The committee that will advise the Board of Regents as it hires a new University of Minnesota president has begun its work as it should: It's doing a lot of listening. At seven sessions over nine days on the university's five campuses, scores of stakeholders described the challenges that await retiring President Eric Kaler's successor and the traits he or she will need to successfully meet them.
Listening is the proper predicate to the next step. A consensus needs to come quickly about the university's leadership needs. The search advisory committee will be better able to craft and articulate such a consensus if it engages the U's many constituencies now.
Comments are still being solicited at president-search.umn.edu/community-input. The Editorial Board hopes committee chair Abdul Omari and his 22 colleagues will indulge our preference for this page's forum as we offer ours. Here are our answers to the questions they've posed:
What do you see as the challenges and opportunities facing the next president? The University of Minnesota has a vital role to play in helping Minnesota prosper in the 2020s. That's a decade in which the state is forecast to experience little or no growth in its working-age population. An insufficient supply of talent threatens to stall the state's economy.
The next university president should make it his or her mission to help change that forecast. He or she can advance strategies for recruiting more top-notch students and faculty, from Minnesota and around the world. He or she can put more focus on the university's research mission, with an emphasis on discoveries that can generate new Minnesota industries, advance existing ones and make them talent magnets in their own right. And he or she can deploy university resources in ways that help more Minnesotans live up to their full economic potential.
Seizing those opportunities will require overcoming what has been a persistent point of contention through several decades — the desire of many Minnesotans, including some on the Board of Regents, for the university to function more like a low-budget state college rather than the world-class research university that Minnesota's economy requires. Easing that tension in favor of upholding the university's unique research mission must be part of the next president's assignment.
What professional experience and qualifications must the successful candidate possess? A lively debate has already begun in some quarters about whether the next president must have a pedigree in academic leadership. Would a proven leader in business or politics serve as well, or better? Perhaps. But that question can wait. At this stage, presidential searchers would do well to cast a wide net.
It's enough for now to say that a contender for this job should have already served successfully as the chief executive of a large and complex organization. He or she should have a track record of forging an organization-wide strategy and building consensus across multiple constituencies to get it implemented. He or she should have a history of a positive working relationship with a diverse governing board and of gaining the confidence of a faculty or similarly large professional staff. He or she should know how to assemble and maintain a high-caliber executive team. And he or she should have experience functioning with a high degree of public visibility and fiscal accountability.
