Ashland University President Frederick J. Finks said he transition from president in October to take on the newly created position of chancellor at the university. The announcement came  January 31.

Finks also said he will retire from the university in May 2015. An interim president will take over in October, Chair of the AU Board of Trustees Lisa Miller said in a press release announcing Finks’s retirement.

“Basically I’ll be transitioning in October and working probably for the next three years but full time through May 2015 and part time for the next two years working with major donors and fundraising,” Finks said.

Art Department chair Dan McDonald looked forward to a new president with guarded optimism.

“Though there’s never an assumption that someone new is going to make things different, there is always the expectation that someone new might make things different,” he said.

Student Senate President Victorialyn Keay was saddened to hear the news of Finks’s retirement.

“My initial reaction was sadness,” she said. “Personally I don’t like losing people who are supposed to be my mentor, my leader. It always makes me uncomfortable when someone who I don’t expect to leave decides to leave.”

Ashland is in the early stages of planning a new fundraising campaign, which Finks will focus more heavily on in his role as chancellor.

There is a question among faculty and students as to what this position entails.

“We’re trying to muddle through what the term chancellor means…It’s a weird title considering the size of this institution,” said McDonald.

“I think its extremely odd and concerning,” Keay said. “There are positions vacant within the development department that he could have applied for and been put into but that’s not the case. They are making a completely new position for him.”

In 2006, Finks became the 28^th president of AU. According to a story that ran in the Ashland Times-Gazette on Dec. 1, 2005, he was among the eight semi-finalists for the position, but was not named one of the four finalists. He was reconsidered as a candidate after the pool dwindled from four to two. He was announced as president on Dec. 3, 2005.

“I accepted the presidency in 2006 because I wanted to give back to an institution that had given so much to me,” he said in the press release announcing his retirement. “I also wanted to make a difference and leave Ashland a better place than what I found. I believe I have accomplished those goals.” 

Finks said Ashland has made positive strides during his tenure, including the acquisition of the Dwight Schar College of Nursing. The facilities on campus were also improved by the addition of the Dwight Schar Athletic Complex, the greenhouse at the Kettering Science Center, the Rybolt academic corridor, and several additional athletic improvements.

However, new buildings have not changed Ashland’s mission and commitment to academic excellence, Finks said in a wide-ranging interview with The Collegian, WRDL 88.9 and AUTV-20.

“Physically campus has changed a lot,” Finks said. “Fundamentally I’m not sure it has changed a great deal because when I was a student here accent on the individual was very much alive and I think it’s very much alive on our campus today.”

Despite his assurances that the university has improved, Ashland has hit rough times. McDonald said the prospect of some change could be positive for Ashland University going forward. financially, and the next president will have fiscal issues to deal with, including a credit downgrade from Moody’s Investor Service to Caa2 with a negative outlook. 

David Jacobson, a communications strategist with the Public Finance Group of Moody’s, said the rating is the fourth lowest rating. 

“Issuers with this rating are judged to be of poor standing and are subject to very high credit risk,” Jacobson said in an email.

According to Moody’s report, “The Caa2 rating and negative outlook reflect Ashland University’s very weak liquidity, high leverage, insufficient cash flow to support debt service and challenging student market. These challenges are exacerbated by three-years of enrollment declines and heavy dependence on tuition revenues.”

Finks said the downgrade is not that important for the university, and that AU has firm commitments from multiple banks to continue loans, and the University has any debt managed and budgeted.

The university’s budget has also been an area of concern. A five-month non-payment of retirement benefits to all employees was announced earlier this academic year, saving $1.1 million. This move had a predictably negative affect on general morale.

“Anytime you deal with people’s salary or benefits it’s going to affect morale but if you look at morale around the country we’re right in the same boat,” Finks said.

The retirement non-payment is intended to be a one-time fix to the budget issues. However, the university is already facing a deficit for the next academic year. During Faculty Senate on Friday, Dr. Stephen Storck, the university’s vice president of business affairs, said the university is trying to make up about $6.9 million.

“We’ve run some budget projections which show us needing to cut multiple millions of dollars,” Finks said.

With these issues clouding Ashland’s financial future, Finks does not see the university’s fiscal problems as particularly unique.

“You look at every other college in America and all of them are going through the same struggle we are unless they have bazillions in endowments,” he said.