Then & Now: After a rocky start, nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina
Then: This column originally ran Oct. 23, 1996, in the Tribune.
Lee and Deanna Vickers, after more than two years in northeastern South Carolina, are professionally established and personally settled.
Lee Vickers seems to be firmly at the helm as president of 3,800 enrollment Francis Marion University, a 25-year-old state-supported college nine miles outside the city of Florence. He has weathered lingering discontent with some faculty, taking firmer control than a predecessor president and exerting more direction and leadership. Goals are more defined; communication is more intact.
Deanna Vickers has led renovation of a 72-year-old president’s residence, become involved in university and community life and is this week assuming a new role — as a first-time grandmother.
That’s the summary update on the two who left the West after 23 years at Lewiston’s Lewis-Clark State College, departing in July 1994. Vickers was president for 16 years, taking LCSC from unsettled football status to a defined and more secure role in Idaho higher education.
Some Vickers update:
His hands-on leadership seeks to increase creativity and innovation, as at LCSC. The academic mix at FMU is similar to LCSC, but it has graduate programs in business, education and psychology. It is a more traditional student body than at LCSC, having 1,200 students living on campus in residence halls and apartments, with another 2,600 commuting.
Vickers recently secured a building in downtown Florence. He will establish a presence in the city by having morning and night classes and increase access for non-traditional students. As done at LCSC, he is forming a partnership with industry by offering on-site courses throughout the region. Florence, a growing city of more than 40,000, includes General Electric and DuPont plants and a pharmaceutical research facility that is the largest in the country. Medical care is the leading industry, including two medical centers and a new $100 million hospital under construction.
Vickers established an English Language Institute, as at LCSC. He plans to increase out-of-state and international student count. He is making FMU a major contributor to the region’s culture and arts, inheriting a strong theater curriculum and vastly increasing its music program.
He has urged reform of public school education and is sharing FMU resources to help poor rural school districts. Vickers found an economic disparity in South Carolina between haves and have nots that is not commonly found in the Northwest.
Today, 92 percent of FMU’s students are from South Carolina and most are from the 10-county Pee Dee region (named for the Pee Dee River). Minorities comprise 28 percent of the student body.
In contrast to Idaho’s mix of three state universities and one college, plus two private colleges, South Carolina has 33 institutions of higher education. FMU has its own 18-member board of trustees, one member appointed by the governor and the other 17 elected by South Carolina’s state Legislature. Trustees run for office, lobbying legislators for their votes. They meet three times a year. A statewide Commission on Higher Education oversees and approves program development.
Vickers sees “tremendous potential” at the school. It is young, one-quarter of the age of LCSC. It is in a wooded former Old South plantation on 310 acres. “From sheer beauty, it’s one of the prettiest campuses I have ever seen,” Vickers said.
Vickers did not have a one-year honeymoon period, customarily the circumstance for new university presidents.
Almost immediately, his style clashed with a strong union chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
Two issues surfaced: The new Vickers administration, backed by its trustees, introduced post-tenure review of faculty effectiveness and classroom observation of campus teaching. Some faculty didn’t like it.
The union pushed a vote of no confidence. Vickers did not back down. Since then, the South Carolina Legislature has enacted measures allowing post-tenure review and classroom observation. Also, South Carolina has become the first state to pass legislation forcing state-supported colleges to pass an effectiveness report card.
Within two years, all of South Carolina’s state-supported colleges’ funding will be dependent on passing 37 indicators of excellence. Proving performance rests upon determining what you’ll do, do it and then prove you’ve done it.
Vickers’ faculty discontent may have been spawned by his style of establishing goals, measuring progress and managing faculty and staff. He appointed a new provost, the academic head. Vickers’ predecessor was a retired military man who some regarded as comparably hands-off and weak in communication.
An FMU retiree, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Fulbright scholar who had been director of the journalism program, wrote a letter to the editor of the hometown Florence Daily News last month, in support of Vickers.
William J. Coughlin criticized a “minority group” of union members of “the gutless local chapter” for “posting anonymous fliers on the bulletin boards, and offering anonymous resolutions at campus meetings.” He said the union sought two things, wrongly: “higher salaries and unchallenged power over the administration,” while “needs of the students are low on its agenda.”
He applauded Vickers for “in full consultation with the Board of Trustees and the faculty reorganizing the structure of Francis Marion University to assure that students here get the best education for the dollar.”
Yes, FMU has sports — 14 teams, seven for men and seven for women. Its majors are basketball and baseball/softball, it is a member of the Peach Belt Athletic Conference, it has no football and it competes in NCAA Division II. Volleyball, under former LCSC assistant coach Jerry Pruitt and with five young women from the Inland Northwest, has a 17-1 record. The women’s soccer team is ranked No. 14 in the country.
On the personal front: Oldest son Damon is a Portland lawyer. He and his wife, Karen, became parents of twin sons, Thomas and Paul, 2½ weeks ago. New grandmother Deanna went to Portland Sunday for a two-week visit.
Daughter Dionne Sleman is a Spokane resident and counsels parents in the Spokane Falls Community College Head Start program.
Son Warren is a professional golfer and resident of Scottsdale, Ariz. He is an instructor at the Tournament Players Club there and continues his ambition of qualifying for the Professional Golfers of America major tour. Meanwhile, he has played in some NIKE tour tournaments and smaller Arizona and California tours and twice was on the South African tour.
Deanna, a two-term Idaho state representative when in Lewiston, is active in Literary Guild service. The renovated president’s home, suffering from 11 years of neglect until she coordinated its improvements, was built in 1924 to match the original plantation home that had burned. She did a “marvelous job,” Vickers said, and the area is “extremely pleased with what she’s done with it.” The Vickerses entertain frequently; social affairs are customary in the South.
Lee Vickers’ last visit to Lewiston was in November 1994, at LCSC’s Centennial Mall dedication.
“Looking back, I’m extremely proud of what evolved there. I knew then and have confirmed an excellent staff that is innovative and bright. LCSC is much farther along than many institutions in meeting needs of students. Idaho and Lewiston should be proud.”
Meanwhile, the window in his president’s office looks out at the highway that leads east to the coast and famous Myrtle Beach. He enjoys the view. But the Northwest will beckon again, sometime.
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Now
The Vickerses’ last presidency was at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. Lee retired in 2008 and the couple moved to Arizona to be closer to family. Both Lee and Deanna maintain a connection to higher education through their association with Arizona State University. Their family continues to be the Vickerses’ primary focus and they “are extremely grateful to have this uninterrupted time with them.”
