OU's Board of Regents decided at an Oct. 1 meeting the composition of the group that will be tasked with finding OU's next president.
The presidential search committee, a group that will nominate and recommend candidates to succeed OU President David Boren after his 2018 retirement, will be made up of members appointed by the Board of Regents based on nominations from faculty, staff and student governance organizations.
The Regents decided during the meeting that the committee will include 17 total members. Five will be faculty members, three from the Norman campus and two from the Health Sciences Center, with one vote each. Two staff members, one from the Norman campus and one from the Health Sciences Center, will have half a vote each. Three students – one undergraduate from the Norman campus, one graduate from the Norman campus and one from the Health Sciences Center – will have a one-third vote each. There will also be seven outside members with one vote each.
During the meeting, Sarah Ellis, Norman faculty senate chair, Patsy Smith, HSC faculty senate chair and chair-elect Marie Hanigan called on the board to give faculty a “significant role” in the search for the new president.
The makeup the Regents decided on, however, is the same as the one used by the 1993 presidential search committee that selected Boren.
"They followed the precedent set by the '93-'94 search, and we always knew that that was a possibility, but we feel that it is a minimal amount of representation and that we needed to at least put some effort into getting a larger faculty representation on the search committee," Ellis said.
Despite concerns, Clayton Bennett, chairman of the Board of Regents, said the faculty will still be an important part of the selection process.
"We think it's a good balance of the university community, faculty — obviously so very important — staff, students, of course, and then...our stakeholders," Bennett said. "We think it's balanced. It's worked in the past, and we've chosen to stick with it."
The Faculty Senate Executive Committee will nominate faculty to serve on the committee, the Staff Senate will nominate staff, the Student Government Association will nominate students and the Board of Regents will make the final decision. The Faculty Senate Executive Committee has already requested nominations.
