The Daily Texan AUSTIN (U-WIRE) -- As University of Texas students and faculty prepare to leave campus for the holidays, officials are entering the final stage of the school's presidential search. The selection will be announced December 16 by the regents immediately following private interviews with each of the five candidates, according to UT System Regent Lowell Lebermann, chairperson of the UT presidential search committee. Lebermann said he expects the regents to announce the new president in open session in the Regents' Room at Ashbel Smith Hall in downtown Austin. The five candidates include Chodorow; Larry Faulkner, provost and vice chancellor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; John Wiley, provost and vice chancellor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison; Shirley Strum Kenny, president of State University of New York at Stony Brook; and Richard Sisson, senior vice president and provost at Ohio State University. Lebermann anticipates a tough choice. "Given the quality of the five candidates, yes, I think it'll be a very difficult decision," he said. "All five of those people could run that university. It's our job as regents to find the best fit for this time." Throughout the search process, candidates have been bombarded with questions from UT faculty, staff and students on a plethora of issues. The system's next president will have to deal with issues ranging from maintaining diversity at the university after affirmative action was eliminated from its admissions process to successfully spearheading its $1 billion fund-raising effort. The new president must also address growing enrollment at what is already the nation's largest university. "It might take a different kind of person than it would have 10 years ago," Lebermann added. After Berdahl's resignation was announced, the university assembled a 17-member search committee to advise the regents on the selection of a new president. The committee -- comprised of UT administrators, students, faculty and staff -- began seeking potential candidates and conducting interviews May 1. On October 31, the committee announced that it had narrowed the field down to five finalists. Since then, the five candidates have each visited the university to meet with various regents, student leaders, faculty and staff, who have all compiled extensive packets of information and feedback on the candidates to present to the regents before the December 16 meeting. Given the immense volume of information now available about the candidates, a final decision shouldn't take long, Lebermann said. "The interviews will be much more refined and in-depth because we know so much more about the candidates. We'll have certain curiosities for further probing," he said. "There will be a lot of information going into it and these things tend to work pretty well." Lebermann said he had hoped to make a decision sooner, but mid-December is the earliest that all of the nine regents and five candidates could meet for interviews. "The way things have played out is all an effort to make sure we get the right person," said Lisa Henken, chairperson of the Cabinet of College Councils and one of two students on the presidential search committee. Henken added that the delay in announcing the next president would be justified if it prevented having to sacrifice crucial elements of the search process out of time constraints.
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