Burtchaell: "Obvious Impropriety"
Fri, Nov17, 2006 - Category: Foundation
Fr. James Tunstead Burtchaell is as big as they come
in Catholic higher education. He served as an
administrator and trustee at Notre Dame, and authored
a highly regarded book on the sources of decay within
Catholic universities. Fr. Burchaell was invited as a
consultant, spending several days reviewing
documentation and interviewing administrators,
faculty, and Tom Monaghan. Burchaell's findings and
suggestions echo those of Ave Maria School of Law
co-founder Charles Rice to Monaghan. Also included in
this post is "The Martin Report", a
2003 study from AMC Board member Ralph Martin that
identified "widespread frustration" with
administration. With all these sage warnings,
Monaghan should not expect sympathy if the Ave Maria
'brand' collapses.
"... it would be both wise and necessary for Mr. Monaghan to resign from the board"
"The board of trustees has functioned under several handicaps. The most immediate one is a pervasive conflict of interest. "
"... it would be both wise and necessary for Mr. Monaghan to resign from the board"
"The board of trustees has functioned under several handicaps. The most immediate one is a pervasive conflict of interest. "
Fr. James T. Burtchaell's report to senior
staff of Ave Maria College, October 2000.
(excerpts)
Fr. Burtchaell served as priest, theologian, administrator, and trustee at Notre Dame. He is widely recognized as an expert in Catholic higher education, and as author of the book The Dying of the Light, an analysis of the identities of church-affiliated universities and colleges, including the decay of Catholic higher education.
"The board of trustees has functioned under several handicaps. The most immediate one is a pervasive conflict of interest. The majority of its members are already so beholden to Mr. Monaghan through employment, benefaction, family, or business that they could not be reasonably expected or trusted to offer disinterested and independent advice and judgement on matters touching the survival of the College. Further, the board lacks members with a seasoned, professional experience in higher education. Still further, it needs the presence of other independent and experienced executives and philanthropists who are prepared to join Mr. Monaghan as peers, not clients, in the initial burden of endowing and funding the College."
"The chairman, Mr. Monaghan, to whose faith, generosity, imagination and initiative the College owes its founding and its funding, has followed a well-practiced tradition of close, entrepreneurial management which obliterates the requisite separation between independent governance and professional administration. Besides the obvious impropriety in the governance of an institution of higher learning, this corporation sole will deny Ave Maria any access to further funding sources. Great though Mr. Monaghan's initiative and largesse have been, it will seriously stunt the College if his patronage ipso factco denies Ave Maria any other through the course of his lifetime."
"Since the day that John D. Rockefeller met William Rainey Harper, no American institution of higher education (save perhaps the military academies) has faced the prospect of such a windfall [from Monaghan]. It is conflicted, however, by the unacceptable prospect of the Chairman of the Board of any institution of higher education presiding over the selection, configuration, and detailed development of any college's campus. If, however, a properly reconstituted board be able to make an independent decision to accept such a magnanimous offer from Mr. Monaghan, they must appreciate that he will not find it possible to confer the gift without using his creative taste and imagination to design and develop it. Since this kind of hands-on responsibility, and the need for back-and-forth decision-making between donor and institution such that the latter is truly able to make the final decisions touching its own welfare, it would be both wise and necessary for Mr. Monaghan to resign from the board, at least for the duration of the transfer and development of the campus and its principal buildings."
"The only handicap that Mr. Healy (AMU President) brings to his office is the fact that attorneys are trained and expected to serve the undertakings of their clients, and the founder understandably regards himself as the president's client. The next president must be a case-hardened academic, for Mr. Monaghan's benefit first of all"
After a 2003 Board-charged investigation of College employee complaints, two Board members determined that frustration was widespread and that then President Healy or Provost Fessio should be replaced. Yet, Healy and Fessio both later claimed (below) that institutional discontent was not widespread and, as of August 2006, both remain in their positions.
(added clarification in parentheses)
**********
August, 2003
To: Ave Maria University Board
From: Paul Henkels and Ralph Martin (Ave Maria Board members)
(unedited)
"This is the interim report we were asked to provide to the Board by August 8. We have let Ave Maria College and University staff and faculty know of our commission to look into the complaints that have been surfacing regarding how leadership functions in the current situation and have received a good deal of input. We have received written input, telephone input and interview input from a wide cross section of faculty and administrative staff."
"Our preliminary conclusion is that there is a serious clash of culture and expectations between the entrepreneurial mentality that is characteristic of our top leadership team, and the more restrained, process oriented, leadership characteristic of successful academic institutions. This has resulted in very wide-spread frustration which has produced a serious morale problem."
"We believe that the testimony to this is so clear, wide-spread and convincing that it would be a mistake to wait any longer in responding. We recommend that we immediately launch a search for a President or Provost of AMU who has significant academic leadership experience. It would be important that this position be filled by someone who could provide stability of administration, planning and communication that is currently not adequately provided for because of the extraordinary demands of launching such a complex project."
"We plan to get together at the end to get together at the end of August (2003) to more thoroughly assess the input we have received and prepare a written report on the issues that have been identified and make recommendations that we may have in addition to the one we are making in this report. We hope to have this report to you sometime in September so that there could be adequate opportunity to reflect on it in preparation for our November (2003) meeting."
"We continue to be excited and hopeful about what this project could mean to the Church but believe that this leadership issue must be promptly addressed for the endeavor to be successful and a widespread morale problem be resolved."
**********
January, 2005; New Oxford Review
Fr. Joseph Fessio - AMU Provost
[added clarification]
Messaros [an AMC faculty member], the "dissident" faculty in Michigan, and a few Michigan staff members have for nearly a year carried on a smear campaign that has been plainly calculated to damage AMU and in fact has damaged AMU.
**********
October, 2004; New Oxford Review
Nick Healy - AMU President
What plainly galls Messaros is that non-academics are in charge of academic institutions. The myth that only professors are qualified to head up colleges or universities dies hard. The reality of universities today is such that their academic dimension, while central to their identity and mission, is only one of an array of responsibilities that fall to the administrators. Hence it may be that entrepreneurial skills and administrative experience are more essential in a university’s leadership than formal academic training. Thus, non-academics often are selected to run major institutions of higher learning. The Ave Maria University project, with the associated Town of Ave Maria, is so monumental and complex that few would be up to the challenge of leading it.
He might also have come to recognize that much, if not all, of the distress and disappointment over the relocation to Florida could have been avoided had it not been undermined and disparaged by a small, self-defeating faction in Michigan, who are now, sadly, reaping what they have sown.
Fr. Burtchaell served as priest, theologian, administrator, and trustee at Notre Dame. He is widely recognized as an expert in Catholic higher education, and as author of the book The Dying of the Light, an analysis of the identities of church-affiliated universities and colleges, including the decay of Catholic higher education.
"The board of trustees has functioned under several handicaps. The most immediate one is a pervasive conflict of interest. The majority of its members are already so beholden to Mr. Monaghan through employment, benefaction, family, or business that they could not be reasonably expected or trusted to offer disinterested and independent advice and judgement on matters touching the survival of the College. Further, the board lacks members with a seasoned, professional experience in higher education. Still further, it needs the presence of other independent and experienced executives and philanthropists who are prepared to join Mr. Monaghan as peers, not clients, in the initial burden of endowing and funding the College."
"The chairman, Mr. Monaghan, to whose faith, generosity, imagination and initiative the College owes its founding and its funding, has followed a well-practiced tradition of close, entrepreneurial management which obliterates the requisite separation between independent governance and professional administration. Besides the obvious impropriety in the governance of an institution of higher learning, this corporation sole will deny Ave Maria any access to further funding sources. Great though Mr. Monaghan's initiative and largesse have been, it will seriously stunt the College if his patronage ipso factco denies Ave Maria any other through the course of his lifetime."
"Since the day that John D. Rockefeller met William Rainey Harper, no American institution of higher education (save perhaps the military academies) has faced the prospect of such a windfall [from Monaghan]. It is conflicted, however, by the unacceptable prospect of the Chairman of the Board of any institution of higher education presiding over the selection, configuration, and detailed development of any college's campus. If, however, a properly reconstituted board be able to make an independent decision to accept such a magnanimous offer from Mr. Monaghan, they must appreciate that he will not find it possible to confer the gift without using his creative taste and imagination to design and develop it. Since this kind of hands-on responsibility, and the need for back-and-forth decision-making between donor and institution such that the latter is truly able to make the final decisions touching its own welfare, it would be both wise and necessary for Mr. Monaghan to resign from the board, at least for the duration of the transfer and development of the campus and its principal buildings."
"The only handicap that Mr. Healy (AMU President) brings to his office is the fact that attorneys are trained and expected to serve the undertakings of their clients, and the founder understandably regards himself as the president's client. The next president must be a case-hardened academic, for Mr. Monaghan's benefit first of all"
After a 2003 Board-charged investigation of College employee complaints, two Board members determined that frustration was widespread and that then President Healy or Provost Fessio should be replaced. Yet, Healy and Fessio both later claimed (below) that institutional discontent was not widespread and, as of August 2006, both remain in their positions.
(added clarification in parentheses)
**********
August, 2003
To: Ave Maria University Board
From: Paul Henkels and Ralph Martin (Ave Maria Board members)
(unedited)
"This is the interim report we were asked to provide to the Board by August 8. We have let Ave Maria College and University staff and faculty know of our commission to look into the complaints that have been surfacing regarding how leadership functions in the current situation and have received a good deal of input. We have received written input, telephone input and interview input from a wide cross section of faculty and administrative staff."
"Our preliminary conclusion is that there is a serious clash of culture and expectations between the entrepreneurial mentality that is characteristic of our top leadership team, and the more restrained, process oriented, leadership characteristic of successful academic institutions. This has resulted in very wide-spread frustration which has produced a serious morale problem."
"We believe that the testimony to this is so clear, wide-spread and convincing that it would be a mistake to wait any longer in responding. We recommend that we immediately launch a search for a President or Provost of AMU who has significant academic leadership experience. It would be important that this position be filled by someone who could provide stability of administration, planning and communication that is currently not adequately provided for because of the extraordinary demands of launching such a complex project."
"We plan to get together at the end to get together at the end of August (2003) to more thoroughly assess the input we have received and prepare a written report on the issues that have been identified and make recommendations that we may have in addition to the one we are making in this report. We hope to have this report to you sometime in September so that there could be adequate opportunity to reflect on it in preparation for our November (2003) meeting."
"We continue to be excited and hopeful about what this project could mean to the Church but believe that this leadership issue must be promptly addressed for the endeavor to be successful and a widespread morale problem be resolved."
**********
January, 2005; New Oxford Review
Fr. Joseph Fessio - AMU Provost
[added clarification]
Messaros [an AMC faculty member], the "dissident" faculty in Michigan, and a few Michigan staff members have for nearly a year carried on a smear campaign that has been plainly calculated to damage AMU and in fact has damaged AMU.
**********
October, 2004; New Oxford Review
Nick Healy - AMU President
What plainly galls Messaros is that non-academics are in charge of academic institutions. The myth that only professors are qualified to head up colleges or universities dies hard. The reality of universities today is such that their academic dimension, while central to their identity and mission, is only one of an array of responsibilities that fall to the administrators. Hence it may be that entrepreneurial skills and administrative experience are more essential in a university’s leadership than formal academic training. Thus, non-academics often are selected to run major institutions of higher learning. The Ave Maria University project, with the associated Town of Ave Maria, is so monumental and complex that few would be up to the challenge of leading it.
He might also have come to recognize that much, if not all, of the distress and disappointment over the relocation to Florida could have been avoided had it not been undermined and disparaged by a small, self-defeating faction in Michigan, who are now, sadly, reaping what they have sown.