In seeking new leadership, it’s time for Temple to return to what works
Recent efforts by the university to appoint administrators who lack a background in scholarship and research have had disastrous results.
With the announcement in March of the resignation of president Jason Wingard and Monday’s vote of no-confidence in two other top administrators, Temple University is once again at a crossroads.
As faculty members who have been present during Temple’s rise and fall since the 2000s, we have had the pleasure of witnessing and participating in its surge to prominence as a world-class research institution, even as it maintained its irreplaceable role as the premier source of affordable education of the highest quality for Philadelphia and the surrounding communities.
But we also have felt alarmed about an about-face from Temple’s mission and watched its recent struggles, feeling powerless to alter its course. We feel compelled to offer a broader perspective on Temple University that may not have been previously visible to the public, even to those who have followed the recent reports in The Inquirer on the graduate student strike, safety issues, the no-confidence vote, and the resignation of the president.
Historically, most Temple University leaders were deeply committed to undergraduate and graduate education and the simultaneous pursuit of scholarship through the creation of new knowledge through research, writing, or generation of works of art or creativity.
As a result, they recognized the role of the university as an institution for education, opportunity, and discovery. In the most recent example, renowned scientist and scholar Hai-Lung Dai served as provost from 2012 to 2016. Dai is an academician — one actively engaged in these practices — and as such, Dai naturally recognized and uplifted the academic mission, and led the university in its surge to international prominence.
Dai remains on the faculty, though no longer in a role as an administrator. Under his leadership, Temple’s reputation soared as we hired prestigious scholars and numerous gifted and pioneering young faculty who brought awards and instructional prowess to Temple’s growing scholarly portfolio.
Temple became ranked as a Carnegie R1 research university for highest research activity and became — and remains — among the top 100 best-funded research universities (for example, roughly $300 million in 2021) based on National Science Foundation reporting, even as Temple climbed the list of the most highly cited institutions in the world.
All this success accompanied a continued commitment to affordable, top-notch education in Philadelphia; we had the lowest rate of tuition increases in the state of Pennsylvania for many years. Time to graduation decreased with innovative programs such as “Fly in Four,” even as undergraduate and graduate students accessed ever more cutting-edge independent research, creativity, and scholarship opportunities.
In 2012, the board of trustees began a grand experiment to shift administrative focus away from scholarship and toward revenue generation. This was done devoid of faculty or student input. It appointed Neil Theobald as president, whose expertise was finance and business, not scholarship or research.
Theobald installed a new budget model that rewards unit revenue — not scholarship. Although a budget model alone can’t make or break a university, new budget practices embraced a cold, corporate approach, failing to reward excellent instruction and scholarship, and were not mission-driven. Instead, leadership focused on bolstering individual academic/college unit revenue in a model of internal competition that served no one well, pitting us against each other.
Even the one redeeming and mollifying promise of the new administration — budget transparency — has never been achieved. In recent years, the administration continued an unequitable distribution of resources, exemplified by $4.5 million allocated by the board to renovate the building that houses the executive offices, even as college budgets were cut at a rate higher than enrollment decreases could explain. Among the many damaging effects of this, we are seeing mass layoffs of valuable colleagues who lack the protections of tenure.
Since 2016, when Theobald was forced to resign by the board, the post of provost has been filled by law school deans. The appointment of Wingard as president exacerbated the trend to remove traditional academicians from leadership, a trend which now continues with the appointment of a former provost and law school dean (Joanne Epps) as acting president in Wingard’s place. Law professors now hold the top two leadership positions.
Temple University is a complex institution with large undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools in addition to a large and complex research portfolio. Only a small fraction of its budget is financed by the commonwealth. Navigating Temple’s distinctive features requires leadership with a clear understanding and commitment to its core mission of affordable quality education, research, and scholarship combined with responsible and just management of financial resources.
Diversity of thought and experience has a role to play at any university, and our professional school faculty make essential contributions, but the board’s grand experiment in using only leaders who envision the university as a traditional “corporate” entity with “cost centers” to achieve budgetary stability has failed. Our income from tuition and indirect cost recovery from grants has declined significantly, and the university community has seen more opacity where transparency was promised.
Unsurprisingly, without traditional academicians in leadership, any sense of a broad university mission — previously so strongly felt by many of us — has disappeared. But we remain positive about the strength of our institution.
On the ground, little has changed: Temple remains highly ranked. Committed world-class faculty instruct the scholars of the future with the same level of dedication, and Temple’s scholarly portfolio continues to grow. But we are fighting against a tide that must change — and soon — to maintain this trajectory.
We feel that Temple will find the constructive path forward once again because we already know where this path is: The time has come to end this grand experiment and appoint fiscally responsible academic leaders who will affirm academic values of excellence in education and scholarship across the many fields of Temple University. Temple is ready to tap its immense potential once again; all it needs is the right leadership.
Michael J. Zdilla, a professor of chemistry, Laura A. Siminoff, a Carnell Professor of Public Health, and Maurice W. Wright, a Carnell Professor of Music Studies, teach at Temple University. They submitted this op-ed with the support and contributions of more than two dozen of their faculty colleagues.