Candidates to become UT president cut to six
KNOXVILLE (AP) — After three days of interviews, the pool of candidates to become the next University of Tennessee president was cut to six on Thursday.
The contenders include five higher education administrators and the director of a federal research institute.
One of the six is a sitting university president, one is a minority and two have worked for UT. Four have some family ties to the Volunteer State. Two are old enough to qualify for Social Security.
Still, the 19-member search advisory council of trustees, faculty, staff, alumni and students was delighted with the candidates and was hard pressed to pare the pool more.
“They really share the same values that we share. They share the same passion for higher education that we share. And they also are committed to making this university better,” said trustee Jim Murphy, who chaired the panel.
State Senate Education Chairman Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, was not impressed.
“We should have had six outstanding individuals left and I see only two,” he said, declining to be specific.
McNally said he wanted a group with more Tennessee roots.
“I thought that was of the utmost importance to everybody. We wanted somebody who understood Tennessee and the university and had Tennessee values.”
The panel said they found such candidates after an unprecedented search that began with 47 applicants and included visits to candidates’ homes, reference calls, resume reviews and background checks by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and Atlanta search firm Baker Parker.
“I think if we get any (of the candidates) as our president we will be fortunate,” panelist Rebecca Peterson said.
The six contenders are:
— Jack Burns, 51, vice president for the University of Colorado system.
— Brady Deaton, 61, provost for the University of Missouri at Columbia, and a former UT-Knoxville professor of agricultural economics.
— Kermit Hall, 59, president and history professor at Utah State University.
— Kenneth Olden, 65, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Science in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
— John Petersen, 56, provost at the University of Connecticut.
— Bill Stacy, 65, chancellor of UT-Chattanooga.
After five votes, the panel eliminated three candidates, all with UT ties — Northern Illinois University President John Peters, a former UT-Knoxville provost; Knoxville hospital executive Jerry Askew, a former UT-Knoxville development official, and UT Law Dean Tom Galligan.
The remaining six face a second round of interviews on Tuesday before another panel, which will narrow the list to three. The full UT Board of Trustees will interview them Wednesday and pick the president.
The search for the 23rd president in the 210-year history of the five-campus, 42,000-student university is following an unusually open process. The aim is to avoid the scandals that ended Tennessee’s two most recent presidencies. Lavish spending forced out John Shumaker in August and J. Wade Gilley left in 2001 amid allegations of a relationship with a subordinate.
“I don’t think we have another chance. I think three strikes and you are out,” said panelist Roger Dickson, a former trustee involved in the earlier searches.
Dickson described Stacy, who has headed the Chattanooga campus since 1997, as the “safest” candidate on the list. “He has done everything we have asked him to do,” Dickson said.
Trustee John Thornton of Chattanooga went further, saying he has had “a seven-year love affair about Bill Stacy” for all the things Stacy has done for UT-Chattanooga.
According to Thornton, the only reason Stacy withdrew as a candidate from the search that yielded Shumaker was because of his commitment to the Lupton family after they donated $25 million to UT-Chattanooga.
Hall also received high praise. A legal scholar and a member of the presidential commission that reviewed the John Kennedy assassination records, Hall showed a common touch by introducing himself to his Utah State constituency by milking a cow in every county.
Students from North Carolina State University, where Hall earlier was provost, sent their endorsement Thursday.
Olden, the final candidate to interview on Thursday, was called a “miracle worker” by several panelists. A Tennessee native and the only minority, Olden never mentioned that he hopes to lead a university he couldn’t attend in the 1950s because of his race.
Olden attended historically black Knoxville College, then the University of Michigan and received his doctorate in biochemistry from Temple University.
As an administrator, he brought a cancer center at Howard University to prominence and has led the federal environmental health sciences institute since 1991.
He announced plans to retire, satisfied with his “legacy,” but said he would change those plans to become Tennessee’s next president. “I am enthusiastic and up for the job,” Olden said.
Panelist Spruell Driver, president-elect of the UT National Alumni Association, said Olden is more than a minority candidate. “Ken Olden is definitely a very, very strong candidate on every basis, irrespective of the color of his skin,” he said.
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To read biographical summaries of each of the candidates, visit http://pr.tennessee.edu/presidentialsearch