There an old saying that if you’ve been married nine times, maybe it’s you. Maybe David Schmidly should get the point. Schmidly, former president & CEO of the OSU system, has just received a vote of no confidence from University of New Mexico faculty. Their claims (via the Whirled)?

About 500 faculty members — half the voting faculty on the main campus of the state’s largest university — cast votes Wednesday on motions presented by the university’s Committee on Governance. Results were made public Thursday.

Along with Schmidly, a former Oklahoma State University president, the faculty cast no-confidence votes against the president of the university’s regents, Jamie Koch, and the university’s executive vice president, David Harris.

They also called for faculty to be included in UNM’s decision making and asked for an independent external audit of how funds from the state and sponsored research and money trimmed from end-of-year budgets have been spent.

Faculty members believe the administration is not aligned with their vision of excellence in teaching, research and service, said Doug Fields, president-elect of the Faculty Senate.

“Their focus is on a more corporate model of making things bigger and not necessarily better,” Fields said.

I’ll just say that squares with my impression of where Schmidly was going to take OSU. I went to school and worked at OSU mostly under the brilliant, masterful, and effective presidency of James Halligan. When Schmidly came on board, he began making immediate changes that reminded me of the power structure and cronyism I had experienced during my brief stint at Rogers State University. I had been thinking about quitting to join Jeane in our business full time. The Schmidly administration, especially an egghead named Wiggins, who was the VP over my department, made my decision for me—and quickly. And, from my friends who stayed, I can tell you his time as chief was just as unsuccessful as I expected. Glad I got out, sorry they had to live through it, and thrilled when Schmidly left.

It’s nice to see a faculty have the gumption to do something with an administration that’s gone wrong, too.

The resolutions voted upon all received large majority support.