Search Update

by Hap McSween, Chair, Knoxville Chancellor Search Committee

The Chancellor Search Committee met for the first time on Thursday. We are pleased to give you an initial update as part of our commitment to keeping you informed throughout the process.

We are committed to an aggressive timetable for this search and would like to have candidates on campus to interview as soon as possible consistent with a broad recruitment effort. However, the quality of the candidates is more important than the timeline; we are dedicated to doing this quickly, but even more to doing it well.

To ensure the best candidates possible, we will employ a search firm to help us with this national search and to widely advertise the position. 

The on-campus interview process will include open forums so the campus community can meet the candidates, pose questions and offer reactions to the committee.  These forums will be held only during a full academic semester to ensure that any member of the campus community can participate.  The forums will be video streamed live and also archived to ensure the widest participation.

The committee will work to recommend top candidates for consideration by President John Petersen.  Petersen will select the final candidate from those recommended and present that individual to the Board of Trustees for final approval.

We’ve launched this search Web site to provide updates, announce forum dates and other pertinent news about the search. We’ve established an e-mail address so that you can begin sharing your views with members of the search committee (chancellor-search@utk.edu).

In addition to the Web site, you can get updates on the search via Tennessee Today, the faculty/staff newsletter. A print version of Tennessee Today is published each Tuesday in The Daily Beacon. News stories are also available on the Web and through a daily email. If you have not, I encourage you to subscribe by visiting this Web page and following the instructions.

Our 21-member search committee has a broad makeup, and reflects the many constituencies of the campus and community. It includes faculty, staff, students, Board of Trustees representation and Knoxville community members. A list of committee members is on the search Web site.

We have become accustomed to great leadership at UT Knoxville and we expect that tradition to continue. We acknowledge that there are both opportunities and challenges in conducting this search and the committee looks forward to working with the entire campus community to recommend the best leadership possible for our campus.

 

 

 

 

The search committee welcomes input from the campus community at any point during this important process. You may send comments here.