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Out of the 50 applicants for the University of Maine’s presidency, only five were women and one a minority.
The names of the final candidates for the presidency, which will be vacated by Robert Kennedy in June, are the only ones publicized — the rest are kept strictly confidential except for demographic breakdowns.
Four applicants’ materials were immediately thrown out due to tardiness, narrowing the pool of candidates actually considered for the post to 46.
Out of the initial group of 50, nine candidates — including the minority candidate, but no women — were selected for preliminary interviews.
After that, the candidates were ranked by the presidential search committee led by system board of trustees member Ellie Baker and four were invited for campus visits.
Those four candidates — the current president of New Jersey’s Rowan University, Donald Farish; Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Provost and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Paul Ferguson; Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Alaska System of Higher Education Daniel Julius; and James Page, the CEO of Old Town’s James W. Sewall Company — are currently being considered for the presidency.
All are white men who have completed their campus visits. An announcement of the final decision from University of Maine System Chancellor Richard Pattenaude is expected before the end of March. The Board of Trustees must approve the candidate.
The minority candidate, according to System Spokeswoman Peggy Markson, was ranked fifth on the list, meaning that unnamed person would be invited if any of the top four candidates dropped out.
Markson said three of the 50 applicants were UMaine employees spanning “both faculty and administration,” including Page, an adjunct professor of philosophy. Provost Susan Hunter also confirmed her application Sunday in an e-mail to The Maine Campus.
“I was a candidate early in the process, but I have not been involved in the search for quite some time now,” Hunter wrote.
Peter Jumars, director of the UMaine School of Marine Sciences, said he talked personally with search consultant and former System Chancellor Terry MacTaggart regarding the search.
“It was just brainstorming. Lots of good things were suggested. [I have] no idea what the list they chose from [was],” Jumars said. “I’m disappointed that no women or minority made it on the [final] list.”
Jumars said he suggested two female candidates — Hunter and Dean of the University of Delaware’s College of Marine Studies Nancy Targett.
“Sue Hunter is way better than any of these four candidates,” he said.
Kennedy was UMaine’s provost before being selected for the presidency in 2004.
Ann Schonberger, director of UMaine’s women’s studies program, declined comment on the search, citing a lack of knowledge about the process, but said UMaine must strive to be attractive to potential female administrators.
“It certainly seems that we ought to be able to be more attractive to women candidates,” she said. “Why specifically that didn’t work out for the UM search, I don’t know.”
The “charge to the committee,” posted on UMaine’s website, says the search committee must “ensure that the process is open to persons of diverse backgrounds in conformance with all Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action guidelines.”
A UMaine associate professor, speaking under conditions of anonymity, criticized the search process.
“It wasn’t conducted in a manner by which they actually had the charge to do,” the professor said. “If you look at the charge, point three says to conduct a diverse search … and they didn’t do that. They didn’t even try. From that perspective, I don’t know why the search was allowed to go on like that.”
Markson said diversity was a priority of the search committee, but many women approached by search officials did not apply.
“It’s not like the effort wasn’t there,” Markson said.
She said MacTaggart personally contacted a number of people and invited them to apply. Two were women who declined application.
Also, Markson said, the State Higher Education Executive Officers association, a Colorado-based group consisting of many lead executives in higher education, was contacted to nominate 30 people for the position. Seven of those candidates were women who also declined to apply.
The position was advertised in both print and online ads in The Chronicle of Higher Education and strictly online with publications such as Inside Higher Education, Higher Ed Jobs, Women in Higher Education, Diverse, Hispanic Outlook and The Bangor Daily News, Markson said. The position was also posted on the system and UMaine websites.
“We encourage applications from qualified women and members of diverse racial/ethnic groups and provide reasonable accommodations in the application process upon request,” the job posting said.
According to a 2007 report from The American Council on Education, 13 percent of presidents of American doctoral-granting institutions and 23 percent overall were, in 2006, women.
Four out of seven university presidents in the University of Maine System are women — Theodora Kalikow of the University of Maine at Farmington, Allyson Hughes Handley of the University of Maine at Augusta, Selma Botman of the University of Southern Maine and Cynthia Huggins of the University of Maine at Machias.
