Several folks forwarded to me an email sent yesterday from
the UF Presidential Search Chair to faculty, students, and staff. For those of
us who have been following the FSU search, this update seems so strange, like
it’s from another planet. The Search Chair highlighted again the “importance” of
hiring a president with “a distinguished academic career”? The Chair is
actually soliciting feedback from faculty about “developing a framework for the
campus visits later in the process” and about “potential subjects for candidate
questions tied to the search criteria,” and is doing so months in advance? The
Search Committee waited until faculty and students were back on campus so they
could participate in the process? How very odd that faculty and students and
staff would be consulted in this manner! And the Search Chair actually included
information about the next Search Committee meeting two weeks ahead of time and
noted its primary agenda rather than quietly posting this info on the search
website at the last minute? How archaic!
My comments are somewhat sardonic, of course, but this update
clearly demonstrates how extremely different the UF search is from the FSU
search in terms of content, structure, and communication. Here we have two preeminent
universities with seemingly different agendas—one wants a distinguished
academic to move the university forward academically, the other wants another
political president who is loyal to FSU and who supposedly has friends in the
Legislature who will hand money over to FSU. And UF is in the AAU. And UF is in the top 25 (#14 to be exact).
And UF is at the top of the performance funding model and the top preeminent
university in the state. See a pattern here?
You can read the UF Search Committee update here: http://presidentsearch.ufl.edu/about/chairman-updates/
Oh, and remind me, when was the last time the FSU Search Advisory Committee Chair sent an
update?
