The Acting/Interim President Search Committee held in-person interviews with four candidates who had moved forward in our nomination and discernment process on Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 29 and 30.
As a part of the process, we sought to build community engagement and our candidates were able to converse with a representative group of the Hamline community. This group was comprised of two faculty, two staff, two students and two alumni. The faculty, students and staff were chosen by their representative bodies to serve on this stakeholder group. Our two alumni are members of the Alumni Board. The persons who participated were: Travis Matthews, Elisa Lopez, Dave Freier ’79, Jim Schuster ’81, Carlos Sneed, Chelsea Skluzacek, Bonnie Ploger and Binnur Ozkececi-Taner.
The candidates also met with the President’s Leadership Team. Each of these conversations gave the candidate a chance to learn more deeply about Hamline and for representatives of the community to give input to the search team about the gifts, skills and fit with Hamline of these potential candidates. The conversations were rich and deep and the one thing each candidate mentioned to the search team at the end of the day was how evident the passion and commitment to Hamline was by all the persons they met and interacted with during the day.
Our next step is to complete further reference checks on our finalist candidates and then confirm which candidates we will move forward to the Board of Trustees for their consideration and action. The Board of Trustees has asked us to consider traditional (from academia) and non-traditional candidates (from other sectors) and our four candidates represented that as well as a rich variety of skills and leadership experiences. We are grateful that they have offered themselves for consideration into this process.
The search committee is aware of the eagerness of the Hamline community to know more about the candidates and who the next Acting/Interim President will be. We know this is a critical role at an important time in Hamline’s history and that you are invested in its future. In order to hold to the integrity of the process, we asked all persons who participated in the Aug. 29-30 conversations to sign confidentiality agreements. This was for the sake of the candidates as well as for the ability to have honest and rigorous debate and conversation within the teams and to provide meaningful feedback to the search team. I appreciate you respecting that. We seek to be as transparent as possible in our process and create community engagement while holding the responsibility of keeping personnel matters within the scope of the search team and the Board of Trustees, as is our fiduciary responsibility.
Thank you for your support of the work of the Acting/Interim President Search Committee and your continued commitment to Hamline.
Cindy Gregorson ’81
Board of Trustees
Acting/Interim President Search Committee Chair
presidentialsearch@hamline.edu
