Search for pres. may take time

Should President Sheldon Hackney be confirmed to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University may be in for a long, hard search for his replacement -- if the experiences of other universities are any indication. Yale University ended its almost year-long search for a new president yesterday by selecting Yale Graduate School Dean Richard Levin to fill the post. Levin will relieve acting president Howard Lamar, who took over at the University after Benno Schmidt unexpectedly resigned last June. A tremendous amount of speculation had surrounded Yale's presidential search, and the length of time it took for the search committee to find a qualified candidate may be indicative of the time it will take for the University to find a suitable replacement for Hackney. But candidates are still out there and the University will likely find the right person to fill the spot. "I think the University of Pennsylvania is a distinguished university with fine schools and reputation," said Henry King, chairperson of Columbia University's Board of Trustees. "It would be a privilege for someone to serve [as president]." In addition to Yale, several other prestigious universities have just concluded their own presidential searches. Columbia recently named George Rupp, president of Rice University, to succeed President Michael Sovern when he steps down in July. According to King, who was also the head of Columbia's recent presidential search committee, the entire selection process took about nine months. Andrew Ceresney, a senior history major at Columbia, was the only student on the 11-member search committee. Ceresney said it is important to know what qualities the university needs in a leader before a search begins. "You have to decide what direction the university will go in before you choose someone to lead you in that direction," he said. "When you choose a president, you take the direction they see the university going in." Both King and Ceresney said the process of allowing all campus groups to have input on the selection can be extremely time consuming. "We spoke to an enormous number of faculty, student groups, all of the deans, the senior staff and local political figures," King said. One of the questions that the University administration will have to face is what part the students will be play in the presidential search process. Ceresney said that he believes that it is important to give both students and faculty a voice in choosing a new president. "It gives the new president a certain legitimacy when all these constituencies are involved in the process," he said. The University of Chicago also named a new president recently. In December, Hugo Sonnenschein, a former dean of the University's School of Arts and Sciences, was selected to head the Illinois university after a seven-month search. Howard Krane, chairperson of the Board of Trustees at Chicago and chairperson of the search committee, said there was no student involvement in the selection process. "The students played no role," Krane said. "I wrote a letter to the student paper asking students for recommendations for president, and got no responses." "I believe that it's a function that should be appropriately carried out by trustees with advice by faculty," Krane added. But Columbia's Ceresney disagrees. "[I came] with the perspective of someone who was living on campus -- a different point of view from a faculty member or trustee -- but certainly as valid a point of view," he said. The Associated Press contributed to this story.