Trustees vote to replace Beauchamp
By MIKE CONNOLLY
News Writer
After 13 years as executive vice president, the Board of Trustees voted to remove Father William Beauchamp and replace him with former associate provost Father Timothy Scully.
The move did not come as a surprise to Beauchamp.
"We had had discussions about it," Beauchamp said. "This wasn't something completely out of the blue."
The last year has been a series of scandals and successes for Beauchamp's office. While the Generations campaign has raised $944 million, far surpassing the goal of $767 million, the athletic department fell under attack from the NCAA. As executive vice president, Beauchamp oversaw the athletic department which received its first major penalty and sanctions in December 1999. Because of improper gifts to football players from booster Kim Dunbar, the NCAA stripped the University of two scholarships and placed the team on probation for two years.
In response to the sanctions, athletic director Michael Wadsworth resigned and oversight of the athletic department was transferred from the office of the executive vice president to the direct control of Malloy in February.
The new structure of the athletic department more closely resembles that of most universities and had been planned for sometime, according to Beauchamp. He also does not believe that the scandal surrounding the football led to his replacement.
"That wasn't the message I was given by the trustees or by the president," he said. "It wasn't implied that this situation could have been avoided if we had done something different. I don't think that is the issue here at all. It was just a matter of that we had talked about it and this was a good time to do it."
Probation, however, is a source of embarrassment for the University but Beauchamp asserts that there was never a loss of institutional control over the athletic department.
"Nobody at the University was pleased that there was a major violation," he said. "I think that it was important that the NCAA made it very clear that they still considered Notre Dame to have a model program. … So I am disappointed and I would not even begin to suggest that this would never happen again in the future."
The Generations campaign, started five years ago, has been a source of pride for the University. The fundraising campaign has paid for such improvements as the renovation of the Main Building, the construction of the new bookstore, the new campus ministry building and the golf quad dorms. Although Generations is still a few months away from completion, Beauchamp is not concerned with the future of the project.
"Anytime you leave, there would always be something that I would be in the middle of," he said. "I am not completely stepping away from the University. I am going to continue to be very involved in the Generations campaign and a number of other responsibilities at the University."
Those new responsibilities will include remaining as a member of the Board of Trustees and the Board of Fellows as well as working closely with Malloy to plan the future of the University.
"It would be more in planning and development and the future of the University," Beauchamp said. "The University is so complex that we can get so busy as officers in specific lines of responsibility that sometimes we don't have the capability to step back and say `OK, what are the real issues and long term things that we should be looking at?'"
Scully, 46, moves from the academic side of the administration into the financial side.
"I am grateful to assume new responsibilities in an office where so much has been accomplished with such great success in recent years," Scully said in a prepared statement.
As executive vice president he will be responsible for overseeing operations of the University ranging from construction of new buildings to overseeing the endowment. Under Beauchamp the endowment grew from $400,000 to $3.3 billion. While Scully's primary expertise lies in politics and academic research, Malloy feels that he will do well as the executive vice president.
"[Scully] is a very bright and energetic and creative person," Malloy said. "He will bring his own set of gifts to the job and I look forward to working with him. [The executive vice president] needs to have the skills to oversee the operations that report to the office.
"He doesn't have to be a master of investment strategy in order to ask good questions and implement plans for investments and finances and the physical part of campus and all the other things that are part of the job."
Scully and vice president of student affairs Father Mark Poorman are both in line to possibly be the next president of Notre Dame. The promotion of Scully to executive vice president was designed to increase the number of young Holy Cross priests with administrative experience at Notre Dame.
"Father Beauchamp and I have talked numerous times throughout the years how to give the next generation of Holy Cross leadership the chance to have experience and display their own gifts and talents," Malloy said. "When the time comes for my successor and for other individuals in major jobs, there will be a pool of experienced people to draw from."
All News Stories for Friday, May 19, 2000
