Amid questions of leadership and outcry over a lack of transparency, the UNC Board of Governors unanimously elected Margaret Spellings as the president of the 17-campus University of North Carolina System Friday. 

The decision comes at the end of a secretive search for candidates that began in January following former UNC President Tom Ross’ unexplained removal from office after serving for five years.

Spellings, who is currently President of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the former United States Secretary of Education for the Bush administration, will take office March 1. 

John Fennebresque, chairman of the UNC Board of Governors, was overcome with emotion following Spellings’ statements accepting the position. 

“I’m so excited — so relieved — that we have hired the special person that Margaret Spellings is,” Fennebresque said. 

The search 

Fennebresque has come under much criticism for his handling of the search process and also for his role in Ross leaving. Last week, Fennebresque called an emergency closed meeting between the board members and Spellings, tipping the board’s hand as to whom would be the next president. 

The meeting drew a new wave of calls for Fennebresque to step down from his fellow board members as it signified a potential break between the spirit of a bill passed by the Republican-led general assembly just last month which requires that at least three candidates be reviewed by the full board rather than just the 11-person search committee. 

Accounts of the board’s adherence to the bill have diverged, with some members expressing frustration at only having met with one candidate while UNC System Vice President for Communications Joni Worthington reports that the BOG has “ensured that its process follows the intent of Senate Bill 670.” 

Isaacson, Miller, the academic search firm contracted by the board to search for candidates, selected 14 semifinalists out of more than 230 prospects to be interviewed by the university search committee which under the new law would narrow that number down to three to be reviewed by the full board. Spellings was the first to be interviewed by the search committee and the only finalist to be interviewed by the full board. 

Board member David Powers acknowledged the appearance of favoritism saying in an email obtained by The News & Observer that even if “the candidate” is worthy of the position, he did not believe that the perception of them being “the chairman’s choice” would be good for the presidency.

Despite these tensions, Spellings still feels confident that she will be able to come in and work with her new colleagues effectively. 

“I’ve had multiple opportunities to meet with the search committee and the full board, and unless they are academy award-winning actors and actresses, I feel very strongly supported by them and it was a key part of my desire to work here,” Spellings said. 

The selection

Spellings was born in Michigan and has spent the majority of her professional career in Texas serving members of both parties in the Texas legislature under then Gov. George W. Bush. 

When Bush was elected president in 2000, he brought Spellings along with him, naming her White House Domestic Policy advisor where she led the administration’s domestic policy agenda from 2001 to 2005. Education was among the many areas that she oversaw in this role. 

From 2005 to 2009, Spellings served as U.S. Secretary of Education, which is the highest position on all aspects of education in the nation.

Two of the accomplishments she is most closely associated with are No Child Left Behind in 2001 and the creation of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, later known as the Spellings Commission, in 2005. Both of these programs have drawn criticism for being off the mark in addressing issues in education, though Spellings has acknowledged the shortcomings and called them “conversation starters.”

Spellings will have to transition geographically to North Carolina, which she said she is just now getting used to having met with Gov. Pat McCrory recently, but also in terms of the ethos of the position.  

Much of the questions Spellings faced following her nomination had to do with her ability to mesh with others in an academic setting being from a deep background in public policy which can often be politically charged. 

“[Politics] is what makes it fun … that’s what allows us to make course corrections where needed,” Spellings said. “I think it’s a fantastic way to make policy is a political setting because that’s the setting that we operate in.”

Taking a defiant stance towards the uncertainty resembling that of presidential hopeful Donald Trump, Spellings said that she would “look at the data” to learn how to make the best decisions in her new position.

‘Deficit of trust’

Following comments to the media by president elect Spellings, Stephen Leonard, chair of the UNC System faculty assembly, held an impromptu press conference to express the assembly’s grievances against the board. 

“Today the UNC Board of Governors appointed a new president for the university,” Leonard said. “The board has yet to explain why it removed the current president, it has yet to account for its intentions regarding the future direction of the university and it has yet to explain why students, staff and faculty were precluded from the review process leading up to this appointment. We think most citizens would agree with us that this is probably not a good thing.” 

Leonard said that though he and members of the faculty assembly showed up to every meeting of the search committee, they were never invited to discuss any matters with any of the candidates.

“Part of what’s troubling about this process is that the board has done all this in clear contravention of its own professed principles including honoring the important traditional role of the faculty in the governance of the academy,” Leonard said. “No student has ever attended any of our campuses to be taught by the Board of Governors or the president of the university.”

This is not just a local issue. Constituents of many other university ruling bodies around the nation including Washington State, Miami and Nebraska have, within the last year, found themselves cut off from any interaction with candidates under consideration for the system president. 

In July, Isaacson, Miller, the entity in charge of the each of these presidential searches, was found to have violated the Open Meetings Act in the University of Nebraska’s presidential search last year, according to the Daily Nebraskan. 

The open model of conducting presidential searches has been successful in states like Ohio. Leonard said that the predominant method of presidential searches nationally is for open searches but there has been a recent movement to close them. 

Spoma Jovanovic, a communication professor at UNC-Greensboro, said that the nature of Spellings’ hire will mean a tough start to the relationship. 

“We have a president who is in a deficit position in terms of trust,” Jovanovic said. “We hope that she will be able to turn around a situation where instead of a Board of Governors not responding to faculty concerns that we will start being active players.”