President Hall applies for Tennessee job
Utah State University President Kermit L. Hall is one of 12 candidates for the president’s job at the University of Tennessee.
A list of 47 candidates – that originally included Hall’s predecessor George Emert as well – was narrowed Monday afternoon by the Tennessee Presidential Search Committee.
USU Executive Director of Public Relations and Marketing John DeVilbiss confirmed that Hall had put his name in for the Tennessee job, but said that Hall is still committed to Utah State.
Hall has been attending meetings in Washington, D.C. and was unavailable for comment, DeVilbiss said.
Margaret Perry, executive director of the search, said she hasn’t spoken with Hall yet, but had heard good things about him.
“I understand that he is a very fine president and is very well thought of,” Perry said.
A move to Tennessee would bring a substantial pay raise for Hall, who earns $215,000 a year at USU. According to the presidential search Web site, the Tennessee president would be paid between $400,000 and $500,000 a year and receive housing and a vehicle.
The next step in the process is to interview the 12 candidates. Perry said the interviews will be open to the public and will be webcast at http://pr.tennessee.edu/presidentialsearch.
“This is the first time we’ve had a webcast of the entire process,” Perry said. “This is the first time the entire process has been open.”
Perry said the response to the open search process from the Tennessee media and the public has been tremendous.
According to the presidential search Web site, the list of candidates was going to be narrowed down to 10 or fewer on Monday, but 12 were chosen.
“We said all along that we were talking about probably going with 10 or more in order to assure that we didn’t have some dropouts in our process,” Perry said. “We’ve had a very good group of candidates.”
After next week’s interviews, which will be held in Knoxville on the 13th through 15th, the committee will recommend between four and six candidates. From those interviews, three final candidates will be selected and interviewed on the 21, with the new president being announced that day.
The new University of Tennessee president is scheduled to take office on July 1.
-str@cc.usu.edu