By Josephine Hill
Towson University students want the school’s next president to show support for greek housing, program funding equality, international students and other important issues facing the community.
Students were given the opportunity to provide input for the president search at a town hall meeting last week. The presidential search and screening committee will take the information students provided to develop the ideal leadership profile for the candidates, officials said.
“Challenges and opportunities that Towson faces and the kind of characteristics that we would ideally like to see in a new president, that’s what we are most interested in hearing from students, ” said Dave Kinkopf, the chairperson of the Presidential Search and Screening Committee.
Photo by Josephine Hill.
The presidential selection process begins with multiple community forums. The committee will review applications from candidates and a new president should be selected in six months, according to Kinkopf.
“At this point in the search, we are not even thinking individual candidates that will be late in the summer and fall,” Kinkopt said. “We try to conduct a very broad search, we are completely open-minded without any kind of pre-determined results going into the process.”
Former SGA executive Gayon Sampson, 22, said he hoped the next president would be Timothy Chandler, who has been interim president since Maravene Loeschke retired last year for health reasons.
Sampson told the committee all the qualifications the next president should possess, jokingly ticking off all of Chandler’s qualifications.
“Well, I hope our next university president is someone who has studied abroad,” said Sampson, who is the vice president of undergraduate affairs for the University System of Maryland. “I think England, Canada, Stanford are great places. Probably someone who has an accent, served as a provost and president at a university and someone I think is charming. Someone who loves and understands our university and has a very intelligent wife.”
The audience contained several journalist, student workers and graduate students who brought their concerns to the committee.
Emma Middleton, undergraduate student, wants the next president to be more visible and supportive of greek housing, mental health awareness, transfer students, internships and liberal arts programs.
“Over the winter, we had issues with public transportation being closed and the university being open,” she said. “The president, whoever is involved in that, didn’t make decisions in a timely manner for some students. I would be interested in a president who is really concerned with campus safety and security.”
“If interim President Chandler chooses to apply, his application will be reviewed very seriously and just as anyone else would. We have no pre-conceived notions, or predetermined results. Our goal is find the absolute best possible president for Towson, whoever that may be,” Kinkopf said.
The university has nearly 22,000 students and a newly elected SGA board that did not attend this meeting. Eleven audience members and twelve committee members were present to provide input in this big decision.
“I hope the person would have a well-rounded background and not just be interested in one specific area of study, but harmonize all the different schools and colleges to bring everyone up to the same level rather than having unequal levels of funding for different departments,” said Ted Shusterman, 34, a graduate music student.
Shusterman said he hopes the next president is a strong supporter and advocate for the arts. Kinkopf joked that Shusterman wants a Loeschke clone.
Wangui Muthaka, 24, an international student from Kenya who works in both the International Student and Scholar Office and the Office of Graduate studies, said graduate students need housing.
“Some things are lacking in terms of housing, they are always quite lost,” Muthaka said. “We don’t have good international housing on campus, so it’s difficult. International students feel isolated. I would just want to see more integration between the domestic students and international students because they can both learn from each other.”
Muthaka hopes the next president is supportive of enhancing the international programs.
“We are hoping to get dozens of resumes,” Kinkopt said. “I suspect some internationally, East Coast and West Coast. Geographical considerations could be strengths for some candidates. None of those single elements would be ones that couldn’t be overcome by someone with different strengths.”
“I think the search process is designed to welcome candidates of many different backgrounds including non-traditional background,” said Leonard Raley, the president and CEO of the University Systems of Maryland Foundation and a committee liaison. “Our search committee will be very careful to make sure that the candidates will have a healthy respect for shared governance because running a major university of this size isn’t just a top-down type of approach necessary.”
Shared governance among the president, government, staff, faculty and students is important to how Towson functions as a great institution of higher education, Raley said.
“Towson is a premier university,” Sampson said. “I think the president to should be able to let the General Assembly know that we are important. If you invest in Towson, you are investing in the future of Maryland. That is what I want to make sure our president understands.”