Report from Faculty Senate President

October 6, 2016

Presidential Search

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:

  1. What are the current strengths of KSU?
  2. What are the challenges?
  3. What characteristics would we like to see in the president?
  4. 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.