Presidential material
Women hold the top job at many Virginia universities

Paula C. Squires
Virginia Business
August 2006

Women didn’t break into the new line up of CEOs at Virginia’s major public companies. Yet, they lead many of the state’s universities.

And college presidents are increasingly being likened to a chief executive, because higher education is being run more like a business. The transformation to a business model is expected to continue under a new restructuring law which took effect last month, giving Virginia’s public institutions more management autonomy.

Throw in the fact that many universities are multimillion-dollar operations and major employers, and it’s easy to understand the comparison. “It’s like running many businesses all in one,” says Roseann Runte, president of Old Dominion University in Norfolk. She heads one of Virginia’s largest schools, with an annual budget of $303 million and overall enrollment of more than 21,000.

The number of women occupying the president’s suite in the Old Dominion exceeds the national average. They run four of the state’s 15 four-year public institutions, or nearly 27 percent of the schools. The numbers are higher at the privates — 36 percent — where women are in charge at nine of 25 schools. (See table on page 15 for a full listing of women college presidents).

Nationally, the figure is 21.1 percent. That comes from a 2001 study being updated now by the American Council on Education. In contrast, 2.2 percent of the CEOs at America’s Fortune 500 companies are women.

Education has long embraced women. A better support system may be the reason that women can scale the academic ladder while their sisters in corporate America seem stuck on the lower rungs. “There’s more assistance available … in terms of mentoring and programming for leadership development perhaps than what is available in the corporate sector,” says Claire Van Ummersen, vice president for the Center for Effective Leadership for the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C.

In the past five to seven years, about 40 percent of the senior appointments at America’s community colleges have gone to women. “So they have a good pipeline for the presidency,” observes Ummersen.

In Virginia, the grand dame of woman college presidents is Patricia Cormier. She took over as president of Longwood University in Farmville in 1996 and is the longest-serving female college executive in the state. Each year, Cormier helps train new college presidents at an academy sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Usually, about five of the 16 to 17 new recruits are women. “We are making strides,” says Cormier, “but we’re not there yet.”

Higher education is attractive to women as a career, says Cormier, because of its mission. “Our product is to produce an educated human being. It’s not a car or a refrigerator.”

Still, she can see many parallels between running a company and running a university. Just like CEOs of large companies, college presidents work under the direction of a board, interact with many constituents and must be accessible 24-7. They develop strategic plans, carve out market niches, worry about the competition and spend most of their time on finances and fund raising.

Yet, there are major differences. Public colleges receive state funding. They aren’t under the gun to make a profit, and they operate under a system of shared governance. “You don’t make all the decisions independently. You work in a much more consensual way,” says Cormier.

Cormier, an outgoing woman with short, spiked hair, oversees 750 employees and an annual budget of $80 million. Under her leadership, enrollment has doubled to 4,381, the average incoming freshman grade point average has improved to 3.3, and Longwood has moved from college to university status. The school’s athletics are being overhauled as well, with Longwood poised for reclassification as an NCAA Division I school.
Cormier’s biggest crisis came on a spring evening in 2001. She had just returned home from work when she heard the wail of a siren. “It went on and on and on. I thought it was a tornado watch.” Then, a resident who lived across the street from Longwood called and said, “The Rotunda is on fire.”

Before the night was over, the fire had consumed four buildings, or 30 percent of Longwood’s academic space. The loss totaled $30 million. Among the wreckage: the school’s historic Rotunda building with its stately columns and soaring dome. Cormier remained at the scene all night, presiding over the safe evacuation of the students. Following a lengthy insurance recovery process, Longwood celebrated the reopening of Ruffner Hall with a restored Rotunda four years after the fire.

Despite the challenges, Cormier describes the college presidency as “the greatest job in the world. … Every single day you can make a difference.” Plus the perks aren’t bad. Cormier’s total annual compensation is $318,000. The university provides a car, a housekeeper and a home — a 10,600-square-foot antebellum home listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But can the college presidency be a springboard to a chief executive’s job outside higher education?

Ummersen, a former president of Cleveland State University, doesn’t think so. While she has seen people move from the corporate sector into higher education, she doesn’t know of a woman college president who has become a CEO in business or industry.

However, that may be changing. Runte, ODU’s president since 2001 and a president at three Canadian colleges before that, says she’s been approached with offers from two big companies (not in Virginia) about becoming a vice president. “So I guess you could move if you wanted to. I don’t want to,” she says.

Under Runte’s tenure, ODU’s enrollment is up, six new doctorate programs are under way, and research funding has increased from $30 million to $65 million. With an annual compensation package of $364,525, Runte is the highest paid female college president in Virginia. Nonetheless, she earns less than her male counterparts at VCU, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia. (At many public colleges, half if not more, of the salary for college presidents comes from private sources.)

Running a university may be a way to gain the executive managerial experience that women might not get in the corporate world. Penny Kyle thought being president of Radford University was such a good opportunity that she left her job as executive director of Virginia’s state lottery in Richmond and moved to Southwest Virginia. While one child relocated with her to Radford, Kyle’s husband and two other children remain in Richmond, creating a commuting marriage.

After more than a year at the school, which has 9,552 students, she says the change was a good career move. “I think to go over to higher education and be a college president — it gives you that CEO experience that the glass ceiling might not allow you to have,” says Kyle, a lawyer and former vice president at CSX Corp.

On the other hand, she adds, large public and private companies without executive women in the pipeline could look to women university presidents as possible candidates, because “they know that college presidents are responsible for everything.” At Radford, Kyle is trying to start the school’s first doctoral programs, in pharmacy and rural mental health. She earns an annual salary of $261,000 a year and lives in a university-owned home, which makes commuting less financially prohibitive.

The newest woman to join Virginia’s college president roster is Carolyn W. Meyers, former provost for North Carolina AT&T State University in Greensboro. She took over at Norfolk State University on July 5, beating out about 60 applicants for the job. She holds advanced degrees in mechanical and chemical engineering, and is a former dean of the College of Engineering at AT&T... “It’s a unique opportunity,” she says of the NSU president’s job.