Businessman Harreld: I'll answer doubts

J. Bruce Harreld was the first to say he faces a steep learning curve.

After being named the 21st president of the University of Iowa on Thursday, Harreld addressed the criticism he has faced since being announced as a finalist some 80 hours earlier.

“I will be the first to admit that my unusual background requires a lot of help, a lot of coaching," Harreld told reporters after the Iowa Board of Regents voted unanimously to give him the job. "And I’m going to turn to a whole lot of people that were highly critical and really tough on me the other day and ask them if they would be great mentors and teachers (to me). And I suspect and hope all of them will.”

Harreld's background is not in academia. He has been a lecturer at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University, but he never has held an administrative position at any educational institution. He was a finalist for UI's presidency along with Oberlin President Marvin Krislov, Tulane University Provost Michael Bernstein and Ohio State University Provost Joseph Steinmetz.

Instead, Harreld's career has been focused on being the turnaround guy for companies as diverse as Kraft Foods, the Boston Chicken restaurant chain and IBM.

REACTIONS:Optimism, worry from area leaders | Students want connection, action on sexual assaults

Now he says he wants to do the same for UI.

“Great institutions don’t stay where they are; they either go up or down," Harreld, 64, said Thursday. "And I think we have all the opportunity in the world to go from great to greater."

Harreld's salary was set at $590,000, with a five-year deferred compensation plan that carries an annual contribution of $200,000. Former UI President Sally Mason's salary was $525,000 when she retired this summer after eight years as UI president.

Harreld's promise to focus on engaging with faculty and other university stakeholders will be essential as he forges a relationship with some highly skeptical members of the broader UI community when he starts the job on Nov. 2. Several campus groups in the past few days have questioned his qualifications to lead a public research university.

"(He will need to be) engaging faculty, really listening to faculty and letting us educate him on what we do every day," said Christina Bohannan, president of the UI Faculty Senate and a member of the search committee that recommended Harreld as one of four finalists for UI president. "He has expressed not only a willingness but an eagerness to do that. We fully expect a lot of engagement in the next few months."

National faculty organizations, such as the American Association of University Professors, have been outspoken against the trend of hiring university administrators hired from the corporate world. Some recent examples include former Indiana Gov. Mitchell Daniels, who became president of Purdue University in 2013, and former state lawmaker and businessman John Thrasher, who became president of Florida State University in 2014.

“Universities are not corporations," said Donna Young, a professor at Albany Law School and a member of the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. "They are academic institutions with a mission to educate students for the common good. When universities are run like corporations ... that mission often gets lost."

Yet Young described Harreld's statements about reaching out to faculty as "encouraging" and urged him to follow through on them. She cautioned faculty members, as they watch his actions carefully, to allow Harreld the chance "to prove himself."

"There are steps that the faculty can take to express their disapproval of a president – the most pernicious being a no-confidence vote." Young said. "But it's way, way, way too early to talk about that."

Bruce Rastetter, Iowa Board of Regents president, denied suggestions that Harreld's hiring somehow means the regents want UI to run more like a business than a public university. The 90 minutes it took for the regents to deliberate Thursday, he said, demonstrate how difficult the decision was. And the hiring of an accomplished business leader proves that the regents think "that (simply maintaining) status quo is not acceptable" and the focus of the university needs to always point forward.

In August, Harreld asked Rastetter to inquire about Gov. Terry Branstad’s “support for the university should Harreld continue through the process, become a finalist and ultimately, be selected,” the governor's spokesman, Jimmy Centers, said in an email. “Because of the inquiry, the governor called Mr. Harreld and said that he would continue to support the University of Iowa no matter who the Regents selected.”

No other candidate called the governor during the process, Centers said.

EARLIER: Criticism abounds after search | Survey: Harreld least qualified | About J. Bruce Harreld | What he said during his Iowa visit

Other members of the UI community said they appreciate the new perspective and focus on organizational strategy that Harreld offers. And with public universities facing a host of new competitors and challenges as higher education evolves, they argue, UI can't afford to become trapped in projects and organizational structures that limit, rather than encourage, growth and adaptation.

"If we want to be able to ensure the University of Iowa is in a leadership position among our peers in 25 years, sometimes we have to think outside the box,” said Larry Weber, a member of the search committee and director of UI’s IIHR Hydroscience and Engineering.

If Harreld's presidency marks the start of a grand experiment for how to lead an administration, it is an experiment that still will need careful oversight.

It's been 75 years since the regents named a president of the University of Iowa from outside of academia. The last UI president who was not hired directly from an academic post was Virgil Hancher. For the 13 years before being tapped in 1940 to lead UI, Hancher — whose many degrees included a law degree from UI and a master's degree from Oxford University — was affiliated with a law firm in Chicago and specialized in corporate law.

"He clearly is a departure from our precedent of appointing presidents who are more strongly tied to the academy," said Brian Kaskie, an associate professor in the UI College of Public Health. "But he did say he would step down if he was not meeting expectations, and as such we should hold both him and the regents accountable to that."

Although Harreld still will have much to learn about higher education when he starts his new job on Nov. 2, he will be assisted by Interim President Jean Robillard and a team of administrators already in place at the university, said former regent and current UI graduate student Hannah Walsh.

"There is going to be quite a steep learning curve," Walsh said. "But as I learned as a regent and now as a student, academia is not the business world. There are some commonalities, and I have the greatest hope that he will pick that up very quickly."

She also cautioned, however, that Harreld keep in mind his main duty is not to the regents, but to the faculty, staff, students and other stakeholders at the university.

"It's incredibly important our new president holds his ground and is really cognizant of the responsibility of representing the University of Iowa," Walsh said.

Salary comparisons

Newly appointed University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld's salary was set at $590,000 on Thursday, with a five-year deferred compensation plan with an annual contribution of $200,000, according to information provided by the Iowa Board of Regents.

“What we did is look around the country in terms of similar-sized institutions and also looked at what Iowa State University’s president is getting paid,” said Bruce Rastetter, the regent president. “And this is a larger institution, a more complex institution. It also includes the hospital. Which is why we came to the conclusion that the pay should be higher than what we pay the president of Iowa State University."

ISU President Steven Leath's base salary was increased by 5 percent from $500,000 to $525,000 – the exact same salary that Sally Mason was making when she retired this summer after eight years as UI president. Leath’s compensation package included a longevity bonus that awards him $125,000 if he stays through the end of his five-year contract, through June 30, 2020.

Although Harreld’s starting salary is $65,000 a year more than Mason’s final salary, Mason remains a tenured faculty member in the UI Department of Biology and will continue to earn 60 percent of that amount as an annual salary. Harreld’s five-year contract does not include a tenured position.

University of Northern Iowa President William Ruud's base salary was increased by 2.5 percent from $348,400 to $357,110. In addition, the board approved a longevity bonus that awards Ruud $75,000 if he stays in the position for the next two years, through June 30, 2017.

Among Big Ten schools, Harreld’s base salary for the 31,000-student UI would rank between the fiscal year 2014 salaries for Eric Kaler of the 51,000-student University of Minnesota ($610,000) and Robert Easter of the 43,000 student University of Illinois ($552,375), according to information provided in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

J. Bruce Harreld

Age: 64.

64. Education: Bachelor's degree in engineering from Purdue University in 1972, and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975.

Bachelor's degree in engineering from Purdue University in 1972, and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975. Recent administrative experience: While Harreld does not have experience as a university administrator, he's held leadership roles at Fortune 500 and other companies, including senior vice president and division president for Kraft General Foods and senior vice president of IBM.

While Harreld does not have experience as a university administrator, he's held leadership roles at Fortune 500 and other companies, including senior vice president and division president for Kraft General Foods and senior vice president of IBM. Academic experience: Harreld taught as an adjunct professor for Northwestern University's MBA program from 1993-94 and for six years at Harvard Business School, focusing on entrepreneurial and strategy from 2008-14. He was the faculty chair of the Building New Businesses in Established Organizations" program, and has published multiple articles and book chapters.

Harreld taught as an adjunct professor for Northwestern University's MBA program from 1993-94 and for six years at Harvard Business School, focusing on entrepreneurial and strategy from 2008-14. He was the faculty chair of the Building New Businesses in Established Organizations" program, and has published multiple articles and book chapters. Family: Wife, Mary Gillilan Harreld, four children and six grandchildren.

THE OTHER CANDIDATES: