Executive's bumpy ride at YSU comes to an end

A top administrator for more than two decades, G.L. Mears retires this week.
By RON COLE
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- It's a Southern thing.
That's the short answer to the origins of G.L. Mears' initial-laden moniker.
G.L., it turns out, doesn't stand for anything.
"That's my legal name," Mears said in his most earnest Louisiana drawl. "I still have some friends who believe that I have some other name.
"But that's it. Plain and straightforward. G.L."
Plain and straightforward may be the best way to describe Mears' 22-year career as one of the top administrators at Youngstown State University.
A southern gentleman and Civil War fanatic who came north more than three decades ago to pursue a career in higher education, Mears retires this week after 10 years as executive vice president, one of the top five posts at YSU.
Working relations
He leaves with a reputation as a nuts-and-bolts, honest and plain-spoken chief financial officer who has guided YSU through some of its bumpiest fiscal times.
"I don't try to hide anything," said Mears, 60, of Austintown. "I tell the truth as I understand it to be, and sometimes I'm probably a little less diplomatic as maybe I should be. I call it the way I see it, and there are some people who don't particularly appreciate that. As a result, there have been a few people on this campus who didn't particularly like me.
"But hey, that's part of the package you get when you take the job."
In a two-hour interview last week in his university office, Mears talked about his life, career and future, including the four YSU presidents under whom he toiled: John Coffelt, Neil Humphrey, Leslie Cochran and David Sweet.
"The presidents that I've worked for here have been people that I might not totally agree with, but I could agree with them enough that we could work together," he said.
He said he had the most disputes with Cochran, YSU's chief executive from 1992 to 2000.
"Cochran had an attitude that if you've got the money, spend it," Mears said. "Worry about tomorrow when tomorrow gets here. Well, as a president or a chief financial officer, you better be thinking about not only tomorrow, but next month, next year."
Cochran tried to put a positive spin on everything, and eventually it cost him his credibility, Mears said.
"Everything Cochran said came to be suspect in many people's eyes," Mears said. "Hopefully, this new administration [under Sweet] will have learned the lesson from that and will be open and honest and tell it like it is, whether it's good or bad."
Background
Mears had both good and bad growing up on the family cattle farm in the tiny town of Dixie Inn, La., east of Shreveport.
The youngest of eight children, little G.L. was only 4 years old when his father, an engineer, died in a construction accident.
His mother taught school, directed the family farm and worked in an ammunition plant.
In a time and place where the races were separate and women knew their place, Mears said his mother was against segregation and fought for women's rights. During World War II, angered that men in the ammunition plant were earning higher wages, she conducted a one-woman strike.
"She was a person who believed that everybody ought to be treated the same," he said.
After earning bachelor's and master's degrees at Louisiana Tech University and a doctorate at the University of Mississippi, Mears made the move up north, taking a job as research and planning director at a small college in New Jersey.
He moved back south to the University of Arkansas for two years before coming to YSU in 1980 as budget director. Until last fall, when Sweet hired a new chief financial officer, Mears oversaw YSU's $100 million plus budget.
Difficult period
In 1992, Mears faced the most difficult period of his YSU career. With Humphrey's presidency winding down and Cochran about to take office, it fell mostly to Mears to see through the layoff of nearly 50 employees, the first and only layoffs in the university's history.
"It's one of the most difficult things in the world to do," said Mears, who suffered a heart attack a year later. "You know you're harming people, and yet you just don't have an alternative."
With dwindling state support and declining enrollment, YSU's fiscal status has been a precarious balancing act ever since, Mears said.
State funding, which makes up about half of YSU's budget, has been stagnant for the past decade and likely won't increase significantly any time soon, Mears said. The state also caps the amount that universities can raise tuition, which limits the amount of money YSU and other state universities can raise through student fees, he said.
That means it's an absolute necessity that YSU increase enrollment, Mears said.
"If the challenge of enrollment is not solved, then the ability to solve any of the other problems the university has is going to diminish," he said. "Everything ultimately comes down to dollars, and enrollment means dollars."
YSU had nearly 15,800 students when Mears came to Youngstown in 1980; it now has 12,250. Although enrollment is on the upswing as of late, Mears said it remains a gigantic hurdle.
"You've got to be more active out in the community," he said. "You've got to have more diverse programs that people want to enroll in. Frankly, we haven't done a good job of selling this place. We have to do a better job of telling our story."
What's next?
Mears won't be around to do that. Virginia, whom he first met in the fifth-grade in Louisiana and married 37 years ago, is assistant director in the Center for Student Progress at YSU and likely will retire in a year.
With a son in Columbus and a daughter in Alabama, Mears said he and his wife likely will move out of the Mahoning Valley, but he's not sure where. Maybe the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia or the mountains of eastern Tennessee.
An avid woodworker, he's found a place in New Hampshire where he wants to go for six weeks to learn to build a Windsor chair.
He's also a director of the North-South Skirmish Association, a group of nearly 4,000 Civil War enthusiasts that holds competitions nationwide shooting muzzle-loading rifles.
"I think there's a gold medal in one of these events for me," he said, tugging on his tie and leaning back in his office chair.
"Eye-hand coordination doesn't get better as you get older, so if I'm going to do it, I'm going to have to do it in the next few years."