Continuing what their critics decry as a cycle of dysfunction and disruptive leadership, the Nevada Board of Regents has scheduled a special meeting for Friday to consider parting ways with the top administrator in the state’s higher education system.
NSHE revolving door
When Melody Rose is replaced as the chancellor of Nevada’s higher education system, her successor will be the sixth person to lead the system since 2016. Here’s a brief timeline of the changes at the top.
2016: In May Dan Klaich resigns as chancellor after seven years in the position. Klaich’s resignation comes under pressure from state lawmakers and the Metro Chamber (then the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce) after he was exposed for providing Nevada legislators with misleading documents related to the state’s higher-education funding formula. The board of regents angered critics by allowing Klaich to retire early and receive full pay and benefits over the remaining year of his contract.
John Valery White is named acting chancellor through June 2017.
2017: Thom Reilly is named chancellor effective in August. The regents appoint former Chancellor Jane Nichols as acting chancellor in the five-week interim between White’s departure and Reilly’s start.
2019: Reilly and NSHE reveal that Reilly will step down after his three-year contract ends in July 2020.
2020: Reilly leaves NSHE as anticipated after a tenure marked by volatility at UNLV, where Reilly and a group of regents pressured popular president Len Jessup out of the university. Jessup’s forced departure prompts several major UNLV contributors to withdraw or reconsider multimillion-dollar donations for construction of UNLV’s medical school, saying they no longer trust the regents to steward their money. Jessup is hired at the prestigious Claremont Graduate University in Southern California, where he remains president today.
In June, the regents hire Melody Rose as chancellor under a four-year contract, effective in September.
2021: In October, Rose levels explosive hostile-workplace accusations against Regents Chair Cathy McAdoo and Vice Chair Patrick Carter, accusing them of bullying her, undermining her authority and subjecting her to gender discrimination in an orchestrated attempt to drive her out of her position. The regents launch an independent investigation into Rose’s accusations.
2022: In February, the third-party law firm that investigated Rose’s accusations delivers its findings, saying it found insufficient evidence of her legal claims. However, the investigators also describe the regents as being politically factionalized, engaging in inappropriate behavior and possibly committing ethnic violations.
The elected board of regents is expected to vote on a separation agreement for Chancellor Melody Rose just 19 months into the four-year contract she signed in 2020. The regents could also possibly name an interim or acting chancellor Friday; if so, that person would become the sixth temporary or full-time chancellor to lead the system since 2016.
The revolving door pace of comings and goings coupled with the circumstances involving Rose’s departure after she leveled hostile-workplace accusations against some regents have prompted concerns that the situation will have a chilling effect on attracting high-quality candidates to succeed Rose.
And meanwhile, supporters of Rose are rising to her defense, saying she was unfairly hounded out of the system due to disputes with a faction of the board over political issues and system management, including her support of COVID-19 mask and vaccination mandates that were opposed by some regents in politically conservative districts. Rose, a first-generation college student who became a seasoned administrator over her career, was hired as chancellor after a national search. She previously served as chancellor of Oregon’s university system and was vice provost of Portland State University.
“Melody has the consensus and support of her cabinet, and she has the consensus and support of the institution presidents,” said Regent John T. Moran III. “I feel she’s done a great job. If what she feels is best for her and her family is to resign, I’ll support that. But I’m very disappointed in the system and how it treated her. The system has run her out. And that’s a black eye to our state, because she was potentially a transformational leader.”
The proposed agreement calls for Rose to be paid $610,000, which amounts to less than two years of her base annual salary of $437,750, and includes a clause barring Rose and the regents from making comments disparaging “the honesty, integrity, ethics, or professional competence and reputation of one another.”
Rose’s resignation comes shortly after the conclusion of third-party investigation into hostile-workplace allegations she lodged last fall against Regents Chair Cathy McAdoo and Vice Chair Patrick Carter, whom she accused of gender discrimination, intimidation and retaliation in an orchestrated effort to drive her away. The investigators found insufficient evidence to support Rose’s legal claims but fell far short of giving the regents a clean bill of health, instead noting that the board had engaged in unprofessional behavior, was factionalized politically and had possibly committed ethical violations.
Among Rose’s accusations, she said McAdoo claimed to have received instructions from God on how to handle the system’s policy on masking, and said Regent Byron Brooks made her feel intimidated during a January meeting in which he’d received special approval from McAdoo to be armed with a gun.
Despite those findings, the board voted last month to accept the results of the investigation and reinstate McAdoo and Carter to their officer positions, from which they’d stepped down after the investigation was launched. And despite legal counsel to the contrary, several regents who had been named in the complaint voted on the matter. Those regents, in addition to McAdoo and Carter, were Brooks, Jason Geddes, Joseph Arrascada, Laura Perkins and Patrick Boylan.
Their decision to spurn the advice of counsel and vote on the issue prompted several businesses and organizations — the Vegas Chamber, Nevada AFL-CIO, Latin Chamber of Commerce, Las Vegas Asian Chamber and the Council for a Better Nevada — to call for the state ethics commission to conduct an investigation.
Gov. Steve Sisolak issued a letter the next day to the regents offering “strong support” to Rose. While Sisolak did not mention the allegations specifically, he praised her as a team-builder and an effective leader in what was clearly a statement aimed at protecting her.
It didn’t work.
The proposed separation agreement was unveiled Tuesday when it was included on the public agenda of Friday’s special meeting of the board of regents.
Rose’s imminent departure, and the circumstances surrounding it, brought fresh criticism of the board, which has been chastised in the past for unprofessional behavior, north-versus-south factionalism, meddling and disruptive leadership in general. A leading case in point came in 2018 when the regents and then-Chancellor Thom Reilly pressured then-UNLV president Len Jessup out of the university over what Jessup’s supporters believed were unfair or trumped-up accusations of inadequate leadership and inappropriate behavior. Several major UNLV donors were so angry about the regents’ treatment of Jessup that they withdrew or reconsidered multimillion-dollar donations toward a new building for the UNLV medical school. Those donors then banded together to essentially cut the regents out of the process, forming a nonprofit building corporation that is constructing the building and will lease it to the university at $1 a year.
Under Nevada’s higher education system, the 13-member board of regents relates to the chancellor in a way similar to an elected public school board and a district superintendent. The presidents of
Nevada’s universities are like building principals in this comparison.
The Sun on Wednesday reached out to each member of the board to ask whether they would approve Rose’s proposed separation agreement and, if so, they would support giving her the $610,000 payout.
Only four regents responded: Moran, who offered on-the-record comments; and Carter, Jason Geddes and Joseph Arrascada, who declined to comment. Arrascada said he hadn’t read the agreement, Geddes said he would withhold his opinions on the matter until Friday, and Carter said “I can’t comment on an item that is posted on an agenda.” Asked for the reason he believed he couldn’t comment — such as a regents bylaw — Carter didn’t respond.
Given what their critics contend is a tradition of micromanaging at best — or malicious, unethical meddling at worst — at both NSHE and at the college and university level, the regents could further damage the state if Rose is not paid severance. Such a move with a prominent executive could make Nevada’s higher education system radioactive to future candidates for chancellor or university presidents.
To make matters worse, the gender-based hostile workplace charges will likely reverberate among the community of senior leaders in higher education.
To former Regent Lisa Levine, Rose’s accusations of gender discrimination and intimidation rang familiar. During discussion about campus sexual assault during an online meeting in 2020, Levine was subjected to demeaning behavior by the board’s then-special counsel and chief of staff when he told her he would disconnect her from the meeting if she continued to “child-speak.” The comment went viral online, prompting a storm of criticism against the regents and the special counsel, Dean Gould, but the regents never publicly rebuked or disciplined Gould.
It wasn’t the first time the regents had faced such criticism. For instance, the former human relations director of the Nevada System of Higher Education, the body that the chancellor oversees, filed a lawsuit in 2020 containing accusations similar to those of Rose. That lawsuit was settled, including a nondisclosure agreement.
Another example occurred in 2015 when the Sun reported that NSHE had quietly rehired an employee who had been fired after a female colleague reported him for watching pornography in his office and masturbating behind his desk.
“For the board to use their good ol’ boy intimidation tactics, something I experienced first-hand, to push out (Rose) speaks volumes,” Levine said. “How many more qualified and respected leaders will the board of regents undermine? How many more women need to come forward before Nevada’s leaders take action? How many millions more in tax dollars will be wasted before there is transformational change?”
Levine’s mention of tax dollars refers to the payout to Rose plus the costs of a national search to replace her.
Criticism over the regents prompted a ballot question in 2020 that would have set the stage for the board to be restructured and possibly turned into a hybrid panel with some elected seats and some governor-appointed positions. Nevada’s board is the only one in the nation with all-elected members overseeing all of the state’s public institutions of higher education, which has fed criticism that the regents fail to hold themselves or each other accountable because they answer only to the small constituencies of voters who elect them.
The regents history of inappropriate behavior includes:
– Former Regent Kevin Page being exposed for demanding in 2015 that UNLV waive its prerequisite rules for a relative of his who was attending the university’s business school at the time. When UNLV resisted, saying the special dispensation would put the business school’s accreditation at risk, Page threatened the university with unspecified retaliation. Yet the board never disciplined or reprimanded him.
– After former Chancellor Dan Klaich was exposed for providing state lawmakers with misleading documents, the board took no disciplinary action. To the contrary, they allowed Klaich to resign with a lavish separation agreement.
The 2020 ballot question narrowly failed despite drawing a majority of the vote in Clark County, where some critics of the regents believe the board has long undercut UNLV in favor of UNR. A resolution to revive and reword the ballot question passed in the 2021 session of the Nevada Legislature, and will return for a second vote in 2023. If it passes again, the revised measure will go back on the ballot.
“It is without question that the board of regents are the greatest example of government waste and public corruption in the state, and it is time for the community to come together and fix this broken system,” Levine said.
Editor's note: This analysis was revised to correct an error about the 2021 resolution in the state Legislature. In the original version, it was reported that the resolution failed.