Volume: 59 Issue: 8
OCTOBER 28, 2015
driftwood.uno.edu
THE SEARCH BEGINS
Representatives from the Witt/Kieffer executive search firm, John Thornburgh and Elizabeth Bohan conduct meeting with faculty to formalize qualifications for new UNO president. Betty J. Ballanco, graduate coordinator and instructor in the College of Business Administration, and Tony Micocci, assistant director of the Arts Administration program, provide input to aid the search. Photos by Grant Campbell
University community seeks leader with vision BY CHARLES NICHOLSON Managing Editor In early September, President Peter J. Fos announced that he would be stepping down as president on Jan. 31. As per procedure, the UL system has formed a committee to decide the next president of UNO. According to the UNO website, Randy Moffett, retired UL system president and past president of Southeastern Louisiana University, has been recommended as interim president until the next president is in place. The voting members of the search committee include UL board members: James Carter, Edward Crawford, Pamela Egan, E. Gerald Hebert, Jimmie Martin Jr., Mark Romero, Robert Shreve, Winfred Sibille, Gary Solomon and UNO Faculty Senate President Cherie Courseault Trumbach. The non-voting, advisory members include: SGA President Joy Ballard, Alumnus/Former Speaker of the House Jim Tucker, Interna-
tional Alumni Association President Al Herrera, Research and Technology Foundation Chair Russell Trahan, Foundation Chair Barry LeBlanc and UL System President Sandra Woodley as the non-voting committee chair. The committee met for the first time on Oct. 22 to create a tentative timeline and an advertisement for the position. In an effort to better serve the UNO community and obtain input from it constituents, faculty/staff and students had separate meetings with two representatives from the Witt/Kieffer executive search firm, Elizabeth Bohan and John Thornburgh. During the faculty/staff meeting, Thornburgh said that the idea was to “sell this university” to whomever took up the position. “We’re going to be casting a net far and wide, but typically the candidates we end up putting in front of you and the board are ones who are very thoughtful about their consideration of this,” Thornburgh said. To open the conversation, Thorn-
burgh asked faculty members what they thought were positive attributes of UNO and New Orleans that would attract potential candidates. David Hoover, chair of the Department of Film and Theater said, “the school of the arts, which was just formed in April, will constitute more than one tenth of the entire enrollment of the university. So the next president should be arts-centric, and our programs are poised to grow and are also nationally recognized. So that would be important to myself and our students.” “We do have two programs of distinction in the College of Business: the Department of Accounting, which is nationally recognized and we have the school of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism. Both are very active in the community. The culture of New Orleans is a big draw for just about everybody,” said Betty J. Ballanco, graduate coordinator and instructor in the College of Business Administration. Tony Micocci, assistant director of the Arts Administration program, said, “In 1983, we offered the only
Bachelors of Arts in arts administration in the state of Louisiana, the only one in the region, [and] one of the few in the country. If you go to any cultural institution you will find 25-50 percent of their staff came through our program. We are supporting the infrastructure of this culture.” Thornburgh went on to ask what issues they thought the new president should first address. “It seems to me that what we lack is kind of a sense of vision, a sense of moving forward and where it’s going to go,” said Hoover. “When I first arrived I was told there was going to be a whole plan to develop private sector support, acknowledge that state support is being cut and move forward in a proactive way. But I have seen nothing done about that.” Bohan later brought up the question of transparency between administration and the faculty and students. “There isn’t a lot of transparency. We were promised transparency, but correct me if I’m wrong folks,
do we have a lot of transparency on this campus?” asked Ballanco, to which she received various no’s and mumbles. However, faculty weren’t the only ones who felt a certain distance from the higher ups of the university. At their meeting with the students, they also agreed that there is a transparency problem. “Previous administration has been much less involved with actually wanting input and more about wanting input on how to convince students to accept decisions they already made,” said David Teagle, former SGA President. “To use a classic example: cutting the programs, students weren’t really given a voice in the faculty committee last year that decided what programs were going to be cut.” The search committee will be holding an open forum to the public on Nov. 9 at 11 a.m. Application deadline for the position is Nov. 30 and the UL system board has to make its decision on the final two candidates by Feb. 24.