- File: Molly Walsh ©️ Seven Days
- University of Vermont president Suresh Garimella
University of Vermont president Suresh Garimella has been hired as president at the University of Arizona, the Tucson-based school’s board of regents announced on Friday.
He's expected to start later this fall, according to the school. Cecilia Mata, chair of the Arizona Board of Regents, described Garimella as a valuable addition to the university and to the state.
“First and foremost, Dr. Garimella is student-focused and considers himself a faculty member,” Mata said on Friday during a board meeting that was streamed online. She also translated her remarks into Spanish. “Beyond his nearly 30-year career in higher education, Suresh is engaging, a great listener and a collaborative leader,” Mata said.
When he was hired as UVM’s 27th president in 2019, Garimella immediately set about working to raise the university's profile as a major research institution. His stated goal was to see the school attain R1 status, a classification based on the amount of money that universities spend on research and development. UVM’s Office of Research budget has grown 23 percent during Garimella's tenure, according to school officials.
That mission will continue, said Ron Lumbra, chair of UVM’s Board of Trustees.
“We’re not interested in taking a step back from all the momentum we’ve built around our research mission," Lumbra said in an interview on Friday. "That will inevitably be a core part of what we look for in a president."
“We’re not interested in taking a step back from all the momentum we’ve built around our research mission," Lumbra said in an interview on Friday. "That will inevitably be a core part of what we look for in a president."
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College presidents generally spend five to six years in the top job, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. So the news of his departure “is not a total surprise,” said Phil Baruth, a UVM English professor and Burlington resident who also serves as Senate president pro tempore in the Vermont legislature.
Like others among the faculty and staff, Baruth said he hoped that the process for choosing the next president will be more collaborative than the one used to hire Garimella. At that time, the UVM Board of Trustees brought only one candidate, Garimella, to campus to meet with stakeholders.
“That was a break with tradition,” Baruth said on Friday, noting that in the past, a few finalists would be invited to forums where students, faculty and staff could ask them questions.“President Garimella turned out to be just a fine president, and I have no quarrel with anything he has done,” Baruth said. “But with that said, when we move through the next process, it would be my hope that the trustees would green-light a more inclusive interview sequence once the candidates are down to three.”
That’s not going to happen, Lumbra said Friday. He said candidates will avoid a job opportunity that requires a public interview process because they prefer not to reveal their search to their current employers. That’s why the Arizona Board of Regents waited to reveal Garimella’s name until they had decided to offer him the job, Lumbra said.
“There wasn’t this, ‘Show us your top four finalists and we’ll pick one of them,’” Lumbra said. “The market won’t tolerate it. That’s common sense.”
Lumbra expects the search for a new president to take six to eight months, though he noted that the process seems to have accelerated in the five years since UVM last went through it.
Arizona’s Board of Regents formed a search committee in the beginning of June, just nine weeks before choosing Garimella, Lumbra said.
“I’m surprised Arizona moved so quickly,” he said. “We could learn a lot about the need for agility so that when the right person emerges, you can go after them.”
Garimella’s leadership style often provoked complaints that he was running UVM like a corporation. As an example, Ellen Kaye, copresident of UVM Staff United, pointed to the recent, abrupt termination of several people who worked in the Center for Health & Wellbeing.
“There wasn’t this, ‘Show us your top four finalists and we’ll pick one of them,’” Lumbra said. “The market won’t tolerate it. That’s common sense.”
Lumbra expects the search for a new president to take six to eight months, though he noted that the process seems to have accelerated in the five years since UVM last went through it.
Arizona’s Board of Regents formed a search committee in the beginning of June, just nine weeks before choosing Garimella, Lumbra said.
“I’m surprised Arizona moved so quickly,” he said. “We could learn a lot about the need for agility so that when the right person emerges, you can go after them.”
Garimella’s leadership style often provoked complaints that he was running UVM like a corporation. As an example, Ellen Kaye, copresident of UVM Staff United, pointed to the recent, abrupt termination of several people who worked in the Center for Health & Wellbeing.
Under Garimella, staff are "considered dispensable, replaceable, and our institutional knowledge doesn’t matter,” Kaye said. “That is a hallmark of this administration.”
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"We are the feet on the ground, the people who are frontline doing the daily work, and we know exactly what is needed," Kaye said. "I would like to see kindness and humanity restored to UVM in its next president and next administration."
Professor Paul Bierman, a geologist, welcomed the news, saying Garimella’s push for the prestige of R1 status and his top-down leadership style had damaged faculty and staff morale.
“I don’t want to be impolite or improper; the man has obviously dedicated a lot of time here, but we’re the University of Vermont, not the University of Arizona,” Bierman said. “I hope we can go back to serving the state of Vermont and living within our bounds.”
He noted that staff and graduate students had been working to form collective bargaining units for several years and accomplished that goal under Garimella’s leadership. Faculty had formed a union before his arrival.
"One of Garimella’s lasting legacies is going to be now that almost the entire UVM campus is unionized,” Bierman said.
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