On Monday, Ira Weiss, the dean of the College of Business Administration announced his resignation. Last Friday, Northeastern President Richard Freeland announced that Vice President for University Relations Sandra T. King, would leave the university. A week before that, university Treasurer Joseph Murphy announced he would leave Northeastern to pursue an early retirement. The list doesn’t end there.
Recently, the Athletics Department lost three administrators: Jodi Meredian, Todd Patulski and Kim Terrel. About a year ago, Ian McCaw, then Athletics Director, departed for UMass-Amherst. The following spring, Bill Chaves, assistant director for external affairs for athletics, also left to pursue a career with McCaw at UMass.
The Division of Student Affairs was hit hard this summer when Vice President for Student Affairs Karen Rigg opted for early retirement, Dean of Student Services Keith Motley took a job at UMass-Boston and Dean of Student Life Ron Martel’s position was abolished.
And this is just a list of the high-profile administrators who have opted to leave Northeastern for one reason or another. Though The News is not insisting that all of the vacancies are related, there is a pattern — qualified professionals are leaving NU.
Take Vice President King for example, who spent the last two and half years at NU, known most widely for the marketing campaign that made the university more visible. Now she said she’s ready to move on. McCaw and Motley were similar cases.
For many of the aforementioned administrators, Northeastern was not a home, it was merely a stepping stone.
For a large university, turnover is expected, but at this rate and with so many upper-level administrators?
Maybe at any other large university, this is acceptable, but this should not be the case for a university that harps on retaining students, and that measures its success by retention rates and the ability to attract the most talented students each year.
At some point, Northeastern is going to have to step up the services provided to those who keep the university afloat — its staff. The vision of attracting the best and brightest should be reciprocated to the other end of the spectrum and the vision should be extended on to the faculty and staff.
Students should demand great customer service from the university. If Freeland wants to continue to attract this higher caliber of students, he should also begin to think of how to attract a higher caliber of administrators, who are ready to give their all to the university — not just a year here or there.
