Mickey Munley steps down, department understaffed

September 8th, 2010 | By Kelsey Roebuck | Section: News

In early August, Mickey Munley ’87 resigned as Vice President of College and Alumni Relations. His decision was guided by future career goals and a desire to allow new ideas to influence the Alumni office.

His departure brings the total vacancies in the College and Alumni Relations office to four. Other vacant positions include Director of Alumni Relations, Assistant Director of Alumni Relations, and Director of the Pioneer Fund. The Department of College and Alumni Relations oversees fundraising and community-building events, among other responsibilities.

In Munley’s absence, Vice President for Institutional Planning Marci Sortor is also serving as Acting Vice President of College and Alumni Relations. However, she does not have time to work in two Vice President positions at once.

“I can put in six and a half hours in one office and six and a half hours in another office and still not be doing a full day’s work,” Sortor said.

Director of Donor Relations Meg Bair is now also serving as Acting Director and Assistant Director of Alumni Relations, according to Sortor.

Except for the Director of the Pioneer Fund, the job searches have been postponed as Grinnell adjusts to the leadership of new President Raynard Kington. According to Sortor, it remains to be seen how much he will be involved in the process, but the staff is waiting to understand the new goals of the college before filling the positions.

Though Munley no longer holds his position, he is assisting Kington and the College and Alumni Relations staff until his replacement arrives.

“I am not the VP and I am not working full time,” he said, “but I’ve agreed to sort of stay available as needed in a consultant basis for the office, for the college, for the president during the transition.”

Munley is proud of the steps that have been taken to both assert Grinnell’s presence in the national media and establish a sense of tradition on campus. He is responsible for establishing the Medallion Ceremony and the Brass Ring ceremony although he maintains that his favorite aspect of the job was talking to other alums.

“What I have that most people don’t ever get is the perspective of not just ten or fifteen or twenty other alums but hundreds of alums on what makes their Grinnell education important to them personally,” Munley said. “That has made me in turn appreciate mine.”

Munley will continue to live in Grinnell with his family.

Comments

Frank says:

September 14, 2010 at 8:16 pm

Perhaps the S & B staff could work a bit harder to shed some prized ‘critical thinking’ here. Seems to be a more insightful story to learn from if one would choose to read between the lines. Grinnellians owe themselves an honest assessment of what is really going on, lest you’d rather not learn from your mistakes.

Hannah says:

September 29, 2010 at 11:23 pm

He always seemed angry. Hope things are happier now! Good…luck.

Lori says:

October 12, 2010 at 9:19 pm

I think the department is understaffed because of poor leadership. I mean, with Grinnell’s resources, why wouldn’t you want to work there? Well, I guess the answer would be that you don’t want to work for a turkey…

Jen says:

November 11, 2010 at 11:28 pm

“His decision was guided by future career goals…” Oh, come on. He was fired after years of questionable practices.

Dave says:

November 18, 2010 at 9:54 pm

Jen is right, but too polite. Not only questionable but harmful, divisive, and mean-spirited. Many of the campus climate problems we face today can be linked to good people standing by when social injustices were perpetrated by an out-of-control administrator.

Jay says:

December 27, 2010 at 6:57 pm

But now they’re hiring 2 VPs to replace him? What’s that about?

What Do You Think?

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Name *

Email *

Website

Comment

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Note on Commenting: All comments are moderated and flagrant content will deleted by the moderator without warning. Repeat offenses will result in a permanent ban on your ability to comment on any articles. Please, take care to be kind and courteous to authors and other commenters. We encourage critical thinking and questioning, but do not let your anonymity on the internet take the best of you.