The Presidential Search Committee will decide whether to release the names of final candidates for AU's presidency and conduct site visits with them based on how much confidentiality the candidates feel they need, according to Presidential Search Committee Chairman Gary Abramson.
Abramson, who spoke to campus media following the end of the board of trustees' meeting Friday, said some candidates for the position may want their identities to remain confidential over concerns about being fired from their current jobs.
"Often the best candidates are the ones that really need the confidentiality," he said. "Yet at the same time, we would like to conduct things as openly as possible. ... Until we know who the final candidates are and what their position is on that, it's hard to really promise that everything will be in the open. If possible we would prefer it that way, because not only do we want to continue with as much transparency and openness as possible, but we also want the new president to be accepted by the university community."
When AU conducted its last presidential search in 1993 and 1994, it released the identities of the four final candidates after they had all come to campus for day-long interviews with the board of trustees. One of the candidates, Ilene H. Nagel, was then a full-time professor at the Indiana University School of Law, while Benjamin Ladner, whom the board ultimately selected, was then the president of the National Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Sciences. The other two candidates, George Langdon and John Rosenblum, were former presidents of other universities, The Eagle previously reported.
According to Abramson, the committee received over 100 applications from candidates, as well as about 160 nominations from the campus community.
The board specifically asked the committee to have a diverse group of people in its candidate pool, Abramson said.
"The board's instructions were for us to have as much diversity as we could, and we told our search consultant that we would like that as well," he said. "But when you do a search, it's not just a question of who answers the newspaper ad. You have to get a headhunter to go out and recruit people as well."
The committee met Wednesday to conduct its first screening of the candidates. While Abramson said he didn't have exact figures to report, the committee "tried to get close to cutting out half of them."
Once the candidate pool is narrowed even further, the committee will interview the remaining candidates. Once that round of interviews is completed, the committee will pick out the most stellar candidates and present them to the board for consideration. At that point, the board would conduct its own round of interviews and make a final decision, according to Abramson.
"The purpose of the Search Committee is not to pick the final person," Abramson said. "It's to find the best candidates during the screening process."
While the screening process continues, the committee is looking for three important qualities in its final candidates. They want to find someone who has good leadership skills, a good academic background that has a good basis in higher education and an ability to raise money, Abramson said.
