Special meeting to be held March 30 in presidential search
A special meeting of the Western Washington University Board of Trustees will take place Wednesday, March 30, on campus. Announcing that meeting in an email to campus this morning were BOT Chair Karen Lee and Presidential Search Advisory Committee Chair Sue Sharpe:
Dear Students, Faculty and Staff of Western:
Welcome back from spring break!
We are writing to inform you that the Board of Trustees of Western Washington University have scheduled a special meeting to be held on Wednesday, March 30th, regarding the culminating steps in the search for the next president of WWU.
The Board of Trustees (BOT) held a special meeting on March 17-18 to interview five candidates recommended by the Presidential Search Advisory Committee (PSAC). At the special meeting on March 30th the BOT will continue its review of the candidates in executive session starting at 9:30 a.m. (This review will be conducted in executive session in order to preserve the confidentiality of all candidates, including those not selected for further review.) The BOT will then move into open public session at 10:25 a.m. for Trustee discussion and the selection of one or more preferred presidential candidates. The meeting will be held in Old Main 340 and will be audio cast at the following link: https://wp.wwu.edu/live/. In the event that additional seating space is needed, Old Main 330C will serve as overflow space.
The preferred candidate(s) will be invited to campus on April 4-5 to meet with student, faculty, and staff governance leadership and the PSAC. After receiving feedback from those groups, the BOT will conduct a special meeting on April 5th to vote on the preferred candidate to be the 14th President of WWU.
The BOT is truly excited by the high quality of the five candidates recommended by the PSAC for further interviews. That quality is reflective of the comprehensive effort of the PSAC to screen the overall pool of 75 applicants that resulted in the initial interviews of 18 candidates conducted by the PSAC. Based on those interviews and reference checks conducted by the PSAC and our consultants, the PSAC unanimously recommended the five finalists to the BOT for their final consideration. The candidates were all screened and evaluated using the preferred qualifications and criteria developed by the PSAC and approved by the BOT, based on listening sessions and surveys conducted with students, staff, faculty and other stakeholders last fall. In order to recruit and keep our high quality pool of candidates, it has been essential for us to keep the names of our candidates confidential. For further information about the search process over the last 6 months, please refer to the details on the presidential search website.
We thank each of you for your participation and support of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee and the Board of Trustees during this search process. We look forward to the selection of the next great President of Western.
Respectfully,
Karen Lee, Chair, WWU Board of Trustees
Sue Sharpe, Chair, Presidential Search Advisory Committee