Star Tribune
How University of Minnesota president finalists have tackled past challenges
Three finalists for the University of Minnesota presidency are dashing around the state as they try to convince regents they’re the best person to lead the U through a series of upcoming challenges.
The public forums — one per person at each of the U’s five campuses — are designed to serve as a test of the candidates’ stamina and to give them a preview of what it’s like to oversee a system that enrolls about 68,000 students. The person who ultimately lands the job will be tasked with reversing enrollment declines at some campuses, navigating budget constraints and helping to shape the future of the university’s medical programs.
“We fully understand that one of the most important decisions, if not the most important decision, we make is the hiring of a president,” Board of Regents Chair Janie Mayeron said in a meeting last week.
The full schedule of the candidates’ appearances are on the U’s presidential search website, president-search.umn.edu.
Here are some of the issues they’ve tackled before:
Current job: President at Cleveland State University, which has about 14,000 students
Highest degree: Ph.D. in educational policy and administration from the University of Minnesota
Challenges faced: Ohio lawmakers are debating a bill that would “prohibit political and ideological litmus tests” in hiring and admissions, ban many diversity trainings, and publicly release course syllabi. The bill hit on national debates about academic freedom and diversity.
Bloomberg said she worries provisions limiting diversity work could hamper efforts to support a wide array of students. She said she’s open to ideas that promote transparency and increase confidence in higher education but isn’t yet sure whether posting syllabi is the right solution.
When she was working as dean at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Bloomberg oversaw discipline for two professors accused of sexual harassment. Her initial decision to suspend them both drew criticism from some in the U community who wanted to see harsher punishments.
The school reached a settlement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights that required actions to prevent sexual harassment.
“I am aware that some people might think that we should have taken a different path, and I am aware that some people think we were too transparent,” Bloomberg said. “I stand behind the approach that we took, which was rooted both in clear accountability but also in restorative practices.”
Rebecca Cunningham
Current job: Vice president of research and innovation at the University of Michigan, which has more than 65,000 students and more than 13,000 research staff and faculty
Highest degree: Medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia
Challenges faced: The University of Michigan reports roughly $1.8 billion worth of research expenditures, one of the largest portfolios in the nation. Cunningham oversaw the efforts to ramp down research operations when the COVID-19 pandemic limited in-person interactions in 2020 — and then to build them back up again when it waned.
Cunningham didn’t respond to a message Tuesday, but cited that experience on her resume as one example of her ability to handle “crisis management.”
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, the university’s student newspaper, Cunningham said she sought to distinguish between critical and non-critical research projects. “The safety and the health of our communities and the folks in our lab is paramount, so the decisions we made to really minimize the activity down to critical and essential research that’s going on in our labs had to be done,” she told the paper.
Some of Cunningham’s own research focused on gun injury prevention. She was part of a group that in 2018 launched a website that aimed to outline what researchers know — and don’t — about guns and people under the age of 19. That type of work drew criticism from groups like the National Rifle Association, which urged doctors to “stay in their lane.”
Cunningham said in a university announcement, “Safety is what we do for our patients. This is just one of another type of safety that we need to engage in. So it’s not controversial at all.”
James Holloway
Current job: Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of New Mexico, which has nearly 27,000 students and about 14,000 employees
Highest Degree: Ph.D. in engineering physics from the University of Virginia
Challenges faced: The University of New Mexico was facing enrollment declines when Holloway took a job there in 2019. After hiring a new leader to help oversee enrollment strategies, Holloway said the school reported an increase in new students each year. Still, a decrease in state funding and multi-million dollar revenue drops during the COVID-19 pandemic, required tough financial decisions. Holloway said he committed to not doing furloughs or layoffs — promises he felt comfortable making because of the enrollment gains.
When the U.S. Supreme Court this summer overturned affirmative action and limited the consideration of race in college admissions decisions, Holloway said he sought to convey to students and faculty that diversity was still important.
“What the Supreme Court has done is said this tool that one might use it not available to you,” Holloway said. “All that says to me is, we need to use and find other tools.”
He had previously worked at the University of Michigan, where state voters in 2006 had prohibited affirmative action. Holloway said that while he was working in the university’s engineering college, they sought to boost programs that attracted diverse students, including efforts to support transfer students.
Staff writer Jeffrey Meitrodt contributed to this report.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
