Board of Regents Statement

News Release from UH Board of Regents May 24, 2013

The Board of Regents met this afternoon to initiate the process of selecting the next President of the University of Hawaiʻi. The Board appointed a task group, chaired by John Holzman and including Regents Saedene Ota and Jan Sullivan, to report on the logistics of the presidential search.

The Board respects the University’s numerous constituents and acknowledges the importance of soliciting public input. The Board made no substantive decisions about the selection process at this meeting and will hold a public, facilitated meeting in early June to consider the process for the selection of the University’s next leader.

At that time, the Board will appoint a selection committee composed of Board members.

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Flashback: Engineered choice: How to pick a Greenwood

Abercrombie Concerned Regents May not do His Bidding

Borreca May 28, 2013: The UH panel is already headed to its own political decisions before it even gets in position to select a new university leader.

To handle the selection of a president, a selection committee has to be formed. Makeup of the committee will fall to the majority of committee. University and legislative observers are saying that not all regents are on the same page as that of Eric Martinson, the board of regents' chairman.

"Before developing the search process, we need to define where we are and where we want to go," said Martinson earlier this month.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie has already had at least one private meeting with the regents to discuss the process.

Although Abercrombie has appointed a majority of the board, he has remained concerned that the state law regulating how regents are selected has limited his choices. The result is a board that may have been named by Abercrombie, but not guaranteed to do his bidding....

J.N. Musto, the long-serving executive director of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, is recommending that the job be changed so that the UH president becomes chancellor of the entire UH system and be designated chief executive officer of the board. The separate college campuses now run by a chancellor would have that title elevated to president. The UH CEO-chancellor along with the regents would evaluate and pick the campus presidents, but decision-making then would be made by the campus presidents.

Also up for consideration is a plan to scrap the Manoa campus chancellor and give the UH president direct authority over Manoa.

Finally, Musto is also urging that the UH get over the current idea that in order to woo a president, the university must also give new presidents tenure. Hawaii certainly has not had an enviable track record of granting tenure to people it didn't really want around campus, once they left Bachman Hall.

So after the regents get a committee running, they must also decide on an interim president.

Some are lobbying for that selection to be the real hatchet-wielder in a UH reform effort. The interim president, the argument goes, could be the one to prune a lot of dead wood and open up some of the barricades to reform created by various deans.

read ... Picking new UH president is off to a dispiriting start