This story was updated on March 8 at 12:45.

Former Portland State University administrator Erin Flynn expected polite chit-chat the first time she met Rahmat Shoureshi, the college’s new president.

But she found the 66-year-old engineer more pit bull than soft-spoken grandfather.

“No one knows who you are or what you do,” Flynn recalled Shoureshi telling her, “They say you’re all talk.” Flynn included an account of the meeting in a letter of complaint to a PSU trustee.

A few months later, Shoureshi fired Flynn as associate vice president, and after eight years her time at Portland State was over. She joined an exodus from the city’s largest college of senior managers, many of them women, who have opted to leave, changed jobs or been fired since Shoureshi’s arrival in August 2017.

In her letter to the trustee, Flynn said Shoureshi was “bullying and degrading PSU employees,” a charge that many other PSU staffers also have leveled.

Flynn declined to comment. She signed a non-disclosure agreement with PSU as part of a legal settlement in which the university agreed to pay her $47,000.

The story of the Shoureshi era at Portland State goes far beyond another #MeToo account of male privilege and gender inequity. Dozens of interviews with current and former employees and internal Portland State documents reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive allege Shoureshi has used PSU cash and staff time for his own gain, violated state ethics rules and launched new initiatives and international partnerships that exposed the college to significant financial risk.

All the while, university records show, Shoureshi has made lavish demands of the financially strapped institution while its students faced steep tuition hikes.

The internal furor over Shoureshi’s conduct could be dismissed as typical campus politics -- except that members of the Portland State Board of Trustees clearly share the critics’ disquiet.

“We have serious concerns about your ability to be successful at PSU,” wrote Gale Castillo, board chair, in a bombshell Nov. 14 letter to Shoureshi.

Castillo’s memo went on to accuse Shoureshi of chaotic leadership and of mistreating his staff, putting his own financial interest above the university’s, and misleading the board. The board gave him a stark choice: Resign or agree to a “performance plan” and executive coaching intended to make him a more effective administrator. He chose to stay.

Portland State already faced a difficult future due to waning state funding and declining enrollment. The board of trustees opted to hire Rahmat Shoureshi to deal with those issues. Elliot Njus/Staff Elliot Njus/StaffElliot Njus/Staff

Senior PSU staffers have told trustees they’re concerned that Shoureshi’s misleading statements have damaged his reputation and hurt his credibility.

The trustees’ review of his actions is still underway. In February, the board hired an accounting firm to review the financial ramifications of Shoureshi’s dealings and a second firm to investigate the workplace issues, Castillo told The Oregonian/OregonLive late last week.

“The board is aware of some of these concerns,” she said in a Thursday interview. “We’ve had our performance review. Now, we’re taking it another step.”

Shoureshi canceled an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive after first agreeing to one. In a written statement, he denied that he had been unfair to anyone, women included. He declined to get into specifics on the board’s ultimatum to him.

“As part of my annual review, the board gave me feedback on my first year as president with direction and goals going forward,” he wrote. “I believe that focusing on the specifics we had during that confidential review is between the board and myself.”

These are troubled times at Oregon’s public universities, due largely to waning state support, ever-increasing employee pension costs and declining enrollment. Before Shoureshi was hired, Portland State faced additional problems -- its home turf has been invaded by the University of Oregon, Oregon State and a host of other smaller colleges and its longtime president Wim Wiewel had announced his retirement.

The trustees launched a national search that attracted candidates from some of the nation’s best-known colleges. But they kept coming back to Shoureshi, provost and interim president at the obscure New York Institute of Technology. He got the job, beating out two other finalists from Arizona State and the University of Southern California.

“He was candid, transparent, thoughtful and soft-spoken,” said Rick Miller, then chair of the board of trustees. “There was a general feeling that business as usual wasn’t acceptable. We needed a change agent.”

The soft-spoken Shoureshi, who mixes easily with students, was often harsh and demanding with employees. (Photo by Andrew Theen/Staff)LC- Andrew Theen/Staff

One of the first ethical questions involved Shoureshi’s housing.

The new president in August 2017 demanded that the board increase his monthly housing stipend from $6,000 to $9,200 a month. Shoureshi argued that he needed the larger stipend because he didn’t realize when he negotiated his compensation that his housing allowance would be taxed like income.

The stipend money – Shoureshi also got a $1,000-a-month transportation allowance -- boosted his annual compensation to more than $720,000.

PSU owned a presidential mansion in the exclusive Dunthorpe neighborhood that Shoureshi could have lived in for free. But the university had decided before Shoureshi’s arrival to sell the mansion and had placed it on the market. The new president didn’t want to live there anyway considering it not up to his standards, according to university records and interviews with former staffers.

But after deciding he didn’t like the Pearl District condo he and his wife had chosen as their residence, Shoureshi began to reconsider the mansion, which was still on the market. Records indicate he actively involved himself in the decision-making about the mansion, rejecting one purchase offer as insufficient. At one point, Shoureshi commissioned an architect to come up with a plan to demolish the existing mansion and build two new homes on the site.

University lawyers decided his involvement in the ongoing housing debate posed a clear conflict of interest. As a public employee, he was barred by ethical rules from negotiating a deal that would affect his compensation package the lawyers advised him

The lawyers directed Shoureshi to disclose the conflict to the board of trustees and recuse himself from any further debate or decisions on the mansion. He disregarded the advice on both fronts, according to internal PSU documents reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Meanwhile, the nascent Shoureshi era was rocking the university’s headquarters.

Shoureshi was bristling with energy and ambition to put PSU on the map. He created new “centers for excellence” to research homelessness and digital cities, which won him raves from some faculty members. He forged new relationships with area businesses to create a program that will give meaningful jobs to PSU students.

“He’s done some good things for the university,” said Cliff Allen, dean of the business school. “I think the center on homelessness is something the city needs. I think it’s incredibly important to have that resource.”

But Shoureshi was also perceived as mercurial, disorganized and prone to micro-managing, people who worked with him said.

“His experience as a provost at a small, private engineering-focused university and dean of a college of engineering does not transfer well to a large, urban, public university facing budget problems,” said Jennifer Dill, an urban planning professor. “Part of that difficulty is the difference in scale. He would spend time on tasks that normally staff and other administrators would take care of, often make last-minute requests not realizing the scale of his request, or request things that exceeded the budget.”

Dill got a close-up view of Shoureshi in action when she became a member of the PSU executive council, a high level advisory panel, in October 2017. Shoureshi had appointed her interim vice president of research. She opted not to apply for the full-time research job and returned to teaching 10 months later. Five other members of the council have also departed, leaving a single incumbent administrator, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Reynolds, still on the body.

Rahmat Shoureshi's future is in the hands of the PSU board of trustees, which is plainly dissatisfied. (Photo by Andrew Theen/Staff)LC- Andrew Theen/Staff

Shoureshi has also gone through four provosts in his year and a half at PSU. Sona Andrews returned to teaching. Her replacement, Margaret Everett, left and took another job at a small college in Massachusetts. Karen Marrongelle, then the dean of the PSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, agreed to step in as interim provost. She also left and took a job at the National Science Foundation.

“Looking back, Sona Andrews’ early departure was the first red flag,” said Miller, the former board chair. “I think that was an instance where the board was too relaxed. We should have anticipated more transition trauma.”

Finally, in August 2018, Shoureshi hired Susan Jeffords, then chief academic officer of a branch of the University of Washington. She remains in the post as PSU’s top academic leader.

Meanwhile, life became particularly difficult for Shoureshi’s office staff, documents show.

According to Internal records, one of his executive assistants spent days negotiating the purchase of advanced electronic components from Chinese factories. Rachel Martinez spoke no Chinese, nor did she know much about electronics. Nevertheless, after days of working the phone, she managed to find the correct components, records show.

Shoureshi needed the parts for research into “smart shoes” he’d begun at his previous job. In fact, the research and the graduate student overseeing it were still based at the New York Institute of Technology.

Shoureshi authorized the purchase with Portland State money, according to the records.

University lawyers notified him that he couldn’t use PSU money or staff time to advance the research. Shoureshi subsequently agreed to repay the $2,523 spent on the shoe project. But he didn’t actually write a check until Thursday after The Oregonian/OregonLive asked him about his failure to pay.

In her November letter, Castillo blasted Shoureshi for his “mistreatment of staff” and a management style that was both overly authoritarian and chaotic. “We have received reports of bullying and demeaning treatment,” Castillo wrote. “Last-minute demands, changes and cancellations ... have led to distrust and discontent.”

Few were exposed to those last-minute demands as often as Amanda Wendelbo, who arranged Shoureshi’s travel. He has taken 21 trips since taking office, including excursions to Vietnam, the Middle East, China and Germany.

Shoureshi frequently demanded upgrades from coach to business class and last-minute changes to his itinerary, both of which cost the university or its foundation money, records show.

He launched a two-week tour of the Middle East last February, telling his staff that the trip would help him court potential donors and visit with alumni. Before he left, Shoureshi informed his assistant that he needed more meetings with local officials, according to an account she wrote at the time obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive under a public records request. Wendelbo found herself cold-calling various Saudi Arabian sheiks whose names Shoureshi gave her, fighting the 11-hour time difference and the language issues, to ask them if they cared to meet with her boss, according to her account. Some of the Saudis were glad to do so, but others professed not to know Shoureshi.

University expense records indicate the Middle East trip cost PSU more than $9,500.

Plenty of other issues have cropped up.

There was the weekend getaway last July that Shoureshi and Portland real estate magnate Jordan Schnitzer took to the Bohemian Grove, an exclusive resort north of San Francisco. The resort is known as place where a select group of wealthy men go to blow off steam.

University officials notified Shoureshi that as a public official, he could accept only token gifts and would have to repay Schnitzer for the flight on Schnitzer’s private jet. Months went by before Shoureshi complied. But he finally did reimburse Schnitzer.

“He repaid me $1,450 in December,” Schnitzer said. “He sent it with a Christmas card.”

Documents show Shoureshi also negotiated a 10-year deal with Nanjing University for PSU and Nanjing faculty to co-teach an engineering program predominantly in China. A budget analysis conducted last fall indicated the partnership created “significant financial exposure” for Portland State. The college will have to invest $11 million over five years to comply with terms of the deal, the analysis found, though the program’s ultimate profit, or loss, will depend on the number of students who enroll, Chinese labor costs and tax implications.

Then, last August, Shoureshi asked the board for a 4 percent raise. It was only fair, he told trustees, as that was what most faculty members received. The trustees agreed and granted the 4 percent pay hike.

There was just one problem. Faculty members did not get a 4 percent raises but rather pay increases of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent. As far as some of the trustees are concerned, Shoureshi’s misstatement was no mistake or slip of the tongue, documents indicate. Some trustees are convinced they were misled.

They now say they will reduce the 4 percent raise to 2.3 percent, according to Castillo’s letter.

In Castillo’s letter to Shoureshi in November, she ordered him to consult with his executive team before making any major decision, particularly Chief of Staff Lois Davis; Starke, the top university lawyer; and Reynolds, the vice president of finance.

Castillo also warned him against taking any retaliatory action against anyone who helped bring the issues to the trustees’ attention.

A little over a month later, on Dec. 19, Shoureshi fired Davis, records show.

Shoureshi is not without supporters. “I still believe to this day that we made the right decision,” Miller said. “But is the current board behind Rahmat? I think they’re trying to figure that out.”

On Thursday, Castillo told The Oregonian/OregonLive the trustees will wait for the audit results before taking any action.

This story was updated on March 8 to reflect that Portland State University President Rahmat Shoureshi has had experience working at three public universities and he has taken 21 trips, not 23, since he became PSU president. An article in Sunday editions misstated those facts and incorrectly spelled trustee Gale Castillo’s first name.