Panel Picked to Look for Next A&M Leader
By Vimal Patel
From the Bryan-College Station Eagle
Robert Bednarz presided as Faculty Senate speaker last month as the group passed a vote of "no confidence" in Texas A&M System Chancellor Mike McKinney's leadership.
On Thursday, Bednarz was named one of 15 people who will search for the next president at the flagship university.
The announcement of a diverse advisory committee during the regularly scheduled Board of Regents meeting in College Station represents a move to alleviate concerns by many worried about regents and the chancellor making decisions without proper input from faculty and other groups.
"It's certainly very encouraging," said Tim Hall, a distinguished professor who will serve on the committee. "I think it's the sort of thing that most of the faculty were looking for."
The chair of the new committee is Richard Box, who, before he was tapped to become a regent last year, was treasurer of Texans for Rick Perry, the governor's campaign fund.
Two more regents also will serve on the committee -- Ida Clement Steen and Lupe Fraga, who served on a 2007 presidential search committee.
The group will search for a replacement for Elsa Murano, who resigned in June amid a public falling-out with McKinney, a family physician and former chief of staff to Perry.
R. Bowen Loftin, who has served as the chief of the Galveston branch campus, is serving as interim president.
The committee -- which includes two students, five faculty members and five other members representing various "stakeholders" -- will work under a flexible deadline of February to complete the 16-step process that began with the creation of the committee and ends with the final selection.
"While the schedule is aggressive, I certainly believe it can be accomplished," said Regents Chairman Morris Foster, adding that the deadline could be pushed back if necessary.
Some observers have described the next presidential search as the most important in the university's history. Others view it as a test: how it is handled will determine whether the chancellor and regents put muscle behind their conciliatory overtures.
It will be Texas A&M's third search for a president in the last seven years. The last two took essentially the same path: The chancellor appointed a diverse advisory committee, and each body recommended three candidates to regents.
And each search ended in a spurt of controversy as it became known that regents were considering candidates who weren't vetted by the search committee -- Murano in 2007 and former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm in 2002.
Differences
In the 2002 process, the will of the search committee was upheld when five of the nine regents voted for approving Robert Gates, who was researched by the search committee and was one of the three recommended finalists.
The remaining regents supported Gramm, a former Texas A&M professor who was neither vetted by the search committee nor ever officially acknowledged as a candidate by the board chairman at the time, Erle Nye.
The 2007 search ended with Murano's approval by an 8-1 vote even though the search advisory committee had recommended three sitting university presidents to regents. Murano, who was then a vice chancellor and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, had not been vetted by the advisory committee.
The 2007 advisory committee was criticized by some on the faculty. In 2002, the three finalists' names were made public and the candidates were invited to campus for interviews and a chance for the community to meet each candidate.
But the names of the three finalists whom the 2007 search committee yielded were never publicly named -- not by the chair of the committee, Douglas Slack, or by the regents.
After the names were forwarded in August 2007, Slack said, he and other committee members were in the dark about what was happening with the search until December, when regents announced that Murano was the sole finalist.
Slack defended his tight grip on information, saying he went as far as making committee members sign secrecy oaths not to disclose the candidates' names. The wildlife and fisheries sciences professor said that his search was different from the one that led to Gates' hiring: In 2007, he said, all the finalists were sitting university presidents whose reputations at their current institutions could have been harmed if their job search had been disclosed.
The new search will protect the names of all candidates from disclosure, officials said.
Jerry Cox has run through more applications for Texas A&M president in the last decade than just about anyone else. The distinguished alumnus, who is the only person to have served on both advisory committees, defends the 2007 search process.
"I got an inside look at both searches, and I can say unequivocally that both were equally successful," said Cox. "Had we picked [one of the] recommended finalists, we would have been equally as pleased with that candidate as we were with Bob Gates.
"The problem came after the search," he said, referring to regents' consideration of candidates not vetted by the committee.
Politics Suspected
In both searches, many saw political undertones.
In 2002, three of the four regents who didn't support Gates and were said to favor Gramm had been appointed by Perry, a former Aggie yell leader. All five regents who broke for Gates had been appointed by Gov. George W. Bush.
Former Regent Don Aviles was one of them. Now he's one of 24 members of Murano's shared governance task force.
"The five of us followed the process," Aviles said. "I personally believe that if you set a process, follow the process. Otherwise, you lose credibility."
The political undertones were subdued in the 2007 search, because there was no final showdown between two candidates. In a largely guarded process that began that August after the committee forwarded recommendations, the university community didn't know the status of the search until Murano was named sole finalist in December, many faculty members said.
With a board packed with Perry appointees, Murano was approved on an 8-to-1 vote.
Some have lamented the politicization of the search process and note that even though Gates is regarded as a successful president, the fact that all the regents who supported him were Bush appointees shows that board members often have a political allegiance to the governor who picked them.
One member of the 2002 search committee said that Gates and Perry zapped attention away from academics.
A New Search
Officials said that each candidate would go through the same search process, even if more candidates were added. If that procedure is followed, the last-minute concerns of the two previous searches will be avoided.
McKinney didn't address the search during remarks Thursday, but he said in a statement that the process was about more than hunting for the next Texas A&M leader. He called it a way to reach out to "the greater Aggie community regarding their thoughts and recommendations on how we can best advance Texas A&M."
"We believe this process will be one of the most interactive and progressive ever undertaken in selecting a president for Texas A&M University," he said.
The search will begin with outreach efforts such as town-hall sessions throughout the state, visits with various interested groups and solicitation of thoughts and comments through a presidential search Web site, officials said.
From the initial pool of candidates, those on a short list will be interviewed and then "three to four" semi-finalists will come to College Station for interviews. The committee will then forward three names unranked to regents, who will make the selection and approval.
Foster, in a press conference after the board meeting, said this search would be better orchestrated than the last one.
"We learned a lot from prior searches," he said. "I fully believe that we're organized this time, and ... we'll have a successful search."
Presidential Search Committee
The 15-member search committee expected to select the next Texas A&M president was announced Thursday. They include:
* Regent Richard Box will serve as the chairman of the committee.
* Regent Ida Clement Steen
* Regent Lupe Fraga
* Dr. John Junkins -- Distinguished Professor; Regents Professor; Director, Center for Mechanics and Control, Department of Aerospace Engineering
* Dr. Tim Hall - Distinguished Professor; Director, Institute of Developmental and Molecular Biology, Department of Biology
* Dr. Robert Bednarz - Speaker, Faculty Senate; Professor, Department of Geography
* Dr. Mark Hussey - Vice Chancellor and Dean of College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Former Head of Soil & Crop Sciences Department
* Dr. Antonio Cepeda-Benito - Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost
* Eric Beckham -- Student Body President
* Meredith Maloney - President, Student Chapter of the American Veterinary Medicine Association
* Shelley Potter - Chair of the Board, The Association of Former Students
* Thomas Saylak - Chairman of Board of Trustees, Texas A&M Foundation
* Neal Adams - Attorney; Former Vice Chair and Member, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
* Dr. Dave Parrott - Executive Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Student Life
* Dr. Frank Ashley - Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, A&M System
Published on Friday, July 17, 2009
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