CHAPEL HILL (March 23, 2024) – Here we go: The search “advisory” committee for a new chancellor at UNC Chapel Hill met for the first time Thursday under a policy that decidedly shifts control of the process to the UNC System Office.
“Good leadership matters profoundly to the faculty, to the staff, to the students and to the people of the state that we all serve,” System President Peter Hans told the 13 committee members.
The search committee will make recommendations to the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, who will in turn recommend at least three candidates to Hans, who will recommend a single candidate to the UNC Board of Governors.
Former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz resigned in December to become President of Michigan State University. Hans named Lee Roberts – a former member of the UNC Board of Governors and budget director for former Gov. Pat McCrory – as Interim Chancellor.
The search for a new chancellor will be the first under a policy the Board of Governors adopted last May that shifted the composition or search committees largely to the UNC System Office.
The committee can include no more than 13 members, and it must include the System President, Chair of the Board of Governors, another member of the Board of Governors and a sitting or retired chancellor of another UNC System campus. It also must include members of the Board of Trustees, faculty, the student body, staff and alumni.1
So the search committee includes just two members of the UNC Chapel Hill faculty: Dr. Cristy Page, a professor and executive dean at the UNC School of Medicine; and Dr. Beth Moracco, Chair of the Faculty.
Notably, though, Hans named Page – who is widely respected across campus – as Chair of the search committee, rather than Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer, who remains a member of the committee. Two other trustees – Jennifer Evans and Malcolm Turner – are also committee members.
The two Board of Governors members on the committee – Chair Randy Ramsey and Kellie Blue – were both absent from the initial meeting.
Hans said the committee will hire a national search firm “to make sure we cast the widest net possible.” And Page said the committee’s goal is to complete its work by the end of the year. The committee is scheduling a series of listening sessions across campus from April 1 to June 5, and advisors have discussed holding a second round of listening sessions in the fall.
HANS LISTED a variety of traits in a new chancellor, including commitments to the university’s public mission, honesty and integrity, “intellectual humility,” provision of students with both “promising careers and meaningful lives,” research, academic freedom and shared governance, fiscal prudence and Carolina’s role as an economic driver for the state.
Though the UNC System policy designates search committee members by their positions with the university or University System, Hans told committee members they should not act as representatives of a particular group, but should exercise their best judgment on behalf of the university.
MEMBERS OF the Search Advisory Committee include:
- Dr. Cristy Page, professor and executive dean, UNC School of Medicine
- Kellie Hunt Blue, Board of Governors member
- Jennifer Evans, UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees
- Christopher Everett, UNC Chapel Hill student body president
- Veronica Mora Flaspoehler, president, UNC General Alumni Association
- Frank Gilliam, Chancellor, UNC-Greensboro
- Peter Hans, President, UNC System
- Beth Moracco, Chair of the Faculty and professor at UNC-CH Gillings School of Global Public Health
- Katie Musgrove, Chair of the UNC Employee Forum
- Jim Phillips Jr., former student body president and former Chair of UNC Board of Governors
- John Preyer, Chair, UNC-CH Board of Trustees
- Randy Ramsey, Chair, UNC Board of Governors and founder of Jarrett Bay Boatworks
- Malcolm Turner, Vice Chair, UNC-CH Board of Trustees and an executive at DraftKings, a sports-betting company.2
1 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/policy/doc.php?type=pdf&id=74.
2 https://www.northcarolina.edu/news/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-search-advisory-committee-announced/.
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