Looking through the Wednesday classifieds, four restaurants need students to wait tables.
Four is also the number of administrative positions open at LSU.
The University needs a provost, dean of social work, director of University Press and dean of business, according to Stacey Ardoin, LSU human resources analyst.
Ardoin said the University has a five to 10 percent turnover ratio in academic administrative positions, which Chancellor Mark Emmert said is normal.
“It would be unusual to not be constantly looking for one,” he said.
Emmert said he sees more turnover in academic life than he would like, but the University is a victim of its own success. LSU hires bright, young people. They succeed and move on, he said.
“It may not feel like it, but it’s normal,” Emmert said.
The Process Itself
Filling administrative positions starts with the chancellor’s appointing a search committee.
Emmert said search committees need to represent a cross section of campus and include people the University community holds in high regard. This is one reason he said including the Student Government president, Faculty Senate president and Staff Senate president “a proverbial no-brainer.”
But while committees need to be inclusive enough to represent the campus, they also have to be small enough to manage, he said. For example, the provost search committee includes 15 people — two students, 11 faculty and three staff members.
Emmert said it is also common to have people serve on search committees more than once, especially if they do a good job.
The University advertises nationally in higher education journals, and depending on the position, the University uses the search firm Heidrick and Struggles to identify and encourage qualified individuals to apply, Emmert said.
The University purposely bid for a firm it could use more than once, because it could speak about LSU more passionately than if the University used a different search firm each time, Emmert said.
Heidrick and Struggles, a well-known search firm among the higher education community, placed the lowest bid, so it got the job, Emmert said.
Emmert and committee members also search on their own.
“A lot of people, including myself, made a lot of phone calls to a lot of people encouraging them to apply,” Emmert said.
Throughout the search process, the committee sorts through résumés and brings promising applicants to New Orleans or Baton Rouge for interviews in or near the airport.
After airport interviews and discussions, the search committee selects candidates to bring to campus. If it feels a candidate is ‘the one,’ the committee makes a recommendation to the chancellor.
“It’s a hard thing to describe, but you know it when you see it, I guess,” Emmert said.
Being a Candidate vs. Committee Member
After serving on search committees at the University, former Provost Daniel Fogel, went through one in 2002 when he left LSU to become president of the University of Vermont.
To him, the difference in the two sides of the process is focus.
Candidates examine whether the school’s culture and the job requirements suit them, while search committees go through a more diffused process, sifting through many applicants and interviews, Fogel said.
“It’s very focused for the candidate — who is very busy weighing the fit — whether the position is really comfortable for himself,” Fogel said. “The focus doesn’t become as focused on the committee side until the list is narrowed down to a few a candidates.”
Searches also are difficult for committees because they have to examine the university’s image and what it wants to be to sell it to someone else, Fogel said.
Between the paperwork, meetings and sorting values, searches are a major administrative challenge for the chair, he said.
Also, searches for popular positions, such as the chancellor, football coach and athletics director, are more difficult because the media become involved and want information quickly, Fogel said.
“It’s a process that spans the nitty-gritty of administrative work to the philosophical questions of university ideals,” Fogel said.
Search Firms
Search firms help cut back on the paperwork, allowing search committees to run more efficiently.
“From someone who’s done search committees before, having a search firm is wonderful,” said Karl Roider, provost search committee chair. “The paperwork is unbelievable.”
However, the biggest challenge facing any search is building a rich pool of candidates, Fogel said, and depending on the position, search firms can help a lot.
For example, the path to becoming a provost is clear-cut, Fogel said. People start as a professor, then typically move to department chair, dean and further into higher administration.
But positions like vice chancellor of research or business school dean are not so clear-cut, he said. While candidates likely will be academics, they also can come from industry.
“While we in academia know the higher education community, we don’t know the research community,” Fogel said, and search firms can help bridge the gap.
Emmert said the University only uses a search firm for administrative positions, starting with deans, because they are costly.
According to Rose Mary Wilhelm, executive director of purchasing, Heidrick and Struggles is paid on a retainer basis, meaning if the University hires someone they brought in, it receives one-third of the person’s first-year salary.
The firm also is reimbursed for travel expenses as long as it stays within the stateÕs travel regulations, she said.
“Most of this is standard,” Wilhelm said.
Emmert compared the search firm to a dating service because it brings interested and qualified people to the University.
“If you just advertise for a job like this, people wonÕt apply for it,” Roider said. “You’ve got to solicit them.”
As much as candidates try to convince the University to hire them, the University also is convincing them to come here, Emmert said.
Few people are qualified to take upper-administrative positions, such as chancellor or provost, Fogel said. And among those who are, many are unmovable, and some are new to their current job, so they feel it would be inappropriate to leave. Search firms encourage them to look at open positions without making the University look like it is pestering, Fogel said.
Is It Really Taking That Long?
It may feel like the University of Vermont hired Fogel quickly, but Emmert said behind the scenes Vermont spent six months recruiting and nine months in the hiring process.
“To take an academic year to replace a senior administrator is the norm,” he said.
According to Fogel, University of Vermont contacted him in summer 2001, and by the time he officially visited the campus in January 2002, he had been to two interviews in New York and one off-campus interview.
While the University of Vermont’s president search took five months from the time they contacted Fogel until he accepted the job, and LSU’s provost search is taking a year, the University’s search for Emmert was much faster.
Emmert filled the chancellorÕs position in 1998, after then-chancellor William Jenkins accepted a job as LSU System president.
“Bill Jenkins and I were intent on having someone in as quickly as possible,” Fogel said.
Fogel said Jenkins was assigned to start as president in April, so he launched a committee in December and had a candidate by April.
“A lot of what happened, happened behind the scenes with [Jenkins] and I traveling around the country,” Fogel said.
How Searches Affect the Rest of the University
While the search committee looks for a new provost, mass communication professor Laura Lindsay fills in as the interim.
Lindsay, who previously worked as vice provost, said she doesnÕt feel in limbo like people might think.
“I was in the office before and I know the people and the expectations and the job,” she said.
However, she said it is frustrating to start projects, such as the chancellor’s Flagship Agenda and strategic initiatives, that she won’t see accomplished while in this capacity.
Lindsay said she misses class, students and colleagues, but working as interim provost still allows her to interact with students, faculty and administrators.
Victor Felts, assistant dean of Greek Affairs, knows what a difference an interim can make. The office recently hired an interim assistant director and Panhellenic adviser.
Felts said without an interim, he would be at work until 11 p.m. or midnight trying to get everything done.
“Having someone in the office while you’re looking helps out,” Felts said. “It reduces the workload for the staff in the office, and [interims] have the option to apply.”
While people in the office may come and go, Felts said it doesn’t affect his ability to plan because he knows whoever they hire would be able to transition into the job quickly.
“You plan, knowing someone will be in the position, but you donÕt know who the person will be,” he said.
Apathetic or Distracted?
Louisiana itself is unique, but according to Roider and Emmert, the people are LSU’s biggest asset.
“One of the things that convinced me to come to LSU was spending two hours talking to students in the student Union,” Emmert said.
Sonora Nambiar, a mass communication graduate student and student representative on the provost search committee, said more students should be involved in search committees.
“As it happened, on this committee, the other members realized that student members bring to the table the most dominant concerns on the campus,” she said.
However, Fogel said when he went to Vermont, some students were interested, but most were detached from the process. But he sees it as students focusing on other things, not being apathetic.
“The average students who were not in a leadership position were probably not particularly interested,” he said.