Leadership in flux: Updates on provost search, IOA and student vet center directors, Student Senate execs

The three finalists for the position of Kansas University provost are, from left, Neeli Bendapudi, Larry Singell and Chaden Djalali.

This week the third and final candidate for the position of Kansas University provost and executive vice chancellor made his public presentation on campus. When do we find out who the next provost will be?

The official word from KU, according to spokesman Andy Hyland: “We do not have a specific timeline for when an announcement will be made.”

However, wheels are turning, he said, and 5 p.m. today is the deadline for KU community members to submit feedback to the search committee. The committee is scheduled to meet next week to review all of that and submit “an assessment of strengths and weaknesses” to the chancellor, who will review committee feedback and make a final decision.

The provost is an important position — basically No. 2 on the Lawrence campus, following the chancellor herself. In a chancellor’s message earlier this month, Bernadette Gray-Little urged campus to weigh in.

“The search committee received strong applications from candidates across the country who are excited about this opportunity,” she wrote. “…This job is critically important for our university. The provost seeks to ensure and elevate our academic quality, including both our educational and research efforts. These are our core functions and things that distinguish a public university from other organizations.”

The Journal-World covered each candidate’s public presentation. Here are links to those stories:

KU School of Business Dean Neeli Bendapudi gave her presentation April 11. Larry Singell, executive dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, presented April 21. Chaden Djalali, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa, presented Monday.

If you have a KU ID, you can view videos of their presentations online at provostsearch.ku.edu.

Sidenote: Djalali mentioned in his presentation that KU’s contracted search firm reached out to him and that he also had been contacted about positions at other schools. I found at least one via a quick Google search of recent news articles: Last summer he was a finalist for provost at University of South Carolina, according to The State (of Columbia, S.C.). Ultimately, University of Missouri business school dean Joan Gabel was hired for that job. I didn’t turn up any such news with the other two candidates’ names.

• Who will lead IOA and the student vet center?: Rank-wise they’re no provost, but both of these jobs are directly involved with supporting students at KU — and as of now they’re still unfilled. The position of director of the Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access (which, among other things, investigates and adjudicates complaints of sexual assault and discrimination on campus) has been filled by an interim since Jane McQueeny resigned in October. The Student Veteran Center, a new KU unit, is supposed to open in January 2017.

Both searches remain open, and the university plans press releases when the chosen candidates are named, KU spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said this week.

It’s been a while since the named candidates visited campus. Three IOA director candidates gave public presentations in January. Four Student Veteran Center director candidates were scheduled to give their presentations in late January and early February.

• Student Senate names new execs: While we’re talking new leaders, the Student Senate has some of those as well. We previously reported that students elected Stephonn Alcorn as their new student body president and Gabby Naylor as student body vice president, in addition to new Senate representatives for the 2016-17 school year.

Wednesday night, the new Senate met for the first time and decided its executive staff. According to Senate, they will be Danny Summers, chief of staff; Allyssa Castilleja, treasurer; Mady Womack, government relations director; Abdoulie Njai, director of diversity and inclusion; Dalton Willey, policy and development director; Connor Birzer, communications director; Amy Schumacher, graduate affairs director; Whit Collins, assistant treasurer; and Mitch Reinig, internal affairs director (a newly created position).

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• I’m the Journal-World’s KU and higher ed reporter. See all the newspaper’s KU coverage at KUToday.com. Reach me by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187, on Twitter @saramarieshep or via Facebook at Facebook.com/SaraShepherdNews.