The UF Board of Trustees has established a Presidential Search Committe to guide the recruitment of the university’s next president, with listening session starting in early January.
Rahul Patel, vice chair of the UF Board of Trustees, will chair the 15-member search committee. Patel also headed the committee that selected former President Ben Sasse, who stepped down in July, as the lone finalist in 2022.
The 15-member committee includes current deans, alumni, the student body president, three trustees and a Florida Board of Governors member. Nine of the 15 members were not on the 2022 search committee.
“The committee recognizes that the foundation of this search lies in understanding the hopes, aspirations, and priorities of our community,” Patel said in an open memo.
Patel said the committee will use a survey and listening sessions to find that understanding, following similar steps before the hire of Sasse.
The committee has already opened the survey for students, staff, faculty and other stakeholders to fill out. The survey asks about the qualities the next president should have to fit with the UF community and the short- and long-term challenges for the university.
You can find the survey here. The deadline to complete the survey is Jan. 30.
The search committee also plans to hold 10 community listening sessions to gather input on the process. The sessions will happen during the first few weeks of 2025. You can find the full schedule here.
The listening sessions have targeted different stakeholders along with two open sessions. The first open session will be 5 p.m. on Jan. 9, and the second will be at 5 p.m. on Jan. 15. The sessions will be held on Zoom.
For those unable to attend, you can also send comments to presidentsearch@ufl.edu.
UF has hired SP&A Executive Search to help with the search and held its first organizational meeting on Dec. 18. At the meeting, Patel said interviews with candidates could happen in March depending on the quality of candidates and market conditions.
“Your input is vital to this process,” Patel said in the memo. “Together, we will lay the groundwork for UF’s continued rise as one of the premier universities in the country. We look forward to collaborating with you as we embark on this exciting journey for our university.”
When picking Sasse, many students and faculty felt their input was not vital. Students protested when Sasse made his first official visit to UF, shutting down stakeholder meetings.
Besides issues with Sasse, students decried the announcement of a single finalist instead of multiple named options. Without multiple finalists, students said their input about Sasse didn’t seem to matter; he’d already been picked for the role.
One sign at the protest mocked UF’s search: “700 candidates or ONE corrupt board?”
The search committee narrowed a field of 700 candidates to 12 in the leadup to Sasse’s nomination. However, the university said because many of those 12 currently serve in high leadership positions elsewhere, the candidates said they would withdrawal their names if not selected as the sole nominee.
UF officials said having a lone finalist has become standard in executive searches across higher education. Other top universities had done the same in recent years, including UC Berkley in 2017, UCLA in 2006, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2022, University of Virginia in 2017, UNC Chapel Hill in 2019 and UC San Diego in 2012.
A new state law, established in 2022, allows UF to keep the final pool of applicants secret until 21 days before a final decision.
De-emphasize NCAA athletics. Emphasize academics and an “eco-friendly” environment for the UF Gainesville campus and surrounding community.
Just a PR farce. They haven’t listened, they won’t listen. They will only listen to mori and ron.
Listening meetings=Public/student pacification meetings
Not sure what this comment means.
Ensure that the next president has solid academic credentials and experience running a large and complex institution, not a re-tread politician..
Re-establish that the president of the University of Florida runs and speaks for the institution. The trustees should not micromanage. They should set policy, and the president should administer the institution within that policy. When important announcements are made, they should come from the president, not the trustees chair.
The same could be said for the executive and legislative branches of state government. They have neither the knowledge nor the understanding of what a really great university is or does. They certainly control the purse strings, but they should not make rules and regulations on the running of the institution.
Concentrate on research and education, not on how big the school is. Cut back enrollment and stop trying to be one of the “largest single-campus university in the United States.”
De-emphasize (and de-fang!) the post-tenure review requirement passed by the state’s highly politicized and anti-intellectual legislature.
Get rid of the party-school image. The students who promulgate this reputation should realize that having a degree from a “party school” is actually detrimental to their post graduation job search.