Report from Faculty Senate President
Early Monday morning, October 3rd, Christina Leath, KSU's Assistant General Counsel notified me that Academic Search, the firm selected for the presidential search process, would like to meet with members of the Faculty Senate to determine our expected criteria for presidential candidates. I then asked all faculty senate committees to discuss this Monday afternoon and prepare a list of criteria to present to the search firm when we met with them.
Our meeting was held Thursday at 11 a.m., where the Executive Committee met with Dr. Mac Stewart, and Dr. Wanda Durrett Bigham, representatives of the Academic Search team. Dr. Stewart is a former interim provost at KSU, serving the university in 2011-12 (between Chapman & Thierstein). Dr. Bigham is from Ballard County, Kentucky, received her bachelor's degree at Murray State, master's degree from Morehead State, and held administrative positions at Morehead. (https://www.academic-search.com/content/wanda-durrett-bigham)
During the meeting, four specific questions were addressed:
What are the current strengths of KSU?
What are the challenges?
What characteristics would we like to see in the president?
What are the points of pride for KSU?
At the end of the meeting, we discussed the role their firm serves in the search process.
Strengths:
Small size
Hands on professors
Mentoring programs
Emphasis on student support services to promote recruitment and retention
Free electronic textbooks for students
Land Grant status – provides extra funding for students
Liberal Arts focus
HBCU
Very diverse institution
Challenges:
Interim leadership from chair level to President
Most of the challenges are affected by our budget.
Some chair positions have been interim for more than 15 years.
Many problems in the search process
High turnover results in zero institutional memory.