July 8, 2004

Staff members leave Glen amid changes at preserve

Two Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center staff members left the Glen last week troubled and sad to be departing from a place they both felt strongly committed to.

Director Sue Feller, who had worked at the Glen for seven years, and Assistant Director Brad Whaley, there for almost two years, packed their belongings last Wednesday morning wondering what went wrong.

Whaley left because his position was eliminated in the spring for budgetary reasons, he said. Feller resigned because of differences she had with organizational changes at the Glen. Both said they felt “unsupported” and “disrespected” by management and found it impossible to work in what Feller called in her resignation letter “an atmosphere of stress and low morale.”

There is more happening at the Glen than the current staff changes. The Glen Helen Ecology Institute (GHEI) launched a $6 million capital campaign last year in conjunction with Antioch College’s $65 million campaign. After nearly a year of training volunteers and contacting potential donors, the Glen has nearly $300,000 committed toward the drive.

Bob Whyte, the executive director of the Glen, and the GHEI board are also on the verge of launching a strategic planning period to better define a vision for the Glen, as seen by its directors, staff, boards, Antioch College and the community. A strategic plan is not a master plan, Whyte said, because it does not focus on details but instead establishes a framework to help guide the Glen.

So why these conflicting feelings? The OEC and the Raptor Center form the largest unit of the Glen’s budget. Out of a $700,000 total budget, the OEC brings in an average of $375,000 a year. With salaries, facilities and resources needed to run its school-age education program, Whyte said, the OEC spends as much as it makes. The rest of the budget is supposed to cover management and other staff salaries, Trailside Museum, the Glen Helen Building and the upkeep and maintenance of the 1,000-acre nature preserve.

Historically, because of geographic separation or differences in focus, there has always been a rift between the Glen Helen Building and the OEC, said David Hergesheimer, chairman of the GHEI board. Changes Whyte wants to implement, including having the Raptor Center work on independent fundraising and cutting the OEC’s assistant director position, are not at all what the OEC staff want. And the OEC staff feel like they’re not being heard, both Feller and Whaley said.

Feller, Whaley and several GHEI and Glen Helen Association board members believe the problem may be more specific. Bev Viemeister, the former chairwoman of the GHEI, resigned nearly a year and a half ago partly for health reasons and partly because she found Whyte was “too difficult to work with” and that he “didn’t understand about sharing the job,” she said.

Whyte said he disagreed with Viemeister when she was on the board about issues concerning the Glen’s independence from the college. As an employee of the college, Whyte couldn’t very well advocate for a separation of the Glen from the college, he said. The impasse lead to the schism between them, he said.

Glen Helen Association trustee Rick Donahoe said that he was very supportive of Whyte when he joined the Glen as its director in 2000. Whyte seemed young and hard working, Donahoe said, and he was always between a rock and hard place with the Antioch administration on one end and the public on the other.

But after many times of hearing the same complaints about Whyte’s micro-

management style and ways of offending people, Donahoe said, he began to feel “disillusioned” about Whyte.

“I’ve watched Sue since she first arrived as an intern, and she’s done a marvelous job,” Donahoe said. “She has this salt of the earth quality, and why a person would leave a job she is so dedicated to and one she dearly loves…it seems like something is rotten in Denmark.”

Whaley also complained that as the executive director of a large organization, Whyte did not provide avenues for cooperation or try to seek others’ input and sought instead to handle everything “confidentially.”

Other staff members declined to comment, but Raptor Center Director Betty Ross, who has been at the Glen since 1986, said she was disappointed to lose Feller and Whaley.

“Brad and Sue have been very devoted and effective leaders, and I’m really sad about losing them in this way,” Ross said. “For a place like the Glen that’s so loved by the community, it’s very sad that it’s such a stressful environment.”

While those interviewed found it easy to talk about their difficulty getting along with Whyte, most of them were only mildly critical of his specific policies, plans, and management of the Glen itself.

Whyte declined to comment on the reasons Feller left the Glen and on Whaley’s criticisms, saying that discussing personnel matters was inappropriate. But he did say that the OEC wasn’t making enough money to reinvest in its operations and maintain its current staff, facilities and contribute toward trail upkeep. Whyte said that he is open to all options for the strategic plan, but the bottom line is that the “Glen needs to be financially viable” and will not survive if it continues in the manner to which it has always been accustomed.

Hergesheimer said that Whyte and the GHEI board plan to put half the money raised during the capital campaign toward the endowment and spend the other half on the Glen’s facilities. In anticipation of that, Whyte said he wants to expand programs that have a return so that the Glen is no longer depleting its savings but growing them.

“We’re tossing around ideas about how to more closely serve the academic needs of the college and serve the educational needs of local and regional schools,” Whyte said. “Everything we do here has to revolve around the land first and then the educational and outreach programs.”

George Bieri, who began managing the Glen’s trails three years ago, said that the problems between the Glen staff and Whyte are representative of a larger and more obscure issue. Yellow Springs residents love the Glen and think they know what’s best for it, he said, but don’t necessarily give enough money to allow things to change and improve.

“There’s not enough money in this town to support the Glen, and therefore the Glen has to go further afield,” Bieri said. “Bob’s got a great vision for the Glen.”

Bieri also said that Whyte’s responsibilities are huge, and the Glen was hardly problem free when Whyte came here four years ago.

“It’s like saying, ‘Oh, here’s the Titanic and, oh, by the way, would you redock it and dada-dada…’ ” he said. “I’ve been around long enough to know that the problem isn’t Bob Whyte. It’s unfair to think the Glen director is going to be the miracle worker.”

Hergesheimer said GHEI board members recognize that there is tension between the Glen’s staff and management. They also acknowledge that an institutional polarization between the Glen Building and the OEC has existed as long as the two buildings have been in the Glen, he said.

A comprehensive evaluation of Whyte completed last spring was a more thorough and inclusive evaluation than previous ones, Hergesheimer said. Every staff and board member had adequate opportunity to express to the Antioch College president their concerns with recommendations for recourse, which, Hergesheimer said, he thought could help improve the situation.

Joan Straumanis, who was college president and Whyte’s direct supervisor at the time of the evaluation, echoed those thoughts. She said she has been lobbied extensively by people at the Glen but feels that the evaluation process was the appropriate venue to address internal difficulties at the Glen.

“An evaluation is a way to communicate the things people think are going well and things people think are going badly,” Straumanis said. “People are working on improvements recommended in the evaluation,” which is the appropriate thing to do, she said.

Straumanis added that she thought the evaluation was balanced and that both she and the GHEI board found “there is plenty that showed the Glen is being well run.”

Whatever the difficulties, the goal of Whyte, the staff and board members appears to be the same. Both Whyte and Donahoe used an image of children laughing, playing and learning about the Glen and the environment as the standard by which to gauge the success of the Glen and its management.

“If that’s really Bob’s intent, then he needs to support the people who are really making that happen, and Sue is one of them,” Donahoe said. “Let’s go beyond words and see some action.”

As the Glen’s capital campaign continues, Whyte said he hopes he and the community can devise a stable strategic plan in the next year. Beth Krisko, who came to the Glen two years ago as the volunteer coordinator, will be directing this summer’s Echo Camps while the Glen begins a search for a new OEC director.

Bieri also has cautious hope for the Glen’s future.

“This is an opportunity for a new start at the OEC, but it’s also like, where are the dollars?” he said. “If you have the best intensions but don’t have any money, you can’t buy a spigot to fix the faucet.”

—Lauren Heaton