In her six years as the head of the Illinois Department of Human Services, Carol Adams helped bring in $500 million in new grants and federal funds to the state’s largest agency.

Couple that with nearly 20 years in higher education and at least as much time in social services, and Adams is well suited to take over the top job at Chicago State University, she and colleagues say.

Fundraising would be one of the top priorities for Adams if she becomes president at CSU, as would creating a new marketing strategy for the university to help overhaul its image.

“I have felt that a certain kind of leadership is really necessary at Chicago State, someone who can bring Chicago State into the center of the city,” Adams says. “It’s got excellent faculty but you don’t hear them quoted as much as you might hear faculty quoted from other universities.”

Adams, 64, is one of two finalists to be the president of Chicago State University. Wayne Watson, the chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, is the other finalist.

CSU is trying to repair its reputation after a state audit showed a previous president used a university credit card for personal purchases. While that money was repaid, students at CSU are particularly concerned that the next president have the qualifications to move the campus forward.

“Secretary Adams has had a very long history of leadership in a variety of sectors,” says Grace Hou, the assistant secretary of Human Services. “She’s worked in government, she’s worked in academia, she’s worked in philanthropy.”

Decades of experience

Adams lists dozens of accomplishments at the places she’s worked, including the ability to manage large staffs and the skills to help attract millions of dollars in grants and matching funds.

For six years in the 1980s, Adams was the director of the African-American Studies program at Loyola.

After that, she logged seven years at the Chicago Housing Authority and was one of the few administrators there to survive the agency’s takeover by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. When she left, she was CHA’s director of resident programs and services.

Over the course of her career, Adams spent a total of 13 years at the Center for Inner-City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. Most recently, as executive director of the center from 2000 to 2003, she brought in at least $13 million in new funding and established a variety of partnerships with community organizations.

Both Adams and Watson "have worked very hard and have contributed to the educational upliftment of Chicago, particularly in the African-American community,” says Conrad Worrill, the current director of the center.

Adams says the faculty at NIU asked her to come back to the Center for Inner-City Studies when the job opened up because of her experience raising money.

“I’m a known fundraiser,” she says. “I’m a grants person. Wherever I go, I bring money.”

Questions over qualifications

But CSU students like Elise Burks question whether Watson and Adams really are the best choices for the campus.

“I don’t think that being dean of a college for however long she was there is enough experience at all,” Burks said of Adams’ time at Loyola. She added that just because Watson has experience running the City Colleges doesn’t mean that he would be the best person to run a four-year university, either.

Adams, who was appointed by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2003, had her share of scandal on her watch at Human Services.

Adams’ chief of staff, Teyonda Wertz, was at the center of a sexual harassment trial last year. A male driver for the agency said Wertz solicited him for sex in a hotel room during a trip in 2003, threatening to fire him if he didn’t comply.

The driver was fired a short time later and said it was because he refused to have sex with Wertz; the agency said it was because he used a state vehicle for personal trips. The agency was acquitted of all charges by a federal jury.

“What I did in this instance was, Ms. Wertz, I moved her away from being my Chief of Staff during the time that the investigation and the trial was being held,” Adams says.

She adds that the driver had only been working for the agency for three months before he was fired.

“How it was handled was appropriate,” Adams says.

Adams prefers to focus on other accomplishments in her career, like integrating a massive state agency that effectively had seven bureaucracies within it when she took over.

People like Hou urge CSU students to give Adams the benefit of the doubt.

“I would just encourage people to reserve judgment, and if you really care about the welfare of the school, to take the opportunity to get to know her, to see what she’s done over the course of her career,” Hou says.