An American Revolution

University's President Draws Mixed Reviews

He has fired and replaced nearly all his top administrators, produced a strategic plan that roiled the campus and unilaterally dropped "The" from The American University, so named by Congress in 1893 when it chartered the school.

All this and more has been carried out by President Benjamin Ladner since he was tapped in April 1994 to take over a scandal-ridden, turmoil-weary university, whose 535 full-time faculty members and 9,200 full-time students were desperate for stability.

Ladner has brought some measure of that stability simply by staying in his post, which had been a revolving door after president Richard E. Berendzen resigned in 1990 as he was being investigated for making obscene telephone calls. (He received a suspended sentence and sought counseling.)

Three interim presidents later, Ladner was picked by a search panel that had been turned down by its first choice, Scott Cowen, dean of Case Western Reserve University's mangement school. AU, according to search committee Chairman Bill Jacobs, wanted someone who would not "go into a place . . . and turn it upside down."

But Ladner has shaken things up at American, long struggling to emerge from the shadows of its better-known neighbors, Georgetown and George Washington universities. And the reviews have been mixed.

He has set tongues wagging on the 85-acre campus in Northwest Washington, not only with efforts to boost enrollment, beef up athletics and raise funds, but also by hiring a chef, a household assistant and a full-time assistant for his wife, Nancy, who has worked voluntarily alongside her husband to help raise the university's profile.

American's Board of Trustees also purchased a newly built home on the edge of campus for Ladner -- who is paid $ 231,555 a year -- and then spent more than $ 200,000 for drainage work and landscaping, including the installation of a small waterfall.

But Ladner's supporters say those are minor issues and obscure the fact that he has brought a new vitality and direction to the campus.

"Given the situation that he was given when he got here, I think he's done a fine job refining our mission and representing our school," said Neil Kerwin, dean of the School of Public Affairs.

Jess Sheer, a 21-year-old junior and an editor for the student newspaper, the Eagle, is less enthusiastic.

"For a first-time president, he isn't doing a bad job," he said. "But unfortunately, this is the first university he is heading."

Ladner came to American from Atlanta, where since 1980 he had headed the National Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Sciences, which brings together educators and academics for various programs. A former philosophy professor and department chairman at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, he had fund-raising experience and numerous contacts with legislators and private foundations -- although many on campus say he has not yet deeply tapped those sources for contributions.