11-20-06 Update: Listen to discussion on Talk of Iowa from WSUI: http://128.255.60.46:8080/ramgen/wsuiarc/IT11_20_06.rm
The Board of Regents, State of Iowa voted 6-2-1 to terminate the search for the next President of the University and discharged the search committee consisting of many esteemed members of our community.
The ostensible reason articulated on the Board’s web site by Regent Gartner was that none of the four candidates recommended to the Board were sufficiently experienced as “leaders who oversaw complex health-sciences operations.”
Campus community members who served on both the Search Committee and the Advisory Committee can assure you that all four candidates had sufficient experience to warrant the support of the entire search and advisory committees, including all four regents on the search committee. Furthermore, the decision of the Board was made without any consultation with the leadership of the search committee who were intimately familiar with all of the candidates, including the strengths and weaknesses as they relate to the university and particularly the health care enterprise.
Faculty Senate, UI Student Government, and Staff Council will all be pursuing votes of "no confidence" in the Board of Regents leadership as a result of this vote.
"What can I do?", a reader may ask.
Take time to write your local delegation, your home town delegation, the governor and the governor-elect and insist that the leadership of the Board of Regents be removed before it does further damage to the UI and to the citizens of Iowa.
Here is a list of the email addresses for the entire General Assembly: http://www.legis.state.ia.us/aspx/Legislators/LegislatorInfo.aspx
Johnson County Delegates:
robert.dvorsky@legis.state.ia.us
joe.bolkcom@legis.state.ia.us
David.Jacoby@legis.state.ia.us
Vicki.Lensing@legis.state.ia.us
Mary.Mascher@legis.state.ia.us