Presidential search committee narrows list

The search for a new University president is moving forward smoothly and as scheduled.

Since the application deadline of Oct. 30, committee members have been evaluating the applications they received.

The President's Office would not release figures on how many people applied for the position. However, Cody Sumter, student representative to the Board of Governors, said the number of applicants "far surpassed" the University's last presidential search, when Barbara Dixon was hired in 2003 from almost 50 applicants.

The committee met Saturday and narrowed the list of applicants to those whom they will conduct phone reference and background checks on, Sumter said.

The committee contracted a company to conduct the background checks, and the company will report back to the committee at a meeting Dec. 5. At that point, the committee will further narrow the list and select candidates they will interview at neutral sites.

After the neutral site interviews, the short list of finalists will be made public. Those candidates will visit campus, at which point students, faculty, staff and the community will have the opportunity to interact with them and ask questions.

"The reason we bring the candidates to campus is we want to solicit that input," Sumter said. "We want someone that will mesh with the environment that we have here. So it is very important what student input is, what faculty input is and staff input is. The time to bring up a concern is not after we've selected someone, but when we've brought them to campus for exactly that purpose. We want that feedback."

Sumter said the committee had an excellent and qualified pool of candidates to choose from, but there are still challenges the committee faces in selecting the next president.

"We're in an interesting time right now where we have budget considerations as well as our mission considerations," he said. Pulling all of those together into a single person is a challenge."

"There's different aspects that the president has to face. It has to be internal - toward the faculty, staff and students, but also outwards, towards, say, alumni, toward the state for funding. Basically, the president has to be both the internal facing and the external facing embodiment of the University. So I think the candidates are quite qualified for that."

Sumter said the committee has achieved consensus in its decisions thus far, and the selection process is going as scheduled.

"Everything is going very smoothly," he said. "I was actually expecting things to take longer than they were, but we're almost ahead of schedule."

Ken Read, chairman of the presidential search committee, said he would like to have the new president selected as soon as possible, but by its nature, such a process is time-consuming.

"It's the kind of subject that takes time, and there's so many people involved and so many people have a stake in this that you have to make sure they're all included," Read said.

He said the committee hopes to have a president selected by the end of Feb., but wants to makes its decision carefully.

"We want to get this right," Read said. "We only want to do this one time. I personally would like to see, for whoever the candidate is, or the final pick is … that it would be for a good, long term - for stability for the University and [to] bring in a program and move it forward over a period of years."