Who Is Elmira Mangum?

The university announced last week that Elmira Mangum will be the new vice president for budget and planning. Her appointment was approved last Wednesday by the board of trustees, and Mangum will start in February. Since my June post about Laura Brown seemed to gather a lot of interest, I'll try to do a little research on Mangum.

Mangum is no stranger to upstate New York, having held administrative positions at SUNY-Buffalo from 1984 to 2001. She has served as associate provost at UNC-Chapel Hill since 2001 and is in charge of preparing the operating budget each year.

Earlier this year, it was reported that UNC-Chapel Hill has the highest paid professors of any publicly-supported institution.

Like Cornell, UNC hired the services of Bain & Co. this year to find ways to cut costs and balance the budget. UNC faces a $60 million budget shortfall and is enacting 5 percent cuts across the board. However, unlike Cornell, UNC was able to solicit a private donation to hire Bain.

Mangum wrote a 1998 dissertation entitled "A study of the leadership behaviors of public four-year historically black college and university presidents as perceived by the presidents and their upper echelon administrators." She earns points for crafting a 26-word title with no punctuation.

Unsurprisingly, Mangum donated to Barack Obama's campaign. What is interesting is that she was a very early donor. She gave $500 in June '07 and then another $1800 in August '07, which meant that she was "maxed out" several months before the first primary. For whatever reason, she chose not to give again during the general election cycle (or donated a far smaller amount).

Mangum is a registered Democrat and has voted in every recent election. She may have signed an online petition encouraging North Carolina's superdelgates to cast their votes for Barack Obama at the convention. Mangum should feel at home politically at Cornell, since the senior staff members she will work with are mostly Democrats and Independents.

Mangum is 55 or 56 years old. She owns a four-bedroom, 3,600-sq. ft. home which is currently assessed at $414,188. It appears that she purchased the house in 2001 for $330,000.

Mangum was at one time known as Elmira Mangum-Daniel, which suggests she has since divorced.

We wish Mangum success and hope she is able to balance our budget.