Since the first email in early February from the Presidential Search Committee, the campus and Peoria community have been included in the presidential search process.
The committee hosted two open forums at the beginning stages of its search in an effort to discover the opinions of faculty, staff, students and community members in regards to the qualities they thought the new president should possess.
The campus community also received four emails throughout the 2015 spring semester and summer to keep updated on the committee’s progress.
The last email update was released July 30 and informed recipients the fairly large pool of candidates was narrowed to four after two days of in-person interviews, and they would be recommended to the Board of Trustees.
The committee stated in the campus update, “The Trustees will meet and interview the four ‘finalists’ in the near future and will select the person they feel can best lead our University at this time.”
Since then, it has been over a month and a half with no new information released.
This isn’t a request for an accelerated process. Choosing a president for the university is not something to be taken lightly or to be rushed.
However, as it was stated several times in the presidential search forums, campus members desire transparency.
This editorial board isn’t disparaging Interim President Stan Liberty, either. He has reached out to faculty, students and community members since day one of his induction. He is a visible presence on campus and has been working to show that.
That being said, Liberty made it clear in his initial press release announcing his position as interim president that he would not “set a vision or change strategic plans for the university.”
This silence on the committee’s part is troubling, partly because decisions need to be made, and the campus community is left in the dark, meanwhile.
The committee needs to keep to its decision to include the campus community in this process, wherever it goes.
