Note: this editorial was published in the May 3, 2020 edition of the Toledo Blade.
President Sharon Gaber has resigned, and the University of Toledo is again without a president. Why can’t we get and keep a good president? That seems to be the self-flagellating question circulating around the campus and the city at the moment.
Ms. Gaber’s fans will say she was a good administrator.
Her critics will say, perhaps so, but she was not a particularly creative or courageous leader.
Both things could be true.
Others will focus on whether her new job was too good to refuse or an escape; a step up or lateral. (It seems to be a step up but a small one.)
But Ms. Gaber is gone, no matter how one assesses her tenure. The question is: How does UT move forward and by doing so move Toledo forward?
The first thing that must happen is that the UT board of trustees must be challenged, for the board remains in place, and its record in recent years is not one of dynamic or careful leadership.
Does the board have a vision for the future of the university?
Does it have a vision, or a 5 or 10-year plan, for the medical college?
The board’s first duty is to recommit to the future of the medical college and stabilize the university hospital. The hospital and the UTMC campus have been depopulated, and the hospital is now for sale.
The trustees should reverse course, cancel the proposed sale, and make a plan for the hospital. It would be an act of the utmost irresponsibility, and ultimately of self-destruction, for the university as whole, to throw away an academic hospital. UT is one of only two public universities in Ohio that has this precious asset. Ohio State University is the other.
And it is a precious asset to have a teaching hospital attached to your medical school. Think of George Washington in Washington or Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
The University of Connecticut infused its teaching hospital, only an hour from all of New Haven’s outstanding hospitals, with new buildings, equipment, and faculty a few years ago. It did not close it or sell it or pluck it dry.
Yes, ProMedica is a great organization that has done much for Toledo. But it does not run an academic hospital.
The hospital must be revivified and to a certain extent re-created. Can it affiliate with another research institution? Can it make service to veterans its focus?
The UT board must not only lead but think.
A step toward both would be to form a separate board to oversee the medical college. It should be made up of individuals who know medicine and medical science, as well as health-care economics. These people exist in northwest Ohio and most would be willing to serve.
This UT board’s first task should be to make a plan to save the UTMC hospital and, thus, assure the future of the medical school.