By Tim Woods

Tribune-Herald staff writer

GRAPEVINE — Baylor University’s board of regents and now-former President John Lilley offered vastly different views on relations within the Baylor family Thursday, the day Lilley was fired by the board.

Regent chairman Howard Batson, pastor of First Baptist Church of Amarillo, told the Tribune-Herald that Lilley’s firing after 2 1/2 years as president was primarily because of his failure to unify the school’s various constituents.

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COVERAGE

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Slide show: Lilley retrospective
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Interactive: Timeline of Lilley's presidency

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“It wasn’t any single factor,” said Batson, who declined to reveal how much Lilley would be paid to cover the remaining 2 1/2 years of his contract. “It was just kind of a building of factors over time, where at a point we realized progress is not being made quickly enough to unify the Baylor family. And we felt like, honestly, John could do that under a transition plan (to a new president while Lilley remained in that role), which we presented to him. We felt like that would free him to be a unifying force, and he just didn’t see that at all.”

In a brief phone interview with the Tribune-Herald, Lilley, 69, declined to discuss the matter in detail but did tout his administration’s accomplishments in implementing Baylor’s strategic plan for the future, detailed in the annual report submitted to regents during their retreat this week in Grapevine. He also claimed successes in unifying the often divided Baylor family.

The annual report, he said, noted “success after success after success” in implementing Baylor’s vision, dubbed Baylor 2012.

In a Thursday morning e-mail to the Tribune-Herald, Lilley added: “I am proud of the work my colleagues and I have done to bring the Baylor family together and to help the university achieve the ambitious goals set forth in our mission and vision 2012, documented in our annual report just presented to the regents. I deeply regret the action of the board, and I do not believe that it reflects the best interests of Baylor University.”

Batson was reluctant to discuss specific constituents the board believes Lilley failed to unify within the Baylor community. He did acknowledge that the clash this spring with faculty, following Lilley and Provost Randall O’Brien’s denial of tenure to 12 of 30 tenure-eligible professors, played a role.

“It wasn’t any single factor, but obviously our faculty are very important to us,” Batson said. “We want our faculty morale to be high. There’s certainly some embracing of John amongst our faculty, and there’s some conflict with John amongst the faculty, and I wouldn’t say (low faculty morale following the tenure denials) didn’t play any role. Of course it played a role in it.”

Lilley and O’Brien, however, had said progress was made in regaining the faculty’s trust after a June summit between administration and faculty leaders in which the tenure-granting process was discussed at length.

Jeff Kilgore, executive vice president of the Baylor Alumni Association, acknowledged that the independently run group had also butted heads in recent years with Lilley’s administration, plus that of his controversial predecessor, Robert B. Sloan Jr., and Baylor regents.

Lilley’s downfall may be the result of an unwillingness to listen to ideas that conflicted with his own, Kilgore said Thursday.

“While John made himself very accessible to many of the various constituent groups, he often remained vigilant to his own opinions,” Kilgore said. “In a delicate time such as this for Baylor, it is not only important to reach out for input, but for that input to have impact on decisions and the direction Baylor heads.”

Kilgore said Lilley arrived on campus at a time that required tremendous diplomacy and nuance from Baylor leadership. In 2005, President Sloan resigned after several years of controversy involving faculty, alumni and regents.

“Having the president serve alone as the single conduit of information between regents, faculty and alumni probably proved to be too much for any one person and probably not the most effective model moving Baylor forward,” Kilgore said. “(Lilley) found himself in a very untenable position from the get-go, inheriting a highly sensitive and emotionally charged campus and alumni (and) donor base, probably without being fully equipped with an adequate understanding of or experience in Baylor’s recent history.”

Despite regents’ criticism of what they say was Lilley’s inability to bring the Baylor family together, Batson praised Lilley for leading the school in many gains. Among them: Baylor’s highest-ever U.S. News & World Report college ranking, 75th nationally; an endowment topping $1.02 billion; record enrollment at Truett Seminary and record numbers of applicants to the university; athletic success; and a Carnegie Foundation classification of Baylor as a research university with a “high research” level.

Batson, too, recognized the difficult endeavor Lilley took on as Baylor’s president.

“It is no secret that he came into a very difficult situation,” Batson said. “All the strains of the Baylor family are not John’s doing. Some of them were here before he got here, and we acknowledge that and we know that.”

Lilley’s termination comes after months of speculation and discussion about the matter, dating to before the regents’ May meeting. Prior to that meeting, multiple regents told the Tribune-Herald that Lilley’s job could be at stake.

Batson said a “transition plan” was discussed with Lilley between the May meeting and this week’s regents retreat in Grapevine, which Lilley declined to accept. Under the plan, the board would have proceeded with a presidential search committee while Lilley kept the reins of the university with full presidential power, Batson said.

Without Lilley’s agreement to the plan, Baylor now finds itself searching for its third president since January 2005, when Sloan, now president of Houston Baptist University, resigned. Mercer University President Bill Underwood, formerly a Baylor Law School professor, served as Baylor’s interim president for a year between Sloan and Lilley’s tenures.

Not counting Underwood — Batson pointed out he was interim, not permanent — Batson noted that Baylor has had only two presidents in the past 12 1/2 years, since Sloan assumed the helm in 1995. That, Batson said, isn’t unusual for a major university.

Some beyond the university, however, perceive the school’s presidency to be a tenuous position of late.

“Baylor needs to seriously look at strategies used by universities with presidents that have achieved longer tenure and implement them here,” said Nika Davis, pastor of Second Missionary Baptist Church of Waco. “People get tired of riding merry-go-rounds.”

Batson said regent Harold Cunningham, who has served in two vice presidential roles at Baylor and chaired the board of regents, will assume the role of acting president until an interim president is named.

Once an interim is found, the board will begin a comprehensive search for a permanent replacement, Batson said.

Batson wouldn’t discuss specific names for the interim or permanent presidency but said he believes it’s important the new president’s personality and experience mesh well with the complicated heritage and constituencies at Baylor.

Baylor senior lecturer Lynn Tatum, immediate past president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said the faculty is wary yet hopeful about the future.

“Dr. Lilley took office with a widespread hope from the faculty that his tenure would be successful,” Tatum said. “I think there will be sadness and nervousness among the faculty that we will be going into the future with two presidents in a row leaving under a cloud.”

Expressing the faculty’s hope for the future, Tatum referred to a statement by Batson on the school’s Web site in which Batson said the board seeks unity within the Baylor family.

“While the faculty are naturally nervous, I find regent Chair Batson’s call for ‘communication and building of relationships within the Baylor family’ entirely positive,” Tatum said. “He will find the Baylor faculty eager to participate in opening up lines of communication.”

As for Lilley, he said Thursday afternoon that he and his wife, Gerrie, plan to return to a home they have maintained in the Reno-Tahoe area of Nevada, near the University of Nevada at Reno, where he was president before Baylor hired him in November 2005. He said the move shouldn’t be difficult.

“We didn’t bring that much furniture,” he said.

twoods@wacotrib.com

757-5721