Former DSU head to face state board

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Richard McCallum will attend a hearing next week to challenge the North Dakota University System’s choice to fire him as Dickinson State University’s president, his attorney said Friday.

Attorney Benjamin Thomas of Fargo said he and McCallum do not have a plan for what to do when his fate is decided.

The hearing begins 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Office of Administrative Hearings in Bismarck and is expected to conclude Friday, NDUS Director of Public Affairs and Marketing Debra Anderson said.

NDUS Chancellor Bill Goetz informed McCallum of the pending termination in August after an audit accused him of playing a role in inflating DSU enrollment

numbers.

McCallum has been back and forth to Nebraska since, Thomas said.

“He’s been told not to be on campus,” Thomas said. “He’s not able to go to his office so he has spent some time in Nebraska, but he’s in North Dakota now.”

McCallum is still allowed to reside in DSU’s president’s house on campus, officials say.

However, nobody answered the door and a phone call was not returned Friday.

The State Board of Higher Education will decide McCallum’s fate, though board members will not attend the hearing, said Pat Seaworth, general counsel and executive secretary to the SBHE.

The hearing record will be forwarded to the board for review following the hearing, he said.

“What that decision is and what happens next will be up to the board,” Seaworth said.

There is no deadline for the board to decide and Seaworth said transcript and recommendation preparation will delay a board

decision.

“It’s not going to go on for months, no,” Seaworth said. The SBHE will eventually have a public meeting to deliberate and decide its next step, he added.

Thomas is confident in McCallum’s case.

“I have, in preparation for this hearing, received no information that changes my earlier assessment of this, which is that there is not just cause for termination,” he said. “At this point we’re focused on the administrative hearing and what happens after that we’ll have to deal with it at that point.”

D.C. Coston is acting president of DSU, but it’s unclear what will happen to the position after

the board makes a decision, Seaworth said.

DSU Director of University Relations Marie Moe said the issue hasn’t affected campus activity.

“What has happened with administration has not changed the positive interactions here on campus and the faculty continue to provide excellent education and the students are very engaged,” she said. “There’s a really positive feeling on campus just with what’s going on with the students, interactive learning and I sense just a real positivity on campus and optimism for the future.”

The OAH office is at 2911 N. 14th St. Suite 303 in Bismarck. The meeting is open to the public, Seaworth said.

Tags: richard mccallum, dickinson state university, news