Former University of Akron President Scott Scarborough is joining the faculty that voted no confidence in his leadership as a professor this fall in UA’s business college.
Scarborough will move from his campus-view presidential office at Buchtel Hall into a new office on the third floor of the College of Business Administration.
“We had to scramble to find an office for him,” said Steven Ash, chair of the department of management at the college. “We didn’t know he was going to teach here until Thursday morning.”
Scarborough, who taught periodically at various universities from 1989 to 2008, made an abrupt exit as UA president this week. He is registered to teach two undergraduate courses in “strategic management” in the College of Business Administration and Introduction to Health Care Management, a graduate-level course.
The board of trustees reached a mutual agreement with Scarborough on Tuesday, dismissing his five-year contract as president after less than two years and giving him the option to teach or take a buyout.
He will continue to be paid full salary and benefits until he must leave the president’s residence — where he, his family and his in-laws live — by Sept. 27. As a professor, Scarborough will make 65 percent of his former $450,000 salary.
The Business College of Administration, with 22 full-time faculty members, is the largest department on campus.
New office space
Ash said he had to reshuffle offices and move a development officer out of the office to make room for Scarborough.
The 12-by-9-foot office is a standard office space for faculty members. Room 338 is located near one of the back exit doors and around the corner from the faculty lounge. His new office has a view of the railroad tracks. He will keep the same telephone number.
His paintings could be seen gathered on the floor in the doorway of his former office.
Scarborough holds a doctorate in strategic management. He was also the chief operating officer of the University of Toledo Medical Center for two of the years he was provost at the University of Toledo.
The classes Scarborough will teach in the fall are already available online for students to register. Both are three credit hours. The average number of students per class is 12 for undergraduate courses and 10 for graduate classes.
If not enough students sign up for the classes, that could create another scramble.
“If that happens, keeping the classes would be cost inefficient and we don’t have resources to waste,” Ash said.
In previous interviews, Scarborough has said his passion has always been teaching, following in the footsteps of his mother. He could not be reached for comment Friday.
Union membership
His new position is not tenured. He will be represented by the Akron chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
“If he’s part of the bargaining unit, we will act on his behalf and he will benefit from it with a union representative,” said John Zipp, president of the 600-member union. “It’s typical for presidents to have academic appointments.”
Zipp said the former president would also be able to take part in any of the faculty surveys on campus, one of several measures the faculty used to voice their no confidence in Scarborough’s leadership.
Scarborough’s predecessor, Luis Proenza, also will be returning to UA this fall from a two-year sabbatical following his departure as president to teach in the school’s political science department.
The two former UA presidents will be the university’s highest-paid professors, together earning $617,500 for teaching three classes and performing other duties. That’s roughly equal to the tuition of 56 in-state undergraduate students.
Proenza, a former biology professor, was president of UA during a building spree that increased university debt by 700 percent between 2000 and 2014. By 2015, UA had the highest debt-to-revenue ratio among all four-year public universities in Ohio, according to the Ohio Board of Regents.
Proenza will teach a special course in political science for an annual salary of $325,000.
Other duties
Proenza also will work on a project that marries higher education and the economy, board of trustees Chair Jonathan Pavloff and university spokesman Wayne Hill said in an interview on Thursday. No details about the project were readily available.
Hill provided the Beacon Journal with the proposed contracts and job descriptions required of Proenza and Scarborough to maintain full-time professor status this fall. Each will work nine months out of the year.
“Most people would perceive those options as appalling for such a controversial president,” said Sean McKinniss, a Columbus expert who is writing a book on no-confidence votes. “Taxpayers will look at it like he created all this controversy and angered the community and he gets this type of severance arrangement, but the options are also common for those presidents who are perceived to have been successful presidents.”
McKinniss said given the tension at the university and in the community, he was shocked that Scarborough decided to stay.
“Financially, of course, it is the sensible choice,” McKinniss said.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug. Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter:@BJMarilynMiller