Saturday, August 23, 2014

New UF Update

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?