u/Fun_Awareness_7623

Two years into his tenure at UNT and the place is in shambles. Morale is at rock bottom for staff and faculty. Staff and faculty are leaving. Students are frustrated because their classes are being put online (so Keller can charge them more digital use fees. Yes, they know the reason and they detest the cynicism), students can't get advising appointments, they can't get business done on campus because staff is overworked and underpaid. President Keller meanwhile seems oblivious to the carnage he is causing. He needs to go, and one of you Board of Regents folks needs to be the little boy who stands up and says the emperor is naked as hell.

President Keller has never had a tenure track job. He has never been a legitimate executive. He has zero relevant experience to be a university president. And guess what? It shows!

It is time to cut the losses for us all, and let him go. This needs to stop before much more damage is done.

This is a topic that comes up frequently in this sub, especially as UNT continues to reel from budget cuts and bad executive decisions. This recent study shows that no, athletics programs are not bringing in money.

Some argue that strong athletics programs contribute to atmosphere and student life. But, as we are now in an era of needing quantifiable return on investment data on everything, we should demand the same of athletics.

https://www.chronicle.com/liveblog/heres-the-latest-news-on-campus-finance

Why is a bureaucrat who has never had an academic job president of UNT? Why is an associate professor of biology at Georgetown (Heidi Elmendorf) a senior advisor to President Keller? Why is an educrat from Georgetown who pontificates on “institutional transformation” (Randy Bass) a senior advisor to President Keller? Why would career academics at Georgetown University come to UNT in the first place? It doesn’t make sense. Or does it?

Here is how the puzzle goes together:

Harrison Keller became UNT’s president as a political appointee: he is a long-term education bureaucrat for the state in Austin. He probably thought he was coming on up to UNT to clean up a little DEI, cancel a few art shows here and there, and basically take it easy while coasting on to some bigger political position down the road. Then the budget crashed, and it wasn’t so fun anymore. What to do? Well, obviously, call your old cronies from your Georgetown days to come to the rescue. The only thing is...they come with a price.

Heidi Elmendorf is an associate professor of biology from Georgetown. She was tenured in 2005 but was unable to be promoted to full professor in the 20 years since that time. This is called “deadwood” down here in Texas, don’t know what they call it at Georgetown. She doesn’t do biology anymore and now works on education initiatives and institutional transformation with hubby Randy at the “Red House” at Georgetown University. The Red House is a group of people at Georgetown that theorize about education and teaching and transformation. They pilot lots of these ideas in classes here and there at Georgetown, but now they are doing it on a large scale here at UNT.

Randy Bass is an English Professor at Georgetown and thinks about strategic initiatives and institutional transformation and lots of other buzz words. Unlike Heidi, he was able to be promoted to full professor. Anyway, now he gives lots of talks on educational technology and transformation and is a big player in the Red House. Like Harrison Keller, he just really wants to be Michael Crow.

So, when Harrison’s gig at UNT started crashing with the budget deficit he called Heidi and Randy. They came in to help and are now basically getting paid big bucks to pilot their Red House ideas on us at UNT. This is the reason for the major changes we are all seeing crashing into UNT right now. Randy and Heidi have basically made guinea pigs out of all 46,864 of us. Not a bad deal for Randy and Heidi at all. I can’t wait to read the paper they publish on us!

President Harrison Keller (along with his highly paid advisors Randy Bass and wife Heidi Elmendorf of Georgetown University) is getting rid of all academic departments at the UNT and merging them up into “Schools” of 3-4 former departments. [These advisors are old friends with the president, and the ostentatious nepotism is appalling, but that is another story]

In any case, the president is getting rid of all academic departments, and is also splitting some departments up into two or three pieces in the process. For example, The English Department was cut up with pieces going into three different Schools: the Creative Writing element went to the School with dance and theatre, the Literature element went to the School with world languages, while the First Year Writing Program went to a School of communication and media. Geography was split up in similar ways, as was Communication, etc. The College of Liberal Arts was Keller/Bass/Elmendorf’s first target, but they are now doing the same to all the other colleges: Business, Engineering, Science, etc.

The faculty are in chaos, and nobody seems to know what is going on, whether department chair or dean, as there has been no formal instruction, just notice that your department no longer exists, and rumors flying everywhere. As would be expected, morale is rock bottom and the faculty that can leave are doing so.

President Keller originally tried to claim that all the merging was in response to budget deficits, but it became clear very quickly that there wouldn’t be much savings, and not nearly enough to justify that level of disruption, so he has dropped that claim. Nevertheless, Keller/Elmendorf/Bass are pressing on.

Are other universities out there experiencing this level of chaos brought on by their own President and his highly paid advisors? This is not simply cutting programs here and there (plenty of that has been done too). This is getting rid of every single academic department at the university in a rushed, abrupt, chaotic manner, with the feeling that there is nobody out there driving the bus.

...someone who is actually good for UNT, identified through a dedicated job search as the best person for the job?

Or will it be President Keller-crony and new Associate Professor of Biology, Heidi Elmendorf? The deep pull of cronyism can be hard to resist, but we are hoping President Keller is up to the challenge! Harrison, stay strong buddy!

https://preview.redd.it/2d01hjeckw7h1.png?width=1206&format=png&auto=webp&s=4202d29e5385ed8b11bf4d90bf007267f900a3cc

The two favorite phrases of President Keller are 'time to value' and 'return on investment,' as in, when do UNT students break even on their investment in UNT education? If the answer is one that President Keller doesn't like, he shuts down the academic program. Something like 60 academic programs at this point, depending on how you count.

I'm wondering what the timeline is for 'return on investment' for President Keller himself? He has now been with us for a full two years, and the university is in shambles, morale at the ground floor, upper level administrators paralyzed with no clue what is going on, enrollment numbers still slipping. When are things going to get better? How long do we have to wait? Even the US president gets a big evaluation every two years with midterm elections. Wouldn't it be great if we could vote out the UNT administration every two years if things aren't going well? And he still can't be bothered to move to Denton? Then again, if I lived in a two million dollar house in Austin I might not move to Denton either.

When will the Board of Regents get tired of this situation and quietly ease him out? Especially now that he is throwing the Board of Regents under the bus, saying he wasn't made aware of the budget deficit when he was hired. The buck apparently does not stop at his desk. And the plan of turning UNT into a vocational school and killing the college of liberal arts and sciences just isn't good enough.

Here is an interesting Science article on AI cheating across different academic disciplines. Results might be surprising.

https://preview.redd.it/u4f9ghapjw3h1.png?width=1466&format=png&auto=webp&s=3e16251b50e0262d7468429269fd965b5094ac5c

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec5115?utm_campaign=Science&utm_medium=ownedSocial&utm_source=facebook

Heidi Elmendorf, who is Deputy Advisor to President Keller, and who was his buddy from their days together at Georgetown, was granted tenure as an Associate Professor by the UNT Board of Regents at their February 2026 meeting (p.64).

Question

Why does an advisor to the president need tenure? According to the UNT BoR, tenure is supposed to "1. assure the faculty of freedom of teaching, research, opinion, and full participation as citizens in the academic community." As advisor to the president, why does she need this protection and a guarantee of a job for life?

Compare the write up of the other person granted UNT tenure at the same time by the UNT BoR, which is Mark Traynor of College of Merchandising. Importantly, there is specific mention of 16 publications and a million dollars in grants. This is the kind of evidence we want to see in an expedited tenure decision.

Giving tenure to Heidi Elmendorf, so she can serve as advisor to President Keller, looks like bad cronyism. Is President Keller going to get tenure for his other advisors too? I'm not sure this is the best use of tenure or taxpayer dollars.

https://preview.redd.it/modbvg0kbk2h1.png?width=2062&format=png&auto=webp&s=249663983f9a1c42e9d3398dea756cd5743da02e

https://preview.redd.it/udxy16bhbk2h1.png?width=2000&format=png&auto=webp&s=305cd745029cffa8f456fe685873f56f1828017b