University
of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly appointed a committee last week that
will begin the search for a new UW-Madison chancellor.

Reilly
announced a 23-member search-and-screen committee to narrow down a list of
possible candidates for the position opening when current chancellor John Wiley
steps down in September.

The
committee will include 12 faculty members, two academic staff members, one classified
staff member and one campus dean. There will also be four community
representatives, one UW System administration staff member and two student
representatives who will be announced before Jan. 25.

Marsha
Mailick Seltzer, UW professor of social work and pediatrics, will chair the
committee.

?The
committee will probably look for candidates through traditional means of
advertising like in the Chronicle of Higher Education,? UW System spokesperson
David Giroux said. ?But because UW-Madison is such a prestigious institution,
word will get out pretty quickly. We will also go after highly qualified
leaders elsewhere and encourage them to apply. This is a search, but also a
recruiting process.?

Students
interested in participating in the committee are currently being reviewed by Associated
Students of Madison Chair Gestina Sewell and Shared Governance Committee Chair
Jeffrey Wright.

?[These
student representatives] can have as big of a role as they want,? said Regent
David Walsh, chair of the committee. ?They can say anything they want, and I am
sure they will have an equal vote.?

But Wright
said it is still hard to say how much impact the student representatives will
have on the final decision, given the student to non-student ratio in the
committee.

?There
will be 23 members on the search-and-screen committee this year, and two of
them are students,? Wright said. ?When Wiley was selected (in 2000) there were
21 members with two students. It is a concern because the committee has
expanded, and we aren?t sure why two more members were added and at least one
wasn?t a student.?

Wright
said he hoped to have four or five students in the search-and screen-committee,
but ASM was unable to expand the size of the committee to accommodate more
students.

?Ideally,
we would like to have one grad student and one undergraduate student, but it
really depends on who is interested in the position,? Wright said. ?And it?s
really important to have students who will be vocal and who will highlight what
is important to the student body as a whole.?

The
committee plans to have a meeting in the next couple weeks to further discuss
what they would like to see in the new chancellor, the needs and concerns of
the student body and assess where UW is going and where it needs to go, Wright
said.

Once the
committee has narrowed down a list of five possible candidates for the
chancellor position, a small group of regents will conduct interviews, chaired
by Walsh.

The
special regents committee will then select one candidate and recommend him or
her to the full Board of Regents.

The search
for the new chancellor will be a lengthy process, Giroux said, due to the
diversity of groups being represented on the committee.

?I think
the committee will be looking for someone who understands shared governance,
and that they need to share the governance with all constituencies,? Walsh
said. ?They need to have a good understanding of Wisconsin?s ideals and the
history of the university. They should also have lots of enthusiasm and be a
good fundraiser.?