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The 20 applicants vying to be the next president of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville also include interim president Charles Robinson and UA College of Commerce Dean Matt Waller.
Outgoing University of Southern Mississippi President Rodney Bennett and senior administrators at the University of Alabama and Oklahoma State University also applied.
Candidates on the list as of last Friday include one woman out of 11 applicants currently working at the university. Not all 20 candidates had biographical information easily accessible online, but only two were women.
The University of Arkansas System has announced the names and positions of applicants actively seeking the job as of the July 8 deadline to receive “best consideration.” UA System officials released the list in response to a request under the state’s public disclosure law.
UA System spokesman Nate Hinkle said in a statement that it is “very likely” that more than 20 candidates will ultimately be considered, adding that “we are actively working to identify top talent.” The recruitment process will continue,” he added. , a diverse pool of candidates to consider. ”
Hinkel noted the diversity of talent that was hired through recommendations by UA System President Donald Bobbitt to the UA System’s various colleges and universities. Bobbitt, through Hinkel, declined to comment on the pool of applicants for now.
Andrea Silbert, leader of the nonprofit Eos Foundation, said in a study released earlier this year by the foundation that UA at each school is working hard to reduce the gender gap, which is dominated by men in various leadership positions. It said it had become clear that “urgent action” needed to be taken.
Silbert, who was told that UA has never had a woman serve as prime minister or president, and that there are not enough women to aspire to the position, called on those in charge to speak out.
“I think there needs to be direction from the system president and the board chair to say, “We’re very interested in having gender diversity at the top of the organization,” Silbert said. Ta.
Robinson is the UA’s first black chancellor, and was appointed by Bobbitt as interim chancellor following the sudden resignation of Joe Steinmetz last June.
Robinson, who has been a history professor at UA since 1999, became interim provost on Aug. 16. Previously, he served as the university’s provost and executive vice president for academic and student affairs.
Waller became dean of UA’s Sam M. Walton College of Business in 2016, after serving as interim dean a year earlier. He joined the university in 1994 as a visiting associate professor and previously served as interim associate dean of executive education and dean of UA’s School of Supply Chain Management.
Bennett became the first black president of the University of Southern Mississippi in 2013, a public university with about 14,000 students. His last day as president will be Friday, according to a June 30 statement from the school. He previously served as vice president for student affairs at the University of Georgia.
Russell Mumper has served as the University of Alabama’s vice president for research and economic activities since January 2019. Previously, he served as vice president for academic affairs at the University of Georgia.
Paul Tikalski became Oklahoma State University’s dean of engineering in 2012. He is a professor of civil and environmental engineering, a professor of materials science and engineering, and served as dean at the University of Utah before joining Oklahoma State University.
In 2017, Manoj Malhotra became dean of the School of Business at Case Western Reserve University, a private university in Cleveland, Ohio. Previously, he served as dean of the School of Management Sciences at the University of South Carolina’s School of Business.
Jason Osborn joined Miami University in Ohio in 2019 as vice provost for academic affairs and vice provost for academic affairs, and resigned from those positions on June 30. Previously, he served as vice president and dean of graduate schools at Clemson University.
Daniel Reed is a professor of computational science at the University of Utah, where he served as senior vice president for academic affairs from 2018 to December. He previously served as vice president for research and economic development at the University of Iowa.
Alan Kay joined Louisiana State University Health Shreveport in November 2019 and serves as provost, chief academic officer, and vice president for academic affairs. He is also a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology. He previously served as chief of anesthesiology at his LSU Health in New Orleans.
In 2016, Melissa Grice became dean of the Richard T. Dormer School of Business at what is now a public university, Purdue University Fort Wayne. She previously served as dean of management and international business at Wright State University in Ohio.
Kim Needy, chair of the advisory research committee supporting Bobbitt, cited national data from the American Council on Education that shows about three in 10 college presidents are women.
“I wish we had a higher proportion of women in our group, but our numbers are not significantly different from what the ACE data shows. The lack of female presidents/prime ministers is a national concern.” Needy said in an email.
Hinkel, the UA System spokeswoman, said in a statement that Bobbitt has brought forward “an extremely diverse group of leaders” for board approval in past searches for top administrators.
“The current search for a president at our flagship institution is similar,” Hinkel said.
Last year, Bobbitt recommended hiring Christine Holt to lead the University of Arkansas at Hope-Texarkana Community College. Holt becomes the first black woman to lead a public higher education institution in Arkansas. In 2019, Bobbitt recommended hiring Teresa Riley as chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.
However, the EOS Foundation’s report examines the gender disparity that exists in leadership roles at 130 of America’s top research universities. In Arkansas, UA is considered only among the group of schools designated as “R1” in what is commonly referred to as the Carnegie Classification, based on the university’s research activities.
UA ranks 101st out of 130 schools in what the report calls comprehensive gender metrics and rankings, and Silbert said there is only one woman on the University of Arkansas’ 10-member Board of Trustees. I pointed out that it wasn’t there.
The rankings are also based on other data, such as the percentage of women who are tenured full professors and the percentage of women who are deans. According to the report, 25% of UA’s 314 full professors were women, and 44% of the university’s nine deans were women.
“It’s not just, ‘OK, they have this problem right now. There aren’t enough female applicants,'” Silbert said. “That means we have a systemic problem across multiple categories where women are underrepresented compared to other ‘R1’ schools,” Silbert said.
The Greenwood/Asher & Associates search firm will be paid $225,000 plus 12% in overhead costs for its role in the search. The agreement with the research firm calls for payment from the University of Arkansas Foundation.
Silbert said search firms should “focus on striking a fair balance. It’s probably 50% women applying for this job, so they’re not doing a good job.” It’s the people,” he said. Top university leaders must work harder.
“You have to call and ask people who might not even be interested and say, ‘Hey, let me talk to you about this,'” Silbert said.
Reached for comment, the search firm’s Jan Greenwood said in an email that “cultural and gender diversity is always a priority for us,” and referred questions to the university.
The report’s rankings include a total of seven of the SEC’s 14 schools in the category of schools requiring “urgent action.”
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