Mangum’s vague 2016-2017 goals reflect her lack of vision

Last week, the FAMU Board of Trustees (BOT) took President Elmira Mangum to task for the vague goals she presented for May 2016 to April 2017. Those will be the final 11 months of her three-year contract.

The problem reflects the lack of vision that Mangum has as a president.

Back when Mangum was hired, some FAMUans thought her background at Cornell University would make her a champion for building new doctoral programs at FAMU.

But the goals for 2016-2017 that Mangum gave to the BOT Special Committee on Presidential Evaluation failed to include any specific plans for the expansion of doctoral programs that FAMU needs to climb up to “R1: Doctoral Universities – Highest research activity” in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

FAMU reached “R2: Doctoral Universities – Higher research activity” earlier this year. According to the Carnegie Classification definitions, the “Doctoral Universities” classification “includes institutions that awarded at least 20 research/scholarship doctoral degrees during the update year (this does not include professional practice doctoral-level degrees, such as the JD, MD, PharmD, DPT, etc.).”

That accomplishment was due the work of past Presidents Walter L. Smith, Frederick S. Humphries, Fred Gainous, and James H. Ammons. They all pushed aggressively to increase the number of Ph.D. programs at FAMU in order to help the university climb up the Carnegie Classifications.

FAMU still hasn’t implemented all the new Ph.D. programs that were proposed for the Center of Excellence in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (or COESMET) that was approved by the Board of Regents.

Mangum could have proposed making faster progress to launch the Ph.D. program in Computer Science in 2016-2017 and then used a timeline as the metric.

But for “Educational Leadership,” Mangum just wrote: “Enhance academic quality and mobilize the resources needed to support and create university programs by empowering change agents.” The metric she presented was: “Actively engage stakeholders in the change process.”

Mangum’s poor handling of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (COE) has put FAMU’s future in R2 in danger. Most of the Ph.D. programs at FAMU are in the COE. They are: Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Industrial Engineering.

FAMU was in control of the core operating budget for the COE from 1987 until 2014. But in 2015 the new Joint College of Engineering Governance Council started to claim that it is in charge of the COE budget. Back at a May 20 meeting, the Joint Council unanimously voted to move the $12.9M COE core operating budget from FAMU to FSU.

Mangum supported those changes and didn’t let the FAMU BOT know before those things happened.

The FSU representatives and Board of Governors (BOG) Chancellor Marshall Criser, III can now just outvote FAMU on budget decisions and make cuts that could hurt the Ph.D. programs FAMU has in the COE.

$425,000 per year is too much to be paying to a president who lacks the vision needed to take “FAMU Forward.”