The Mott Community College Board of Trustees sparked outrage and concern among faculty, staff and community members last week when they installed the college’s interim leader as the permanent president, bypassing a formal presidential search process. The board passed the motion—its second attempt to do so—in a contentious 4-to-3 vote.
The move reflects long-simmering tensions at the community college in Flint, Mich. The board has become known for hours-long meetings and infighting among warring factions, and its path to choosing a new president has taken multiple twists and turns.
When the previous president, Beverly Walker-Griffea, announced her departure in May after a decade at the helm, the board opted not to conduct a national search for her successor; some argued a search firm would be too costly. Instead, the trustees created an ad hoc board committee to conduct an in-state search. And they set a bachelor’s degree, rather than a master’s or doctorate, as the position’s minimum higher education requirement, which alarmed some faculty members and administrators.
The board also prompted backlash by choosing Shaunda Richardson-Snell, a candidate with no higher ed experience, as interim president. Richardson-Snell, who started her role in July, has held executive positions at major companies, including General Motors and Delphi. She was selected over three other candidates who previously worked in academic settings, including two with Ph.D.s and one education doctoral candidate who held the interim job before Richardson-Snell and served as the college’s vice president of student academic success.
The announcement of Richardson-Snell’s generous interim benefits package—an annual salary of $237,500 and up to $15,000 in moving expenses—made critics wary that the board planned to keep her in the position for good rather than embark on a more comprehensive search process. The board also voted in August to remove language from her contract that prevented her from hiring or firing executive cabinet members, MLive–The Flint Journal reported.
Then, in October, to some onlookers’ relief, the board agreed to hire an outside firm to conduct the presidential search after the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation offered to pay for it. The foundation agreed to provide $250,000 to allay board members’ concerns about cost.
But that relief was short-lived. At a Nov. 18 meeting, trustee Janet Couch proposed permanently instating Richardson-Snell as president for three years, despite the board’s earlier decision to hire a search firm. The vote narrowly failed, but the issue was raised again at a continuation of the meeting on Nov. 25.
Trustee Jeffrey Swanson, who previously voted no, asked to revisit the defeated motion.
“I think the president is doing a wonderful job,” Swanson said at the Nov. 25 meeting. “As you can see, she’s already saved us money in the 90 days she’s been here. I think she fits right in with the administration we have. That’s why I would like to reconsider and revote.”
This time, Swanson changed his vote, and the motion passed.
Through a college spokesperson, Richardson-Snell declined a request from Inside Higher Ed for comment.
The board’s fracturing over the issue has continued. Two separate board meetings were called for Monday, one by the chairman, which included “retention of counsel” related to Richardson-Snell’s contract offer on the agenda, and another requested by trustees who opposed her hiring to “reconsider the board’s decision.” (This paragraph was added Dec. 2 to reflect the latest developments.)
A Fractious Debate
Before they voted, trustees engaged in a fierce debate about whether it was wise to forgo a formal search process.
Trustee John Daly argued that Richardson-Snell’s performance on the job was irrelevant.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with the interim president—what it has to do with is process,” Daly said. “We need to go through … the process that we approved to ensure that we find the best person, the best candidate, for the job.”
He called the alternative “dangerous.”
Neglecting a search process “will be a sword that cuts both ways,” Daly said. “And it will come to haunt this college, not now and not immediately but 10 years from now. You are on dangerous, slippery ground in doing this.”
Richardson-Snell could earn the position by participating in the open search process, said Michael Freeman, another trustee who voted against the move. Freeman reminded Swanson of the concerns that originally prompted him to vote no—namely, that if Richardson-Snell were selected without a search, she’d get the job “under a cloud” with “suspicion this was done inappropriately,” Freeman said.
Wendy Wolcott, a trustee who voted in favor of Richardson-Snell’s permanent appointment, said at the meeting that she had spoken with 27 faculty members who comprised a “silent majority” in support of the interim president but who hadn’t spoken at board meetings out of fear of the faculty union.
“That is the reason I ended up changing my decision” about a search, Wolcott said.
Kim Owens, president of the college’s faculty union, the Mott Community College Education Association, said she finds it “very, very difficult to believe” most professors support what the board did.
“No one has said that they support how this all played out,” Owens said. “Honestly, I think a lot of faculty are scared, for sure, but not for the reasons Wolcott is saying … There’s been no input from any stakeholders.” Owens said when the previous president was hired, she underwent a “rigorous process” that involved meeting with students, staff and faculty members.
Professors have repeatedly asked the board to “do a national search and include us,” she said.
The Bigger Picture
For months, the board’s public comment period has been dominated by impassioned critiques and defenses of Richardson-Snell and how she got her interim position.
Some community members accused faculty of disliking her because of her Christian faith and views. (Richardson-Snell previously said the Lord’s Prayer at a meeting.)
Richardson-Snell’s business background makes her “more than qualified,” pastor Christopher Thoma said during the public comment period at an October board meeting. “It’s just that relative to her as a person, her individual piety or her personal belief system, she does not necessarily fall within the ritual or ceremonial boundaries of this place’s predominating ideological liturgies. She has a different way. It’s not a bad way.”
A former Mott administrator, who chose to remain anonymous, described “division just spilling out into the community and into the college in a way that’s unproductive.” The former administrator is concerned by Richardson-Snell’s lack of experience and public prayer but over all said the interim president isn’t the problem—it’s the board.
Richardson-Snell “does listen. She’s very focused. I think she’s a very determined person, and I think she really wants to do well,” the former administrator said. Making sure the college functions and has the right leadership is “the board’s responsibility, not hers.”
Some critics of the board speculate there’s a conservative political agenda afoot that they can’t quite pinpoint. The city of Flint overwhelmingly votes Democratic, but Genesee County over all has more of a political mix, and Lapeer County, also in the college’s service area, voted for Donald Trump by a large margin.
Patrick Hayes, an adjunct communications professor at the college, said the fractiousness on the Mott board is not dissimilar from “ultraconservative Republican attempts to get control of school boards” nationwide. Over the summer, Hayes started an ongoing recall effort against three board members, Couch, Wolcott and Daly, though he believes Daly took the appropriate stance against forgoing a national presidential search. Hayes also writes a blog about the ongoing drama on the board.
The composition of the board is about to shift. Freeman is retiring as a trustee, and the board’s chair, Andy Everman, lost his seat. Swanson was re-elected along with two new board members, Kenyetta Dotson and Candice Miller. Dotson, an alum of the college, was the only candidate endorsed by the faculty union to win and has generated excitement among Hayes and others.
But Hayes isn’t hopeful the board dynamic will change.
Over all, “I don’t think that the election actually really changed the ideological makeup of the board at all,” he said.
Owens said she’s “angry” and “deeply disappointed” by the way the trustees selected the president, though she’s not “totally surprised.”
The faculty union has submitted multiple complaints about the board to the college’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, but the accreditor has yet to involve itself. Owens worries Mott is on the brink of becoming like North Idaho College, where board dysfunction and political infighting put the college’s accreditation at risk last year.
“We’ve seen this coming for a while, and now we’ve got to figure out next steps so that we don’t go the way of other colleges across the nation where this is happening,” she said.