The UW System Board of Regents outlined its criteria for finding a replacement for outgoing System President Katharine Lyall at the UW System search-and-screen committee meeting Tuesday.
Board of Regents President Toby Marcovich recently appointed the committee, including State Superintendent of Public Instruction Elizabeth Burmaster, UW-Platteville Chancellor David Markee and UW-Madison Provost Peter Spear. Other members of the 18-person committee serve in similar positions with other UW schools. Regent David Walsh will serve as chairman of the committee.
\The charter of this committee is to assist in one of the most important processes a university system can undertake; that is the identification of the person who will lead the system in the years ahead,"" Walsh said.
Bill Funk, of Korn/Ferry International, a management consulting firm, will assist the regents.
""It's a very competitive process,"" Funk said. ""We need to put our very best foot forward.""
The committee will first take six weeks to develop a pool of candidates for Lyall's position. In six weeks the committee will meet to discuss the candidates and develop a list of top candidates. Two weeks later the regents will meet to discuss those candidates.
Regents will then interview the candidates' direct references followed by a face-to-face with candidates.
Korn/Ferry will run Lexis-Nexis searches on candidates' backgrounds to determine their eligibility and qualifications.
Funk noted the average tenure for a system president is four to six years. He said Lyall's 12-year term has been fortunate for the system.
""I think those universities that progress and get better are characterized by having continuity of leadership,"" Funk said.
Lyall spoke on her experience as system president and said her position will require her replacement to govern the entire system as both a policy maker and an authority on the system budget.
""It's not a campus CEO,"" she said.
She said the incoming president would most likely follow her lead.
""The job is what the incumbent makes of it, to a large extent,"" she said.
Lyall will serve until Sept. 1, or until her replacement is hired, when she will begin a tenure as a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
