‘Time is not our friend’: Board moved to cement Nemer as new University of Akron president

Weeks before his abrupt retirement in May, University of Akron leaders were already moving to limit President Gary Miller’s influence on the school.

Hours before Miller told members of the Board of Trustees in a May 1 email he had heard rumors that business school dean R.J. Nemer would be his replacement — speculation that came to pass just two weeks later — Miller received a message from another trustee, Michael Saxon. 

Miller would no longer be leading the budget process for the school, Saxon wrote. Instead, it would be the purview of Provost John Wiencek, who in April had emailed Saxon to express frustration with Miller’s leadership, asking the trustee to “kick this can” of the budget down the road to a new leader.

Wiencek got his wish. He, not Miller, would lead the budget process going forward. 

“Of course,” Miller responded less than 15 minutes after getting Saxon’s email. “Makes sense.”

Though he would have limited control over the coming year’s budget, trustees in a May 1 board meeting still approved Miller’s recommendation that the school take “all steps necessary” to reduce budget challenges in the coming years. The university’s $378 million in debt is larger than its $290 million endowment, and its expenditures are outpacing its revenues.  

In the 2023 fiscal year, the university had a $30 million deficit, which it covered by dipping into its reserves.

As Miller worked with university leaders regarding how to frame his exit, Wiencek moved forward to lay out a speedy process that would end with Nemer assuming the presidency, emails acquired by Signal Akron through a pair of public records requests show.

Click to view the timeline full size.

In a May 6 email, Wiencek said a meeting that night with faculty members “accomplished the key objective quite effectively.” The message, to Saxon, Board of Trustees Chair Lewis Adkins Jr. and Vice Chair Christine Amer Mayer, was labeled “URGENT – Challenges with timing at this point.” 

Through a spokesperson, both Wiencek and the board members declined to comment further for this story.

“By the end of the meeting, the three faculty (all AAUP members) were unanimous that we must move towards a permanent appointment of RJ and that the HOW we get there is an important step towards building some trust and backing for RJ among the faculty and staff,” Wiencek’s email said, referencing the American Association of University Professors, a union for faculty members.

The proposal Wiencek suggested included an open forum for Nemer to answer questions, then smaller meetings with constituent groups. After those meetings, the groups would relay lists of pros and cons about the candidate to the Board of Trustees in executive session; board members would vote publicly on whether to appoint Nemer to the role.

But Wiencek said the board needed to move quickly: “No matter what you decide, time is not our friend at this point. Faculty and student groups are leaving campus after Friday [May 10]. If we want to meaningfully engage them, then RJ’s ‘interview’ needs to be finished this week, preferably on Wednesday but not later than Friday. But we cannot do this step without telling people that Gary is leaving. Can that be done tomorrow? Wednesday? Definitely by Thursday or we will lose a lot of credibility with the students and the faculty.

“I understand that the Board is to convene again in Full Board meeting on Wednesday of next week [May 15] to confirm Gary’s buy out. That would be a good opportunity to also approve RJ’s appointment. This is a pipe dream perhaps, but we can do this …”

How we reported the story. 

When members of the University of Akron Board of Trustees voted May 15 to both accept the retirement of president Gary Miller and appoint the business school dean to replace him, the pair of quick votes were out of the ordinary for a university presidential changeover.

Signal Akron reported on Miller’s surprising exit and the speedy process to replace him, but reporter Arielle Kass still had questions. She requested Miller’s personnel file and information about any complaints against him as well as emails and texts to and from Miller, the provost and members of the Board of Trustees dating back to March. She also requested messages related to the sale of Miller’s home this spring. 

Arielle received more than 700 pages of documents in response to her public records requests. With them, she created a timeline of events to better understand how Miller came to leave the university and how his replacement, R.J. Nemer, was chosen. 

Wiencek went on to suggest the leaders “say that we have known the president’s intentions to retire for several weeks and have been busy identifying options for his successor and have opted to wait to [announce] for shared governance group input and a consensus on next steps.” 

He would serve as acting president for the days between Miller’s buyout taking effect and Nemer’s appointment, Wiencek suggested.

“I know this is aggressive, but it’s doable and will be our best chance at getting full campus involvement,” he wrote. “I urge you to get the deal done with Gary right away and lets move forward with this timeline.”

There was just one question board members had to consider: Would their new president be a permanent leader or an interim one?

Dix & Eaton, the public relations firm that consulted on the transition, had suggested Nemer be appointed as an interim president, according to emails. Mayer, the vice chair of the Board of Trustees, said the suggestion came so “the path forward not be rushed and devoid of buy-in” but noted that Wiencek’s conversations indicated faculty didn’t want an interim leader. 

Wiencek wrote that faculty “firmly believe the urgency requires a permanent president that is an Akronite and dedicated to this region and will stick around.” When he arrived in 2019, Miller was the fifth president of the university in five years; only one of his predecessors was an interim leader.

The next morning, on May 7, Wiencek pressed Adkins again: Should he schedule the interviews for Nemer?

“We really need to announce Gary’s departure asap in addition,” Wiencek wrote. “It would be good to know where that stands.”

New emails show behind-the-scenes efforts to put Nemer in new role

Wiencek told reporters May 15, after the presidential transition was made public, that he learned of Miller’s plans to retire May 1. He said a steering committee formed to choose a president quickly decided the new leader would come from a group of internal candidates and should be someone who had experience as an academic leader. 

That left five people in contention: Wiencek himself and the deans of the academic colleges. 

The provost said he took himself out of the running because he was too much of an introvert for the role. Nemer was the only candidate to apply.

His application materials were dated May 8 — the day after Wiencek pushed the board chair to schedule an interview with Nemer. They included a cover letter and a three-page resume listing his two University of Akron degrees; his memberships on a handful of company and volunteer boards; work experience ranging from a law firm, to a sports agency he founded, to a talent company, to a financial management firm and finally to the University of Akron deanship.

Personal interests listed on his resume included golf, international and domestic travel and cooking.

A summary at the top of his resume said he had “deep background” in strategy development, growth, turnarounds and startups. “Possesses highly developed innovative and critical thinking, transformational change strategies, and ability for cultivating relationships, fostering buy-in, and building consensus,” it read.

Nemer’s two-plus-page cover letter spelled out his career path while calling his role as dean of the business school “a ‘dream career capstone.’” The job, he said, had been “more than I could have ever dreamed.”

“I enthusiastically apply for the role of President at The University of Akron,” the cover letter began. As president, he wrote at the end, he would be “deeply committed” to “ushering in a new, refreshed, and energized perspective that will set us on track for the next sesquicentennial and beyond.”

A presidency ends; vetting begins

The day after Nemer sent his application, May 9, Miller received the details of the agreement that would bring his presidency to an end. 

He had 21 days to consider the “compromise settlement” of his contract extension but signed it the next day, May 10 — the first day of commencement ceremonies. The agreement keeps him on as an employee until Oct. 4, at a prorated portion of his salary. 

He’ll also be a special consultant to the university until February — Miller can be asked to assist Nemer and the board but will have no authority. The agreement includes a non-disparagement clause for both Miller and the trustees.

Miller will also be paid $130,000 in deferred compensation and receive the $40,000 he would be owed this fall for his retirement.

As part of the agreement, Miller was required to preside over commencement. In a series of four commencement speeches between May 10 and 11, he lauded the graduates, giving them 10 pieces of advice. They began with a call for empathy, which Miller told graduates was “the most powerful tool you have.”

He went on to say that despite what the graduates may have heard elsewhere, there is such a thing as truth.

“As an educated person, it’s your obligation to seek it,” he said. “As an educated person, it’s your obligation to speak it.”

During the commencement ceremonies, he made no mention of his pending departure, though he said many members of the 233rd graduating class started at Akron about the same time he did, “so we’ve all been here a similar period of time.” 

Miller could not be reached for comment about his exit. 

Groups gather to interview Nemer

The same day Miller signed the agreement, May 10, the push to hire Nemer kicked into high gear. 

About an hour before commencement ceremonies began, Wiencek laid out the plan: At a board committee meeting beginning at 7 a.m. May 13, the same day Miller’s presidency ended, constituent groups would gather to vet the new candidate. 

Undergraduate and graduate students; faculty members, including those representing the union and other shared governance groups; professional staff and other staff employees; department chairs; and deans would each get to ask Nemer a question when the parties were all together. 

Separately, the groups would each have between 30 minutes and two hours with Nemer to hear his vision for the university. Wiencek suggested board members might “reflect on the challenging tasks ahead of us” to set the tone for “things that we MUST do for the best interests of our great university even though it might [not] be what [we] would want to do under better circumstances.”

He also suggested that if the initial question-asking session went long, trustees let it — “this is an important meeting for gaining a cohesive university going into a budget challenge,” he wrote.

After the meetings, which were scheduled to go until 2:45 p.m. that day, leaders of each group would have until 5 p.m. the next day to provide their written feedback.

The day after Wiencek emailed trustees with his proposal, May 11, Nemer spoke during the final commencement ceremony of the day, conferring degrees on business school graduates. 

He quoted the song “Defying Gravity” from the musical “Wicked” and told students they shouldn’t allow anyone else’s vision of them to lower their own expectations for themselves.

“You all have limitless potential,” Nemer told the soon-to-be graduates.

Coming Wednesday: Faculty criticize the process that went into selecting R.J. Nemer as the next president of the University of Akron.