FAU Trustees to name new university president March 3
February 26, 2010 · 0 Comments
BOCA RATON – Florida Atlantic University may select its new president by March 3.
A presidential search committee on Thursday narrowed the pool of candidates from five to three after a full day of interviews.
The trio was gleaned from the five semi-finalists selected Tuesday.
“There were many very qualified candidates who applied for the presidency of Florida Atlantic University,” said Nancy Blosser, FAU Board of Trustees chair and chair of the presidential search committee. “FAU has an exceptional group of finalists, and I’m sure that whoever is chosen will lead FAU to the next level of excellence.”
The new FAU chief will replace Frank T. Brogan, who served as president from March 2003 until last year when he resigned to take the job of chancellor of the state university system. FAU Provost John Pritchett has been interim president.
Coincidentally, the three finalists for the presidents are all public university provosts. They are Dr. Terry L. Hickey, provost and executive vice president at the University of Central Florida; Dr. Gary L. Miller who, since 2006, has served as provost and vice president for academic affairs and research at Wichita State University and Dr. Mary Jane Saunders, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Cleveland State University.
The FAU Board of Trustees is expected to meet Wednesday to select one of the finalists.
Dr. Hickey is at UCF, where the student body exceeds 53,500, making it the third largest university in the United States. He has held his present title since 2006.
From 2003 to 2006, he was UCF’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. He has also served as senior vice president and provost at the University of Akron (2000-2003) and dean of the College of Sciences at Old Dominion University (1997-2000).
From 1979 to 1997, he was at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he held a succession of administrative positions including associate provost for academic programs and associate vice president for medical center programs.
Dr. Hickey received his Ph.D. in physiological psychology from the University of Miami in 1972, and he took postdoctoral training in neuroanatomy at the University of Wisconsin from 1972 to 1974.
Dr. Gary L. Miller comes from Wichita State in Kansas, which has an enrollment of 14,500 undergraduate and graduate students. From 2002 to 2006, Dr. Miller was dean of the arts and sciences college and a professor of biology at the University of the Pacific.
He chaired the department of biology at the University of Mississippi from 1995 to 2002, having joined the biology faculty there in 1988. He also was a member of the zoology faculty at Weber State University, where he served as assistant director of the Museum of Natural Sciences. Dr. Miller received his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Mississippi State University in 1982.
Dr. Saunders currently serves at Cleveland State University, which has an enrollment of 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
Dr. Saunders joined Cleveland State University in 2003 as director of the Biomedical Health Institute and a professor in the department of biological, geological and environmental sciences. She was founding dean of the College of Science, CSU’s second largest college. She was named interim provost in 2006 and provost in 2007.
Prior to arriving at CSU, Dr. Saunders was a program officer and deputy division director at the National Science Foundation, director of the Institute of Biomolecular Science at the University of South Florida and an assistant professor in the botany department at Louisiana State University.
Dr. Saunders received her Ph.D. in botany from the University of Massachusetts in 1982, and she did postdoctoral work at the University of Georgia from 1982 to 1983.
On March 1 and 2, the finalists will tour selected FAU campuses, meeting with students, faculty, staff and friends of the university
in open forums. These sessions will allow the university community to provide comment on the presidential hopefuls.
R. William Funk & Associates, the Dallas-based search firm, helped FAU conduct a nationwide search for a new president.
