The Board of Regents meets in executive session on Thursday morning of this week to evaluate the work of the presidents of the three state universities.

The discussion of Iowa State’s Steve Leath will be perfunctory and routine. He’s new in the job, still in a honeymoon and is highly regarded and widely liked. The discussion of Ben Allen of the University of Northern Iowa probably will center on how long he wants to stick around. He has guided the school through major cultural, financial and strategic change, a wearisome grind that came on top of debilitating prostate surgery. Now 65 and entering his seventh year as president, he could well tell the Board he wants to retire after this year.

“He’s done a marvelous and courageous service for UNI,” says an educator who has watched his every move, “and he could retire with pride even though he has suffered terrible and grossly unfair criticism” for the major changes he wrought — closing the Price Lab school and irritating the community, dropping baseball and irritating some alums, and instituting wrenching academic changes and irritating some faculty. Another factor pointing toward retirement: He dotes on his grandchildren.

That leaves the University of Iowa’s Sally Mason, who has just wound up her fifth year under a five-year letter of employment. She has strong defenders and strong critics in the state — and on the Board of Regents. Critics say her tenure has been marked by administrators’ mishandling of an athletic sex scandal, a devastating flood, a controversy over her husband’s job, the firing of two top aides, a mini-flareup over fundraising by staff doctors, questions about the university’s foundation and a couple of private clashes with Board leaders. Her critics concede she didn’t cause the flood, but they’ll concede little else. Her supporters say she has shown a steady hand through difficulties not of her own making.

Mason, 62, has a couple of firm supporters on the Board — particularly Iowa City lawyer Bob Downer, who has been a cheerleader for the university since his student days in the 1950s — as well as a couple of stern critics, Board watchers say. Her future might boil down to the view of Bruce Rastetter — the vice chair and most powerful member — and he hasn’t tipped his hand. At best, though, the annual review will probably leave Mason bruised; at worst, unemployed.

Stay tuned. ...

Nancy Sebring is what teachers might call a slow learner.

By May 24, the then-superintendent of schools was trying to contain the damage from those steamy emails to and from her six-week lover, missives that the school board was about to release to newspapers and that would imperil — and ultimately undo — her new job in Omaha. You would think that by then she would be careful about what she put in her emails.

But if you think that, you would be wrong.

Trying to explain the X-rated emails to the lawyer for the Omaha school district, where she had been hired as superintendent, Sebring wrote:

“The school district’s attorney (who is of marginal competence) is currently in the process of redacting information from the emails. When that is completed, my attorney and I are supposed to see them and at that time determine whether to file an injunction. However, neither I, nor my attorney, is confident that the DMPS attorney will actually adhere to that process as she seems to change her mind every time we discuss this with her.”

Not a good idea to call your general counsel “of marginal competence.” Not a good idea to do it in an email. Not a good idea to do it in an email to another lawyer. Not a good idea to do it in an email that might be released to the press.

And, sure enough, it was one of a dozen or so emails released last week to the Omaha World-Herald. Even more mind-boggling: The emails were released by Sebring herself. “Sebring told the World-Herald she wants them made public to show the Omaha community she was honest with [the Omaha school board] about why she abruptly resigned from the Des Moines job May 9, seven weeks before her contract with that district was to expire,” the Omaha paper wrote last week. Whatever.

The Des Moines lawyer is Patricia Lantz. She politely told Cityview she had “no interest” in responding to Sebring’s comment. But a school employee who has worked with both Lantz and Sebring says, “Sebring’s comment says more about her own character than it does about Pat’s ability. From my experience, Nancy Sebring’s measure of someone’s competence was in direct proportion to whether or not they agreed with her.”

In that same email to the Omaha lawyer, Sebring wrote: “Six weeks of poor judgment out of a 35-year career.” In fact, it was more than six weeks, but who’s quibbling. More than a year ago, Sebring applied for the top school job in Boulder, Colo., but didn’t get it. She returned to Des Moines, professing her love for the district to such an extent that the smitten board gave her a rich new contract. The ink was barely dry before she was applying for jobs in Minnesota — using her office email account. Those emails, too, ultimately came out. ...

The Southern Hills house where David and Liz Kruidenier had wonderful parties and entertained politicians and artists and writers from around the world is finally on the market, nine months after the widowed Liz Kruidenier died there at age 85 and a few months after a deal — or maybe it wasn’t a deal — for a neighbor to take it over fell through. The 52-year-old, 6,000-square-foot home sits on 3.5 acres and is assessed at $575,000, which is $10,000 below the asking price. The listing doesn’t exactly call it a fixer-upper, but it does say the house “is fairly priced so you can afford to update.” There’s already one offer, Skinny hears.

The house built by the former publisher of The Des Moines Register (and, in those days, The Tribune, too) was one of the first in the Southern Hills subdivision, which was the first major area to attract the wealthy away from the west side to south Des Moines. ...

“I loved listening to you and especially loved listening to you when you had your hand on my leg.” — Nancy Sebring. CV