The Illinois State University presidential search moves on as Eastern finishes contract negotiations with interim President Lou Hencken.

But until last week, ISU was a month ahead of Eastern in the process.

“You could debate that on both sides,” said Stan Ommen, ISU search committee co-chair, of offering Hencken the job without a search. “I think that the search process serves some good because you’re getting your faculty and other people involved, and you’re seeing who is available.”

Eastern’s presidential search was suspended Tuesday after the Board of Trustees voted 6-1 to offer interim President Hencken a two-year contract extension instead of conducting a nationwide search.

Ommen said last week the first wave of applications for their next president will be “shipped over any day now” from their search consulting firm, AT Carney.

ISU interim President Al Bowman will be one of those applicants.

Although he has a doctoral degree and progressed through the ranks as a faculty member, Bowman believed those attributes are not needed to be a “modern president.” At Eastern, faculty argued about Hencken’s lack of a doctoral degree and experience in the classroom. He is teaching this semester.

Bowman said the modern president spends a majority of his or her time dealing with external affairs via fund raising or dealing with legislators. The academic side, he said, is handled by the provost at more universities.

“I spend a lot of time, and I’m sure Lou spends a lot of time, with the local legislators that serve the district,” Bowman, interim president since June 1, said. “I also think that even though the provost is managing the day-to-day affairs of the academic side, the president does play a role, and I think that role includes helping guide strategic planning and communicating to external audiences the direction of the institution.”

Hencken has publicly said many times he defers to Blair Lord, Eastern’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, concerning the university’s academic affairs.

Tuesday, Eastern BOT Chair Nate Anderson said the decision to end the search for a new candidate and stick with Hencken was made for two primary reasons:

u For stability at the presidential position in lieu of the 2005 North Central Accreditation, an evaluation that allows the university to remain qualified for student financial aid, and maintain the ability to transfer and accept academic credit hours.

u The current financial state of the university, like that of most public higher education institutions across the state, experienced an 8.2 percent decrease in state appropriation money from Fiscal Year 2003 to FY 04, a reduction of $4.2 million at Eastern.

To make up for the losses, Hencken proposed a 9.5 percent tuition increase, which was accepted by the BOT.

That experience with the budget is something Bowman, Ommen and Eastern’s BOT members hold with high esteem.

“I think Lou has an advantage over presidents who have been brought to campuses, even without any academic background, because he has lived his entire career on a college campus,” Bowman said.

Eastern BOT members said they had to make a decision whether to continue the search Tuesday, otherwise the search would fall behind schedule.

Betsy Mitchell, Presidential Search Committee chair and BOT vice chair, said this Wednesday was the committee’s deadline to decide whether to advertise the presidential position.

Assuming the ad was placed in the Oct. 3 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly newspaper that covers a variety of higher education issues, notification for top applicants for Eastern’s position would be more than a month behind ISU’s.

ISU, in Bloomington-Normal, first advertised its presidential opening in the Aug. 15 edition of the chronicle.

“We’re really just getting started,” Ommen, also an ISU BOT member, said. “We’ve had several meetings for the search committee.”

Ommen said after the 18-member search committee was formed, it decided to hire the help of AT Carney, a professional search consultation service. Ommen said once the job applications were received, search committee members would provide individual ratings of each candidate.

From those interpretive figures, the search committee will hold off-campus interviews with a selected number of the applicants. The same process will be repeated but with a final pool of “three to five” candidates for on-campus interviews, Ommen said.

Eastern followed a similar path during its 2001 search that was unsuccessful after the university’s top choice took a position at the University of West Florida. Hencken, who had assumed interim president roles Aug. 1, 1999, was offered another two-year extension.

This extension, however, will drop the interim from Hencken’s title, as the 36-year Eastern employee will serve as the university’s ninth full-time president. The contract will be slated for approval at the Nov. 7 BOT meeting.

To Bowman, his colleague at Eastern is the definition of the modern president.

“Historically, presidents typically have had Ph. D’s,” he said. “And on campuses where they’ve hired presidents with no Ph. D’s or not in academic background, the faculty have been happy as long as that president understands the academic enterprise.”

“You would want a person in Lou’s position to respect the faculty as the most important voice on campus, and to respect their role in governance.”