Ohio University released copies of dean evaluations to The Post yesterday ' including the provost's final reports, which were not due until later this month.
Kathy Krendl, executive vice president and provost, spent the weekend writing and compiling her final evaluations so they would be part of the record given to The Post, according to Ann Fidler, dean of the Honors Tutorial College.
She thought that since it looked like the document request ... was going to be honored this week
she really wanted to be able to provide the context Fidler said.
Administrators earlier asked The Post to refrain from publishing information about the dean evaluations until after the provost issued her reports. Administrators feared articles published without the provost's final evaluations would not provide the necessary context.
Last year, The Post submitted a similar records request April 3 and received the records April 17, before the provost's final evaluations. The paper wrote a series of articles on those documents. OU's interim director of Legal Affairs interpreted the records law differently than last year's director, who retired earlier this year.
University Spokeswoman Sally Linder said the provost set aside other work to complete the evaluations over the weekend.
She set aside the entire weekend to work on them so that her deans had their evaluations as opposed to seeing a portion of the data published in a newspaper Linder said.
Fidler said administrators always hoped to complete the evaluations before May 20, but that Krendl rushed her reports because of her commitment to the deans.
She's got a lot of energy
and she put a lot of it into making sure what she felt was right and what she told the deans she'd try to do was honored
Fidler explained, adding administrators are not concerned that the quality suffered under the time constraints. They're as thorough G
he said. I'm surprised to some extent
but knowing that the university was really adamant about not releasing the records until she completed them
I guess I'm not as surprised as I initially was.
Krendl declined to comment, saying through Linder that she believes the written evaluations should stand by themselves.The Post requested all documents related to dean evaluations Feb. 7. Many of the records, including e-mail messages and evaluation forms from previous years, have not been given to The Post.
Rouan said he was glad the paper finally got the faculty evaluations, provost report and committee reports.
I'm glad the university honored the law and I hope in the future
they'll continue (to comply with records requests)
he said.
Linder said OU always intended to comply with the requests but had hoped to do so after the reports were finalized.
At no point was the university in any way not willing to release every single piece of the record
she said. At no point would we refuse to give The Post each and every piece of the evaluation about every dean.
