Ahlburg’s negative CU-Boulder review surfaces

Evaluation reflects the uneasy culture at CU-Boulder, not Ahlburg, according to Aarons

by Samantha Bos

Dennis Ahlburg, president of the university, received poor ratings in an evaluation of his first two years as dean at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

When the Presidential Search Committee was reviewing Ahlburg as a possible presidential candidate, it received an anonymous letter containing a review of Ahlburg’s time at Leeds School, which contained a survey conducted by the faculty at Boulder. The review, which can be found on CU-Boulder’s website, proved to be highly critical of Ahlburg’s ability to interact with other staff members and to effectively lead as a dean.

But the committee felt that the evaluation did not accurately reflect Ahlburg’s abilities to lead Trinity.

“My feeling, and this is a feeling from not only talking to him, but also my own knowledge of Boulder and some of the faculty there and some of the issues there, is that (the evaluation) was a very politically-charged thing,” said Victoria Aarons, professor and department chair of English and member of the Presidential Search Committee.

“There was a lot of disgruntlement that had nothing to do with him. My sense of it is that those responses about Dennis Ahlburg are far more revealing about the uneasy culture at Boulder.”

Penelope Harley, Ahlburg’s wife, also received a copy of the evaluation sent anonymously through the mail, which was marked “personal.” Currently, Trinity University Police Department is conducting an investigation regarding members of the faculty receiving anonymous letters, but TUPD does not believe the letters received by faculty members were sent by the same person.

Last fall, the Trinitonian also received an anonymous letter containing the evaluation of Ahlburg.

But according to Ahlburg, the review reflected the negative opinions of certain faculty members without taking into consideration the opinions of the majority of the faculty members or his role as an external dean sent in to fix the school’s problems.

“The problem that I had was that my job was 70 percent external, and none of the questions on the evaluation asked about what I do externally – raising money,” Ahlburg said. “We built a $38 million building and we raised the private part of the money, which was over half. The majority (of faculty) was positive, but the people who were writing the review chose to focus on the minority of people who didn’t like what I was doing.”

Upon entering Leeds School, there was a $1 million deficit at the Business School that Ahlburg was sent in to fix. Upon reviewing the budget, Ahlburg suggested that over $1 million spent on specific professor research could be recalculated and perhaps reduced to help with the budget deficit. Along with helping to fix the budget of the school, Ahlburg was sent in to help raise money to create a new building on campus.

John Hurd, chair of the Presidential Search Committee and member of the Trinity board of trustees, visited Leeds School along with David Ribble, professor and chair of biology.

“What the board does speaks for itself,” Hurd said. “The board of trustees did not give that evaluation much weight.”

When asked if the evaluation has changed how he plans to lead Trinity or if he has learned anything from the evaluation, Ahlburg said he has learned a lot about himself and the way to direct a university from his time at Leeds School.

“You have to find the pace at which an institution is going to change, and then you try to push it a bit, but if you push it too much, it may not work,” Ahlburg said. “What I learned, what I came here with is that the pace that I want to achieve things may be faster than the pace at which the institution wants to change. We have to work together.”