The Echo has an article on the presidential search, “Regents continue search for university president,” which is rather worrisome. Apparently, the Regents believe that appointing a president after most faculty and students have left after the end of the Winter term will allow for sufficient input from the campus community.
Stapleton said he hopes it will be possible for the forums to take place before the end of winter semester, but said if this is not possible, a large enough percentage of the EMU community lives in the area to allow for input. “This is an important decision, so we’re going to send out on campus enough notice about it, ” Stapleton said. “I’m shooting to have the campus forums before everybody leaves campus, but if we don’t, a good portion of our school base lives in metro Detroit.”
As the lack of input on the budget cuts last summer should demonstrate, there are not enough faculty and students on campus during the summer months to enable such input, especially for such an important decision. I hope the Regents reconsider this potential and unnecessary delay in the search process. It is essential that as many people as possible are included in the decision and able to provide meaningful input to the Regents before the decision is made.
Well, I would agree that it is problematic that the on-campus visits for the President have not happened yet. I had heard that the process was more complicated than the BoR and head hunting firm had originally thought, which to me makes me wonder “why didn’t they reflect on past searches for president?” I don’t have a lot of inside knowledge here, but this whole thing has the smell of reinventing the wheel to me.
But I do disagree about two things here. First, the on-going presidential search and the budget cut debacle of last summer are not even remotely similar. I know I have some misinformed colleagues who continue to bring these issues up as a part of my own department’s politics and perhaps that is going on in other departments as well. But there simply is no analogy/comparison here at all. None. You might as well connect the tardiness of the presidential search to the murder of Laura Dickinson or the president’s house debacle or changing the mascot from the Hurons to the eagles or on global warming.
Second, at this late stage if I had to make a choice between bringing presidential candidates to campus in April or in May, I’d pick May. Again, what should have happened is the search committee should have realized from the beginning that this was a process that was going to take a long time, and they should have started the search process earlier. But that didn’t happen.
So, given where we are at now, it seems to me that May is actually a better choice for two basic reasons. First, I think that Stapleton is kind of right– most people are around the area, and if they have these forums in May, they will still get a high rate of participation. If they were to have these forums in July or August, well, I think that’d be a very different story. Second, not to get to punny with Elliot here, but April really is the cruelest month in all of academia and the many various commitments it brings: final department meetings, celebrations of student excellence, other meetings/events, finals week and the work that entails for both students and faculty, graduation, etc., etc., etc. I personally would probably be more willing and able to go to the presidential interviews in the spring term after all of these other things have passed.
The Wilbanks sneak attack! As he whispers in Stapleton’s ear. Appoint in the spring/summer.
To think that Wilbanks et al are doing this in order to promote a “sneak attack” means that you are assuming that they (and by “they,” I mean a bunch of people, not just Wilbanks and Stapleton) planned all this out. I just don’t buy it. There are probably people on the BoR, perhaps Wilbanks and Stapleton and others, who are just as happy with the way this is turning out, but I have a hard time believing that they were able to plan this ahead of time.
I really need to weigh in on this one. As a member of the search committee I can unequivocally state that if this was by design then we did not know it. I knew there was a hope that the search would be concluded quickly, but it became obvious that would not be the case. Because Alum seems to be in the know, s/he should know that the committee finished its work and it is now in the hands of the Board of Regents. I really cannot say more, but I appreciate sitedad’s observation that this could not have been planned back in October when the committee was formed.
Just to be clear: I think it *could* have been planned this way. I just don’t think it was planned this way. Maybe that’s splitting hairs, though.