LSU’s existing leadership structure will remain in place, as a committee tasked with finding the university’s next president begins its search for a new leader.
At its first meeting today, the 20-person presidential search committee, appointed earlier this month by the LSU Board of Supervisors, dispensed in relatively short order with the potentially thorny and politically charged question of whether to split the top job into two positions or keep the current structure as it is.
For much of the year, the board was divided over the issue of leaving in place the current structure—a single university system president, who also serves as chancellor of the flagship Baton Rouge campus—or dividing the job among two administrators, which is how it was structured until 2013.
Committee members took turns at the microphone this afternoon for 40 minutes or so, extolling the virtues of the current unified leadership structure and praising the way former president F. King Alexander and current interim president Thomas Galligan have juggled the duties that come from wearing two hats.
“I would be inclined to say our structure as it exists now, politically, fiscally and in the arena of the public, is a structure I believe is working,” said Mary Werner, a committee member and also a member of the board of supervisors.
While it is unclear how a committee that has never met before decided so quickly that it will search for just one top administrator, not two—particularly when the board itself was, at least until recently, divided on the issue—a couple of developments likely played into the decision.
For one, Gov. John Bel Edwards, who appoints members to the LSU board, said publicly for the first time this week he has changed his position on the issue and believes LSU is best served by keeping the existing structure in place. Earlier this year, the governor said he thought the position should be split in two.
Also, Galligan, who is chancellor of the law center and has been pulling double duty since Alexander stepped down in January, has recently expressed interest in applying for the president’s position, after initially saying he had no interest in the job long term.
Though the committee decided not to split the president’s job into two, committee chairman James Williams said the committee still needs to look closely at the university’s top leadership structure to see if there are ways to tweak it and make it more efficient.
In other business, the committee voted to retain a firm to help in the search process, though Williams said the firm’s role would be limited in scope and would primarily focus on helping to vet qualified applicants.
