Sometimes the reports generated by these external efforts are ignored entirely. 12 If President Wohlpart meaningfully engaged in shared governance the result would be more efficient, nimble, adaptable, and effective solutions and better stewardship of University resources. IV. President Wohlpart has abandoned his responsibility to lead the University community. His tenure has been marked by a lack of transparency, inefficient communication, and stagnation. President Wohlpart’s communication is ineffective and lacks transparency. The lack of consistency in his statements erodes confidence in his leadership. Often rationales for decisions are not provided. When provided, they are often unclear. For example, the President indicated that his unilateral changes to the University’s mission and vision statement in early 2025, which lacked robust and representative faculty consultation, were not necessitated by changes in federal politics, but later claimed that was in fact the reason. President Wohlpart has also isolated himself from faculty voices and perspectives. He no longer attends Faculty Senate meetings to share reports and answer faculty questions. 13 Faculty leaders have consistently encouraged him to hold office hours or open forums to listen to faculty concerns and he refuses to. He moved the Faculty Senate out of his division, reducing his interactions with shared governance partners. President Wohlpart’s changes to the budget structure have reduced faculty voice and participation, in violation of the Faculty Code and the 2025 Shared Governance document. These decisions have been made unilaterally and without clear rationales. The lack of transparency and communication negatively affects the ability of faculty to accomplish the University Mission and Values. It creates confusion amongst the faculty, silences important faculty perspectives in decision making, and makes the University less adaptive to external challenges and less able to fulfill the University vision of being a model learning community of access and opportunity.
12 For example, President Wohlpart engaged an external consultant to lead a redesign of the University criteria for faculty evaluation. This process lasted several months and asked for significant amounts of faculty engagement and participation. The eventual report recommended the creation of a committee that involved faculty to revise the University guidelines and recommended several specific changes to make faculty evaluations more equitable. The administration instead disbanded the committee and assigned the responsibility of revising guidelines to a single administrator. The resulting administratively created guidelines incorporate virtually none of the recommendations of either the consultant or the committee and have been met with broad opposition from the faculty. 13 A cursory review of the Faculty Senate meeting minutes of our peer institutions showed that other University Presidents attended meetings and their participation was the norm.
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