At the U. of Missouri, Searching for President Everything

UM System

The University of Missouri system is looking for a new president, but given the system’s recent upheaval a better title for the new leader might well be “miracle worker.”

The previous president, Timothy M. Wolfe, resigned in November following widespread protests over racial problems at the flagship campus, in Columbia.

The system is still reeling from the demonstrations that led to the resignations of Mr. Wolfe and R. Bowen Loftin, the Columbia campus’s chancellor. Fallout also lingers from a host of related controversies, including the case of Melissa Click, the assistant professor of communication who was fired after being caught on camera trying to block student journalists from covering the protests.

State lawmakers have responded by subjecting university officials to intense scrutiny and threatening budget cuts. The negative press coverage is one of the factors that officials at the flagship campus blame for a steep decline in enrollment for the fall.

Now the Board of Curators, which oversees the system’s four campuses, has set out a process for finding a new president, along with a list of lofty qualifications for candidates. Both are meant to respond to a range of concerns from those inside and outside the system.

The real trick, say those following the search, is to find someone who can repair the system’s reputation and satisfy the demands of groups whose interests can sometimes clash.

“It turns out the job is really hard,” said Ben Trachtenberg, chair of the Faculty Council at the Columbia campus and an associate professor of law. “That’s why it’s important that they do a really thorough search.”

More Transparent

So far, at least, the process has largely satisfied faculty members and students.

“I am very hopeful about this search, especially since the search committee was expanded to include faculty, staff, and student representatives,” Keith J. Stine, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and chair of the Faculty Senate at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, said in an email.

The search committee includes the six current members of the Board of Curators (there are three vacancies on the board, and the governor has yet to approve a student member), an at-large member from each of the four campuses, and two co-chairs who are not board members.

While the committee is meant only as an advisory body, many see it as a big improvement over the system’s two previous presidential searches.

The board acted on its own when it named Gary D. Forsee president of the system, in 2007, said Cheryl D.S. Walker, who was vice chair of the board at the time and is now a co-chair of the search committee. A 20-member search committee was assembled to find Mr. Forsee’s replacement, but the group had little or no input into the board’s decision to appoint Mr. Wolfe.

For the current search, the committee is charged with evaluating and interviewing potential candidates and then recommending its preferences to the curators, who will make the final decision.

The system has sometimes been “the poster child of doing things wrong,” said Peggy Ward-Smith, an associate professor of nursing and chair of the Faculty Senate at the system’s Kansas City campus. But in this case, the board is being thoughtful and “way more transparent,” Ms. Ward-Smith said.

‘God on a Good Day’

Many have also praised the search committee for listening to a variety of perspectives in forming the list of qualifications for the president.

The board and search committee held a series of open forums, and seem to have taken seriously the feedback they solicited, Mr. Stine said.

The document that resulted from those events includes nine paragraphs describing the leadership challenges the curators will expect the new president to manage and a bulleted list of a dozen broad aspirational qualifications.

Turmoil at Mizzou

Last fall student protests over race relations rocked the University of Missouri at Columbia. Now Mizzou’s leaders are striving to meet students’ demands while restoring stability and the public’s faith in their institution.

• Mizzou Incident Rekindles Anger Over Treatment of Black Students
• What It Will Take for Missouri to Meet Its Faculty-Diversity Goal
• Inside How Missouri’s Leadership Scrambled to Quell a Campus Crisis
• Students Should Feel Like ‘Equal Partners,’ Says Missouri’s First Chief Diversity Officer

The list describes such challenges as creating “an enduring social compact with the citizens” of the state and their elected officials, and leading a statewide “conversation about the value of diversity, inclusion, equity, and respect for all of Missouri’s diverse citizens through an open and equitable higher education.”

It also includes being a “multiculturally competent individual with a demonstrated awareness and sensitivity for all people,” and a “tireless advocate and relationship builder, attentive to many highly varied constituents.”

Shelly Weiss Storbeck, a co-founder of an executive-search firm, said the attributes the committee has identified are clearly aspirational but not so different from what most institutions and systems are seeking.

“Every search committee is looking for God on a good day,” she said.

As the process continues, however, there will be some trade-offs as committee members consider what qualifications they must have and those they can live without, she said.

And many search committees bank on the idea that good leaders can surround themselves with talented people to compensate for any weaknesses, Ms. Storbeck added.

David Maxwell, a former president of Drake University, said broad lists tend to set a tone of “being able to walk on water without getting your feet wet.”

But such an expectation isn’t necessarily inappropriate, given the extreme complexities that any leader in public higher education faces, he said.

“These are ambitious criteria,” Mr. Stine said in his email, but they include some of the most important attributes that the system will need to deal with its issues. And the lengthy list gives the search committee a better basis to evaluate candidates, he said.

Mr. Trachtenberg said it’s hard to be against any of the qualifications that the committee has included. The question, he said, “is whether any human alive can meet all of them.”

Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.