Increasing failure rates in canadian university leadershipcauses and solutions

Based on his almost 20 years of experience as university president, a longitudinal study of presidencies in 47 Canadian universities and other current research, the author provides an ov

Chapter 4

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0672-0.ch004

ABSTRACT

There is growing concern in Canada about the increasing failure rate of university presidents Institutional boards invest significant time and money into presidential recruitment, engaging professional search firms and consulting with a vast array of stakeholders Given this intense scrutiny, why are more and more Canadian university leaders failing? What changes can be made to reverse this trend? Based on his almost 20 years of experience as university president, a longitudinal study of presidencies in 47 Canadian universities and other current research, the author provides an overview of the issues involved, explores them in more detail through mini-case studies and identifies “institutional fit” as the key variable in presidential success The chapter concludes with suggestions to Boards and prospective presidential candidates as to how they can increase the likelihood of success in such crucial appointments.

INTRODUCTION

There have been several recent high profile cases in Canada where a highly touted new president of a major university suddenly departed after only a year or two in office Most recently (August, 2015), Arvind Gupta “resigned” as president of UBC after just over a year in the position In 2014, Ilene Busch-Vishniac was forced to leave the presidency of the University of Saskatchewan after fewer than two years on the job Earlier, successive Concordia University presidents Claude Lajeunesse and Judith Woodsworth, both of whom had been successful presidents elsewhere, left their posts under a cloud part way through their first terms of office

The author’s own research across 47 leading Canadian universities (Paul, 2015) and more extensive studies by David Turpin (July 2014, December 2014) and Julie Cafley (2015) have found that more than 27% of presidents appointed since 2000 have left their position prematurely Perhaps most startlingly, this

Increasing Failure Rates in

Canadian University Leadership:

Causes and Solutions

Ross H Paul

University of British Columbia, Canada

has included several (Lajeunesse, Woodsworth, former Brock University David Atkinson at Carleton) who were apparently successful in a previous position as president of another Canadian university This trend contrasts significantly with previous decades when the “failure” rate was below 10% The impact

of a failed presidency1 can be huge, not only in the ensuing confusion about priorities and direction for the institution during the inevitable interim period following a derailment but also in the accompanying damages to an institution’s profile and reputation and its compromised ability to recruit a more success-ful successor

Why have presidential failure rates increased so significantly? What has changed in recent years? Most importantly, what can be done to reduce the failure rate?

BACKGROUND

The role of Canadian university president has evolved considerably in recent years In the early 1960’s, especially in smaller and regional universities, a university president typically “presided over the acad-emy” (Paul, 2015, p 11) He (and it was almost always a “he”) spent most of the time on campus, knew most of the faculty and many of the students and probably taught a course or two Only about three per cent of the age cohort (18–22 years of age) attended university and, except perhaps in the largest urban institutions, most students were full-time and living on campus Universities were much smaller and they really were ivory towers, significantly displaced from the communities in which they were located, and seldom in the news A university president of that era was more apt to have moral than ascribed line authority and faced significantly fewer challenges than are the norm for today’s leaders2

Contrast that with today’s much larger and more publicly accountable university No longer elite in-stitutions for the privileged few, they endeavour to meet the aspirations of the majority of the age cohort for enhanced employment opportunities and are seen as prominent instruments of economic develop-ment by local, provincial, and national governdevelop-ments Research has displaced teaching at the centre of the university’s mission and there is increased competition for scarce resources, both human and physical The impact on the expectations for and responsibilities of the university president are profound Now CEO of large and complex organizations, today’s president is expected to be a fund-raiser, negotiator, marketer, government and community relations expert, financial wizard and the university’s face to a wide and diverse array of stakeholders At the same time, he or she must continue to have academic credibility with the faculty and to know how to work effectively through the collaborative and sometimes cumbersome instruments of academic governance and to deal with increasingly demanding and often impatient boards of governors Faculty now are almost always unionized and students have a much greater sense of entitlement as fee payers than did their earlier, more privileged counterparts Small wonder that there is little time left over to “preside over the academy.”

It would be easy to conclude that, given the extent of these changes and the demands they make of institutional leaders, the presidential selection processes would be significantly different from those of

an earlier era This is categorically not the case

Notwithstanding the growing demands on presidents to lead and manage across a complex array of issues and for a plethora of stakeholders, there are few significant signs of change in the ways they are recruited and (not) trained (Paul, 2015, p ix)

While the great majority of institutions hire their president from elsewhere (consistently at almost 90% according to a longitudinal study of presidencies in 47 Canadian universities (Paul, 2015, p 30)), almost everyone (85%) has been hired from an academic position (provost, vice-president research, dean) at another Canadian university (p 31) While the search processes are more formal and often more private and confidential than in an earlier age, the make-up of the search committee (chaired by the board chair with other board, faculty, student and perhaps alumni representation) is little changed from the earlier era There are two key components to a successful presidential search – finding the “right” candidate at the given time and then doing everything possible to help the appointee succeed Both deserve rigourous attention

An enormous amount of time and money is invested in the search process Almost universally now, there are three key players – the search committee, the executive search firm and the board of governors The board establishes the search committee which is usually chaired by the board chair (or, in some cases, the chancellor or other senior board member) It is populated by external members of the board, faculty members usually appointed by Senate, a student and perhaps an alumnus It usually has strongest representation from lay board members, but faculty members of the committee often have disproportion-ate power because of their knowledge of the institution, its politics and academic culture Unlike earlier eras, when such processes were more open and everyone on campus tended to know who was on short lists and how individual committee members voted, most such searches are veiled in a cloud of secrecy, primarily so as not to discourage candidates holding senior positions elsewhere who will not allow their names to be considered unless the process is confidential This contrasts somewhat with many American jurisdictions where “sunshine laws” in many states require public universities to disclose search lists and procedures openly

The search committee has a great deal of discretion in how it handles the process, usually working closely with one of a handful of executive search firms that specialize in higher education The search firm is usually directly involved in developing the consultation process, including preparation of the job description and selection criteria The company will also have a source list of potential candidates which is developed further for the particular institution The consultant may even conduct preliminary interviews and play a key role in the development of short lists and, as the search committee closes in

on its preferred choice(s), do the bulk of the reference checking

Once the search committee, with the assistance of the search firm, has identified a final candidate

or candidates, one or more names are taken to the board for consideration and ratification At least in theory, the process is pretty standard, logical and appropriate However, there are many ways that it can

go off the rails

The search committee can be dominated by one or more faculty members who do not necessarily represent a broader academic consensus on campus Everyone might rely too much on the search firm which, notwithstanding its experience and expertise, is the player the most removed from the day-to-day campus operation and, hence, institutional culture When the board is ultimately asked to approve

a candidate’s appointment, its knowledge of the incumbent may be limited to the opinions of the search committee and, hence, its ability to judge the fit of the nominee may be more limited than it should be The search firm can be an invaluable and even essential asset but care must be taken in its selection to ensure that it is the right one for the particular institution and that its role is facilitation, not domination However effective or ineffective the connections among these three players, by far the most heavily weighted activity in presidential selection is the formal interview with short-listed candidates, a notori-ously unreliable instrument for assessing competence and fit Even more problematically, once the new

leader has been chosen, there is an overwhelming tendency for everyone to sit back and let the president get on with the job

It is not surprising that the new recruit often struggles during his or her first year in the role Given the continuing importance placed on academic credentials and familiarity with academia and its gover-nance by presidential search committees, it is understandable why the profile of short-listed candidates

is unchanged from an earlier era The vast majority have served as a dean, vice-president or perhaps president in another Canadian university They are seen to have functioned comfortably within the aca-demic environment and to be ready for the top job in the institution

It is incredibly risky to assume that someone who has been a teacher and researcher for most of their career, and only laterally a dean or a provost, will be equally skilled and experienced in all the facets of the CEO role – financial management, fund-raising, government and community relations, collective bargaining, institutional promotion and forging international and business partnerships As the profile

of the role has expanded, so have the expectations of a broad range of stakeholders – students, parents, governments, taxpayers, donors, special interest groups – all of whom look to the president to respond

to their needs and concerns

Globalization, the explosion of communications technologies and increasingly instrumental expec-tations for the institution have contributed immensely to the complexity of the role and make demands

on incumbents for which they often have little training and experience Upholding academic freedom and the integrity of the academy in the face of all these pressures has significantly raised the profile and expectations for accountability of the president

In short, while the candidate profile has not changed very much in 50 years, the job is dramatically different and it is not enough simply to anoint a strong academic with good interpersonal skills and ex-pect him or her to thrive in such a high profile and complex position Nothing illustrates this as clearly

as the increasing number of failed presidencies

MAIN FOCUS OF THE CHAPTER

In an effort to understand better the prevailing causes of the significantly increased instances of failed university presidencies in Canada, the chapter focuses on case studies in three Canadian universities in the context of the case study based research of Cafley (2015) in Canada and Trachtenberg, Kauvar & Bogue (2013) in the US The results are then used to suggest improvements in presidential recruitment and support, with a particular emphasis on the role of boards of governors in Canadian universities

Issues, Controversies, and Problems

It is a major media event when a university president is publicly seen to have been deposed early in his

or her first term as president While this is most evident in the institution’s home town, when it involves

a major Canadian university such as UBC, it becomes a national news story as well As Trachtenberg et

al (2013) have noted in the American context, the problem is that much of the media coverage is specu-lative and not always well informed, mainly because the facts of the case are shrouded in confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements

Neither board members nor the derailed president wants the details of the failure or the cost of the settle-ment paraded through the press The institution needs to move on from the crisis The ex-president needs

to get on with his or her professional life In the immediate aftermath of a presidential derailment, full public disclosure appears in no one’s best interest (Trachetenberg et al., p vii).

And, yet, learning from such experiences is crucial to increasing the likelihood of success in future presidential searches That is why Trachtenberg et al placed such a high premium on case studies and why this approach was taken in the first Canadian effort to focus on failed presidencies by Cafley (2015), who identified no fewer than 16 Canadian cases in the past 10 years where presidents of AUCC3 member institutions failed to complete their first terms of office (p 2)

In both cases, the authors delved into the details of some of the derailed presidencies, notably by interviewing those deposed presidents who were able and willing to speak out, notwithstanding confi-dentiality agreements The consequent case studies provide plenty of data for reasonable conclusions about what went wrong in a given instance

Cafley’s (2015) ground-breaking work has contributed significantly to our knowledge of recent failed presidencies in Canada, although her analysis reflects only the perspectives of deposed university presidents, not their boards or board chairs Notwithstanding this limitation, her analysis suggests that university boards are often at least as culpable as the presidents they displace in the responsibility for the failed “marriage”

Without divulging the details or breaking any confidentiality agreements, Cafley was able to interview six recently derailed Canadian university presidents to get their perspectives on why they had left their jobs early during the first terms at the respective institutions As is the Canadian norm, all six were hired

as external candidates with leadership experience in another Canadian university

Notwithstanding the variation in details, there were strong commonalities across the six institutional cases (Cafley, 2015, pp 100-101) Most notably, all six derailed presidents…

1 Experienced communications challenges with some members of the board

2 Experienced a significant level of distrust with at least one member of the executive team

3 Felt that board members were misinformed or unaware of their role and responsibilities

4 Found that vital information was not disclosed or was possibly hidden during the recruitment process

5 Found their predecessor to be not particularly helpful with the transition process and five out of the six felt they received little transitional support from the board

While these perspectives may not constitute proof that the boards in each case abrogated their re-sponsibilities for a successful presidential appointment (because the board chairs and others were not interviewed), they strongly corroborate the findings of Trachtenberg et al (2013) in the US and Paul (2015) in Canada that they, with such high stakes in the success of those whom they have appointed, are usually at least as responsible as the appointee for the ultimate failure of a given presidency

This analysis is upheld by the apparent circumstances of recent derailments at Concordia University (two), Saskatchewan and UBC A brief analysis of each underlines significant concerns about the way the boards handled the respective circumstances

Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec

To experience two “spectacularly unsuccessful” presidential recruitments in a row, as noted by the exter-nal review committee for its governance (Shapiro, Coté & Jones, 2011, p 23), badly hurt the profile and reputation of Montreal’s Concordia University What made this case even more disturbing was that both presidents, Claude Lajeunesse and Judith Woodsworth, had previously successfully served as president

of another Canadian university (Ryerson and Laurentian, respectively), so that a key arguments as to why presidents fail (inadequate preparation for the complexities of the job) presumably did not apply These were experienced university leaders for whom the challenges at Concordia would closely mirror their previous presidencies and yet they left early in their first terms, “apparently as a result of irreconcilable differences between each of them and the Board” (Shapiro et al., 2011, p 3)

Considerable insight into the background conditions affecting these presidencies can be gained from the Report of the External Governance Review Committee which was commissioned by Concordia after the second (Woodsworth) resignation late in December of 2010 Chaired by former McGill Principal, Bernard Shapiro, the review team included former Laval University Dean of Law and Secretary-General, André Côté, and OISE’s Canada Research Chair on Post-Secondary Education Policy and Measurement, Glen Jones

The panel identified a number of shortcomings in governance at Concordia that reinforces the notion that the institution, and notably its board of governors, played a significant and perhaps even the domi-nant role in the failure of the respective presidents Without divulging any specific issues, the review team’s concern about the prevailing culture and many of its manifestations make one wonder how any president could survive, let alone thrive, in such an environment

Indeed, one does not have to know the specific challenges faced by Lajeunesse and, then, Woodsworth,

in their presidencies because many of them can be readily deduced from such recommendations from the Review Committee (Shapiro et al., 2011, pp 11-28) as the following:

• The need for a much smaller board

• That limits on terms of board members be ensconced in the bylaws and enforced

• That there be a smaller Executive Committee including the President

• That all committees report regularly to the Board

• That the practice of extending board meetings for in camera meetings without the President be

discontinued

• That the policy of having the President as the sole “face” of the University be upheld

• That the Senate be strengthened and chaired by the President to ensure a truly bicameral governance structure

• That Concordia immediately develop an academic mission and academic plan

• That the practice of having presidential candidates subjected to public presentations be discontinued

• That the President be the only decision-maker for senior administrative participation at Board meetings

• That the President be solely responsible for the appointment of all senior administrators

It is easy to surmise from these recommendations that both Lajeunesse and Woodsworth were hired into an institution that was almost designed to frustrate their ability to carry out their presidential respon-sibilities, that limited their power and authority in ways that seriously compromised their ability to carry out their responsibilities and that perpetuated a weak Senate and often dysfunctional Board Some Board

members were staying on too long as the supposed limits on terms of office were ignored Some Board members appear to have been influenced unduly by members of the senior team other than the president without the latter’s knowledge Consequently, the Review Committee focused on strengthening the power and authority of the President and underlined the Board’s key role in ensuring and supporting this However, the strongest message of all came from the Review Committee’s observations about the prevailing culture at Concordia which it described as adversarial and “a culture of contempt”

Everyone seemed quite willing, in some cases even anxious, to think the worst of someone in some cases, everyone else It seemed almost as if by projecting experienced difficulties on some other person or on some other group, one was relieved of any responsibility to question one’s own motives and behaviour.

We are convinced that all of those participating in Concordia’s governance bear a heavy responsibility

to find a way to work together in order to gradually achieve a climate characterized by mutual respect and understanding (Shapiro et al., 2011, p 10).

This personalized and negative culture, above all other influences, must be the primary reason that two very different individuals, both previously successful, faced similar derailments at Concordia Af-ter the demise of Lajeunesse and Woodsworth, the university and especially its Board had to examine thoroughly its governance policies and practices and work hard to improve them before subjecting yet another president to what the others had experienced To Concordia’s credit, and with the consistent leadership of previous president, Fred Lowy, the University appears to have done that and the present incumbent in the President’s post, Alan Shephard, is in his fourth year at the helm

However, as the Review Committee pointed out, cultural change is not easy and it is not achieved quickly

Changes in climate take time and the modification of an institutional culture is notoriously difficult to achieve Moreover, such changes need to occur within the minds of those committed to and/or working and studying at Concordia It involves a painstaking and gradual “learning by doing differently” process rooted in a renewed mutual presumption of good faith between the actors (Shapiro et al., 2011, p 10)

It remains to be seen if President Shephard can exorcise the “culture of contempt” and develop Con-cordia’s governance processes so that decisions are debated and made in a climate of personal respect

in the best long term interests of the university

Although obviously restricted by a non-disclosure agreement, in writing about her experiences as president of Laurentian and Concordia universities respectively, Judith Woodsworth (2013) emphasizes the importance of board relations for a president and discusses the clash of cultures between boards and academia Especially external board members used to more top-down corporate decision-making and direct accountability to shareholders may be frustrated by the relative ambiguity of accountability

in an environment of multi-stakeholders “who have an interest in maintaining quality of education and upholding a range of seemingly vague academic and ethical values (p 132).” She concludes:

In this context, it is critical to allow management – that is, the president and his or her executive team – to actually run the university, while steadfastly asking probing questions and providing responsible oversight and valuable guidance (Woodsworth, 2013, p 132).

In the case of Concordia, it seems that she was not always given this authority and support One of her conclusions is to strongly advocate board education to assist volunteers from the community and newcomers to governance on campus better understand both the responsibilities of university boards and the difference between management and governance

Woodsworth (2013) also raises the issue of the underrepresentation of women at the helm of univer-sities and speculates about the particular skills and values that women bring to the position that may be underrated (p 129) To the extent that women may be more team-oriented, consultative and consensus building, they would appear to be ideally suited to what Woodsworth describes as an essential component

of the presidential role – communicating across cultures

Like the translator, the president is a go-between, communicating between cultures and across bor-ders, conveying the sense of the academic enterprise to external stakeholders and board members, and interpreting the business-related concerns and preoccupations of a responsible board to the internal community (p 133).

On the supposition that women are at least as capable of playing this role as men, it is fair to ask why

a disproportionate number of female presidents have not succeeded in recent years in Canada (although,

at the same time, some of the country’s most successful presidents have been women) This question is interesting to contemplate, ironically in connection with the UBC case study discussed below, that of a male president who left office early in his first term

The University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

In May of 2014, the University of Saskatchewan dismissed its president, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, after she had been on the job for less than two years Unlike the other cases examined in this chapter, her dismissal was directly related to a specific decision: to fire the Executive Director of the University’s School of Public Health, Robert Buckingham This was ostensibly because he disagreed with the administration’s plans for the school and the expectation that he would support these plans whether he agreed with them

or not The specific context was a controversial academic plan, TransformUS, brought in by the senior administration to cut and reallocate monies in response to major financial shortfalls The difficulty was that not only was Buckingham fired from his position as Executive Director but also as a tenured faculty member

This seemed to confound Buckingham’s responsibilities as a member of the administration with his freedom of speech as a tenured faculty member While it may have been appropriate to ask him to step down as Executive Director, the decision to also fire him as a faculty member appeared to violate his academic freedom to be critical of the administration’s plans and it would probably not have stood up against the University’s collective agreement and Canadian law and practice around the provisions of tenure

The impact on the university was dramatic The provost resigned, Buckingham was reinstated as a professor and Busch-Vishniac was removed as President She has now sued the university and its board for unfair dismissal, and included Saskatchewan’s Minister of Advanced Education and the Premier for inappropriate involvement in the affair.As her predecessor in the role, Peter MacKinnon (2014), has stated it,

The administration overreacted in dismissing him [Buckingham] from both his administrative and academic posts The ensuing controversy over both academic freedom and freedom of speech was understandable and predictable in extent and severity, and it embarrassed the university at home and abroad The uni-versity backtracked on Buckingham’s dismissal from his academic post and restored his professorship

in public health The president paid for the imbroglio with her job (p 152).

Subsequent to his resignation and Busch-Vishniac’s demise, former Provost Brett Fairbairn publicized

a written account of the event that had originally been intended only for the University’s leadership (Levy, 2014) He took the decision to dismiss Buckingham from both his deanship and faculty position on the advice of the Human Resources and university counsel He discussed it with President Busch-Vishniac

on the telephone because she was out of the country and she told him to proceed The Board does not seem to have been consulted at the time of the decision even though it would obviously be a very public and controversial action

The University and its reputation suffered significantly from this series of events The aftermath of

a single decision has been the loss of its top two administrative leaders, the president and the provost, and a rescinding of most of the elements of TransformUS As with all such cases, the University of Saskatchewan was left with a lot of hand-wringing and rethinking its governance and decision-making mechanisms and practices It had to conduct another presidential search for an institution that had lost some of its confidence with a residual culture of division and bitterness Perhaps not surprisingly, after

a year-long search, it looked inside for its new president – Dr Peter Stoicheff, the Dean of its College of Arts and Science His knowledge of the academic culture of the institution and its key players may be significant assets in his efforts to rebuild trust and confidence across the institution

The University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, British Columbia

UBC is one of Canada’s most renowned universities Exactly 100 years old in 2015, the university is routinely ranked in the top three in Canada and top 30-40 in the world After a series of successful presi-dencies, UBC hired computer scientist Arvind Gupta to great fanfare in the summer of 2014 In contrast

to all of the other case studies cited in this paper, Gupta was an “internal” candidate at UBC, coming

to the presidency from his leadership role in MITACS, a highly successful and innovative research and development organization that bridged the gap between universities and industry As someone with a good track record in raising funds for the operation and who was equally comfortable in the halls of academia and business, Gupta seemed an ideal choice for UBC and its research ambitions

However, while a professor at UBC, Gupta did not have any significant experience in academic ad-ministration as a dean or vice-president, and he quickly came into conflict with some of those in such positions at UBC He made some significant changes, including the apparent dismissal of a popular provost that may not have endeared him to some deans and faculty Nevertheless, his sudden resigna-tion, announced late on an August Friday afternoon after barely a year on the job, took the institution and the country by storm

The ensuing responses made the matter worse The day of the announcement, Jennifer Berdahl, a prominent UBC researcher in power, gender and diversity, published a blog in which she speculated that President Gupta may have been deposed because of his “soft” management style, that he had “lost the masculinity contest among the leadership at UBC, as most women and minorities do at institutions dominated by white men” (Berdahl, 2015a)

The chair of the board, ironically the donor for the post held by Dr Berdahl (The Montalbano Professor

of Leadership Studies: Women and Diversity), telephoned her to express his dismay with her blog post

In a follow-up post a week later (Berdahl, 2015b), she described the phone call and related representa-tions from the leadership of her faculty as attempts to limit her academic freedom UBC subsequently commissioned retired B.C Supreme Court justice Lynn Smith to conduct an independent inquiry into whether or not Professor Berdahl’s academic freedom had been upheld The Justice concluded that the university as a whole had failed to uphold the professor’s academic freedom She further wrote that, while the board chair’s action in calling Dr Berdahl was inappropriate, it did not infringe the collective agreement or other relevant policies (Smith, 2015) Subsequent to this judgment, which he interpreted

as vindication, the board chair nevertheless resigned

This incident and its aftermath are further examples of how a failed presidency can bring significant collateral damage In response to a failed presidency, it is increasingly apparent that boards need not only

be to be very clear about strategic directions and the kind of leadership that is most appropriate to their particular institution, but also to look inward at their own operations to ensure that policies, practices and communications are all in sync with the aspirations they hold for excellence and integrity

Closely related issues are the openness and transparency with which the board operates Applying Badaracco and Ellsworth’s (1989) “value-driven leadership” and Duke’s (2002) description of the uni-versity as a learning organization, Paul (1990) defines “open management” as a prerequisite to success

in university leadership, where process is often as important as product and where the search for truth defines effective governance

A true university must not only tolerate but also celebrate dissent, always in the search for truth In this context, a president may often lead from behind, nurturing rather than directing, challenging rather than telling, and encouraging rather than criticizing (Paul, 2015, p 236)

The whole case epitomizes the downside of confidentiality agreements Neither the board nor Gupta would say anything about why he had “resigned” even though the admittance that he had received a compensation package indicated that he did not leave on his own accord The lack of information about why he was removed from the position after such a short time period led to all sorts of speculation around the university and in the media without leading to any proven cause Why had the board lost confidence

so quickly in the star they had lauded only a year earlier? Was there evidence of any impropriety on Gupta’s part?

Right at the deadline for the final submission of this paper and almost six months after the resignation, there was a significant development in the case Through freedom of information requests, the media had obtained e-mails and attachments of correspondence between the president and board chair While the initial information was severely redacted, an error by UBC officials resulted in clean copies of the various texts being attached, effectively violating the confidentiality imposed by the non-disclosure agreements The resulting information reinforced the above speculation that the chair had lost confidence

in the president within a few months of the latter’s engagement

The resulting information did not flatter either side While the board chair had expressed the desire

to help Professor Gupta improve his performance, he worked with a very small group (including one non-board member) to put pressure on the new president to change his management style, suggesting that he was responsible for the “low morale” in the institution It was evident that the chair had been