UH ready for head warrior, peacekeeper Dobelle

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

The man known for the middle-of-the-night phone call starts this week at the University of Hawai'i, a school system with so many problems that some say it may take 24-hours-a-day to address its needs.

Evan Dobelle is known as a hard worker with political savvy. Advertiser library photo • March 13, 2001

With an annual salary of $442,000 and a home at the president's residence at College Hill in Manoa, Dobelle will become the most richly compensated UH president in history and the highest-paid official at the university.

Known for his enthusiasm, nonstop work pace and national Democratic Party connections, Dobelle has been quietly meeting with Hawai'i politicians for months.

Before leaving Trinity, the school gave Sen. Daniel Inouye an honorary degree, a move many considered as evidence of Dobelle's political smarts. Dobelle also sent two colleagues to evaluate UH and advise him on its needs. Linda Campanella, senior vice president for operations and planning and chief operating officer at Trinity University, looked at UH's organization. Peter Goldstein, vice chancellor of finance and administration for the San Francisco College District, examined university finances.

In addition to the administrative needs, Dobelle will face the challenge of working within Hawai'i's slow-paced lifestyle. University officials and others will likely be surprised when they go into work and find that Dobelle has left a message in the wee hours of the morning — sometimes from another part of the globe.

"Evan is a fast-moving and very intense person," said Dan Loyd, a philosophy professor at Trinity College. "His signature is the middle-of-the-night phone call. He gets around to returning calls at 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. — not at your home to wake you up, but on your office voice mail. He responds to anything you do, usually on the phone. That's distinctive."

While he said won't announce his plans for the university until a July 18 public speech, Dobelle already carries a huge weight of expectations for the school's financial and psychological turnaround.

But after years of problems accumulating, the idea of a quick fix for UH is unrealistic to many on campus. Victor Kobayashi, dean of the Outreach College at Manoa, said people may be expecting too much, too soon, from one person.

"We're setting ourselves up for disappointment," he said.

Rep. Roy Takumi, D-26th (Pearl City, Waipahu), chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, said the popularity of high-ranking university officials can swing wildly and depend on things as varied as the latest research success or the last football season.

"If Dobelle can't bring in the funding and resources and ideas he says he can, people will be scratching their heads," Takumi said.

Evan Dobelle, who steps in as UH president tomorrow, did his homework by visiting the college campuses during a trip earlier this year. Advertiser library photo • March 13, 2001

"It's been so long since UH has had a good president," said Jim Dator, director of the Center for Future Studies at Manoa. "That's why the faculty is embracing Dobelle so much. He talks and acts like a president. He will act quickly. Heads will roll, starting administratively. Faculty will cheer it until their dean who they like gets cut down."

J.N. Musto, executive director of the UH faculty union, noted that when Kenneth Mortimer arrived at UH in 1993 to assume the presidency, Mortimer told people that all of his ideas on higher-education management were published and available for viewing. Dobelle is more of a mystery to professors, though. He says he is not an academic, and does not have the traditional publishing history of college administrators.

"If Mortimer started off saying, 'I have no unpublished thoughts,' Dobelle is the opposite," Musto said. "He has no published thoughts."

Some clues about his plans for UH rest in his previous jobs leading universities, though.

When he arrived at Trinity in 1995, Dobelle's job was to boost applications, increase the school's endowment and improve relations with the surrounding neighborhood. But it was his leadership in the $250 million, publicly financed neighborhood redevelopmentthat attracted the most attention. The project, known as the Learning Corridor, includes four new public schools, a boys and girls club, a center for family services and an effort at housing renovation.

Hartford City Manager Saundra Kee Borges said she expects Dobelle to ease into UH before announcing changes.

"I wouldn't say that he jumped in right away (at Trinity)," she said. "It was the politician in him that sat back. He took it slow at first. He found out: Who are the players? He spent a lot of time going through introductions. When you have someone new there's a lot of distrust. I would say that it took quite a while to nurture relationships."

Still, Dobelle is efficient, Borges said.

"He works quickly. He's not one to waste resources meeting with the wrong people. He really just took it slow and formed the relationships, the bond, to get people to trust him."

The Hartford community was at first suspicious of Dobelle's intentions, Borges said. The elite, private school had traditionally walled itself off from the rest of the city. Previous talks about the university helping improve its neighborhood had never materialized.

"The experience we had had was that they wanted to close up the campus and keep everyone out," Borges said. "People weren't sure at first what to think. The wondered, why are they changing their attitude?"

If at Trinity Dobelle met with nothing but success, his time at City College of San Francisco was more of a struggle. He arrived there to find a campus near bankruptcy, barely hanging onto its accreditation and with dismal morale.

While Dobelle left the college with a $5 million surplus by the time he went to Trinity and won kudos for cutting nearly half of the administrative positions, he was criticized by some for not improving student services and becoming enmeshed in college politics. About $2 million of a new sales tax for the college that was heralded as a benefit to students went to a bonus for employees.

Phil Day, current chancellor of City College of San Francisco, said he left the college a much better and efficient place, though. Day first met Dobelle when they were both community college presidents in Massachusetts. There, Dobelle was able to secure the money for a new campus for Middlesex Community College, Day said.

"Nobody could line up that level of support," Day said. "Evan came in and got it done in the first year. He knew how to play the game."

Dobelle faces a myriad of challenges at UH beginning with the budget. The amount of money that the system received from the state has declined in the past decade, from 13-14 percent of the state budget to about 9 percent today. Enrollment systemwide has declined since the mid 1990s. And competition for students — and the financial resources that come with a healthy student body — has pitted UH campuses against each other.

Faculty and staff morale has nearly bottomed out. While things seemed brighter at the beginning of the legislative session, professors struck for 13 days in April to receive their first pay raise since 1998 in the nation's first shutdown of a state college system. Professors expressed outrage at the lack of support they felt from their own administration.

Indeed, while Goldstein, the San Francisco City College administrator who looked at UH's financial picture for Dobelle, said he was pleased to meet so many hard-working, dedicated people at Bachman Hall, he was startled and "disappointed by the lack of evidence of leadership."

A 1999 accreditation report for the Manoa campus sharply criticized communication, Western Association of Schools and Colleges renewed the university's accreditation but blasted its communications, planning, administration and governance.

"We've been operating underground for so many years," said UH Outreach College's Kobayashi.

"In some ways, it's like a developing country."

Jennifer Hiller can be reached at 525-8084 or by e-mail at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.