Ohio University has officially started the second phase of the ongoing process to find a successor for OU President Roderick McDavis.
Now that a committee and firm have been established to search for the university's next president, the two are working to come up with qualifications for the position so they may begin initial screening. The process will also include a search forum hosted by the Board of Trustees on Aug. 30 in Baker Theater at 6:30 p.m.
McDavis, who announced in March that he would step down from his position in June 2017, spoke to members of the class of 2020 at the annual freshman convocation and encouraged them to actively participate in the search for the next university president.
“I was never fortunate enough to witness an Ohio University presidential inauguration prior to my own in 2004, so you definitely have picked a very exciting time to be at Ohio University," McDavis told incoming students during the convocation.
During the search process, the Board of Trustees-appointed search committee will work alongside Witt/Kieffer, a Chicago-based search firm that specializes in recruiting executives for healthcare and higher education organizations.
OU will pay Witt/Kieffer about $150,000 in the coming year — the base price for professional services and fixed costs that are “not allocable to this specific engagement,” according to the firm’s contract with the university.
The payment will be broken into four installments: $50,000 due at the start of the agreement (signed in July), $40,000 after Aug. 15, $40,000 after Nov. 1 and $20,000 “no earlier than the date on which a successful candidate accepts (the) university’s offer to be its president.”
Additionally, the university will be responsible for reimbursing Witt/Kieffer for other costs involved with the presidential search, including costs for candidate travel and accommodations to resume verification and outside printing if the university were to publish advertisements in print publications. A cap for those expenses is set at $10,000 and can’t be surpassed without prior written consent from OU.
Once the search ends, or concludes for any reason, the contract stipulates that Witt/Kieffer “shall return or destroy written materials” that have been provided by OU in connection to the search process.
Specifically, the search committee will work with Dennis Barden and John Thornburgh, two senior partners at Witt/Kieffer who are contractually obligated to attend all onsite meetings and interviews as required by OU.
Barden, who tried to strengthen leadership in higher education as the former chair of the American Council on Education’s Executive Search Roundtable, specializes in executive searches for academic institutions.
Having joined Witt/Kieffer in 1998, Barden spent 20 years in academic administration, working at St. Lawrence University, Georgetown University, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, where he spent part of his time as assistant vice president.
Thornburgh, whose experience on executive boards has taken him from healthcare companies and nonprofits to higher education and Fortune 50 companies, will work alongside Barden during the search process. Before joining Witt/Kieffer, Thornburgh worked within executive consultation.
A spokesperson for Witt/Kieffer said the firm does not comment on individual search cases.
OU Student Senate President Hannah Clouser, who serves on the presidential search committee, praised the university’s efforts to include students in the search process. Hannah Britton, a junior in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and Jivanto van Hemert, graduate assistant for Student Senate, also serve on the presidential search committee.
“I am proud that students are involved in the search committee process and proud of the multiple open forums scheduled for students,” Clouser said. “I think that fact shows that there is a commitment to hearing students' voices.”
Faculty Senate chair Joe McLaughlin expressed his wishes as well, citing, however, that members of the search committee are not permitted to speak about their experiences within the committee.
“I hope we are able to hire a president whose service to the academic community is deeply and visibly grounded in their vocation as a teacher-scholar,” McLaughlin said in an email. “I hope we hire someone who understands that universities can only flourish when they nourish and sustain robust cultures of shared governance.”
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