Ewu President Leaves Early Drummond Quits Under Pressure; Provost Steps In

Eastern Washington University President Marshall Drummond resigned Tuesday to clear the way for new leadership, a new mission and a new image for the school and its 6,900 students.

Drummond, who had agreed to step down June 30 from the university’s top post, sped up his departure by four months.

“Recent events have shown that it would be in the best interest of the university if strong leadership were provided by one individual through the coming spring and summer months,” Drummond said in a statement.

For now, that leader will be Provost Niel Zimmerman. He was promoted to acting president of the Cheney-based school.

EWU’s board of trustees will continue to search for a permanent president, whom they hope to hire by June. Zimmerman, a former professor of government, said he is not a candidate.

“This gives us a chance to show what Eastern can do,” James Kirschbaum, chairman of EWU’s board of trustees, said while announcing the change to the faculty. “I hope this will allow us to put this all behind us so we can move forward.”

Drummond, 56, could not be reached for comment.

Kirschbaum said Drummond told him on Saturday that he was planning to resign.

That decision came one day after the state Higher Education Coordinating Board recommended pushing EWU back to Cheney and granting Washington State University authority over higher education programs in Spokane for juniors, seniors and graduate students.

Drummond’s announcement came hours before Eastern’s faculty senate was scheduled to consider censuring the president for an unusual promotion of certain teachers. The board also had planned to discuss today whether Drummond’s presence was a drag on the university’s public image.

“It’s a start,” chemistry professor Jeffrey Corkill said in reaction to Drummond’s decision. “But there’s still a lot of dead wood in the forest.”

Edmund Yarwood, dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, said that employees, students and citizens will rally around a new president.

“To have a president stay during this time would have been very difficult,” Yarwood said. “This was a very magnanimous gesture on (Drummond’s) part.

Drummond, who lives in Spokane, will lose his monthly $2,500 housing allowance and has the option of returning as a professor in fall 1999. He will receive $110,000 for one year of professional leave and another $110,000 lump sum bonus whenever he chooses to leave the university.

“This makes a clean break from the past,” Zimmerman said. “We can focus on what the HEC Board wants us to do.”

Drummond became the 25th president in 1990 after rising through the ranks of Eastern’s administration. During his reign, Eastern expanded its library, added student housing for families, raised millions for its endowment, designated the campus a National Historic District and moved the business school to the Riverpoint Higher Education Park in downtown Spokane.

Student enrollment peaked in 1994, but slid by 800 students during the next three years when Drummond and the board executed some poorly timed decisions.

Eastern cut recruiters and raised graduation requirements just as other Washington schools and online universities began raiding Eastern Washington students. WSU lured students to its new Tri-Cities campus and low unemployment kept others in the workplace.

Eastern’s decline shook the campus as the university entered into an agreement last year with state lawmakers to recover the lost enrollment. In addition to beefing up its recruitment team, Eastern is under orders to trim 100 of its 420 full-time faculty positions by 1999 unless enrollment rebounds.

Eastern faculty grew suspicious of Drummond and the board when he was rewarded an executive bonus as part of his resignation, which he announced in June of last year.

Suspicion mounted in December when Drummond tapped a seldom-used power to promote four teachers, including one personal friend, without requiring them to go through an exhaustive peer review process, which every other professor had done.

“If this becomes a precedent, we will end up with a two-tiered faculty: those who were promoted (by the president) and those who earned it,” said Sandra Christensen, president of the Faculty Senate.

Upon hearing of Drummond’s resignation, the senate tabled a motion Tuesday to censure him for misconduct.

Last week, the HEC Board, a statewide policy-making panel, ordered Eastern to conduct a full review of its mission and future enrollment targets by Sept. 1. The university also must show why it should offer programs, with the exception of health science, in Spokane.

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