Herbert pressured to pick chancellor

RICHMOND, Ind. - The board of trustees Friday pressured IU President Adam Herbert to name a permanent chancellor for the Bloomington campus.\nIn a unanimous resolution passed at IU-East, the board supported Herbert's decision to reopen the chancellor search but told him to "expedite the search process with the intent of filling the position as early as possible." Trustees said they hoped the search committee, headed by former School of Journalism Dean Trevor Brown, would find and recommend at least one suitable candidate by Jan. 1. \n"We want to have a candidate by the first or second week of January and that's a statement that the board is laying down as a message that it wants this thing done," trustee Thomas Reilly Jr. said.\nTrustees also voiced discontent about the length of time the search committee took to recommend its first list of candidates. IUB has not had a permanent chancellor since Sharon Brehm resigned in October 2003. Former chancellor Ken Gros Louis has filled the position on an interim basis for the last two years.\n"The board also believes that it is not in the best interest of IU to extend what has become a long and cumbersome process," trustee president Stephen Ferguson told the board. "We do not have to wait another six months to conclude this search."\nThe trustees said the University is making progress, but believe a permanent chancellor would be more effective for long-range planning.\n"A person who is in a more long-term position can look at (long-range planning) in a more longitudinal way than a person who is interim who knows that there is an end coming," trustee Sue Talbot said.\nHerbert refused to speak to any specific criticisms against him by many faculty members. He also declined to speak to the faculty's anger with his decision not to appoint College of Arts and Sciences Dean Kumble Subbaswamy as chancellor and refused to say whether Subbaswamy was even a candidate for the search, despite previous confirmations by those close to the search process.\nSee Monday's IDS for a full story.