LSU announced the members of its presidential search committee who’ll oversee the process for selecting a new university president after former President William Tate IV left for the same job at Rutgers in May.
The committee is made up of 19 members, many of them business leaders from around the state.
The committee also includes seven current members of the LSU Board of Supervisors, including chair Scott Ballard; two current professors, Faculty Senate President Daniel Tirone and physics professor Kenneth Schafer; and one student, Emily Otken, who’s pursuing her doctorate at LSU Shreveport.
“This distinguished and engaged group brings deep expertise, institutional knowledge, and a shared commitment to identifying the next transformative leader for our university system,” Ballard said in a statement.
Five of the Board of Supervisors members on the committee are Gov. Jeff Landry appointees. Two other committee members, Ben Bordelon and Greg Feirn, served on councils advising Landry as he transitioned into office.
LSU will soon conduct a nationwide search for its next president.
In 2019-2020, when the university sought to replace President F. King Alexander, the search committee contracted a professional search firm to narrow down candidates. The committee’s meetings were public then, and its interviews of finalists for the position were also public.
No details on how the search committee will operate this time around have been released, but more information is expected to be available at the next Board of Supervisors meeting on June 27.
In the meantime, the interim president is Matt Lee, formerly the vice president of agriculture and dean of the College of Agriculture.
The university has several other high-level vacancies at chief administrative officer and provost. Lee told the Reveille that those positions will be filled once a new president is named.
Here is the full committee, per LSU:
- Scott Ballard, Chairman – LSU Board of Supervisors
- Lee Mallett, Vice Chair – LSU Board of Supervisors
- Valencia Sarpy Jones, Past Chair – LSU Board of Supervisors
- Rémy Voisin Starns, Past Chair – LSU Board of Supervisors
- James Williams, Past Chair – LSU Board of Supervisors
- John Carmouche, Supervisor – LSU Board of Supervisors
- Blaise Zuschlag, Supervisor – LSU Board of Supervisors
- Ben Bordelon, President & CEO – Bollinger Shipyards
- Clarence Cazalot, Immediate Past Chair MD Anderson, Former Chair/President/CEO Marathon Oil, Past Chair – LSU Foundation Board of Directors
- Paul Coreil, Chancellor – LSU Alexandria
- Greg Feirn, CEO – LCMC Health
- EJ Kuiper, President & CEO – Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System
- Pete November, CEO – Ochsner Health
- Roger Odgen, Business Leader, Philanthropist, LSU Foundation Board of Directors
- Emily Otken, Medical Student – LSU Health Sciences Center Shreveport, Former Student Member – LSU Board of Supervisors
- Kenneth Schafer, Boyd Professor and Ball Family Distinguished Professor
- Ryan Theriot, Executive Vice President/COO of Parish Construction, Former LSU & MLB Baseball Player
- Daniel Tirone, LSU A&M Faculty Senate President, Associate Professor – LSU A&M College of Humanities & Social Sciences
- Bill Windham, Shreveport-Bossier Business and Industry Leader
