Star Tribune
Meet the finalists for the top leadership job at University of Minnesota Duluth
DULUTH — A new leader will soon helm the University of Minnesota Duluth, stepping in at a pivotal moment for the campus as it looks to trim costs and overcome steady student loss.
The UMD community of about 9,400 students and 1,700 employees had the chance to meet all three chancellor finalists at forums last week, and University of Minnesota regents will choose one of them to replace interim leader David McMillan, a former regent and Minnesota Power executive.
The next leader will need to help the school navigate a tough time in higher education.
Since 2018, undergraduate enrollment at UMD has dropped by about 300 students annually, in part because of the pandemic, but also because of a long-term trend in higher education. The university is working through a process to streamline low-demand majors and courses to remain viable. It overcame a $15 million deficit last year with half the funds coming from one-time money left over from departments across campus and half from the U system.
The new chancellor will need to help fill other leadership roles: Vice Chancellor Lisa Erwin will retire this summer and two other vice chancellors are serving on an interim basis. The faculty union and administration are also locked in prolonged contract negotiations.
The finalists hail from higher education institutions in Wisconsin, California and New York. All have ties to Minnesota, and one is a former UMD vice chancellor. The U has not responded to a request for the total number of applicants.
The finalists
Fernando Delgado is president of Lehman College in New York, a designated Hispanic and minority serving institution that enrolls 14,000 students. But before that, he spent five years in a UMD leadership role as vice chancellor for academic affairs until 2021. He has also held leadership roles at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Hamline University and Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Delgado said he wants to return to UMD because it’s a good fit, professionally and personally. He’d address the university’s longstanding budget woes in a pragmatic way, he said, “because that drives everything else.”
Uncertainty hurts morale and can play a role in recruiting and retaining students, he said, so a priority for him as chancellor would be “getting to a place where the narrative is no longer about [the budget],” but the school’s reputation as a hands-on and research-heavy institution for undergraduates, for example.
“It is critically important for UMD as we move forward,” Delgado said.
Dwight Watson is an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he was chancellor for three years before stepping down because of a cancer diagnosis in 2021. He has also been provost at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall and a dean at the University of Northern Iowa. Watson has degrees in curriculum and instruction and elementary education.
Watson said Tuesday that he’s drawn to UMD for its sense of place, commitment to research and purposefulness of its students. One of his top priorities would be eliminating access barriers for students. He acknowledged the university’s financial challenges and said “they aren’t daunting to me because of my prior experiences.”
Charles Nies is vice chancellor of student affairs at the University of California, Merced, where he’s served for a decade. Before that, he held other leadership roles at the university that enrolls more than 9,000 students.
Nies didn’t return messages, but a Los Angeles Times story said he was part of the university’s 2021 effort to guarantee enrollment to eligible local students in an effort to expand access. It was the first campus in the UC system to do so. He has degrees in philosophy, education administration and leadership and psychology. His Minnesota connection? An undergraduate degree from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
In search of an identity
UMD’s faculty union president, John Schwetman, said he was impressed by all three candidates. He’s looking for a leader who can give UMD a more defined identity, something McMillan has also said is critical.
The college’s identity as a regional comprehensive university is broad, Schwetman said, and as competition for students grows, a clearer identity will give students a better sense of UMD, “when they’re choosing our campus over all the different alternatives.”
A new leader will join UMD as the entire system welcomes new University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham.
McMillan has served as the interim chancellor at UMD for nearly two years, following Lendley Black’s retirement. He applied after a national search failed to produce a top pick, and was a controversial choice at the time.
It is unclear when regents will name the new chancellor. The board does not have an April meeting.
Many residents in the apartments next to the proposed nightclub are visiting workers such as travel nurses or farm laborers, he said. “It makes no sense to have a nightclub that has concerts next to a place where people need to rest to work in the community,” Zuleger said.
He has said that the company also partners with addiction centers and women’s shelters to house Willmar’s most vulnerable residents, and some of these tenants would be too close for comfort to the new nightclub.
Instead of a nightclub, the site should be used for a Somali community center where children from the nearby apartments can play, Zuleger said. Willmar, a city of about 21,000 people, is about 24% Hispanic and 11% Black, with 16% of the city born overseas, double the average rate in the rest of Minnesota. About 43% of the company’s tenants are Somali, and Zuleger called them his “best-paying renters.”
But Doug Fenstra, the real estate agent helping sell the property at 951 High Av., said he had never heard about the possibility of a Somali community center before Zuleger brought up the idea at an October planning commission meeting.
On Wednesday, the planning commission deliberated whether a nightclub would fit the character of the neighborhood. They noted that there was already a brewery in the area.
They passed a motion granting the conditional-use permit.
“DHS and our state and federal partners have seen evidence that kickbacks are happening in Minnesota,” Inspector General Kulani Moti said in a statement. “That’s why we brought an anti-kickback proposal to the Minnesota Legislature last session. We will continue to work with the Legislature next session on ways to strengthen the integrity of our public programs.”
Nuway Alliance, one of the state’s largest nonprofit substance use disorder treatment providers, pays up to $700 a month for someone’s housing while they are in intensive outpatient treatment, the organization’s website states. The site lists dozens of sober housing programs clients can choose from.
Nuway leaders said they got an inquiry from the government about two and a half years ago indicating they are conducting a civil investigation into the housing model.
But officials with the nonprofit said in an email they believe what they are doing is legal and clients need it. More than 600 people are using their assistance to stay in recovery residences, Nuway officials stated. They said having a safe, supportive place to stay is particularly important for the vulnerable people they serve, more than half of whom reported being homeless in the six months before they started treatment.
Health plans knew about, approved and even lauded their program, Nuway leaders said, noting that health insurer UCare even gave it an award.
“The state of Minnesota has been fully aware of our program for a decade,” the organization said. “Since payors are fully aware of, and support the program, we struggle to see how anyone could argue it is improper, let alone fraudulent.”
Mounds View, the first Minnesota city to require homeowners to discharge racist language buried in deeds before they sell their homes, is celebrating a milestone: at least 100 homeowners have completed the process.
Officials say discharging the language is a symbolic step, but an important one.
“How could we call ourselves an inclusive community with the words ‘This home shall not be sold to a non-white person’ buried in the deeds?” Mayor Zach Lindstrom said at the state of the city address Monday.
Racially restrictive covenants, found in deeds around the Twin Cities and Minnesota, were legally enforceable tools of racial segregation for the first half of the 20th century. They barred homes’ sale to, and sometimes even occupancy by, anyone who wasn’t white until 1948, when they became unenforceable. Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota research project uncovering these covenants, has found more than 33,000 of them in Minnesota, including more than 500 in Mounds View.
Many local cities have partnered with Just Deeds, a coalition that helps cities and their residents learn about and discharge covenants. In 2019, the Legislature passed a law allowing homeowners to add language to their deeds that discharges racist covenants but doesn’t erase them from the record. Earlier this year, Mounds View was the first to pass an ordinance requiring it. The city is also helping residents navigate the process.
Just because these covenants are no longer enforceable doesn’t mean they haven’t had long-lasting consequences, Kirsten Delegard, Mapping Prejudice project director, said at a Mounds View City Council meeting this summer: Minneapolis homes with racial covenants are worth 15% more than those without, she said. And neighborhoods with covenants remain the whitest parts of the Twin Cities.
Mounds View residents Rene and Steven Johnson were troubled to learn from Mapping Prejudice that their house, and many homes in their neighborhood, had racially restrictive covenants on them. It took some effort, including a trip to the Ramsey County Recorder’s Office, to find the document, which not only contained race restrictions but barred unmarried couples from owning the home.
The couple got their covenant discharged, and educated the city about the process, Rene Johnson said. That helped lead to the ordinance requiring covenants to be discharged before sale.
