What to look for in the next UH president

The new University of Hawaii president must be like Hans Christian Andersen’s emperor in new clothes — transparent, but not at all as foolish or incompetent.

This is the bottom line for an organization filled with immensely competent faculty and students whom I don’t consider second to anyone in the country.

The interim president has taken a major step in the right direction: that of addressing the deferred maintenance issue at UH, priced at $487 million. The Legislature should grab a bargain when it sees one and cooperate with his plan. But, UH has been beset with issues and difficulties ever since the budget experienced deep and unprecedented cuts in 1994-99, followed by more tightening since.

The main thing that the UH presidential selection committee needs to understand is that paying more money doesn’t assure a better president. The new president needs to be a person with ideas and aloha — a motivator with people skills.

Strange as it may sound, experience in a senior administrative position is a needless requirement for this position. More often than not, people with such experience come with all the wrong ideas and experiences, having learned to administer the wrong way, having acquired abrasive people skills, and looking out for only themselves. This is not what the sharing culture of Polynesia needs at UH.

What selectors neglect is to look for qualities that cover direct know-how and understanding of procurement, facilities management and construction, budgeting and cost control, finance, business management, public administration, politics and organizational behavior, among other skills.

Transparency, as mentioned above, is another crucial task. No president has succeeded in making the UH Foundation more transparent in more than five decades, even though the foundation has come under scathing attacks from time to time. Transparency is also missing in deals made at Bachman Hall, often leaving faculty wondering what the real motivation is behind some actions.

The new president will immediately need to address burning issues that affect the faculty, who can make it or break it for the new leader. Yet, this most important group has been given short shrift. The faculty are the real spirit at any university, like doctors at a hospital, teaching and administering to generation after generation of students.

Funds for educational improvement, the primary purpose of the university, have been zeroed out; travel for faculty to attend conferences, where vital research advancements are presented, has been drastically reduced; and scholarships for faculty dependents have been suspended. Salaries are a perpetual problem, especially among full professors, who have experienced severe salary compression.

There are ways for UH to raise even more money than it does now through research grants, intellectual property returns, donations and tuition fees. A case in point: new business development strategies that could make tens of millions of dollars annually by making use of the hundreds of UH-owned acres now lying unused. A laggard and unimaginative trend has characterized our past presidents.

UH has a tough row to hoe to select its new president. If past experience is a lesson, fault lies in the selection criteria, the HR firms hired to manage the search and misguided expectations.

The selection committee should announce it won’t pay more than $250,000 annually to the president, to restore faith and trust in the presidency; not pursue a $120,000 contract with any HR firm; look for a president who has not had prior experience in an executive position nor seek one who belongs to the old boys’ network; and look for someone who can serve as a motivator.

We need a president whose intention is to serve the community, not make half-a-million dollars a year. It’s time to look outside the box. Doing so will give UH a fighting chance and hope to bring in new ideas in a changing world.

If the Board of Regents won’t take risks by breaking its stale old mold, they’ll be risking UH’s future.