Presidential Search Committee Chairman Gary Abramson announced at the board of trustees' town hall meeting Thursday that the committee had selected Shelley Weiss Storbeck from Edward W. Kelley & Partners to conduct AU's presidential search.
In other board news, Rebecca Geller, a third-year student in the Washington College of Law, introduced herself at the beginning of the meeting as the student trustee-designate. The Trusteeship Committee previously approved her appointment to the board of trustees. The two other nominees were Genevieve Frye, a senior in the School of Public Affairs, and Matt Simpson, a graduate student in the School of International Service and the Washington College of Law.
"We sent out requests to seven or so firms," Abramson said after the meeting. "Some were too busy, while others had conflicts of interest. We ended up whittling down to two firms, both of whom we examined carefully. It was a close vote, but Shelley was our choice."
Storbeck, who has worked on around 150 presidential searches over the course of her career, said the average presidential search takes six months.
AU's presidential search is just entering its first phase, during which members of the AU community will be able to give input on what they want to see in a new president, Storbeck said.
"You can expect campus meetings to begin almost immediately," she said. "There will be one for students, one for faculty, one for staff and obviously a lot of contact with administrators as well. We'll be posing three questions to you: tell us what the selling points and challenges will be for the next president, tell us about your aspirations for the university and tell us what qualifications you are looking for in a new president."
After the Presidential Search Committee writes an ad and a formal position specification notice, the process will move into the recruitment phase, Storbeck said.
"That's where I will probably take the lead, with the search committee's help, in terms of helping to identify candidates and figuring out recruitment strategies to get those candidates through the door," she said. "I can tell you that, for the most part, a good candidate needs to be retrieved, so we'll be doing a lot of recruiting and retrieving of very good candidates. That's the only way you'll produce a good, diverse pool."
During the third phase of the process, the committee will interview and reference candidates.
"They will be holed away somewhere, quietly, confidentially," she said. "We will see a roster of candidates, and they will choose which candidates look interesting enough to go ahead and reference."
The final phase of the search can vary depending on the institution, she said.
"If you're at a public university, you'll see candidates' names and biographies on the Web site," she said. "If you're at a smaller, private college, you're probably doing this very quietly, stealing people in the middle of the night. I say that the two extremes are the three-ring circus and the three puffs of smoke. There's something in between those two that AU will do."
Since a large of number of colleges and universities are looking for new presidents at the same time, the search environment will be highly competitive, Storbeck said. Institutions currently going through presidential searches include George Washington University, Indiana University, Perdue University and Oberlin College.
"I think we're committed to helping you find the very best presidential candidate for this institution, but you need to put this in a national context of what's happening out there," she said. "There is a lot of competition, so it is going to be incumbent on us to represent AU in its best light, to attract the very best slate of candidates"
