Friday, January 20, 2006
UA president search: Finalists in city starting today
LA MONICA EVERETT-HAYNES
Tucson Citizen
Each of the four candidates for University of Arizona president has been named a finalist, and one may be appointed by this time next week.
The word came after five months of meetings and nearly $95,000 spent on the process out of an original $300,000 budget for consulting services, travel, advertising and catering.
"I think we've created a very difficult job for the regents, but it was our job to make it difficult," search committee chairman Fred Boice of Tucson told more than 30 people yesterday at a working lunch on campus.
Robert N. Shelton, executive vice chancellor and provost of the University of North Carolina will be on campus today as the first finalist to face the UA and Tucson communities for 13 hours.
The others are:
• Tom Campbell, University of California-Berkeley's Haas School of Business dean and professor.
• Deborah A. Freund, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, Syracuse (N.Y.) University, where she is also a distinguished professor of public administration and economics.
• Yash P. Gupta, University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business dean and a professor of information and operations management.
To make the interviews "more intimate," the search committee broke into two groups and each interviewed the candidates separately Wednesday and yesterday, Boice said.
"It's kind of strange because you spend your time recruiting candidates and now you are at the phase of bringing them here ... to sell themselves," Boice said after yesterday's working lunch.
Boice, a regent, said he hopes the regents will appoint UA's new president by Jan. 27 - early February at the latest. That person will replace President Peter Likins, 69, who has been the university's chief since 1997 and retires June 30.
Ann Die Hasselmo, the consultant who helped the committee track down qualified candidates, would not say how far along any University of Arizona employees - if any - made it in the process.
She said the four finalists were referred to the committee.
"Each of them has a very responsible position, each of them is doing very well and each became very excited about the University of Arizona, state of Arizona and all of the opportunities at UA," Hasselmo said. "It's a wonderful point in time for a great leader to take over."
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