An unexpected chancellor hire at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs is raising concerns about the ongoing search for a new chancellor at the Boulder campus.

At UCCS, the search committee presented CU System President Todd Saliman with five finalists for chancellor. Saliman selected two finalists to visit campus and complete interviews, but instead selected Jennifer Sobanet, who did not make the list as a finalist.

“This is very concerning because the committee did not find Jennifer Sobanet to be one of the top candidates,” said Jeffrey Montez de Oca, sociology professor and UCCS search committee member. “The committee determined that she was not as qualified as other candidates.”

Sobanet was named as interim UCCS chancellor after Venkat Reddy stepped down to return to the UCCS faculty in July.

Saliman said he chose Sobanet to be the permanent chancellor because he feels that she’s the right person at this point in time for UCCS.

“I think that she is going to be an outstanding chancellor,” Saliman said. “She’s done a really good job over the last six months as interim, she’s made meaningful progress on the things I’ve asked her to work on, and I think she’s proven she can do the job well.”

Because she wasn’t selected as a finalist, Sobanet was planning to leave in March and had accepted another job offer just hours before Saliman offered her the position on Dec. 8.

“The call that I received from President Saliman offering me the permanent position as chancellor was unexpected to say the least,” Sobanet said. “That said, I am thrilled to continue to grow the momentum we have built over the past six months.”

University of Colorado Board of Regents Policy Three allows the system president to make the final decision on a new chancellor.

CU Boulder is in the midst of its own search for a new chancellor after Phil DiStefano announced in September that he’s stepping down to return to the School of Education. It will be the first time since 2009 since CU Boulder has had new leadership.

“If I was a faculty member at Boulder, I would be very, very concerned right now,” Montez de Oca said. “Something similar happened down in CSU Pueblo, something similar happened at CSU Fort Collins from what I understand. I think that UCCS marks a pattern, and that should be concerning to people.”

Understanding the decision

The hunt for a UCCS chancellor began in September.

Montez de Oca said the search committee followed a code of ethics, completed bias training, went through all 93 candidates individually, ranked them through an online polling system and spent multiple days interviewing candidates to narrow the list down to five finalists.

“It was a lot of time, effort and money, collectively, and so it was extremely frustrating that a person who was not on the list of recommended finalists, who never came to campus (for interviews), and who was never fully vetted was suddenly named chancellor,” Montez de Oca said.

At UCCS, officials hired Greenwood Asher & Associates to conduct the chancellor search. The search firm received $145,433 for its work, which included both the executive search fee and direct expenses, according to a public records request.

The two finalists who visited the Colorado Springs campus met with community members, Saliman said.

“The two finalists are outstanding, accomplished people, and I’m incredibly grateful they applied and wish them nothing but the best,” Saliman said. “It just became clear as we went through the process they weren’t the right choice for UCCS.”

UCCS faces significant enrollment, budget and morale problems, Saliman said, adding that he chose Sobanet because she is highly skilled in those areas. Given the challenges the campus faces, he said felt like he needed to make a good decision quickly to ensure the campus wasn’t “in limbo” for another two years, which would’ve been the result of an extended search.

Saliman said Sobanet also has developed “impressively deep” relationships between community and the campus, and several leaders in Colorado Springs support her, including Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs Chamber & Economic Development Corp., Yemi Mobolade, mayor, and several CU Regents voiced their support for Sobanet’s hiring.

However, Montez de Oca said he and others on campus were angry that there wasn’t the kind of shared governance to choose a chancellor that they would expect. In higher education, shared governance is a shared decision-making process across all ranks that’s rooted in partnership, equity, accountability and ownership.

“Knowing that President Saliman has had a close personal relationship with Jennifer Sobanet, it was very disappointing to see that he did not give the campus a chance to actually vet her as a candidate to be our permanent chancellor,” Montez de Oca said, adding, “There is a potential conflict of interest at work here, and I think there are fair questions on whether Jennifer Sobanet really is the best candidate.”

Minette Church, a UCCS anthropology professor and search committee member for the previous UCCS chancellor, said there’s a larger national context that goes beyond Saliman and Sobanet.

She said there’s a growing conflict of cultures at U.S. universities between academia’s shared governance and people with business backgrounds that are increasingly getting hired for university leadership positions.

Church said this conflict and disintegration of shared governance is creating feelings of existential fear and angst in faculty.

“Un-transparent or closed hires are definitely a part of the business world,” Church said. “Staff or faculty who have a business background, who have worked in large corporations, probably don’t see what the fuss is about.”

Morale is low, she said, and faculty have different levels of trust in campus systems due to feeling devalued.

“The academy is not a corporation,” Church said.

CU Boulder search

Montez de Oca said many people are confused, upset and cynical about the process and administration. He said people asked him if the decision to hire Sobanet was already predetermined, and he had to reassure them the committee was going through the entire process.

“The problem is not the process, per se, it’s the policies that allow the president of the system to essentially ignore the process and make his own choice,” Montez de Oca said. “It’s pretty clear that what he did is well within his rights, and that’s a problem. It’s a problem when our highest leaders can’t be held accountable for their actions.”

Church said she wishes there had been more dialogue with the search committee before the decision was made.

“I think (Saliman) is arguing that this was an exceptional circumstance, and that he needed to use this policy to the letter of the law,” Church said. “I don’t know that I really like the idea that the policy as written allows everybody to be blindsided in this way.”

Church attended a virtual open forum on Dec. 12 between Saliman and the UCCS community to hear the dialogue surrounding the decision.

More than 200 people joined the meeting to understand more about what happened, including many from CU Boulder, Church said.

“They (CU Boulder faculty) are very aware of what happened, and I think anything that has the appearance of a black box or closed search decision, while that happens all the time in the corporate world and is maybe appropriate there, that’s not what faculty and staff governance has always been about,” Church said.

CU Boulder Professor Shelly Miller, a member of the chancellor search committee, said she was initially very concerned about what happened at UCCS but understood how difficult the decision was for Saliman after attending the meeting.

“This kind of unprecedented decision indeed could have consequences for the CU Boulder chancellor search so I wanted to make sure I understood the best I could what happened and how we might in our search ensure confidence in our processes,” Miller said.

AGB Search is the firm hired by the University of Colorado to conduct the national search for the CU Boulder chancellor. AGB is set to receive three payments throughout the search process, according to the firm’s contract with the university. The final cost of the search won’t be finalized until a candidate accepts the job, according to information found in a public records request.

The first payment is for a base search fee, which is calculated to be one-third of the first-year salary of the person who accepts the job, according to the contract. The listed salary range for the new CU Boulder chancellor is $627,800 to $829,800, according to the job posting on AGB Search’s website. Based on the salary range, the cost of the base search fee could range from $209,266 to $276,600.

University officials also are set to reimburse AGB for expenses such as candidate travel, consultant travel, advertising and background checks, according to the contract. Finally, the university is expected to pay an additional $5,000 for indirect (unspecified) expenses. The University of Colorado consists of four campuses, including the Colorado Springs campus, the Boulder campus, the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora and the University of Colorado Denver campus.

“I’m highly confident that the CU Boulder search is going to move forward well and produce an outstanding pool of candidates that will produce our next chancellor,” Saliman said.

Saliman said DiStefano stepped down at a good time to find a new chancellor.

The campus’s national reputation in academics, research and athletics will help draw outstanding candidates to the job, he said.