Interim dean earns most at UMKC

Kansas City, Mo. ? The salary of the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s temporary biology dean exceeds those of not only the university chancellor but the head of the entire University of Missouri system.

Frank E. Horton has been hired to head the School of Biological Sciences for the next six months to a year, beginning Aug. 19. Horton, 62, holds a doctorate in geography and headed three universities between 1980 and 1998.

Two Kansas University deans earn salaries larger than Chancellor Robert Hemenway’s $219,420 salary.Barbara Atkinson, executive dean of the School of Medicine, makes $292,055 per year. Bill Fuerst, dean of the School of Business, makes $240,926 per year.And even they aren’t the top-paid staff members at KU. That honor goes to Patrice Delafontaine, director of cardiology at the KU Medical Center. He earns $325,000 per year.For a look at who earns the most at KU and how the amount KU spends on administrators’ salaries has changed over the past five years, see Sunday’s Journal-World.

Horton will be paid $264,000 a year to head the School of Biological Sciences, which faces possible extinction. The university announced his appointment Thursday.

Horton’s pay exceeds the annual salaries of campus Chancellor Martha Gilliland ($183,750); Manuel Pacheco, president of the four-campus University of Missouri system ($260,000); Richard Wallace, chancellor of the flagship Columbia campus ($212,920); and all other deans at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The biology school has been without a dean since May 2001, when Gilliland demoted its longtime dean. This year, she suspended the search for a new one.

Then, in May, Provost Steve Ballard said in a letter to biology professors that he was considering dissolving the school one of the university’s top recipients of federal research grants because its professors focused too much on research and didn’t cooperate with others on campus.

In a statement released by the university, Gilliland said Horton’s pay was less than he normally receives for consulting work. The university already has paid Horton $10,000 for consulting with Gilliland over the past few months about the university’s life sciences efforts.

“The cost of Dr. Horton’s salary is more appropriately compared to what this difficulty (on biology school issues) and its continuation is costing us, which is far higher but difficult to tabulate,” Gilliland said. “Not being able to move ahead with the life sciences initiative has incalculable costs for us, Kansas Citians and our local economy.”

Some biological sciences professors resisted Horton’s hiring, saying they wanted to be led by an accomplished research scientist, and that they did not have a say in Horton’s selection.

Horton was interim president of Southern Illinois University between February and September 2000, president of the University of Toledo in Ohio from 1989 to 1998, president of the University of Oklahoma from 1985 to 1988, and chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1980 to 1985.