needs to embrace the institution’s economic role. EMU, with its close ties to the financially struggling Ypsilanti, can make a huge difference in that city’s future.” Riiiight, Ypsi is struggling, especially relative to the thriving and obviously far superior kingdom of Ann Arbor. Never mind that business about Pfiizer packing up its tent and leaving, Borders warming up the bus to get out of town/out of business, real estate prices falling, etc.

I agree with the editorial in that hiring Martin has prompted a “collective sigh of relief” on campus, but sooner than later, she is actually going to have to do something. So, in the spirit of unsolicited advice that often characterizes EMUTalk.org, what do you think Martin should actually start to do as EMU’s president?

Here’s a few thoughts I have, based largely on the notes I took during the presentations from all of the candidates:

• You’ve got to get up to speed on the unions on campus, and get up to speed quickly. This was and remains my biggest concern about Martin as president. For better or worse, EMU is very much a “union shop,” and Martin has no previous experience in working in and with a union. That worries me because in my experience, 80% of the strife on campus and bad PR of the university as a whole to the contentious relationship between the unions and the administration. That’s got to end. Speaking of which….
• Start making a deal with the faculty and the lecturers union right away. I know those contracts aren’t coming up until 2010, but start talking now. Make an honest and good faith offer. Do not go down the ridiculous path we went down in 2006 with posturing and threatening and walking out and all of that, and for the love of God, do not hire an outside attorney to do the negotiating. Instead of breaking the faculty and the union, the 2006 administration walk-out and the subsequent fact-finding process succeeded in both pissing faculty off and rallying them behind the union, it helped prove that the union actually had better numbers on the EMU budget all along, and it cost EMU literally millions of dollars that would sure come in handy right about now. So let’s keep this in house and let’s start talking now. And if our new president and the members of the Board of Regents want to weaken the power and appeal of the faculty union on campus, then give the faculty a good contract and treat them like equal partners in the institution.
• I think Flanagan was dead wrong about “No Child Left Behind” coming to higher ed, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to keep working on assessment on several different levels at EMU. We’re doing some good things with assessment nowadays, but wouldn’t it be a good idea to try to unify big institutional assessment tools so that the AQUIP and the NCATE processes can borrow from the same sets of data?
• Speaking of which, don’t come in with a “let’s reinvent the wheel and have some retreats” sort of approach to assessment, program review, strategic planning, blah-blah-blah. Neither Kirkpatrick nor Fallon made a lot of friends with this. Find out what’s going on here right now first.
• While training K-12 teachers is probably going to remain a key mission of EMU into the future, the demographics of Michigan are against us. We need to diversify our institution’s goals and offerings. I don’t think that EMU seriously has to worry about being shut down by the state, but there’s no way we’re going to be able to increase enrollment by relying only on students who want to be elementary or high school teachers.

That’s more than enough from me. What do others think? If you could give our new prez one word of wisdom….