What's it take to hire a public university president?

After Missouri State University President Michael Nietzel on Oct. 30 announced his plans to resign at the end of 2010, the university's Board of Governors took two months to finalize a search committee.

Now, the real work begins.

Take time

Discovering the right candidate to serve as a university president is vastly different than finding the leader of a corporation.

For public institutions, especially, the process can be extremely open, said Claire Van Ummersen, vice president of the Center for Effective Leadership at the American Council on Education, noting that there is the possibility that candidates who don't make the final cut will face repercussions with their current employers. Sitting presidents at other universities, she noted, are especially vulnerable.

A college president serves an average of 8.5 years in office, according to ACE's 2007 American College President Survey. Twenty years ago, the average time served in the president's position was 6.3 years.

At MSU, only two presidents before Nietzel served for five years or less. Russell Keeling was acting president for a year before John Keiser, and Leland Eldridge Traywick was president 1961-64. Nietzel, who began his presidency in 2005, will be the third.

Nietzel declined an interview request for the story, saying it was not appropriate to insert himself into any part of the search process.

Michael Franks, owner of Neosho-based Strategic Alignment LLC, was a member of the MSU Board of Governors and headed up the presidential search committee in 2005. He said that shorter terms in top spots is something he feels is becoming more common, in academic and private sectors. For academics, at least, Franks points to the evolution of the position.

"The pressure to perform is much higher. ... The job is all-encompassing," he said.

A 2006 ACE survey of presidents who had been at the job 10 years or longer asked what tasks took up more time now than when they first became president. Fundraising (78 percent) topped the list.

Because of the effects a president can have on an institution, the search process needs to be well-thought-out, according to Richard Legon, president of Washington, D.C.-based Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

"You need time, energy and patience," Legon said. "A search that doesn't go well can put an institution in jeopardy of delaying its opportunity to move forward."

Search deep

MSU's search committee consists of 14 members, including board members Mike Duggan, Mary Sheid and Phyllis Washington, three faculty members, one member of the administrative council, an academic administrator, a student and a staff member, said board Chairman Brian Hammons. The names were scheduled to be unveiled Jan. 8.

The 2005 search committee had an unusually high 18 members, Franks said.

"The university had not undergone a search for nearly a decade, none of the constituents had experience with a search, so we tried to engage as many members of the community as we could," Franks said.

Another difference between the current search process and the 2005 search is that this time, the board is committed to using a search firm, said Duggan, who heads the search committee.

Duggan expects the board will select a firm by the end of January, and a representative from the firm will take part in the committee's first meeting, which should happen during the first week of February.

"The search firm that typically has a lot of experience in doing academic searches ... is typically very familiar with the candidate field that is out there," he said.

The current candidate pool is smaller than it has been in previous years, Van Ummersen said, partially because presidents are staying longer in their positions and officials in top administrative spots aren't as interested in pursuing presidencies.

Tout benefits

Franks and Hammons think that the current MSU search is well-positioned to draw from a good pool of candidates, especially since this time around, the university has a new name, having dropped "Southwest" in August 2005. Other benefits of the MSU presidency include a continued increase in campus growth, in terms of enrollment, academic and physical growth, Duggan said. And a key benefit is the university's relationship with the community, from the IDEA Commons to its working relationships with businesses and government entities, he said.

"That would be one of the kinds of activities that a new president would love to have, not only on the drawing board, but up and running, and the ability to maintain and grow the program," Van Ummersen said.

Duggan said board member Elizabeth Bradbury is in the process of developing a document that will outline the qualities the board would like to see in MSU's next president.

Those attributes will help the search firm decide on what type of net to cast during its search, Van Emmersen said, noting a high priority on budgets may lead to a candidate with experience as a chief financial officer, for example.

There is still a lot to be determined in the MSU president search. Duggan said the president's job description will be similar to Nietzel's, although the committee may make some changes. It may be months before the board meets the committee's finalists.

"We've thought about a couple of different time periods. One would be that we'd have finalists by late April or early May, the second would probably be sometime in September," Hammons said.