Chairman Discusses No Confidence Vote

Dr. Boggess was recently offered a full contract renewal by the Board of Governors.
Photo Courtesy of concord.edu

Whether you are a student or faculty or staff member here at Concord, campus has been buzzing with the news of the vote of no confidence for Dr. Boggess. Elliot Hicks, Chairman of the Concord University Board of Governors gives insightful information and clarification of the issue and some of the policies and procedures relevant to campus.

    Hicks has been serving on the Board of Governors for a little over seven years now. He has been the chairman for three years, going on four. Before Hicks was on the Board of Governors, he served on the Higher Education Policy Commission.

    Although we hear a lot of things about the Board of Governors, many students aren’t aware of what it is, exactly, that they do. Hicks explains that the Board of Governors for each campus has responsibilities that cover preliminarily okaying programs, dealing with budgeting, and work on various policies that are very specific to the campuses themselves. In previous systems, there were two separate boards that did just about everything. Now things have been more decentralized and some of the campuses decisions can be made on the campus-level.  

    The state of West Virginia is facing some hard decisions this year, however, and Hicks gave some insight as to what these are. “We’re facing really unprecedented circumstances here. There was certainly a time when the state covered 70% of the money that state-supported colleges and universities spent on campus or were allocated on campus. Now, we’re down toward 25-30% of that money. … A lot of the money now has to…come from other kinds of grants, whether it’s research grants, or for some of the larger universities, it comes from tuition and fees directly from the students’ pockets,” Hicks said.

    Hicks says that these are difficult things that we are dealing with but they are prepared to try and tackle these challenges. The Board is trying to run the campus and keep programs that attract students while also minimizing increases in tuition. “These are very, very difficult times and that calls for some tough decisions,” said Hicks, “and tough decisions are not going to be popular. We knew that there was going to be some unrest over some of the things that need to be done.”

    Although tough decisions are not always popular, the Board of Governors does what they think is in the best interest of the University. Hicks went on to elaborate a little about recent decisions that have been made: “What we approved the other day is the reconstructing of the academic departments, so that there would be deans who would have responsibility for guiding the course of study of various departments of the University,” said Hicks, “[The deans] will be responsible for overseeing the way that the departments are structured, the quality of the classes they offer. [This is] because the administration is ultimately responsible for what happens within the university. When the enrollment is good, the administration gets some credit for that and when the enrollment is down, the administration gets some blame. And often some administrators lose their job for that.”

    Not only is the reconstruction plan something discussed often, but the new general education plan is as well. “With regards to the new general education requirements, we voted favorably upon the proposal for changing the general education requirements because we see that students want more breadth in their course study,” explained Hicks. He said that this ensures that students are not only learning the information they need, but are also having more of a choice in the matter. “[Students] don’t necessarily want to take so much math as much as a person going into sciences will need math. So, we want to relax that so that they can have opportunities to study other things that might be certainly math-related and call upon math skills, but aren’t necessarily things that would take you so far beyond what you could ever use.” Hicks says this can easily be expanded to other subjects. “Same thing with English, you need to know how to speak the language well and how to write a sentence, everyone needs to know that. The question becomes whether they need some of the depth of some of the literature courses and other say English classes that they might have to take under a more restrictive general education curriculum.” 

    However, as Hicks stated before, tough decisions may not always be popular. Some of the decisions that have gone public can bring up controversy, especially with professors who rely on the old general education requirements to fill up their rosters. “It’s certainly a more consumer-oriented policy to change the general education requirements that administration has suggested, but at the same time it’s not just trying to be popular. It’s trying to help the school to be more understanding to student needs,” said Hicks. He also said that this can ultimately affect students and how they feel about college. “What we often do is discourage students from being in college if we make them take classes that they feel are not relevant to what they want to do after they get out.” Because of students’ feeling this way, he says that he wants to fix programs the best way that they can. The Board is trying to relax the requirements as much as possible so as not to intimidate students, as well as allowing them more of a choice for them to explore their interests. 

    With the restructuring and general education requirement changes, the Board of Governors were confident in Dr. Boggess and her abilities in order to help the university. “When we hired Dr. Boggess, the challenges that we saw were unstable enrollment because of a number of things. West Virginia has the lowest college-going rate in the country, some say. The area of the state that has the lowest college-going rate within West Virginia, are the Southern Coalfields. It is the lowest college-going rate in the area.  …So we’re faced with a challenge that other schools are not facing,” Hicks explained. Administration knows that these issues need to be fixed. “What we saw there was the need to make sure there was some accountability of these programs. We need to grow these programs and we need to make the programs relevant to the students. Having somebody who is directly responsible to the president to do that, we thought was a better plan than having someone who is merely elected by various faculty groups who certainly have vested interests in their own areas of study instead of having an obligation in thinking about the university as a whole.”

    As a result of these issues and the plans that Dr. Boggess laid out, the Board is confident she can handle it. They hired her to handle some complex issues and they see her doing things that, in the eyes of the Board of Governors, will set Concord on the right path. Although the controversy is very public right now, they felt the need to extend her contract for what they believe are all the right reasons. “Even though there was this controversy about the two things that have gotten the most attention, we believe that she is doing the right thing and we support her in that.”

    Hicks assures Concord that the Board is very confident in Dr. Boggess and her abilities to tackle hardships. “It wasn’t important for us that she win that popularity contest. We see what she does from day-to-day. We see the policies that she has developed for the university year-to-year. We are satisfied with that. We weren’t wringing our hands waiting for the faculty vote to decide whether we think she’s doing a good job, because she is doing a good job and we support what she’s doing. What we’ve called upon her to do is going to be unpopular. It’s important for us to stand behind her and make a statement to the university community, and the state, that we support somebody who is making tough decisions, and we will continue to support her.” 

    When discussing the vote of no confidence, Hicks said that the Board is aware of what is happening on campus. “That shows how popular she is. The vote would be a referendum of her popularity among certain faculty members. That was not important to us as long as she could be effective, and we still think that she can be effective.” Although the Board of Governors is aware that people may disagree, they are very supportive of Dr. Boggess. “I think the vote shows that we may disagree, but we do know what’s going on on campus, and we are paying attention and we are paying attention to the external factors that affect the way she does her job. In doing that and voting the way we did, we felt it was the right time to make a statement that we support what she’s doing,” said Hicks.  

    Hicks also talked about how Concord needs long-term leadership, and how the Board believes that is what Dr. Boggess can give to the students. When considering the candidates for president of the University, they needed someone who they could rely on to stay and finish the difficult job at hand rather than somebody who would only be around and fix things temporarily. Hicks made it very clear that quitting is not acceptable in the time of need that we are facing in our state. “Kicking the can down the road is not acceptable, and only a person who is willing to stay and to do the hard work that needs to be done would be acceptable in this position, and we chose Dr. Boggess.”

    She is still making difficult decisions, but the Board of Governors believes their support will tremendously help. “We feel like she is building a relationship with the service area we have that we feel will be mutually beneficial to the University, so we wanted to show strong support for her and give her the confidence that she needs to continue to make those kinds of decisions and do those kinds of thing.”

    Although there are controversial topics and everyone may not agree, Hicks wanted to say that they do understand what is happening and have good communication to make it possible. “We just want people to understand that we do understand, we do hear the things that are going on and we are talking to the faculty members. We have a faculty member on our Board of Governors whose job it is to bring faculty concerns to our attention. We are in great communication with her and we have the faculty senate, they have a new leader this year and we are working more closely with him.”

    Tensions may be high right now and we may be in a difficult time, however, the Board of Governors believe what they are doing is what is best for our university.