If you want some additional perspective on how screwed up our search committee was, contrast the composition of the committees for our search and the parallel Chancellor search at UT-K. It's not at all hard to see why things went so sideways when there was virtually no one on our committee with substantive knowledge about such searches, the roles and responsibilities of a president, or even the administrative functioning and 'visioning' of a modern R1 university. No deans; just 1 endowed chair; few faculty members (and 1 was an associate professor); and just 1 staff member (sort of). No shortage of Trustees, though. Little diversity of any kind. It was set up to be political, and we got the result that might have been expected:
UT-K Chancellor Search Committee:
Keith Carver (Chair): Chancellor, UT Martin; Misty Anderson: Faculty Senate President and Lindsay Young Professor of English, UT-K; Chip Bryant: Vice Chancellor for Advancement, UT-K; Mark Dean: Interim Dean of the Tickle College of Engineering, UT-K; Bill Fox: Randy and Jenny Boyd Distinguished Professor and Director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research, UT-K; Ovi Kabir: Student Government Association President, UT-K; Amy Miles: UT Board of Trustees Member/Chair of the Audit and Compliance Committee; Donnie Smith: Board of Trustees Member/Chair of the Education, Research, and Service Committee; Michael Smith-Porter: Project coordinator, Student Recruitment, UT-K; Cara Sulyok: Graduate Student Senate President, UT-K; Thomas Zacharia: Director, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
USC President Search Committee
Hubert F. Mobley: Trustee, 6th Judicial Circuit (Search Committee Chair);
William C. Hubbard: Trustee, 5th Judicial Circuit; Leah B. Moody: Trustee, 16th Judicial Circuit; C. Dorn Smith III: Trustee, 3rd Judicial Circuit; Eugene P. Warr, Jr.: Trustee, 4th Judicial Circuit; Marco Valtorta: USC Columbia Faculty Senate Chair, Professor, College of Engineering and Computing; Julius Fridriksson: Professor and Smart State Chair, Arnold School of Public Health; Araceli Hernandez-Laroche: Associate Professor, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, USC Upstate; Taylor Wright: USC Columbia Student Government President; Robert F. Dozier, Jr.: Trustee, USC Alumni Association President; William C. “W.C.” Hammett, Jr.: USC Foundations; Mark W. Buyck, Jr.: Trustee, Gubernatorial Designee; Miles Loadholt – Trustee, 2nd Judicial Circuit