The Ohio University Board of Trustees has hired a consultant to direct a comprehensive evaluation of President Roderick McDavis — months after awarding him a 29 percent pay raise and a four-year contract extension.
Terrence McTaggart, a former chancellor of Maine’s public universities, will conduct on-campus interviews in November and present a final report to an evaluation committee consisting of Trustees M. Marnette Perry, Larry Schey and C. Daniel DeLawder in January. In addition to OU faculty and administration, McTaggart will interview representatives from the city and state governments as well as students.
The university will pay McTaggart $35,000, which, Delawder said, will be money well spent on a useful tool for the president and board of trustees.
Pete Wickman, president of Graduate Student Senate, said it’s encouraging to see the board hire an outside consultant, but he would like to see the board commit to accepting documentation from constituents to create a public record and to ensure transparency.
“We’re a public institution,” he said. “We should conduct our business on paper.”
The board has conducted its own annual evaluations in the past, but this is the first “comprehensive” evaluation, DeLawder said.
“You will not find another public university in the state of Ohio doing (annual performance appraisals) — let alone doing this with a comprehensive evaluation,” he said.
In January, an ad-hoc committee proposed a policy mandating that a comprehensive evaluation be completed in the year before the expiration of a president’s contract. The board unanimously adopted this guideline in its February meeting.
But the board approved a new contract for McDavis in June — a year before his existing employment agreement would have expired — without a comprehensive evaluation.
The contract, which has yet to be finalized, extends the president’s tenure by four years and gives him an $85,000 raise. The president has been working under his new $380,000 salary since its announcement in June.
At the board’s Friday meeting, DeLawder said the contract could be completed within 30 days.
Originally, the board said the contract could not be finalized until OU hired a new director of Legal Affairs. As of Friday’s meeting — two months after John Biancamano took the helm as head of Legal Affairs — only the contract benefits remain under discussion, DeLawder said. He would not specify the nature of the benefits currently under discussion, or whether they were related to the president’s salary.
— Chris Kardish contributed to this report.
Reader Comments
Wow $35,0000! We just spent the general fee of around 60 students to hire a consultant to do a job the faculty senate, board, and students could have done. More importantly we are doing this after a raise and contract extension has already happened. Where does this happen in the real world? Has anyone ever received a contract extension in a job or been given a huge raise without ever having an evaluation completed? I know I haven't! What happens if the evaluation by this outside consultant shows McDavis to be doing a horrible job? He's already been receiving his new salary for months now and already has his contract extension so we can't fire him because then he can sue for breach of contract. Way to waste money!
I just don't understand paying 35k for an outsider to do something we could have done for a few hundred dollars.
Many will probably say this outsider will be impartial. Well I highly doubt that. I am sure there will not be much transparency in this evaluation and I am sure the students that will be asked about the president will be hand picked. This kind of reminds of a company picking it's own researcher to research the validity of it's product to see whether it works or not.
Who knows?
I just think we could have spent 35k in a lot of other places.
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