Prospective presidents: How they might appeal to the BOV

It has long been an intriguing question. Did the leaders of the ouster of UVA President Teresa Sullivan have someone in mind when they made their daring weekend move?

“It’s really too early to judge this decision. This decision should be judged after a new president is installed."– Rector Helen Dragas to Washington Post, circa June 10.

She repeated that assertion, nearly verbatim, to UVA Deans that same day, although she subsequently clarified that a full search process would follow the ouster she engineered. But whoever gets chosen by any search committee would need to win the support of the Board of Visitors. Who could do that? We decided to see who might find favor with the current Board.

Rating scale: 1-5 Rotundas

Edward Miller

Edward MillerHe already told his hometown newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, that he was tapped to become the interim president. Unlike the eventually named Carl Zeithaml, however (who didn't even get a 24-hour honeymoon), Miller, an anesthesiologist, ducked out of the role before his name surfaced publicly. That shows quick decision-making, and what some might call strategic dynamism. As the longtime CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Miller won acclaim for taking Hopkins to new heights. With Time magazine asking whether med center woes caused "UVA June," Miller might be the man to steer the ship to success. Since his June 30 Hopkins retirement, Miller has thrown himself into a new task, joining the UVA Board as a full voting member– though he hasn't donated so much as a penny to a governor. Kind of a mixed message.
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Tom Farrell

Tom FarrellWhere do we start with this one? Let's start recently when the governor tapped Farrell to chair the commission to reform Virginia's system of higher education. Now, let's go back a few years to when he was a student at Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria. There, Farrell became close friends with a lad named Robert McDonnell. They both chose different colleges and different law schools (Farrell stuck with UVA for both). But guess what? They're still close friends. Only now, one of them runs the state government, and the other runs the biggest state-regulated monopoly. And the board running the monopoly– and we're not making this up– sees fit to pay Farrell $14 million a year. That's right, while nearly every business in the world (even giants like Apple and Coca-Cola) have to clamor for market share– Dominion (though it has some free-market divisions) enjoys exclusive rights to millions of electric customers in Virginia and North Carolina. And Dominion's board members don't just pay the CEO handsomely; they also pay themselves handsomely: approximately $200,000 a year each for what amounted, last year, to just 11 meetings. We pressed Dominion for attendance records, but the company flack would say only that all board members attended at least 75 percent of the meetings. One member of the Dominion board is named Mark Kington. Another is named Helen Dragas. One more thing. Word leaked out two years ago that Tom Farrell wanted the UVA presidency. He didn't get it that time. How about next time?
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Carly Fiorina

Carly FiorinaIs the governor trying to help this former Hewlett-Packard CEO establish some education credentials as a stepping stone to UVA? We didn't even realize that the former Silicon Valley superstar was a Virginia resident until the July 9 press release from Bob McDonnell's office naming her– as a resident of Lorton– to the James Madison University board. The timing, less than a month after the failed coup at UVA, raised eyebrows. Just two years ago, Fiorina was running as a California-based Republican against longtime Senator Barbara Boxer. While California voters overwhelmingly chose Boxer, Fiorina has earned her share of accolades. She got an endorsement from Sarah Palin, and Portfolio magazine named her one of America's worst CEOs. While earning a reported $86 million in salary, benefits, and options at the helm of H-P, she offshored thousands of jobs, but the company still lost half its value during her time at the helm. When the H-P board finally fired her, she got another $21 million as a golden parachute. Governor McDonnell says she's now the chairman of Carly Fiorina Enterprises. Money, business experience, and a Palin endorsement– she's executive timber at UVA.
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Penelope Kyle

Penelope KyleWith a business degree from William & Mary and a law degree earned right here in Charlottesville, Kyle is no stranger to higher education in Virginia. Moreover, like Tom Farrell, she has experience in running a monopoly: the Virginia Lottery. She was appointed Lottery director by George Allen and then reappointed by Jim Gilmore and Mark Warner. But it's her work at Radford University that suggests just how compatible she is with the BOV– or at least with current UVA boardie and former Radford boardie Randal Kirk. As Kirk was working his way up to the rectorship of that southwestern Virginia institution, Kyle assumed the presidency and then pushed a remarkable array of reforms. She controversially decided to accept $750,000 from BB&T for a course whose only reading requirement was Atlas Shrugged, the 1957 book that's become the capitalist manifesto. According to the Roanoke Times, she even suggested Kirk as a possible guest speaker. The following year, Kyle gave the heads of 29 fields just two weeks to justify their existence or face closure. Such seemingly essential departments as anthropology, chemistry, foreign languages, physics, and even mathematics had just 14 days to prove they contributed to Radford's future and core curriculum. Willing to make unpleasant business decisions, Kyle is someone the UVA Board could rally around.
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Ed Ayers

By all accounts, he was the main man for whom alumni and faculty were clamoring during the presidential search two years ago. And who can blame them? Like the eventual winner of that contest, Teresa Sullivan, Ayers is a noted scholar with administrative experience. In his case, the admin chops consist of serving as the Dean of the College at UVA and, more recently, the presidency of the University of Richmond. Other Sullivan-Ayers similarities include an outgoing style and plenty of smiles. To that, Ayers holds the additional attribute of having a national profile via his radio work as a host of the now-weekly NPR radio program BackStory with the American History Guys. And, in what might particularly endear him to Rector Dragas, he's a co-creator of an acclaimed online project. However, there are things about Ayers that could doom his chances with this board. For starters, his online work, called The Valley of the Shadow, is built on his nationally-regarded Civil War scholarship, and that war is old and controversial. Moreover, he doesn't seem to have any experience with monopolies– or any profit-seeking business. And he's popular with students, alumni, and fellow faculty members. Doesn't he know who runs this university?
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