Lawmakers advance bill that could keep university president finalist names secret

DES MOINES — Two years after changing Iowa Code to strip presidential-selection power from members of a university community, Republican legislators want to rewrite that amendment to clarify their intentions — after a recent Iowa State University search concerned some lawmakers.

“The whole process is incredibly flawed,” Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, told The Gazette earlier this month in advance of the new legislative session and his sponsorship of House Study Bill 538, which takes a red pen to the two-year-old Senate File 2435 amendment.

“We already made changes two years ago to make sure only regents voted and they kind of got around that by taking the consensus route,” Collins said.

The 2024 amendment stated, “When electing a president of an institution of higher learning, the board may use a presidential selection committee” but “only members of the (Board of Regents) shall serve as voting members of a presidential selection committee.”

Keywords nixed with proposed HSB 538 are “may” and “voting.”

Per the proposed edits under consideration this session, only regents would be allowed to serve on a presidential selection committee that would be required to whittle down candidates for any presidential vacancy at one of Iowa’s public universities.

This change would exclude the many campus community members traditionally invited to serve on presidential search committees — including faculty and staff, student leaders, and members of the public.

That’s concerning to Rep. Heather Matson, D-Ankeny, who during a subcommittee discussion on the bill Thursday said “All aspects of America are shared governance.”

“It’s how we ensure a variety of perspectives and experiences in big decisions,” she said. “If we push out members of a faculty senate, students, alumni and community partners in the presidential selection process, then we are diminishing the power of partnerships and civic engagement.”

Plus, she said, when only regents are included in the hiring process, they run the risk of tunnel vision.

“They simply don’t have the experiences of what it is like to work or study in that university’s culture,” she said.

The committee, according to the study bill, still could use a search firm. But — flouting what has become standard practice in Iowa public university presidential searches for decades — the bill would keep the identities of any candidates being considered confidential “unless the identity of the candidate is made public pursuant to the terms of a written agreement entered into between all members of the committee and the candidate.”

Current practice keeps applicant and candidate identities private until the finalist stage — when three or four top prospects typically visit campus to participate in public forums.

The public aspect of Iowa university presidential searches came up last year during Iowa State University’s presidential search, which netted 78 applicants. From those 78 applicants, a 12-member search committee — consisting of four regents, two ISU students, three ISU faculty, two ISU alumni, and one ISU staffer — chose eight confidential semifinalists to interview in closed session.

From those eight, the search committee — by group consensus rather than vote of just the regents on the committee, as required by law — identified four finalists they wanted to introduce publicly in Ames.

But two of the finalists dropped out before their names were released — leaving the ISU community with just two to pick from:

Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Benjamin Houlton — who holds rank as an ecology and evolutionary biology professor — and North Dakota State University President David Cook, who regents unanimously chose in November to succeed outgoing ISU President Wendy Wintersteen on March 1.

“The problem with having an open process is you oftentimes have individuals who are current university presidents,” Collins said Thursday during a subcommittee discussion on the bill. “Oftentimes … they're individuals from smaller colleges. And it's a little bit of an awkward situation when you have university presidents who are going to interview for another university president job, and there's a chance they don't get the job, and they have to go back to their campus where they came from and put their tail between their legs. So that's part of the problem we’re running in too.”

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Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com