By Sierra Hubbard, Staff Writer
President Daniel S. Papp announced via press release the senior administrative structure for the consolidated university.
A total of 12 positions will comprise the cabinet, including the president himself. Concerns were raised when the announcement revealed, of the nine slots that have already been determined, all of them were filled by Kennesaw State University administrators.
An intricate part of the process, the Expanded Consolidation Implementation Committee is comprised of 47 individuals from both KSU and SPSU, and it acts as an advisory board to the president in regards to the new university.
“The consolidation committee was actually involved in the structure itself, like what types of positions we would have, colleges we would have, things like that,” said Dr. Ken Harmon, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs. “They were not involved in the selection of individuals.”
This task was left to President Papp, who met with other presidents in the University System of Georgia as well as members of the Board of Regents to help with the process.
“The president actually thought that you needed to make this decision in consultation with the university system administrators. Once they were narrowing down on their decisions, my understanding is that they talked to the affected administrators, but that mostly this was a discussion at the president’s level with the Board.” Papp was then able to shed some light on the situation and better explain why each person was chosen for the positions they will hold.
The three positions for which national searches are being conducted are new slots that have no equivalent at either university currently. These three positions target the University System of Georgia’s three strategic imperatives, and anyone who qualifies at KSU or at SPSU may apply for them.
Excluding the president, then,there are eight positions that have been filled, all by current KSU administrators. President Papp was able to break down the entire cabinet in terms of the university’s size, vacant seats, and a lack of equivalency between the colleges. The Provost and Vice President for AcademicAffairs, for example, was an easy position to fill. The Vice president of Southern Polytechnic was already on the job market when consolidation was announced, and she has found an opening at another school.
“Their president, vice president, and CIO are all going elsewhere,” Papp said. This was the case for many of the SPSU administrative staff. “Their chief budget officer had already left; their vice president for student affairs had already retired.”
Some positions that seemed crucial were not present at Southern Polytechnic. “Part of it also, they don’t have a chief diversity officer; we do,” Papp said. “Diversity and inclusiveness are critically important.”Therefore, Erik Malewski will continue to hold this position after consolidation is final.
Many of the decisions were based on size. “In some other areas,” Papp said, “our operation, to put it bluntly, was just much bigger. Athletics: we have NCAA, they’re NAIA. We have 17 sports, they have four. Legal office: we have five lawyers, they have one. Communications: what they call communications we call external affairs, and they have six people in that office. We’ve got about 35 people in that office.”
This leads to the very essence and point behind this event, which is the consolidation of administration, not the outright elimination of jobs at one university. “Their legal counsel is going to be joining our legal counsel staff, and their athletic director is going to be joining our athletic staff.”
Provisions were also made for administrative positions that will not be a part of the consolidated university. “Kennesaw State’s institutional research person does not sit on our cabinet,” Papp said as an example. “Their person does, and she will be joining the institutional research staff.”
Another role that is crucial to the university and whose selection requires clarification is the Vice President for Operations, held by Randy Hinds, who will also perform the duties of chief information officer and chief budget
officer. This was split into three separate positions at Southern Polytechnic, and the question arises as to how one person can manage what appears to be a three-person job at an even larger university.
Dr. Harmon was able to provide a breakdown of this role.
“This is one person above those three individuals who sits on the cabinet,” Harmon said. “What Dan [Papp] has contended is that we achieve a lot more efficiency by having one person over those various areas. “Like I said, each area still has someone over it, but you have someone above that who can easily move resources around from operations to IT and etcetera without having to have individual silos where people are effectively battling for resources.”
Essentially, Hinds will hold the one position on the cabinet, but there will be people under him who control the individual sectors and report to him, which improves the allocation of resources and funds in the long-run.
One of the seats on the cabinet of the consolidated university will be effectively dissolved in the summer of 2015. Faculty Executive Assistant to the President Maureen McCarthy’s three-year term will end in June of next year, and there will not be a replacement for this cabinet seat.
“My understanding,” Harmon said, “from what he [Papp] had mentioned, was this was a role where the same thing could be accomplished without actually having a person in that position.
“That person sits on the president’s cabinet and therefore is a liaison to faculty. Rather than actually hiring someone into this role, instead we could do something such as have a particular faculty member, such as a president of faculty senate or someone like that, sit in on the president’s cabinet, while they are in office. Therefore, we have the link to faculty liaison without actually having to have a separate position for that.”
Again, this further consolidates unnecessary administration to focus more effort on the operations of the university. Breaking down the individual positions on the cabinet reveal an intricate and difficult process used to carefully structure a university fully prepared to meet the needs of its students, staff and faculty. This was also confirmed by Dr. Harmon to be a “50/50” consolidation.
“That is true,” Harmon said. “In forming each of the 81 operational working groups, they are each led by co-chairs: one from here, one from Southern Polytechnic. And the committees are made up of representatives from both institutions, so we’re making sure that both institutions are actually represented as we bring them together.”
The idea of an equal consolidation is reflected even in the treatment of the Southern Polytechnic campus.
“We’re going to have two main campuses,” Papp said. “We’ll have the north campus and the south campus.”
Each will house its own colleges, but course offerings won’t differ very much. “The core courses, ones that all freshmen take and sophomores take, those will continue to be delivered on both campuses. There will be very limited and, in most cases, no movement between campuses.”
Such movement is not the purpose of a consolidation, Papp stresses. The importance lies within the eliminating of duplicated administration, which saves the university money.
“We’re expecting again somewhere between $3 million and $4 million to be able to be redirected to education, structural support, and research.”
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