Three months after the announcement Chuck Staben will not return as the University of Idaho President next academic year, the search for new candidates still has yet to begin.
The State Board of Education (SBOE) expects to name an executive search firm to manage the search for UI’s next president by the end of this month or by September, said SBOE Chief Communications and Legislative Affairs Officer Mike Keckler. The State Board and the University of Idaho Faculty Federation have said the search would ideally produce a president who can begin by July 1, 2019.
“Once we name a firm, a candidate screening committee will be appointed made up of students, faculty and alumni,” Keckler said.
UI’s Faculty Federation, affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, has expressed frustration with how presidential searches have been conducted in the past. They cited issues with candidates procured through executive search firms to the make-up of search committees.
Two weeks ago, the union group sent a letter to the State Board with a list of requests on the search’s design and asked that it begin “immediately.”
In the letter, the faculty group said the last three searches produced just one female finalist candidate out of 12 publicly identified.
“There was some concern that things that are important — not only to the faculty, but to students and I think the community, such as having a good pool of diverse candidates, had not been a priority of search firms,” said John Rumel, the federation’s president.
“At least it didn’t come out that way given the candidates that we looked at and ultimately selected,” the Boise-based law professor said.
The University of Idaho has had only one woman serve as president. Elisabeth Zinser was in office from 1989-1995.
The group also said such searches have not been successful “in finding candidates who could make long-term commitments.”
Staben’s tenure, which will be about five years by the time he leaves office next June, matches up with that of recent predecessors. The four presidents have served since 1996 each served an average term of five years, an Argonaut review found.
Ellamae Burnell can be reached at [email protected].
This article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of UI’s first female president’s name, Elisabeth Zinser.