January 28, 2010

TO		Iona College Community
FROM:		Mr. James P. Hynes Chair, Board of Legal Trustees
RE:		Presidential Search Advisory Committee

It is my pleasure to inform you of how the Board of Trustees intends to proceed with the search for the eighth president of Iona College, Brother Liguori’s successor. While the selection is the Board’s responsibility and, indeed, is the most important task before us, we believe it is essential that we involve the campus community. Therefore, we will be forming a Presidential Search Advisory Committee to recommend finalist(s) to the full Board. The committee will include:

• 7 representatives from the Board of Legal Trustees
• 3 representatives from the full-time faculty nominated by the Faculty Senate
• 1 representative from the staff/administration nominated by the Staff & Administrative Council
• 1 representative from the student body nominated by the Student Government Association
• 1 alumni representative nominated by the Alumni Board of Directors
  

I will Chair the search committee and a faculty member will be Vice Chair. Sister Patricia McGinley, SSJ, will be staff to the committee. The Board has also engaged an advisor to assist in the process. Dr. Stephen Portch has provided similar services to other colleges and has worked with Iona and the Board for the past three years on various projects; his biography will be included on the website that we will establish for the presidential search. We will also be issuing a request for proposals (RFP) for a search firm to work with the committee.
 
I am writing the stakeholder groups, identified above, asking for nominations for individuals to serve on the search committee. I anticipate that the search committee will be established in March, and I will write again to let the College community know of the members of the committee. We will have a presidential search website, and I will write about that in my next email as well.
 
The search committee will engage the College communities in seeking input about Iona’s next president. There will be a series of focus groups and town hall meetings in March, and there will also be a place on the website for comments. I will send details on all of this in the near future.
 
The Board hopes to announce Brother Liguori’s successor prior to the end of the spring semester, 2011. As the College knows, Brother Liguori has been an outstanding president for the College. It will be a daunting task to identify Iona’s next president, but the Board is confident that the search process – through diligent and collaborative work – will result in the successful effort to appoint Iona’s next President.