Someone has to ask the question: Has Eugene Trani stayed on too long as president of Virginia Commonwealth University?
I have enormous respect for Trani, who has done an extraordinary job building VCU as an institution and will no doubt go down in Richmond history as one of its great, visionary leaders. He has transformed VCU from a third-tier, little respected “State U” into an up-and-comer with nationally recognized programs. By emphasizing interdisciplinary programs between schools and departments that traditionally stay pigeon-holed, he has made VCU a genuinely exciting place to study and conduct research.
The VCU president has always had his critics. Some said he was too authoritarian, or that he emphasized bricks and mortar over program development. But there was no arguing with his ability to raise money from the community or squeeze more funds out of a parsimonious General Assembly.
Now those accomplishments are beginning to fray. The simultaneous eruption of the Rodney Monroe and Philip Morris controversies (see “Scandal Reaches Critical Mass at VCU”) raise the possibility that systemic problems might plague VCU’s administration.
Frankly, I have to wonder if Trani’s heart is still in the job. Trani, who turns 69 in November, originally planned to retire from the VCU presidency a few years ago, but the board of trustees apparently could not imagine a VCU without him and begged him to stay another five years. (I draw from memory — I cannot find any reference to the contract renewal on the VCU website. If someone can find it, please let me know.)
While he agreed to stay on, Trani maintained other interests. For example, he serves on three outside boards: LandAmerica Financial, a Fortune 500 title insurance company; Universal Corp., a tobacco trading company; and the SunTrust Central Virginia Bank. Directors at the first two companies (and perhaps the third) are highly compensated and entail significant commitments.
Meanwhile, Trani continues to pursue his academic interests. A historian, he has managed to juggle his administrative duties with scholarly research and writing. His official VCU biography lists an impressive number of columns, scholarly articles and even books written during his tenure as president. In 2005, he spent the summer in Oxford, England, working on a soon-to-be-published book, “Distorted Mirrors: American Images of Russia and China, 1891 – 1991,” and he was intending to spend this summer at Harvard.
Whether this workload — enough to keep two or three normal people busy — affected Trani’s health is a matter of conjecture. But there is no getting around the fact that he was admitted for emergency surgery two weeks ago for a quintuple bypass surgery. A VCU press release stated that he would spend six to eight weeks at home recuperating.
I’ve met Trani a couple of times, including once a few years ago when I interviewed him for an in-house VCU publication. He spoke enthusiastically about his research into early U.S.-Soviet relations — he was particularly interested in the U.S. expeditionary force dispatched to Archangel in 1919, as I recall. Trani also displayed a voracious appetite for information. One thing that struck me: He made a practice of Googling “Virginia Commonwealth University” every morning to see what people were saying about the institution.
Gene Trani is a remarkable man. But it’s a legitimate question to ask: Has he taken on too much? Given his multiple pursuits and responsibilities, not to mention his ill health, can he possibly stay on top of the pressing issues that consume Virginia’s largest university? Who’s calling the shots in his absence? Is the eruption of simultaneous scandals a coincidence, or a sign of a deeper malaise at VCU? I don’t know the answer. But let us hope the Board of Visitors is asking that question.
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