Mark Weiser was facing an alleged software-piracy scandal that threatened to compromise the integrity of his department at Oklahoma State University.
The information and technology system was on the verge of collapse in 2004 when an IT employee approached Weiser, director of OSU's Center of Telecommunications and Network Security Management. The employee said he had been asked to change the copyright references on a Texas Tech University calendar application to that of OSU - a crime of piracy that could prompt a federal investigation, Weiser said.
He said the incident led to his first experience working under President David Schmidly's CEO-like management skills.
At that time, Weiser was a member of OSU's Faculty Council Executive Committee. He didn't normally deal with then-president Schmidly, who declined to comment on this story.
However, Weiser and other committee members agreed the situation warranted immediate action, and he confronted the president.
"The Faculty Council Executive Committee actually went in before any of it became public to let him know that federal crimes had been committed and he might consider doing something about them," Weiser said. "We laid out all of the different things . and after listening intensely for 30 to 40 minutes, his only response was, 'Are you claiming' - and I still remember this vividly - 'Are you claiming protection under the Whistleblower Act?'"
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The Whistleblower Act is a statute in many states that protects a person who has brought forward evidence of fraud or illegalities from being fired or harassed.
Weiser said he saw Schmidly's response as a threat.
"In fact, I responded by saying, 'I don't know. I'm not a lawyer.' And he said, 'Well, perhaps you should look into that,' and then he got up and left. That's all he said the entire meeting," Weiser said. "It was clearly a threat, and it turns out that in Oklahoma, OSU employees are not subject to the Whistleblower Act, but he wasn't aware of that."
Weiser said it was Schmidly's method of running OSU like a business that led to the departure of many employees who had been involved with the IT copyright debacle.
"I'm not sure if it happened before he got here or immediately following, but he changed the title to be 'systems CEO' from 'president,'" Weiser said. "So, not only in practice, but in name, in fact, he saw himself as a CEO of the system."
UNM faculty members have often criticized Schmidly for his business-like management of UNM. The recruitment of high-paid vice presidents has been a sore spot among the UNM community.
Schmidly has refuted the criticism and said that a shared-governance structure is imperative to the well-being of UNM. In a statement Tuesday, he said faculty members should participate in University governance to their fullest capacity.
"As the core of any University, faculty must have a central role in academic matters that include establishing curriculum within their disciplines, setting research thresholds, hiring of new faculty and helping establish direction for the University as a whole," Schmidly said.
At Texas Tech University, where Schmidly was president from 2000 to 2002, the president's role was that of a CEO's, according to a Texas Tech spokeswoman.
The practice of granting a president CEO status over the University caused a heated discussion between faculty members during their Senate meeting on Jan. 8, 2003, after Schmidly left Lubbock, Texas.
At the meeting, members referenced a dispute over whether the title of CEO was appropriate to use while advertising for a future president, according to the meeting's minutes.
Chancellor David Smith, a faculty member who had the responsibility of hiring a president, said that unlike "the issue with Schmidly," the person selected for the position would not have a CEO-like status "on the system level," according to the minutes.
Smith said Schmidly talked to the Board of Regents to see if Texas Tech's business model could be altered to mirror that of Texas A&M's, where the president had the ability to go around the chancellor, according to the minutes.
Smith said that the board would not change the system. The president may be responsible for managing budgets and making day-to-day decisions, but he would always be accountable to the chancellor, and these regulations would be applicable to the next president, Smith said.
UNM professor Douglas Fields, Faculty Senate president-elect, said Schmidly has many good ideas but that the way he goes about applying them is problematic. Using a CEO approach to institute them won't work at UNM, he said.
"You can't lead by just saying, 'This is what I've decided to do and we're going to do it,'" Fields said. "Especially if there's real questions about its viability that need to be addressed."
Fields said Schmidly should alter his management style to include the faculty. Shared governance means caring about the faculty's concerns and needs, he said.
"He's willing to spend five minutes to listen to you, but then nothing comes of that," Fields said. "He just listens and then throws away everything you said and then continues down the path. And a CEO coming into a corporation where if the people aren't with you - you can just fire them and hire new people tomorrow. That might work there, but it doesn't work at a University where the people - or your employees, the faculty - actually know a lot about what's going on, and in a lot of cases know more than you do about it."
Schmidly said in the statement Tuesday that people need to understand that "modern Universities like UNM are highly complex, multi-billion-dollar educational enterprises" that represent thousands of workers and multiple venues.
"So it is incumbent upon the leader - after thorough consultation with regents, faculty, students, parents, alumni, elected officials and other stakeholders - to establish a realistic vision for the institution and to devote resources necessary to achieving it," Schmidly said. "Toward this end, a big part of any president's job is to find the right individuals to execute his or her vision and to conduct day-to-day management of the institution."
Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of the University's announcement that Schmidly would be UNM's 20th president.
