Doing the PSU Shake

[May 26th, 2004] In the small world of Portland State University, it was as if Alan Greenspan and Colin Powell had quit on the same day. On May 17, PSU announced the resignations of vice president Jay Kenton, the finance czar called the "resident genius" behind the school's rapid growth, and Provost Mary Kay Tetreault, its controversial academic chief.

The twin departures--PSU officials call them coincidental--leave the school with holes at its two most influential jobs outside the presidency.

Kenton has been the rainmaker behind Portland State's dramatic efforts to expand eastward--and remake a significant chunk of downtown--and south into the big-ticket North Macadam riverside development. In early May, in fact, Kenton unveiled no fewer than 14 planned building projects. Kenton is credited with fueling the aggressive construction agenda, which relies on a complex mixture of public and private funding and alliances.

"Jay will be an enormous loss," says Abe Farkas of the Portland Development Commission, which is teaming with Portland State to build a dense mixed-use complex just east of campus. "He has an uncanny knack for working with a broad cross section of people and organizations, and he's highly entrepreneurial. Keeping the momentum he's generated will be crucial."

Kenton is heading east to become the finance VP at the University of Idaho in Moscow, where he inherits an unholy mess left behind by an ill-fated scheme to build a branch campus in downtown Boise. The project's financial implosion took down UI's president, as well as Kenton's predecessor, last year.

"The [Idaho] faculty has lost faith in the administration," he says, "and that will take years to rebuild. But there is really nowhere to go for that school but up."

Tetreault, known for tightening PSU's tenure process and bolstering its research credentials, is taking a year off to write a book. Her relationship with the faculty has been tense from early on. Recently, she clashed with the faculty senate over procedural matters--a sign, some say, that profs had lost patience with their boss--and she reportedly butted heads with Kenton as well.

The shake-up will be a key test for President Dan Bernstine, usually viewed as a low-key leader despite significant fundraising successes in his seven-year tenure.

"Portland State is evolving very rapidly internally," says one longtime observer of the downtown school, where enrollment is growing roughly three times faster than at University of Oregon and Oregon State. "The state board is in flux, and Oregon and Oregon State both have very competent presidents. You have to guard your flanks."

Challenges also await Kenton and Tetreault's successors, who will be chosen in an unusual dual search led by PSU library director Tom Pfingsten, a respected veteran headed for retirement himself.

The provost's office must guide the school through re-accreditation next fall, and Bernstine has tapped Michael Reardon, provost before Tetreault's 1999 arrival, to handle the job during the search. Cathy Dyck, a Kenton deputy, will run Portland State's finances during the search.

Bernstine, as usual, focuses on the positive, framing the departures as a rare team-building opportunity for the school.

"We're looking for two different kinds of people, obviously," says Bernstine. "But they have to complement each other."