Washburn Regents looking to hire search firm to find next university president
Rafael Garcia
It's been so long since Washburn University had to hire a new president that its Regents aren't even sure if they have an adequate job description on file.
Few can even remember the search process, Regents chair Terry Beck said. With few records, there's still confusion as to how involved the Regents were in interviewing candidates.
So Beck, at a Regents work session on Thursday, brought a copy of the board's bylaws outlining the role of the Washburn University president as the next-best approximation of a job description as the board begins the lofty process of finding the university's next chief executive officer.
More:Longtime Washburn University president Jerry Farley announces retirement
Following Jerry Farley's announcement in April that he would retire after 25 years as Washburn University's president, the Regents are kickstarting a summer search process that will hope to find a successor for Farley before Sept. 30, his last day as president.
But with little personal or institutional memory of the last presidential search process, Beck and the other Regents are looking for help in making what he said will likely be the biggest decision members will make while on the board.
Washburn Regents likely to hire search firm
While the Regents took no formal action during the work session, they directed board secretary and university Marc Fried to put together a list of search firms with experience finding and recommending university candidates.
Two of the names that immediately came to the Regents' minds were AGB Search and WittKiefer Search, the latter of which recently helped Kansas State University hire its president Richard Linton.
While the Regents plan on developing a list of candidate attributes, a job profile and expected salary, the Regents said they preferred to first hire a search firm to guide them in that process.
Regent John Dietrich said that a search firm, acting as a headhunter, likely already has a cultivated list of prospective university presidents, and a search firm is better positioned to screen out finalists from an initial crop of candidates.
However, he also pointed out that a search firm could be incentivized to find a candidate at any cost, and the Regents could end up with with a candidate "crammed down (their) throats."
"But we can be alert to that," Beck said.
The Regents will hold a special meeting 3 p.m. Thursday to review executive search firms and possibly vote on one to find Washburn University's next president.
Closed vs. open university presidential search
Beck told the Regents that he understood it is usually the imperative of the board chair to appoint search committee members, but he also made it clear that was not a responsibility he wanted to undertake by himself.
Instead, he asked the other Regents to come up with lists of recommendations for a committee that will ultimately be made up 20 to 25 students, faculty, staff and community members, including two Regents themselves.
Beck said that would help keep the committee large enough to represent various campus interests but small enough to not be "unwieldy."
The Regents also touched on whether they would engage in an open or a closed presidential search, with the board leaning toward a closed search.
With open searches, candidates are publicly announced ahead of their interviews, and they typically tour campuses and meet with various campus stakeholders when they do reach the final selection stage.
Under closed searches, though, only the search committee knows the identity of each candidate. Most Kansas universities' recent searches for presidents have been of this type, although critics have said this type of search strips the public of the opportunity to engage and participate in what should be a transparent process.
In either kind of search, the committee only makes recommendations to the Regents, who make the final hiring decision, although under a closed search, the first time the public learns a candidate's name is when they're announced as being hired.
Regent Allen Schmidt, who is the Kansas Board of Regents' appointee to its Washburn counterpart, said that he used to be opposed to closed searches.
But after his experience with other Kansas university president searches, he said a closed search typically yields a better crop of candidates, since potential applicants at other institutions may be turned off by publicly disclosing they are looking for a new job.
No interim president planned for Washburn ... yet
At a Regents meeting earlier in May, both the incoming and outgoing faculty senate presidents had urged the Regents to remove the urgency to find Washburn University's next permanent president by appointing an interim.
"Washburn is not well-served by a rapid search for a long-term president," said newly elected faculty senate president Shaun Schmidt. "Instead, we believe an interim president is needed to guide the university community's transition to the next long-term presidency."
More:Washburn faculty urge Regents appoint interim president while looking for Farley's replacement
While the Regents on Thursday briefly touched on the topic of an interim president, their conversation instead mostly focused on the search process for a permanent president.
After the meeting, Beck told The Capital-Journal the board's immediate priority will be to start the search process, although the board could appoint an interim closer to the end of the summer if the search process stalls.
"With a timeline, if we don't have the process far enough along to have the permanent president by September 30, we'll look at getting an interim," Beck told The Capital-Journal.
"We're all taking it seriously," he said. "This is the biggest decision we'll probably make as a board, and we want to do it right."
Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.