Daily Egyptian DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 2015
SINCE 1916
VOL. 99 ISSUE 46
Finalists announced in chancellor search Luke Nozicka | @LukeNozicka The university announced the top four candidates for the chancellor vacancy on Tuesday. In addition to presiding over three campuses, President Randy Dunn assumed chancellor duties following the November death of interim Chancellor Paul Sarvela — who changed campus policies to decentralize decision making during his four months in Anthony Hall. The 18-person chancellor search committee — chaired by Carl Flowers, director of the Rehabilitation Institute, and Meera Komarraju, chairwoman of the Department of Psychology — conducted Skype interviews with potential candidates last week. The finalists, who are listed below, will be invited to campus for open forum interviews. In the SIU press release, Dunn said he hopes to have a full-time chancellor appointed by the beginning of the fall semester. “All of the finalists are currently sitting provosts with experience overseeing academic initiatives and serving in multiple university roles,” according to the SIU press release. “Interview dates are being finalized.” Susan Ford Susan Ford, who was named interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs on Aug. 4, is the only internal candidate for the position. When she was appointed provost duties in August, Ford — who has worked at SIU for more than 35 years — said she expected to retire in January. During a phone interview Tuesday,
Susan Ford
Sabah U. Randhawa
Ford said she did not consider applying for the position until she had been nominated for it. “I had a lot of conversations with my family because I had planned to move to retirement to have more time to spend with my family, including my elderly father, and they really encouraged me to go ahead and apply,” she said. “So that made me more comfortable about changing my plans.” Ford, who chaired the search committee that recommended Chancellor Fernando M. Treviño to President Glenn Poshard in 2007, said she is fairly familiar with what the chancellor position entails. “Because president Dunn is trying to serve both roles at the same time, it means that those of us here in Anthony Hall fill in... to try to keep things moving forward when he’s not able to be physically here and as engaged,” said Ford, who has worked with several of the campus’ chancellors. During the four months Ford and
Pam Benoit
Sarvela worked closely together, they changed more than 20 campus policies. The two made it so retired faculty can be rehired and principal investigators of a grant can be in charge of the money they’ve been awarded. They also decreased the cost per credit hour for military students who attend the university, from $350 to $250. Ford helped change policy so students can work up to 37.5 hours a week when school is not in session for at least five days, including summer semesters, although the 20-hour cap still applies for fall and spring semesters. “I think we’re on a good track,” said Ford, who, if chosen for the position, would select an interim provost to serve until a full-time one is appointed. “The first order of any chancellor is going to be thinking about how we shape the university to deal with whatever new fiscal reality we have after the state decides on a budget going forward.” Her two children graduated from SIU, which she has said gave her new
Lawrence Schovanec perspectives about the university. “I’ve seen the university from admissions to commencement through the perspective of a parent of two students and I got to know their friends really well when they were students on campus,” Ford said in August. “So I really got to see what happens on this campus through the lens of a student.” She was appointed interim dean of the Graduate School in December 2012 after working as a full-time employee at the university since 1980, the same year she received her doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. She was a visiting professor in 1979, an assistant professor from 1980 to 1986, an associate professor from 1986 to 2012 and a professor in early 2012, according to an SIU press release from 2012. She was also chair of the Department of Anthropology from 2005 to 2011. “This institution has been very good to me in my professional career and I just look forward to being able to serve it in whatever ways I can,” she said.
Sabah U. Randhawa Sabah U. Randhawa, who was named provost and executive vice president of Oregon State University in 2005, served twice as interim provost, once for nine months in 2002 and 2003. In March 2014, Randhawa told the New York Times that he wanted to expand a program on his campus called Into Oregon State. According to the Times’ piece, headlined “Universities Try a Cultural Bridge to Lure Foreign Students,” the program fits international students — most from China who study engineering — “into a fast-growing and lucrative niche in higher education, of efforts to increase enrollment of foreigners with transitional programs to bridge the cultural divide — often a chasm — between what it means to be a college student in their own countries and in the United States.” Randhawa told the Times that the program — which “prepares students to move into the university’s mainstream after a year, as Oregon State sophomores” — is a wonderful source of revenue. “It helps us afford to admit more resident students, offer them more aid, expand the faculty and infrastructure,” he said in the Times report. Oregon State has doubled its number of international students since the program began. “I think it’s absolutely critical for folks to know different cultures and understand the world,” Randhawa told the Times, saying his next goal is to increase the number of students who study abroad. Please see CHANCELLOR | 3
Debate continues in controversial levee project HeatHer cacHoLa | @HeatherCachola
Changes planned for a Mississippi River levee nearly 100 miles away from Carbondale are sparking debate between environmental and economic interests. The issue is flooding in an area known as the New Madrid Floodway, and whether a levee should be extended and a pumping station built to protect farmland — or if the space should be allowed to flood, as it does annually, creating a wetland. Jonathan Remo, an assistant professor in the biology department, is familiar with the issue Remo said the floodplain’s water level varies from year to year, making it hard for farmers to predict the condition of the land. But a levee
would destroy the ecosystem that comes from the floods. During the last 64 years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has repeatedly attempted to construct a levee and pumping station between the New Madrid Floodway and the Mississippi River. The estimated cost of this project is $16.5 million, according to the Corps’ website. Before the Corps can devise an overall plan, however, an environmental impact statement must be prepared and released. This statement evaluates possible effects on the environment as a result of the proposed action and forms a plan to mitigate these problems. This process is estimated to be complete this summer,
M arat t sabLiNov | Daily Egyptian
at the earliest. “At the lower portion of the floodway next to New Madrid, Mo., there has been a 1,500-foot ‘gap’ in the levee that allows Mississippi River water to temporarily back up into the
lower floodway when water levels in the river get high,” said Jim Garvey, the director of the Center for Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences. Discussions among farmers, the Corps of Engineers and
environmentalists will help determine whether the decision to close this gap in the lower floodway to protect farmland outweighs the possible negative effects to the ecosystem. The area is also designed to be a catch basin if the river level is high enough to threaten nearby communities, as it did in 2011 for the city of Cairo. The 135,850-acre floodplain has only been allowed to completely flood three times in the last 75 years. According to the National Wildlife Federation website, one of those times was in 2011 when the Army Cops of Engineers opened the levee, saving the historic Cairo from massive flooding. For more on this story, please see www.dailyegyptian.com
@daiLyegyptiaN Voting for the USG president and student trustee ends today at 5 p.m. Visit our website for details on the candidates.