UWF Begins Final Interviews For President On Sunday

September 8, 2016

The final interviews for the University of West Florida’s presidential candidates will start Sunday with Frank Ashley, a vice president for The College Board. Ashley will be the first of four candidates to meet with university leaders, administrators, faculty members, students and community leaders.

The format for each of the candidates will follow a similar pattern, including an hour-and-a-half open forum with faculty, staff and students. There will also be an hour-long interview with the university’s Board of Trustees. And each candidate will attend a social event with university leaders as well as community members and a dinner with trustees and members of the presidential search committee.

Ashley’s interview process will conclude late Monday morning with a meeting with the trustees, followed by a campus tour. Former state Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, will begin his interview process Monday afternoon, concluding with a dinner that evening.

On Tuesday, Martha Saunders, a vice president and provost at the University of West Florida, will be interviewed.

She will be followed on Wednesday by William M. “Mike” Sherman, a vice president and provost at The University of Akron.

On Thursday morning, the presidential search committee will meet and recommend at least three unranked candidates to the Board of Trustees, which later that day will select one of the candidates to succeed Judy Bense, who is stepping down as president at the end of this year.

Gaetz, who has a master’s degree from Troy State University, has the least university academic experience of the candidates, but he has extensive experience in the business world, having help found a hospice company that became a $500 million enterprise. He has academic experience as the former superintendent of schools in nearby Okaloosa County and as a former member of the county’s school board.

Gaetz’s strength is his political background, including serving as Senate president from 2012 to 2014. He has a deep understanding of the budget process for state universities, most recently chairing the Senate budget subcommittee on education spending. He is also a proven fund-raiser, another requirement for a university president.

Saunders has the strongest academic leadership experience, serving previously as president of the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

With a doctorate from Florida State University, Saunders also has deep ties to UWF, where she began teaching in 1984, rising to a professorship and then becoming dean of the College of Arts Sciences in 2000. She left in 2002 to take a vice president post at Columbus State University.

She served two years as president of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and then five years as president of the University of Southern Mississippi. She returned to UWF as the provost in 2013.

With a doctorate from the University of Alabama, Ashley has been with The College Board since 2013, working as a vice president. He has extensive experience at Texas A&M University, where he began teaching in 1986 rising to a professorship and then chancellor in 2007. He also served as the chief of staff at the school.

Sherman has a doctorate from the University of Texas. His longest academic stint was at The Ohio State University, where he began teaching in 1985, becoming a professor in 1993. He moved to The University of Akron, where he has served as chief operating officer and vice president for innovation and economic development.

by The News Service of Florida

Comments

4 Responses to “UWF Begins Final Interviews For President On Sunday”

  1. molino jim on September 9th, 2016 6:45 am

    Please be nice about Don— he needs the job. He has only been able to build an asset level of over $ 24 million dollars since he has been in the Senate. We all know that 24 million will not last forever after being in the lime light. I would hate to see him having to pick up cans on the side of the highway to make ends meet in his old age. There is an old saying about not being able to “beat a done deal”. I question what the total pay package will be worth to him.

  2. BT on September 8th, 2016 11:27 am

    I feel sorry for those candidates from out of town. They are spending all this time and effort to do some sort of dance for UWF, but they don’t stand a chance.

  3. frank fuller on September 8th, 2016 9:26 am

    It looks to me like a question needs to be reframed to determine who can lead a community to achieve university success in these dark times of student debt, poor student outcomes ( 25 % graduation rate),weak job market and way too many universities for the actual market of available students. Knowing a lot about a railroad that does not work well is not the best indicator of selection criteria for the leadership of the railroad….for those who do not like business references, knowing a lot about how to manage a social non profit that spends 40% of its revenue on “staff” is not the best criteria for selection of the new leader of that non profit….if it is to survive. This is a question of survival for this university considering the crumbling (ITT closed – no student loans as the new government tool to control a university) post secondary landscape and global economic uncertainties.

  4. shiloh on September 8th, 2016 5:23 am

    All this to do over nothing. Gaetz was picked a long time age because of his “political” clout. Him being qualified is not the point, he has the inside because he is a politician.

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News