Blackburn: FSU's search for president may be back on track

Blackburn: FSU's search for president may be back on track


"Now, with a new search firm, there's a feeling that there's a sense of normalcy has returned to the process. Some faculty and students still question the makeup of the search committee, mostly because their colleagues represent less than one-third of the 27-person panel, but there's no reason to expect that Allan Bense, chairman of FSU's trustee board, will make changes to the committee.
It seems a given that Thrasher, a well-connected state senator who chairs Gov. Rick Scott's re-election campaign, will be one of the three finalists. Thrasher, 70, has been considered a front-runner for the position since mid-February, when Eric Barron accepted the president's job at Penn State.
He would not be the first politician to be picked for the top job at a major research university. Mitch Daniels had been governor of Indiana for eight years before he was hired as Purdue's president last year.
Thrasher has steered hundreds of millions to FSU and other members of the State University System, but he has also been a lightning rod for controversy. The most recent example came on April 2, when without warning he introduced an item into the Senate budget that would provide $13 million for FSU to develop an engineering school, putting an end to the decades-old partnership FSU has had with Florida A&M. The Senate approved the measure, but it did not make it into the final budget.
FSU officials, it should be noted, welcomed the opportunity to have a separate engineering school. It's needed, they say, to make FSU a candidate for an invitation to the prestigious Association of American Universities.
But Thrasher's move also threatened to undo whatever goodwill Barron and his team had developed with FAMU during the past four years.
Professors and students have spoken out against a Thrasher presidency. They have made it clear they want someone from their world and not government to be in charge of FSU.
Thrasher would have to do a Herculean job of fence-mending with FSU's faculty when he is invited on campus to meet with the the university's constituents prior to the search committee's final decision. Many doubt that is possible.
What should happen, to provide much-Fneeded transparency to the search committee's work, is for each member to clearly explain their relationship to Thrasher before they begin interviewing him. Be open. Be honest. And be fair. Anything less would be wrong."