September 17, 2008

I am very pleased to inform the Saint Martin’s University community that our presidential search is well under way. I am writing to provide you with an update on the progress made since my last report in July.

We held our second search committee meeting on September 11, 2008 and the search committee agreed to accelerate the timeline of the presidential search process. There were a few reasons for this decision, but the primary reason was to allow the newly appointed Saint Martin’s president to be involved in a significant portion of the vice president for academic affairs search process and for the new president to help identify potential candidates for this position. You will receive an update on the vpaa search from Mary Gentry, the chair of the vpaa search committee, next week.

The presidential search committee agreed to the accelerated timeline, which I have listed below:

During our meeting, we agreed to reduce our candidate pool to a smaller group of candidates whose background and experience seem especially consistent with the qualities and qualifications for the next president as established for the search. Our search committee members are in the process of checking references for these candidates. In the next few days, we will invite a smaller number of candidates to confidential preliminary interviews with the search committee. On completion of that round of interviews, the committee will select candidates to participate in more extensive on-campus meetings with a broad range of Saint Martin’s University constituents. We will notify you of the specific dates and times of these visits as soon as they are scheduled.

Please be assured that the committee has agreed not to move the interview process forward unless we have confidence in our pool of short-listed candidates. We are pleased, however, with the quality of the candidate pool and have every reason to believe that our search will come to a successful conclusion in late October, 2008. The committee will continue to stay in touch with you throughout the process, and we welcome your comments and questions at any time. If you have any questions, please direct those to me at SMUPresidentSearch@stmartin.edu or you may contact our search consultant, Maya Ranchod Kirkhope at (703) 440 1008 or at maya.kirkhope@academic-search.com. We will treat any information you provide as confidential.

You will receive another update on our presidential search in a few weeks.

Thank you for your interest and support.