Chicago State University bitterly parted ways with Paul Vallas on Monday after revelations that he planned to leave the temporary job to potentially make a run at mayor in 2019.
Trustees voted unanimously at their Monday afternoon board meeting to immediately terminate Vallas’ contract as chief administrative officer of the struggling university on the Far South Side. Vallas, a former chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, was appointed to the university’s board of trustees last January before taking the job in the upper administration in a highly politicized and controversial process.
Vallas’ contract stipulated that he would hold the administrative role until July of this year. But late last week, saying Chicago State was “on the right track,” he confirmed that he planned to leave the job months early to consider challenging Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the February 2019 election.
In addition to canceling Vallas’ contract Monday, trustees eliminated the job title altogether and said they would not hire anyone to replace him.
In casting out Vallas, the board Vice President Nicholas Gowen said he felt that Vallas had used the 150-year-old university solely to further his political ambitions. Gowen said Monday that Vallas never informed him about plans to leave the job early or to seek political office. Had he known that, Gowen said, his decision to vote in favor of hiring Vallas, 64, for a position that was essentially created for him would have been different.
“I find it unfortunate that he would attempt to use Chicago State University as a platform to run for the mayor of the city of Chicago,” Gowen said. “It is not the role of Mr. Vallas to try to use Chicago State University to try to bolster his bona fides to the black community.”
“I, for one, felt that we have got less than effective use out of that office and the person who occupied it,” said the board’s chairman, Marshall Hatch. “I think we’re doing a good thing to eliminate that office and move forward.”
Vallas, who did not attend the meeting, said in a statement that he could not comment on his dealings with the university but said he thought recent attacks on the purpose of his job at Chicago State were politically motivated. Vallas also said he resigned his position to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.
Vallas’ brief tenure at Chicago State was steeped in politics from the start. Gov. Bruce Rauner appointed him to one of four open seats on the board of trustees in January 2017, alongside fellow newcomers Gowen, Tiffany Harper and Kam Buckner.
The governor expected the new trustees to help stabilize the university, which at the time was being reviewed by its accrediting agency because of persistent financial troubles and was recording steep drops in enrollment. It also gave Rauner appointees the potential to create a majority voting bloc on the board.
The appointment came as a surprise since Rauner and Vallas are longtime political rivals. Still, the governor recommended that trustees install Vallas as the board chairman, though trustees had held their elections a month earlier and chosen Hatch as their leader. Vallas was elected as board secretary.
Weeks later, the governor’s office made another maneuver to elevate Vallas.
Unconvinced the board was doing enough to enact the sweeping changes the governor expected, Rauner’s office pushed to make Vallas a temporary crisis manager, an upper administration position that would have given him more direct authority to spearhead reforms until a new permanent president could be hired.
“I’ve been on that university campus and there’s an absence of any real, serious effort to connect with community colleges and to recruit students from among the high schools,”Vallas said at the time. “There needs to be some actions taken now to financially stabilize the university, and develop and quickly implement recruitment and retention strategies needed to get the enrollment numbers up, and to begin to develop a long-term strategic plan for the university.”
The governor’s plan did not make clear what the proposed power dynamic would mean for interim President Cecil B. Lucy, and that sparked divisions. Several black elected officials and community members bristled at the idea to install Vallas, who is white, as the de facto head of a majority-black institution. Members of the faculty union, fed up with the leadership at the time, backed a plan that would put Vallas in charge.
The plan also was ethically problematic because it would have meant moving a sitting board member into the school’s administration.
Trustees went a different route, instead announcing in March that they would hire a new interim president and create a position for a chief administrative officer. Vallas was allowed to apply for both, but only after he withdrew from the board. In April trustees hired Rachel Lindsey, a former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, as the new interim president, replacing Lucy. Vallas was hired for the chief administrative officer job.
Lucy returned to his previous position of interim vice president of administration and finance but since has left the university.
Now, having held that temporary job for roughly half the term of his contract, Vallas exits with the same political overtones that enveloped his arrival one year ago.
“I’m sorry to see him go,” said Robert Bionaz, head of the Chicago State faculty union. “I think that he was one of the few people on the campus who had any ideas. We’re desperately in need of fresh thinking. I definitely think he was an asset. He worked really hard for this school. He’s really made an effort.”
Though Vallas’ job always was meant to be temporary, his early and unexpected departure marks another shift for Chicago State, which has struggled to maintain steady leadership for the past few years. Three presidents were hired in less than 18 months. Multiple administrators have been terminated in the past year. Two seats on the board of trustees have been vacant for months.
Gowen said the presidential search committee, made up of trustees, faculty and students, is within weeks of receiving a list of finalists to interview and expects to present a final choice to the board in May.
The university continues to be beset with dwindling enrollment and deteriorating facilities. Chicago State’s student population has dropped for 15 consecutive semesters, data show. Fall enrollment was 3,171 — less than half of what it was in 2010.
Vallas said one of his top priorities would be to boost enrollment. He expressed confidence that changes to recruitment strategies, a better social media strategy and improved internal technology could help the university draw more students. He also said a new university website was in the works.
No new website has come to pass. Enrollment still dropped in the fall by more than 400 students, even though the incoming freshman class increased from 86 to 149.
Bionaz, a longtime critic of university leadership, said Vallas was not the person to be held responsible for those problems, however, and felt that Vallas made a decent effort to make improvements.
“We have a group of people who are not working in the best interest of the university,” Bionaz said. “A lot of the stuff that he proposed ran into opposition. It’s all tied up to the political climate here, and there’s a lot of people who don’t want to see a white administrator come in and save the university — which is ridiculous. It’s still not a good atmosphere and we’re still doing business the same way we’ve always done.”
Political science professor Phillip Beverly, head of the faculty senate, said he thought Vallas lacked some understanding about how universities function, but he did not think the rest of the university leadership gave him enough latitude to implement some of his proposals.
“He was set up to fail,” Beverly said.
drhodes@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @rhodes_dawn
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