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YSU Board of Trustees select committee, search firm for new university president
By Ed Runyan
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown State University Board of Trustees formed a 17-member committee and announced Friday it will hire the company AGB Search Inc. to help attract hundreds of candidates in a nationwide search to replace President Cynthia Anderson.
Anderson announced she will retire July 1 after three years as university president.
The search will be similar to the one conducted three years ago when Anderson was hired, but the committee will be smaller (17 instead of 22) and AGB, of Washington, D.C., will earn $65,000 instead of the $176,000 paid to Storbeck/Pimental & Associates of Media, Pa.
Sudershan Garg, trustees chairman, has said the search would be less expensive this time because the “Profile of the Institution & Position” won’t have to change much from that used three years ago because the university hasn’t changed much in that time.
All nine trustees and the two student trustees will serve on the Presidential Search Advisory Committee this time, along with six others.
They are former trustees Eugenia Atkinson and Donald Cagigas, retired YSU Assistant Provost Bege Bowers, Professor of Biological Sciences Chet Cooper, former National City Bank vice president Carl Nunziato and former research associate in the YSU Center for Urban and Regional Studies Suzanne Fleming.
Garg will be chairman of the search committee and its spokesman.
Only five members of the Board of Trustees sat on the last search committee.
Garg said he expects this search to be much like the last one, which involved about 300 people expressing an interest in the position, including those recruited by Storbeck/ Pimental.
The company is expected to reduce that number to 50 to 60 by mid-March, and the president-search committee will reduce that to 10 to 12.
AGB is expected to be under contract within two to three weeks, Garg said, adding that four to six months is “an adequate time period to find a president.”
By May 15, the board wants to have no more than five candidates and no fewer than three to interview. The board plans to make its selection by the June 12 board meeting.
The board voted 9-0 on each of the three resolutions it approved Friday in Tod Hall — one to authorize Garg to hire AGB, one to appoint the search committee, and one to establish the “charge” of the committee.
Among the points in the charge are to establish the characteristics and qualifications for the position and provide the trustees and university community with “regular reports regarding the progress of the search.”
Garg said the process used three years ago was “lauded” and said, “I can assure everyone that this time again the process will be thorough, rigorous, comprehensive, clean and honest.
“We have no favorites. Every individual, even if it is one of us interested in the job, has to go through the same process. I have no favorite, even amongst you, and so do the rest of you on the committee. We want the best and most-competent individual who can guide the university.”
Afterward, Garg was asked if Jim Tressel, former YSU football coach, would be considered.
“I think Jim Tressel would do a good job. He has to apply like everybody else.”
“There is no more important decision that we will make as trustees than the selection of a university president,” Garg said. “We are confident that our search will elicit much interest from highly qualified candidates across the country, and we look forward to a search that will be comprehensive, transparent and inclusive.”
According to its web site, AGB Search “is focused exclusively on higher education,” adding that the role of higher education’s governing board, expectations of student and alumni and other factors “make higher education leadership unique.”