RALEIGH – Three members of the UNC Board of Governors participated in a town hall-type of meeting with members of the Capital Area Republican Club Tuesday night. Although a wide variety of topics were covered, most of the discussion centered on the search for a new UNC president.
Brent Barringer, Frank Grainger, and Peter Hans discussed the candidate search in general as well as the candidacy of Erskine Bowles in particular during their presentations. All three said that the board would consider all candidates, but with the media and politicians getting behind Bowles it was making it hard to conduct a search. Those same sentiments were expressed by Board of Governors Chair Brad Wilson during the board’s regular meeting earlier this month.
“There are only so many potential candidates,” Hans said. “The search for a new president is wide open.”
In April, current President Molly Broad announced her plans to retire and the end of the current academic calendar or when a replacement had been named. Since then Bowles, a former Clinton Administration Chief of Staff and two-time Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, has made it known he would like the position and has met with UNC leaders such as former president Bill Friday. Bowles has also appeared to receive the endorsements from leaders of both parties in the General Assembly, including Sen. Marc Basnight.
“I think these guys have a hard job not to hire the guy when the people who are cutting the checks are telling you to hire the person,” Grainger said about Bowles.
Grainger said another strain on the search is that most of it is being done in the public view. He said that the search should be private and that even the names of the top three candidates shouldn’t be released to the public.
“That scares off a lot of people,” Grainger explained.
Board members recently put together a 12-page leadership summary detailing what they are looking for in a new president. It was approved during the previous meeting.
“We’re basically looking for someone who can walk on water,” Hans joked.
The three also discussed the roles of the 16 universities, especially that of UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State. Each said that he was concerned about a perceived drop in quality at the two schools. Grainger said that was partly because Broad had a mission to bring the other 14 institutions up to the same level as UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State.
“They are missing their missions,” Grainger said about the other institutions. “We need to get back to making sure that Carolina and NC State are the best they can be.”
Barringer said a lot of the problem is mission creep with schools seeking to do more than what they are capable of doing. One example he mentioned during the discussion was the creation of a pharmacy school at Elizabeth City State University. Board members said that the more logical place to have started a new pharmacy school would have been East Carolina University because it already has a medical school.
“It becomes so political that we don’t think of the follow through,” Grainger said. “We have got to realize what we are doing.”
Board members also discussed how they were elected to the board. Each said that he approached legislators to secure support. Grainger, the longest serving of the three, said that the process has changed since he first arrived. At first, Grainger had to do what he considered a “door-to-door campaign” talking to each legislator prior to an election. Now, he said, the process is an appointment made by the leadership.
“It was really a political machine to get elected,” Grainger said of his first election. “I’m not sure that the process we go through today is much better.”
Shannon Blosser (sblosser@popecenter.org) is a staff writer with the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Chapel Hill.