Local News: Search for Texas A&M President Begins

Panel Starts Search For A&M Leader
By Vimal Patel

From the Bryan-College Station Eagle

The search committee responsible for finding the next Texas A&M University president held its first gathering Friday.

Members chatted over breakfast before heading into the Board of Regents meeting room to begin the hunt.

"I didn't volunteer for this," said Regent Richard Box, an Austin dentist and chairman of the 15-member committee, in an interview before the 7:30 a.m. breakfast. "It's a great honor but a tremendous responsibility."

Board of Regents Chairman Morris Foster asked Box, a former treasurer of Gov. Rick Perry's campaign fund, to serve as chair of the committee, which is working under a flexible deadline of January to forward the names of three candidates to regents.

Officials tout the transparency of the process. This search, if followed as planned, will avoid the last-minute controversy that the last two presidential searches encountered when regents considered candidates who hadn't been vetted by the search committee.

Several committee members interviewed this week expressed optimism.

"There were many errors made in the past search committees," said Eric Beckham, student body president and one of two students on the committee. "But I think this committee's been set up correctly. I think we'll get the job done right this time."

The committee also consists of two other regents, five faculty members -- some of whom have administrative positions as well -- and five other members, including Frank Ashley, vice chancellor of academic affairs for the A&M System, and attorney Neal Adams.

"I'm sure we're going to get a huge pool of candidates," said Ashley, who has served on presidential search committees for four other Texas A&M System universities. "I think the hard part is going to be trying to just get down to eight or 10 candidates for the committee to look at."

Many members said they had no reservations about serving on the committee when asked, despite the level of scrutiny this search will encounter due to questions and acrimony surrounding the resignation of Elsa Murano in June.

"I'm pretty excited about it, actually," said Meredith Maloney, the only graduate student on the committee. "I have faith that the system will work."

The Board of Regents will make the final selection from the three candidates recommended by the panel. Officials indicated that every candidate would go through the same process.

That didn't happened in either of the last two searches.

In 2002, four of nine regents didn't support Robert Gates and were believed to favor former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, who was never declared an official candidate and wasn't vetted by the 24-person committee.

In 2007, a 14-member committee forwarded the names of three sitting university presidents. Instead, regents went with Murano, a vice chancellor and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She had not been researched by the search committee.

In March, after a harsh back-and-forth over a job evaluation between McKinney and Murano, regents approved a formal policy that would allow them to select a president who hadn't been vetted by a search committee.

Information about candidates and deliberations will be confidential. R. Bowen Loftin, who is serving as Texas A&M's interim president, was asked Friday whether he planned to apply for the position.

"It's too soon to tell," he said.

Also Friday, officials announced that a Washington-based firm had been hired to assist the committee in the search. Academic Search Inc. has conducted more than 186 presidential searches since 2004.

Published on Saturday, July 25, 2009