Interim President Mike Smith’s 6 month term will end in October 2023. The Board of Trustees was given a short amount of time to find a new president for Vermont State University, which made them change the process to an abbreviated version to complete the search by the deadline.
The Board of Trustees will be hiring an experienced “change management leader” to be the Interim President of VTSU for 18 to 24 months. They plan to conduct a proper search for a president once this interim president is fulfilling their 18 to 24 month term.
There has been an appointed Ad Hoc Search Committee comprising of five Trustees. The members of this search committee are Trustees Bombardier, Dickinson, Durfee, Luneau, and Tester. However, other trustees can participate in the biweekly meetings held Thursdays at 8:30 AM. These meetings are set to regularly start on Thursday, August 3rd. The Board of Trustees aims to have a decision for the hiring of the next interim president at the Boards retreat on September 18-19th 2023.
A calendar was proposed to create a timeline of the search, but has not yet been approved. The unapproved calendar was presented as followed:
July – Generate a list of potential candidates and see what a search firm can provide
August – Finalize the candidate list and conduct initial interviews and background checks
September – Decision will be made by the retreat on September 18th-19th
October – Hired candidate will begin onboarding and transitioning into role
November – Official start date begins on November 1st
Community engagement will not be made on the front end of this search and internal engagement is not wanted at this time of the search. Any firm involved in the search for the new interim president will not be released to the public yet.
More information about the Search Committee can be found on the VSC website. The possible candidates will not be made public and will only be discussed in executive session at this time. There will be another update at the August 14th Board of Trustees meeting.
Patricia Shine
I love how inclusive this process is. Oh, wait a minute. That would be a different reality.