Students and faculty at Chicago State University got lots of answers from Carol Adams today, but many remained unconvinced that either she or job candidate Wayne Watson is best suited to run the school.

Adams, who is currently the secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services, repeatedly talked about the need for the university to market itself, rebuild its brand, earn the trust of current students and raise large amounts of money to help it expand.

While many students agreed with those needs, they also worried that both candidates have too much baggage coming into the job.

“We don’t feel that either one of them is qualified to run a university,” says Gread McKinnis III, a fourth-year political science major.

During the morning sessions today, students occasionally entered the room and stood silently at the back holding signs with slogans like “R.I.P. CSU’s Reputation” and “No Political Hacks.” Outside, students gathered signatures on petitions calling for a new search process. About 700 students have signed the petitions so far, says political science student Michael O’Connor.

“As I look as the students out here today, they may think I would be in dismay at their demonstration, but I think that is so significant,” Adams told the crowd this morning. “They should organize all the time around these issues. As a former student activist myself, I would be a hypocrite not to be smiling seeing the students.”

Adams says the next president will have to work hard to boost faculty and student morale, one of three significant problems with the school, she says. Adams says the school also faces challenges with projecting a positive brand image and has a scarcity of fundraising.

“You have an asset with this great facility that isn’t being used and marketed appropriately,” Adams says.

Though students asked Adams for specifics on how she would bring in more money, she broadly mentioned the need to attract corporate sponsors, solicit wealthy alumni and tap as many state and federal grant programs as possible.

“She was not able to give specific examples about how she would be able to change the administration at large,” says junior marketing major Levon James, who agrees that CSU needs to do more fundraising.

About 65 students came to a lunchtime session, many of them wearing bright green T-shirts demanding the interim president stay on board while the school conducts a new search process. At the end of the session, some students briefly chanted, “Retain Pogue,” a reference to interim president Frank Pogue, who has held the position since former president Elnora Daniel left last summer.

The search process comes at a critical time for a university that has seen its enrollment slide each of the last few years to less than 7,000 people today. Its four-year graduation rate is less than 20 percent, and some students complain that when they transfer from community colleges, CSU doesn’t recognize all their credits and forces them to stay an extra year.

Faculty and alumni also expressed concerns about how few people seemed to be involved in the search process until the two finalists were announced.

“The process was deeply flawed and what we got were candidates that are clearly political insiders, and that’s not in the best interest of the university,” says zoology professor Laurie Walter, who is the president of the faculty union.

“My only concern - and it probably always will be - I just want other candidates who were strong on paper to be presented to us,” says Donald Pettis, the president of CSU’s alumni association.

Watson, the chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, will visit CSU tomorrow for a similar day-long set of interviews and panels