University presidents must be ‘business executives’ to be successful, FAMU search consultant says

A consultant told Florida A&M University’s trustees as they began their search for a new president that successful university leaders take a business-executive mindset to the job while, in her experience, candidates are less often emerging from within academia.

Artis Hampshire-Cowan, owner of Leverage Leadership Group, shared her perspective on a successful search with FAMU trustees during a virtual meeting Wednesday.

“Presidents have to be business executives to be successful and effective; they have to be really good at relationship building and influence — not by authority, but by influence. And so, personality is a factor, and tenacity,” Hampshire-Cowan said. 

In Hampshire-Cowan’s experience, qualified academic candidates are passing on the opportunity to serve as university presidents “because they don’t see it as an opportunity anymore.”

“Some of the complications as we’ve talked to a lot of people who would make great presidents but are declining the opportunity really has to do with the complexity of the work now,” she said. She emphasized a candidate should be innovative, creative, able to motivate, a believer in strong accountability, and able to manage risk.

Being a great academic and “sort of okay” manager used to be enough, but now the complexity of university finances, the scramble for resources, and retaining talent pose larger challenges. 

“We really need to lean into looking for diverse candidates, not just in terms of race but in terms of experience,” she said. “You know, we typically look for that traditional Ph.D., having come up through the higher ed system, but the new thinking is the skillset now for higher ed is really no different than recruiting for a Fortune 100 company.”

Starting the search

FAMU President Larry Robinson announced last month that he would step down after serving nearly seven years in the job, having originally become a visiting professor in 1995. His departure followed a controversial $237 donation offer, which would have been the largest in the history of any historically black college or university but has been scrapped.

According to a report overseen by the Board of Governors, that donation was determined to be fraudulent, and had been “improperly handled” by FAMU, as reported by the Tallahassee Democrat. 

Hampshire-Cowan said the board should be clear and have “a consistent cadence of communicating” in selecting a new president. She emphasized the need for “alignment, in terms of reestablishing absolute credibility and absence of concerns of missteps that have happened in recent times as we’ve gone through some headwinds.”

The mishandling of the donation aside, FAMU was ranked the country’s top HBCU by U.S. News & World Report and also a top 100 public university.

“I want to just make sure we set our sights high as we look for whomever that next person is going to be coming in, because as much as we’re going to be looking to them, we have a lot to offer ourselves. I just want to make sure that out of the … openings that are out there I perceive ours is the best available,” trustee Kelvin Lawson said.

FAMU is not the only state university searching for a president; Florida Atlantic University and the University of Florida are in the process of filling their campus’ top role.

This story was updated to correct the name of the organization Artis Hampshire-Cowan represented at the meeting. It was the Leverage Leadership Group.