If the Northeastern faculty have their way, the next university president will be an energetic fund raiser with good external relations. That person will be regarded as an intellectual who respects shared governance and focuses on improving academics. But Presidential Search Committee Chairman George Chamillard said that’s a tall order.

“At some point we have to say, ‘I’ve heard this and this and this, but it’s probably a Renaissance person who could do all that,'” Chamillard said. “You have to make trade-offs.”

Faculty members weighed in on what they consider those trade-offs to be in a series of forums during the final weeks of the fall semester. The Presidential Search Committee joined the faculty senate for their final meeting of the semester, and faculty also dominated attendance at an all-community forum the same week. Although individual priorities varied, some themes arose consistently.

Most faculty seem to agree Northeastern needs more resources. Although the senate discussion began on the topic of increased funding for academics and classrooms, it quickly shifted to increased funding in general.

“All this talk about allocation of resources is meaningless without any resources,” said Bob Futrelle, associate professor in the College of Computer and Information Science. “We can run our shop here if the president can go out there and build our endowment.”

The size of Northeastern’s endowment was an important topic at the all-community forum as well. David Ford, senior major gifts officer, spoke about the need for increasing alumni involvement, and said, “Judging from the size of the alumni base relative to the size of the endowment – something’s wrong.”

However, in contrast to this point of view, some members of the faculty said the new president’s emphasis should be on immediately channeling more funds toward academics, then focusing on growing the endowment through external fund raising.

“I think that takes too long,” said Dennis Cokely, chair of the modern languages department. Cokely said students don’t have functioning labs to work in, and channeling funds to academics should be expedited.

“We have to have some way to make sure our students aren’t getting a second-rate education while they’re paying a first-rate tuition,” he said.

Gerry Herman, associate professor of history, agreed with Cokely’s emphasis on students. Herman is also the director of interdisciplinary studies. He said in his interactions with students, particularly within interdisciplinary studies, he often finds that he cannot help students as much as he would like because the university lacks the adequate resources.

“We all feel like we’re operating on the edge,” Herman said. “There’s no flexibility at all to do that extra thing you want to do for students. You constantly have to worry about robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

While much of the discussion about Northeastern’s future president has centered on fund raising and external relations, the conversation at the senate meeting also turned to internal management style. Senators emphasized that Northeastern has a tradition of shared governance, and said that the new president should respect such standards.

“My sense is that goals are moot unless we talk first about style,” said English professor Stuart Peterfreund. He said there had previously been tension between teaching faculty and the trustees, which he said stemmed from a lack of revenue being allocated to academics. “We’re only just now reaching a good feeling between the academic side of the house and the trustees, and that’s because we have a courageous provost who has told our story.”

Toward the end of the discussion, a member of the search committee asked the senate to identify the criteria they will use to judge whether a president has done well 10 years down the road.

Herman said he believed success would come from being able to help all students achieve their goals, without being limited by a lack of funds or flexibility.

We will be successful, he said, “If we reach a point where we can say to every student, ‘You can realize your dreams … and if students leave feeling their money was well spent.”