pitch | Beginning in 2005, James served as director of the Missouri
Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security. He found his way into
higher education via a 2007 task force on campus security that he
co-chaired with Robert Stein, commissioner of the Missouri Department of
Higher Education. The two hit it off. When Stein learned that there was
an opening at MCC for a vice chancellor of administrative services, in
2009, he recommended James as a candidate. The MCC board of trustees — a
six-member body, elected by the public — approved. When Jackie Snyder
stepped down as chancellor of MCC the next year, James was recommended
for the job. Despite less than a year's experience working in higher
education, he got the appointment.
One of James' first acts as chancellor was to turn MCC's campus
security into an official, state-commissioned police department. Today,
MCC boasts a force of 35 uniformed officers, plus another six
uncertified public-safety officers. Though it patrols only five small
campuses, MCC's police department numbers nearly as many cops as that of
Gladstone, Missouri — an 8-square-mile suburb with a population of
28,000.
If you're measuring MCC's success in non-law-enforcement terms,
however, James' tenure as chancellor has been a shaky four years.
According to faculty surveys and outside studies, the district is in
disarray — a condition confirmed by more than a dozen current and former
staff, faculty and administrators, many of them longtime MCC loyalists,
interviewed by The Pitch in recent weeks. The beefed-up police
department, they say, is merely the most visible way that James has
shifted resources away from educating students.
"You'd think a guy with a police background and basically zero
higher-ed experience, chosen to lead a community-college district, would
bend over backward to familiarize himself with academia and not focus
on all the law-enforcement stuff," says a longtime faculty member who
asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. "Instead, it's been the
complete opposite. He's consistently shown disdain toward the academic
traditions that have been in place at these schools for 100 years."
Such criticisms might be easier to dismiss as the grumblings of
change-averse academics, were it not for the growing body of data
indicating that MCC is underperforming. A 2014 report, commissioned by
MCC and prepared by CLARUS Corp., a community-college marketing-research
firm, concluded:
"Nationally, over the last four years, the number of applicants to
community colleges has been increasing. But at Metropolitan Community
College, from 2010 to 2013, the number of applicants has been in decline
(from 14,600 to 11,500)." The report goes on to note that the school's
conversion rate — the percentage of applicants who end up enrolled at
MCC — has held steady at 40 percent, though "the typical conversion goal
for a community college is 60 percent."
James' tenure has also been marked by a significant exodus of
high-ranking, long-serving administrators, including several vice
chancellors and presidents with decades of the kind of higher-education
experience that James lacks.
Shake-ups are common when new administrations take command, and
unpopular moves are often necessary to ensure the long-term viability of
an institution — particularly at community colleges, where state funds
are ever-depleting and donations add up to a fraction of what four-year
universities comfortably rely on.
But many of MCC's critical positions — vice chancellors, directors
and, as of last month, a school president — remain unfilled. And several
of the past administrators who spoke with The Pitch indicated
that most of those who have left MCC in recent years toughed it out
under James' leadership as long as they did out of a sense of duty to
the students, whom they believe are getting shortchanged as a result of
changes that James has made.
Kathy Walter-Mack first arrived at MCC in 2007, when she was part of a
two-person consulting team hired by the school to investigate
racial-discrimination complaints, brought by several black students,
against two teachers and a staff member. Walter-Mack's conclusion was
that the allegations were unsubstantiated but that a systemic
environment of intolerance existed at MCC. One of the recommendations of
the report was to establish a diversity-0x000Acoordinator position at
MCC. Walter-Mack was subsequently hired for that position.
Her pedigree included a stint in the 1990s working in the Kansas
City, Missouri, school district, which was then still mired in a
decades-long desegregation battle. She had by then been the executive
director of the Desegregation Monitoring Committee, a court-ordered
governing body through which the district had to clear virtually all of
its decisions. Walter-Mack later went to work for Sam's Town, where she
oversaw compliance with city quotas for minority- and women-owned
businesses. Later, she returned to Kansas City Public Schools and served
as its general counsel.
According to a 2001 Pitch story ("Taylor Made," October 4,
2001) chronicling leadership problems in KCPS, Walter-Mack attempted to
consolidate district power in her office and was subsequently fired by
Superintendent Benjamin Demps.
"Really and truly, she [Walter-Mack] was running a large part of the
district," Jack Goddard, chief of staff to the KCPS superintendent at
the time, told The Pitch. "A lot of everyday decisions,
principals were reporting up through her as much as they were through
the superintendent. ... You had a really confused chain of command."
That characterization is likely familiar to staff and faculty at MCC, who now know Walter-Mack in a variety of roles.
When James became chancellor, in 2010, he created a new position —
chief of staff — and installed Walter-Mack in it. In 2013, Walter-Mack
took on the additional role of vice chancellor of human resources. Owing
to her background as a lawyer — she's licensed to practice in Missouri
and Illinois — Walter-Mack is also highly involved in all legal matters
pertaining to MCC.
James has grown increasingly reliant on Walter-Mack, "abdicating
daily decision making to her so he can focus on community visibility and
fund raising, leaving the running of the academic institution to
others," according to notes from the faculty emergency meeting.
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