Presidential Search

["President's Office" <auemail@groupwise1.duc.auburn.edu>]

September 6, 2001

Dear Members of the Auburn Community,

At Tuesday's meeting of the Auburn University Senate, I was asked about
the presentation that Dr. Bill Weary made to Auburn's Board of Trustees
at their meeting last Friday. It occurs to me that this subject may be
of interest to many of you, and so I am providing this overview of what
took place and what I think we can expect.

As you may recall, Bill Weary is nationally recognized as an authority
on helping universities to prepare for presidential searches. He
presented a seminar on this subject here on campus on July 23, and the
seminar seemed to be well received.

We agreed that additional visits were needed for him to learn more
about Auburn. The purpose of these visits would be to help him help us
as we prepare for a presidential search.

Dr. Weary's first return visit was from July 31 through August 3. In
the course of these four days he was able to interview representatives
of many of the university's stakeholder groups. 

While these interviews did not constitute a complete "immersion" in
Auburn, they did give Dr. Weary a sense of some of the tasks the
university might usefully undertake before initiating a presidential
search. He followed up by sending me a brief and very tentative outline
of eight such tasks. Given the sketchiness of the list, he asked that it
not be shared at that time.

Dr. Weary's thinking about the desirability of Auburn's proceeding with
a presidential search appears to have been strongly influenced by his
four-day visit. In July, he appeared to feel that it would be essential
for us to proceed with a search this year. His remarks to the Board this
past Friday, however, took a different approach.

Specifically, he recommended postponing the search until the university
has been able to accomplish some preliminary tasks. As examples, he
mentioned the eight items on the list he had sent me in early August.
The eight tasks he suggested are as follows.

1.	Enhance the structures and functions of the board of trustees.

2.	Restructure, focus, and build the University's administrative
leadership.

3.	Identify and begin implementation of a shared academic vision.

4.	Plan the facilities required to advance this emerging
University.

5.	Create a viable and productive structure and staffing for
advancement.

6.	Assess the quality of "customer service" to make sure it matches
the best.

7.	Complete re-accreditation (2003) with SACS.

8.	Determine the dollars necessary to implement Auburn's vision.

It is important to understand that this list is tentative and needs to
be refined by the thinking of the university community, as well as by
the understanding Dr. Weary will gain from further visits to campus
within the next several weeks. 

I am in the process of working out the timing for his upcoming visits.
I expect them to be followed by a report that presents Dr. Weary's
observations and recommendations based on the immersion in Auburn that
we all felt was called for.

I will, of course, be sharing this report with you.  I will also be
calling for an assessment, by the campus leadership and the trustees, of
which tasks we feel we should address prior to beginning the
presidential search, who is responsible for carrying them out, and a
time frame.

In other words, Bill Weary will be proposing an agenda, but it is we
who will ultimately determine what the agenda is going to be. I believe
that the process of deliberation that we go through to reach these
decisions will serve us well.

Sincerely,

William F. Walker
Interim President