Did she or didn't she?
That's what students, professors, administrators and some local educators are asking themselves as rumors swirl about UTB-TSC President Juliet Garcia's reported application for the presidency of Trinity University in San Antonio.
The prestigious private university made its selection in September, but some reports indicate that among the 100 candidates, 39 percent of which are women or minority applicants, was one Juliet V. Garcia, the current president at the hybrid UTB-TSC.
"I heard about that over the weekend," said a high-ranking administrator at the university, "but I've not been able to confirm it."
Most trustees we asked were in the dark concerning her possible application to serve as Trinity University's 18th president. Many thought that if she had applied for the job, it would have been simple professional courtesy for her to confide the fact to them, even if it was in private.
None of the trustees we asked would venture to comment about the issue.
In the end, the Trinity University’s Board of Trustees elected Dennis A. Ahlburg, Ph.D. Ahlburg is currently the dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and will assume the presidency Jan. 1, 2010.
Still, sources from as far away as west Texas and the Alamo City report that Garcia was among the candidates that merited a second look by the Trinity University search committee.
The committee selected a small number of candidates for face-to-face interviews. These interviews were designed to determine which candidate’s "skill set most closely matches the University’s needs and strategic direction." After the first round of interviews, Garcia was among the reduced number reportedly invited for a second interview.
If that was the case, even Garcia's selection by TIME Magazine as one Ten Best College Presidents of 2009 came a little too late to make a difference.
Garcia, who was the first female Hispanic president of a college or university in the U.S., was ninth on the list, sharing the plaudits with traditional academic and athletic powerhouses such as the University of Michigan and the University of Ohio.
However, the search committee might have been aware that under Garcia's watch, UTB-TSC recoiled from the scandal of massive "gross academic fraud" involving stolen tests and answers by students and staff. A police investigation found student employees and regular staff used their positions to steal test answers and sell them to students.
The search committee members might have also been aware that Garcia rode shotgun over the formation of the so-called "partnership" between the University of Texas University System and the Texas Junior Southmost College District where the resources of one of the most poverty-ridden areas of the country subsidized massive construction projects under the name of the UT system.
And the members of the committee might have also learned that she agreed that as part of the conditions to that "partnership" that poor little UTB-TSC would refrain from asking for money from the state's Permanent University Fund (gas and oil) in return for the prestige of placing UTB plaques on local taxpayer-funded structures.
Come to think of it, perhaps we'd have been better off if St. Juliet had been selected and our taxes would stop being the object of her largess to the UT System.
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