JOPLIN, Mo. — The filling of the position of vice president for academic affairs is emerging as a key issue for faculty relations at Missouri Southern State University and could determine whether any trust can be rebuilt with President Bruce Speck, several faculty said.

Speck was the host for both a press conference and a listening session with faculty Friday, several days after the faculty senate passed a “statement of concerns” conveying faculty opposition to recent moves to “erode tenure” by hiring more adjuncts and expressing concern about the VPAA’s post going for so long without a permanent replacement.

Faculty members in early November gave an overwhelming vote of no-confidence in Speck’s leadership. Since then, the university has already seen one search for the permanent VPAA fail, student protests, continuing questions about tenure track, and fresh concerns about class sizes.

Trust

The Globe asked Speck on Friday about credibility and trust that some faculty members previously said remains ruptured since the vote, with Speck still facing questions about trust as he now tries to assuage faculty concerns about issues such as tenure and class sizes. He and the faculty at the same time must brace the school for deep cuts in state funding that are expected more than a year from now.

“We have been very transparent about our communications,” Speck countered. He reiterated a litany of steps he said he has taken to be more transparent: the revival of administrative council, the creation of a new executive budget committee, and a series of listening sessions with faculty like the one Friday.

“I think trust is a two-way avenue,” he said.

Yet faculty on Friday keyed in on transparency on what is now emerging as a high-stakes VPAA search that once again is down to three finalists who will start visiting the campus next week. The tenure track issue itself is one that “the new VPAA will inherit,” Speck said.

Stephen Schiavo, a faculty senator and president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, told the Globe a new VPAA who is “mutually acceptable” to both Speck and faculty would “make life here a lot easier for the president and the faculty.”

Joy Dworkin, an English professor, told Speck during Friday’s press conference that the faculty is “eager to have trust” in the new VPAA position. She also told him that if faculty members have significant say on that search, it would help build trust not only in the VPAA position but also for the administration as a whole.

Dworkin and other faculty returned to the VPAA search issue during the listening session later that day. Dworkin said the transparency of that process would help ensure a “substantial buy-in” from faculty.

She told the Globe after the listening session that she personally thought the new VPAA search was “enormously important” and that its outcome could go “a very long way to reassure me that the future of this institution is bright.”

‘Good faith’

The VPAA position at times has been a lightning rod for the university since July, when the then-VPAA Jack Oakes resigned just a few weeks into his tenure to return to teaching. Oakes would later accuse Speck of being “vindictive” and using “threats in order to coerce” a member of the faculty.

The search for Oakes’ replacement became one of 23 complaints about Speck’s leadership that were leveled last year by a faculty senate ad hoc committee. The committee alleged that Speck formed the search panel initially with only one faculty member, eventually granting greater faculty representation only after the threat of a no-confidence vote arose.

Dworkin said Friday that part of the reason why faculty have called for more transparency in this year’s search is because of last year’s unsuccessful one. That search was declared failed even after one candidate, Peter Johnstone, seemed to clearly enjoy faculty support, she said. Speck himself chaired that search committee, and he makes the final decision about who is hired to be VPAA.

When Speck declared last year’s search failed after two of the three finalists, including Johnstone, withdrew, faculty were left with questions of how and why, Dworkin said.

For his part, Speck on Friday told faculty members that he purposefully did not chair the search committee this year.

“I didn’t know who the finalists were until it was announced,” he said of the current three finalists.

“I understand the importance of this position,” he told faculty Friday. “I am operating in good faith with you.”

Yet Speck also faced questions about how much weight the recommendation of the search committee — which includes several faculty members and is one conduit for faculty influence — would carry when he makes the final decision.

Speck said he did not want the committee to advance any names that the panel did not think could do the job. Yet Speck also said that the new VPAA in “large part” would have to fit in with the university’s administrative team.

Holly McSpadden, a professor of English, pointed out that the new VPAA also had to be a “bridge” between the administration and faculty.

“I want somebody who is on my team, too,” she said.

Brad Kleindl has been acting as the interim VPAA since Oakes’ resignation, although Kleindl will return to teaching in the fall.



Coming up

The search for a new VPAA at Missouri Southern has been narrowed to three finalists. A.J. Anglin, who retired in June 2008 as vice president for academic affairs at Waynesburg (Pa.) University, a private Christian university, will visit the Missouri Southern campus Thursday. Thomas L. Winter, the current vice provost at Abilene (Texas) Christian University, will visit the campus Friday, May 14. Abdul Turay, the current provost and vice president at Tougaloo (Miss.) College, will visit the campus Monday, May 17.