After the announcement on Friday of UC President Mark Yudof’s resignation, the UC Board of Regents faces a much shorter time frame in comparison to previous searches to select a successor.
The last two presidential searches — Yudof’s in 2007-08 and that of his predecessor, Robert Dynes, in 2002-03 — had about 11 months to complete and designated a successor three months before the outgoing president officially stepped down. Yudof’s announcement of his resignation in January means that there is a little more than seven months to find a successor before he leaves office on Aug. 31, 2013.
ASUC Vice President of External Affairs Shahryar Abbasi, one of the student representatives on the recent search committee to replace UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, said that attracting potential candidates from outside the UC system will present a challenge.
“There will be times when you don’t know if you’re going to find someone, and you’re going to have to pick other state systems,” Abbasi said. “How do you convince people to leave universities and come to the UC? That’s going to be a difficult thing to do. It’s not going to be an easy search.”
According to the UC Board of Regents’ appointment policy, the selection of a new president begins when a vacancy for the position is anticipated. The chair of the board, currently Sherry Lansing, will appoint a special committee consisting of the alumni regent, the student regent, ex officio regents and up to six other board members to nominate candidates.
In the last phase of the selection process, the committee will present its final selection to the entire Board of Regents for voting.
An important aspect of the selection process is broad and thorough consultation with various UC stakeholders, including the Academic Council, Laboratory Directors, campus chancellors, students, staff and alumni. They will have the opportunity to weigh in on the selection criteria and eventual candidates.
“The next president (should) figure out how to maintain excellence in light of new technological developments,” Abbasi said. “There is pressure and a general consensus that people want to do a lot more with online education.”
The UC Student Association consulted with the search committee five years ago when Yudof was selected and expects to be just as involved in the selection of the next UC president.
“As a whole, we haven’t decided on what our exact qualifications are,” said Darius Kemp, UCSA director of organizing and communications. “However, we still concretely believe the next UC president should be someone just as open as Mark Yudof in the past few months and, even more so than he has ever been, open to student input.”