Leath leaves ISU for Auburn president job
- Thread starter cyIclSoneU
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This is so so true! The only wild card here is the Iowa Board of Regents. Forgot about that...
Yep yep yep. Bingo. Leath is a relic of an older era that is still acceptable in some places. I'm glad those "perks" seem to be getting harder to come by. If he did this above board, it wouldn't have been a problem - I would have thought it was cool for our president to be a pilot (my dad is as well) and the Rastetter land thing needed to have been public. Big conflict of interest - buying land from the BoR chair? I mean, the entitlement to think that wasn't a problem. There's a lot of land in Iowa he could have bought. Sweetheart deals are something a leader in Leath's position has to be able to resist. He obviously didn't.
A plus is that the BoR has fairly recently hired Wickert for his current position. However, we haven't seen a lot of internal promotions in recent years for the presidential positions at the Regents institutions.
If Wickert does not get the job this time, he will be president of another university in the next couple years. Seems ready for that next step and if he is passed over it will be time to look elsewhere.
That's the "message" that was relayed to the Regents when he was up for VP/Provost: Wickert's goal is to be a univ president, so you'd be wise to name him Provost now before we lose him...
It was a big story with the media for so long because Leath stonewalled them. He created this. He talks a good game about transparency but wouldn't release anything. So instead a story that looks bad but dies quickly it becomes the dreaded drip-drip-drip series of stories of whatever the media can find by itself.
What Leath did - or I should say, what we *know* Leath did - isn't that bad. But he wasn't forthright about it and stonewalled when confronted about it. So it *looks* bad and raises the question of, if he's not honest about this, what else is he hiding? The trust is gone.
Over and over again, Leath failed PR 101, which is to own the story and never let the media or others define it. You'd think he'd have learned from years of watching Sally Mason, who couldn't get out of her own way.
"I just saved a bunch of money on airplane insurance by switching from Leath."
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CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
I'm really surprised to hear this. I wouldn't think Auburn would be a step up in that world. But I'm sure that's not all that factored into this decision.
I wasn't a huge fan of his, but we've seen much worse Presidents in our time.
It'll be an interesting next few months, for sure.
I wasn't a huge fan of his, but we've seen much worse Presidents in our time.
It'll be an interesting next few months, for sure.
Very interesting article. Auburn sounds like Leath's kind of place, particularly because they did almost nothing that was truly public in the search. This is a Good Ol' Boy school and Leath has shown that he is a Good Ol' Boy president.
Overall, I like what he has done for Iowa State, but his style fits much better at Auburn. And having talked to him at the airport a month or so ago, it was clear that he really disliked what he considered to be a media witch-hunt by a few reporters.
Don't know if this really helps qualify him for being ISU president, but it's a fun fact!
Fairly typical statement, but the statement about leading one of the nation's great land grant universities seems off to me. He already is at a land grant school so, to me anyway, this comes off as a slam to ISU.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised he didn't use "another" instead of "one" there.
