President Davenport to retire after 19 years
Chancellor Malhotra to begin search for replacement during fall |
Maxwell Mayleben ® Editor in Chief |
MNSU president Richard Davenport announced that he will be retiring from his position after the 2020-21 academic school year.
President Davenport decided to move on from his role as president after what will be 19 years of service as the 12th president of the university on Aug. 14, 2020. Dr. Davenport will tie with Dr. Clarence L. Crawford as the second longest running president in University history, behind Charles H. Cooper, who was presided over the university for 32 years.
Dr. Davenport was appointed president on February 22nd, 2002, and officially took over the role in June of the same year. The MnSCU Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve his appointment. Since then, he has worked with the vision of being a place where people can expect to “go further than they thought possible”.
The University’s current mission statement under Dr. Davenport is “Minnesota State University, Mankato promotes learning through effective undergraduate and graduate teaching, scholarship, and research in service to the state, the region and the global community.”
Before his time as an administrator at MNSU, he received multiple degrees, including a Bachelor of Arts in speech and hearing disorders, a Master of Science degree in speech and hearing science, and a doctoral degree of philosophy in Higher Education Administration.
In his letter, announcing his retirement, Dr. Davenport stated his appreciation for the students and the campus community, saying “We have pulled together and shown our perseverance, creativity, adaptability and our Maverick Family Spirit.”
Chancellor Devinder Malhotra announced in a letter sent to students and staff that a search will begin early in the fall to find a replacement president. Before the search begins, Chancellor Malhotra is set to visit the MNSU campus to talk to students, faculty and the campus community about their future aspirations for the University.
The Chancellor seeks to make the search for the new president a group effort, creating a search advisory committee, with President Robbyn Wacker from St. Cloud State University as the chair. “I will also be asking for your help and partnership during the search process” says the Chancellor in his letter to the campus community, “We need to be in recruiting mode over the months ahead to have a strong pool of candidates”.
While it is his last year as president of MNSU, Dr. Davenport has a full plate to deal with in regard to COVID-19. “We will continue to meet the challenges this global pandemic brings to us.” said the president in his announcement letter.
It would be interesting to see if his dissertation for his Ph D in Education Administration reads as poorly as the MSU Education Department web page. Check out Richard Mitchell’s book, Less Than Words Can Say, if you want to see the quality of writing in Education departments around the country, or, go to the MSU Library, and check out the Ph D dissertations and Master’s thesis in Education in the basement.
The mediocrity of writing in education departments in American universities is well known in academia, and it could explain the sloppy thought behind the witch hunt against the football coach five years ago. At any rate, see if you can get a copy of Doctor Davenport’s dissertation and spend an evening having a good laugh. Some of the dissertations in the library will have twenty pages of convoluted gobbledygook writing with eighty pages of footnotes. Surely, these university presidents are well worth their high salaries while talented adjunct faculty walk around with no health care in the land of multicultural opportunity. Don’t let the door slam on your way out.