First meeting of a search committee to find a new University of Arizona president to take the place of Ann Weaver Hart, Oct. 13, 2016.Members of the committee that will assist in finding the next president for the University of Arizona met Wednesday for the first time.
They discussed qualities they’d like to see in the next president. The list of nouns included innovator, entrepreneur, communicator and uniter. Members stressed that the next president needs to be someone who can navigate changing landscape of higher education and sell the UA’s story locally and around the world.
Melinda Burke, UA interim vice president of marketing and brand management, said for her it’s important that the president be committed to the community.
"We’ve had too much turnover," she said. "We need a president that’s committed and sees a timeline that’s not five to seven [years] but 15, 20 to 25 years down the road."
The committee also heard from Bill Funk, the consultant hired to help with the search.
"There’s an amazing thing going on around the country right now, and that is that there are more vacancies in these presidential positions then we’ve ever seen before," he said. "We count as many as 50 presidential vacancies or soon-to-be vacancies."
After the meeting, Funk told Arizona Public Media that competition doesn’t worry him because many of the universities searching for presidents are so different from the UA.
"And I think we have an institution that is so well known, so highly regarded that we will be able to assemble an outstanding pool of candidates."
Current UA President Ann Weaver Hart told the Arizona Board of Regents this summer that she would not ask for an extension of her contract when it expires in 2018. A new president is expected to be named sometime next year.
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