The University of Illinois presidential search committee is currently in an information gathering phase, said committee co-chair Douglas Beck, physics professor on the Urbana campus at the committee’s town hall meeting in Beckman Auditorium on Wednesday. 

Beck said the search committee has divided all levels of the three campuses’ administrations down to and including deans among the committee’s 19 members. The members have begun discussions to learn about the current status of the system’s three campuses, where people would like to be in three to five years, what their opportunities and challenges are, to answer questions about the search and to elicit nominations for the next president. 

He said these discussions are ongoing while the committee continues to meet. Its next meeting, which has a public portion, will be held July 11 at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center in Urbana. At this meeting, the committee will hear from University President Robert Easter and Jim Applegate, executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

Next, the committee will enter another phase of information gathering, Beck said, which involves talking to colleagues outside the University. These colleagues include “friends in the higher education community across the country,” sitting and retired chancellors and presidents as well as heads of national organizations such as the Association of American Universities.

“We are asking for their advice, for their view of the higher education landscape at this point in time and of course for potential candidates, so that’s kind of a threefold mission as we talk with those folks,” Beck said.

Relatively soon, he said, the committee will begin doing research on the committee’s about 60 candidates that have been nominated across the campuses so far. The committee also has another 60 or so candidates who have been gathered from various lists of people in appropriate positions at other universities. 

“We’re going to start looking at that big list to see where there are … matches,” Beck said. “Of course we’re going to be continuing to add to that pool as we go along.”

At some point, he said, the committee will reach out to these candidates and find out if they are interested. If they are interested, that’s when conversations will continue.

“Those conversations are where all this information that we’re gathering at the moment really plays a very important role because the candidates — the more interested they are, the more serious they are, the more questions they’re going to have,” Beck said. “There’s going to be a dialogue between members of the committee and these folks.” 

Following these interviews with the semi-finalists mid-semester, Beck said, a set of finalists will be recommended to the Board of Trustees later in the fall semester. 

Committee co-chair Pamela Strobel, trustee, emphasized the importance of leadership skills in the selection of the next president of the University of Illinois. 

“We do emphasize that we’re looking for a leadership style built on openness and the ability to inspire others by articulating a vision for the future,” Strobel said. “While we don’t have one set of qualifications that says the person has to … be this exact prototype that we’re looking for, we want it to be very open, especially in the beginning, to having people nominated who are great leaders, whether they are the traditional model of a University president or not.” 

She said the committee has published a white paper online that lays the foundation the committee has worked on to sum up the University and the qualities that the committee is looking for in the next president. Strobel expressed that committee would like the white paper to reach anyone who goes onto the committee website — whether it is someone already at the University interested in the search, someone who has never been to the University of Illinois but has an interest in the search or even someone who is a very good candidate but has not yet made up his or her mind that they want to be identified as a candidate. 

“We have attempted to describe the University very honestly and accurately, but positively as well because the leader we are looking for will be someone who understands the challenges that face public higher education in general and understands what’s at stake for the University of Illinois,” she said.

During the public comment section of the meeting, Stephen Kaufman, professor emeritus of medical cell and structural biology, voiced concern regarding the budgetary considerations of the University in relation to retirement packages. He said those who will be retiring see little if any advocacy for them.

“Getting immediate budgets to do things in the present and selling out people’s future I don’t think is a way an institution that wants to rely on integrity as part of its cornerstone should be functioning, and I hope the next person that you get to lead the institution shares that value,” Kaufman said. 

Strobel said there is currently real effort to create additional ways to fund retirement for old and new University of Illinois employees and Beck added that, while efforts might have been started sooner, this has been under consideration for quite some time. 

Tyler can be reached at [email protected] or @tylerallyndavis.