Mutiny looms at the ineptly run Metropolitan Community College

Believing himself to be Jesus Christ reincarnated, a 22-year-old student named Casey Brezik entered a conference room in the humanities building on the Penn Valley campus of Metropolitan Community College the morning of September 14, 2010. Brezik had been awake for three straight days, beset by schizophrenic delusions of government conspiracies. He had accessorized his all-black outfit with a bulletproof vest. He carried a knife, with which he planned to assassinate Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who was shortly scheduled to give a speech at Penn Valley.

Instead, a confused Brezik stabbed Albert Dimmit, the dean of instruction at Penn Valley, in the neck.

As horrified onlookers struggled to process what was occurring, Mark James, the recently appointed chancellor of Metropolitan Community College, sprang forward, tackled Brezik, wrested the knife away and detained him until police arrived. Dimmit was rushed to the hospital and recovered after surgery. James — who sustained a minor stab wound to his chest in the scuffle — had saved the day.

“I think there was general awe over that act among everybody at MCC,” says Debbie Goodall, president at the time of the MCC–Business & Technology Campus. (She retired in 2013, after 19 years at MCC.) “Here’s Mark, the new leader of the entire district, wearing a suit, waiting for the governor, and he just responds so efficiently and automatically to this shocking school violence. It was very impressive.”

James, the chancellor of a five-campus community-college system — MCC–Blue River, MCC–Longview and MCC–Maple Woods round out the rest of the district — was unusually well-equipped to confront such a situation. Virtually his entire pre-MCC professional background had been in law enforcement. He had worked for the Missouri Highway Patrol and also as an ATF agent, where he assisted the Oklahoma City bombing investigation and, in 2002, the D.C. sniper case. He keeps a photo in his MCC office of his time as an undercover police officer: James, wearing a heavy beard and standing next to a Harley, having infiltrated a biker gang.

Beginning in 2005, James served as director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security. He found his way into higher education via a 2007 task force on campus security that he co-chaired with Robert Stein, commissioner of the Missouri Department of Higher Education. The two hit it off. When Stein learned that there was an opening at MCC for a vice chancellor of administrative services, in 2009, he recommended James as a candidate. The MCC board of trustees — a six-member body, elected by the public — approved. When Jackie Snyder stepped down as chancellor of MCC the next year, James was recommended for the job. Despite less than a year’s experience working in higher education, he got the appointment.

One of James’ first acts as chancellor was to turn MCC’s campus security into an official, state-commissioned police department. Today, MCC boasts a force of 35 uniformed officers, plus another six uncertified public-safety officers. Though it patrols only five small campuses, MCC’s police department numbers nearly as many cops as that of Gladstone, Missouri — an 8-square-mile suburb with a population of 28,000.

If you’re measuring MCC’s success in non-law-enforcement terms, however, James’ tenure as chancellor has been a shaky four years. According to faculty surveys and outside studies, the district is in disarray — a condition confirmed by more than a dozen current and former staff, faculty and administrators, many of them longtime MCC loyalists, interviewed by The Pitch in recent weeks. The beefed-up police department, they say, is merely the most visible way that James has shifted resources away from educating students.

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“You’d think a guy with a police background and basically zero higher-ed experience, chosen to lead a community-college district, would bend over backward to familiarize himself with academia and not focus on all the law-enforcement stuff,” says a longtime faculty member who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. “Instead, it’s been the complete opposite. He’s consistently shown disdain toward the academic traditions that have been in place at these schools for 100 years.”

Such criticisms might be easier to dismiss as the grumblings of change-averse academics, were it not for the growing body of data indicating that MCC is underperforming. A 2014 report, commissioned by MCC and prepared by CLARUS Corp., a community-college marketing-research firm, concluded:

“Nationally, over the last four years, the number of applicants to community colleges has been increasing. But at Metropolitan Community College, from 2010 to 2013, the number of applicants has been in decline (from 14,600 to 11,500).” The report goes on to note that the school’s conversion rate — the percentage of applicants who end up enrolled at MCC — has held steady at 40 percent, though “the typical conversion goal for a community college is 60 percent.”

James’ tenure has also been marked by a significant exodus of high-ranking, long-serving administrators, including several vice chancellors and presidents with decades of the kind of higher-education experience that James lacks.

Shake-ups are common when new administrations take command, and unpopular moves are often necessary to ensure the long-term viability of an institution — particularly at community colleges, where state funds are ever-depleting and donations add up to a fraction of what four-year universities comfortably rely on.

But many of MCC’s critical positions — vice chancellors, directors and, as of last month, a school president — remain unfilled. And several of the past administrators who spoke with The Pitch indicated that most of those who have left MCC in recent years toughed it out under James’ leadership as long as they did out of a sense of duty to the students, whom they believe are getting shortchanged as a result of changes that James has made.

“I think Mark came in with the attitude that he was going to throw the old model into the ocean and start fresh,” Goodall says. “But if you want to do that successfully, and without turmoil, you have to understand the existing culture and be respectful of it. Good leaders respect the culture they are leading. Mark has never understood academic culture and never really tried to. He’s only been focused on enrollment dollars, and when you do that, you overlook the standards of academic integrity that are critical to maintain over the long haul. Because if you lose that integrity, you lose your reputation, and you’re just going to continue to bleed.” 

Goodall continues: “And that’s why everybody’s leaving. If you look at the number of people who have left and the positions that have not been filled and the dismal morale on those campuses, you have to wonder: What kind of leader is this man?”

Last year, concerned that their voices were no longer being heard, MCC’s faculty voted to unionize — a first in MCC’s 100-year history. And in early April of this year, 75 MCC faculty members across all five campuses held an emergency meeting to discuss concerns about James’ leadership and how, under his reign, “tough choices have mainly come at a cost to the academic side of the house, which ironically represents the mission, the main revenue source, and the college’s reason for existence,” according to notes from the meeting obtained by The Pitch. According to several people present at the meeting, the decision was made to send a letter to the board, censuring James and calling for the removal of his top aide, a woman with longstanding ties to education in the KC area and whom many blame for MCC’s woes.

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Kathy Walter-Mack first arrived at MCC in 2007, when she was part of a two-person consulting team hired by the school to investigate racial-discrimination complaints, brought by several black students, against two teachers and a staff member. Walter-Mack’s conclusion was that the allegations were unsubstantiated but that a systemic environment of intolerance existed at MCC. One of the recommendations of the report was to establish a diversity-0x000Acoordinator position at MCC. Walter-Mack was subsequently hired for that position.

Her pedigree included a stint in the 1990s working in the Kansas City, Missouri, school district, which was then still mired in a decades-long desegregation battle. She had by then been the executive director of the Desegregation Monitoring Committee, a court-ordered governing body through which the district had to clear virtually all of its decisions. Walter-Mack later went to work for Sam’s Town, where she oversaw compliance with city quotas for minority- and women-owned businesses. Later, she returned to Kansas City Public Schools and served as its general counsel.

According to a 2001 Pitch story (“Taylor Made,” October 4, 2001) chronicling leadership problems in KCPS, Walter-Mack attempted to consolidate district power in her office and was subsequently fired by Superintendent Benjamin Demps.

“Really and truly, she [Walter-Mack] was running a large part of the district,” Jack Goddard, chief of staff to the KCPS superintendent at the time, told The Pitch. “A lot of everyday decisions, principals were reporting up through her as much as they were through the superintendent. … You had a really confused chain of command.”

That characterization is likely familiar to staff and faculty at MCC, who now know Walter-Mack in a variety of roles.

When James became chancellor, in 2010, he created a new position — chief of staff — and installed Walter-Mack in it. In 2013, Walter-Mack took on the additional role of vice chancellor of human resources. Owing to her background as a lawyer — she’s licensed to practice in Missouri and Illinois — Walter-Mack is also highly involved in all legal matters pertaining to MCC.

James has grown increasingly reliant on Walter-Mack, “abdicating daily decision making to her so he can focus on community visibility and fund raising, leaving the running of the academic institution to others,” according to notes from the faculty emergency meeting.

“Everything has to go through Kathy,” says a vice chancellor who spoke to The Pitch on the condition of anonymity. “She is the one making the bulk of the academic decisions, and she is the gatekeeper to Mark. And, therefore, the only way to get any type of policy through is to go through her. And she holds everything up.” (More than one person whom The Pitch interviewed referred to the pair by a pejorative nickname: Kathy Walter-Mark.)

Lisa Minis was the dean of students at MCC–Penn Valley until retiring in 2013; she had been at MCC for more than 20 years. Minis says she initially found James to be direct and honest when he came onboard as vice chancellor of administrative services. But she says James became “almost instantly unapproachable” after he became chancellor and appointed Walter-Mack as his chief of staff.

“A lot of struggling community colleges and four-year institutions have turned to business leaders to try to steer them through budget problems,” Minis tells The Pitch. “And there are examples of that working out. It’s not always a bad idea. But Mark wasn’t really a businessman. He’s an ATF guy.”

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She goes on: “And Kathy didn’t have any higher-education experience, either. And I can’t speak for all the deans at MCC, but I can say that, for me, she inserted herself into parts of my job where there was no reason for her to be involved. And it became a detrimental thing. She created problems where there were none, and she was critical and intimidating, and she usually made things worse. And the perception was that she had Mark’s blessing to be doing all these things. And if she didn’t want Mark to hear your concerns, he didn’t hear them.”

In 2014, the American Association of University Professors — an organization that, according to its website, “defends academic freedom and tenure, advocates collegial governance, and develops policies ensuring due process” — conducted surveys of the MCC faculty and the faculty senate. A recurring theme is that Walter-Mack and James are dismissive of the long-held traditions of shared governance in higher education. Perhaps because of his background in law enforcement, James’ approach to MCC has been more top-down than a culture that typically exists at institutions of higher education. One anonymous piece of feedback, a comment made by a faculty senate member, makes the point this way:

“Our institution is being run by a lawyer with no HR training who heads HR and serves also as chief of staff to the chancellor. Any HR professional in the country would be shocked by this. The existence of HR departments in 2014 is universally considered to mean the existence of an independent office that manages personnel issues with protection for both the employees and the employer. At MCC, it has been used the last 10 years as a weapon against employees, with no regard whatever for knowledge of HR as a profession or for the reasons that HR is a profession.”

A real-life example of how such an arrangement can become problematic occurred recently at MCC. In 2014, shortly after Hasan Naima was appointed president of the MCC–Business & Technology campus at “Meteropolatin Community College,” as his LinkedIn profile spells it, complaints began to surface about his leadership. These included allegations of racist and homophobic statements, according to multiple MCC employees briefed on the matter.

Among Walter-Mack’s daily operations is advising campus presidents and making recommendations as to who should be appointed by the board as campus presidents. At the same time, as head of HR, she is also required to respond to and assess human resources complaints — and, in theory, to oversee background checks of prospective hires.

MCC declined to comment on the HR investigation into Haima. 

“We respect the privacy rights of our employees and do not comment on confidential personnel matters,” says Christina Medina, spokeswoman for MCC.

Regardless, a vote of no confidence was cast against Naima last month, after which he resigned. His position has not been filled.

Goodall, who preceded Naima as president of the Business & Technology Campus, says, “The issue there is that, for any MCC employee who has an issue or grievance about something happening on campus, there’s nobody to go to. There’s no system or protocol in place where you can feel confident that what you share is going to be private or even investigated at all. Because you’ll be seen by her [Walter-Mack] as a liability or a threat. And that’s a real cancer to an institution.”

MCC doesn’t think so.

“The obligations and responsibilities of any employee holding either of these positions is the same, there are no conflicting obligations,” Medina says, in an e-mail, of Walter-Mack’s dual positions. “Ms. Walter-Mack in her role as chief of staff has worked closely and daily with human resources. When the Associate Vice Chancellor [for Human Resources] position became vacant in 2013 Ms. Walter-Mack agreed to take on the duties without any change in compensation. This cost savings is enough to support the salary and benefits of at least one faculty member.”

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The 2014 AAUP surveys (previously mentioned) followed an identical set of surveys in 2009, prior to James’ appointment as chancellor. The results tell strikingly different stories about faculty morale before and after James took over. Among the faculty:

• In 2009, 18 percent of those surveyed characterized as false the statement that MCC “fosters shared governance by maintaining reasonable workloads, supporting faculty development of shared governance skills, and rewarding participation in governance work.” In 2014, 44 percent of respondents called that statement untrue.

• In 2009, 20 percent of faculty considered the relationship between faculty and the governing board uncooperative. In 2014, that number was 50 percent.

• In 2009, 16 percent of faculty respondents disagreed that the president, officers and board consulted the faculty in matters of shared concern. More than twice as many 2014 respondents — 35 percent — registered that complaint.

Among the faculty senators — those elected to deal directly with the chancellor and MCC officers — the results are starker.

• A full 60 percent of faculty senators in 2014 disagreed that negotiations and communications were “carried out in good faith and in an atmosphere of trust,” up from just 20 percent in 2009.

• Compared with the same question in 2009, more than three times as many faculty senators surveyed in 2014 said they weren’t given timely access to information necessary to give input into the governance process.

• Seven percent of faculty senators in 2009 responded “no” when asked, “Does the Board respect and support the faculty’s traditional role in institutional governance?” In 2014, 42 percent of faculty senators said “no.”

• In 2009, 10 percent of faculty senators said the chancellor — Jackie Snyder at the time — did not have “adequate academic as well as administrative credentials to serve as the chief academic officer of the district.” In 2014, several years after James took over from Snyder, 86 percent answered that the chancellor was inadequately credentialed.

• In answer to the question “Does the chancellor respect and support the faculty’s traditional role in institutional governance?”: In 2009, 19 percent said Snyder didn’t. In 2014, 72 percent said James didn’t.

If James and Walter-Mack have taken any action to remedy the sharp dips in morale among faculty revealed in the AAUP surveys, few have noticed.

Medina of MCC stresses that James inherited a difficult financial situation upon taking the reins of MCC in 2010, and has made tough decisions regarding retirement programs and insurance coverage that, while unpopular among faculty, have put the school back on stable footing.   

“In light of the severe fiscal belt-tightening required over the last several years, it is not unexpected that there would be some impact on morale,” Medina says in an e-mail. “The Chancellor has always taken the concerns of all employees very seriously. When faculty brought him concerns about the delivery of on-line classes, he listened and acted upon their input. When faculty brought him concerns about the process being utilized for the revision of the associate degree, he listened and acted upon their input. Most recently the restoration of professional development funds for faculty and converting over 35 faculty members to a permanent faculty track were the direct result of input from faculty. These are but a few examples.”

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Meanwhile, the brains continue to circle around the drain. Gone from MCC:

• Tuesday Stanley, vice chancellor of student development, enrollment management and administrative services (who worked at MCC 2006–2014)

• Lisa Minis, dean of students at MCC–Penn Valley (1989–2013)

• Tom Vansaghi, associate vice chancellor of college and community relations (2004–13)

• Juan Rangel, director of community engagement for the Institute for Workforce Innovation (2006–13)

• Shelli Allen, dean of student development at MCC–Maple Woods (2000–14)

• Jennifer Sacks Saab, project manager and interim director of enrollment services (2005–14)

• Steve Frommelt, director of accounting (2010–14)

• Mary Birkel, communications and public relations manager (2007–14)

• Kathy Hale, director of enrollment management (1991–2013)

A scan of MCC’s most current organizational chart reveals at least eight high-level vacancies at the college, including vice chancellor of student development and enrollment management, director of academic programs, director of accounting, director of budget and planning, and president of the Business & Technology Campus.

In December, Paul Long, an MCC employee for 21 years, either resigned or was removed by James from his position as vice chancellor of academic affairs and technology. According to multiple sources, Long was one of the last remaining members of the leadership team not installed by James and Walter-Mack.

This year, MCC is up for reaccreditation by the Higher Learning Commission, its governing body; the process occurs every 10 years. Some say Long’s exit may have been precipitated by his sounding alarm bells about the school potentially not hitting the marks with the HLC in terms of academic standards.

From the early-April emergency meeting notes: “To this day, no reason has been given for Paul’s removal, although it came on the heels of Paul explaining at Senate his concerns about HLC holes, such as in policies that he could not get past Kathy Walter-Mack, the diversity piece, and his growing inability to run the academic side of the house because of Kathy’s interference in his budget, in professional development, and in his communications with Mark.”

Long declined to comment. MCC declined to comment on the situation or on Long’s interim replacement.

Historically, the MCC board of trustees has been deferential to James’ recommendations; non-unanimous votes are rare. Having seen little evidence that its concerns about Walter-Mack are being communicated to the MCC board of trustees by James, the faculty is likely to vote in favor of sending a censure letter to the board sometime in May.

“He [James] tells us [faculty] that he’s protecting us from the board, but it’s clear to us that the board doesn’t really understand how big some of these problems are,” says a faculty member.

A faculty senator’s comment from the AAUP survey: “It is worth noting that many of our best and brightest are leaving MCC. Why? The response is usually they got an opportunity they can’t pass up, one they don’t have at MCC. However, if people were happy, they wouldn’t look elsewhere. We’ve never had the turnover that we now have, and the reason for that is the incredibly low morale and sense of futility that permeates MCC. Employees used to stay at MCC for life. Not anymore. The Board really needs to be thinking about employee resignations as a sign of an ailing institution.”

It’s possible that the board may have a different matter to attend to in the very near future. Just last week, Park University confirmed that James is a finalist for the presidency there.