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.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
