2 IU board of trustee members do not expect to be reappointed

The IU board of trustees will meet Aug. 17 with no president and four open trustee positions because Gov. Mitch Daniels has not made his appointments to the board.\nThe Nomination Committee, which is responsible for nominating the leaders of the board, picked Patrick Shoulders, trustee vice president and committee chair, to continue his term as vice president so that he can stand in as president in case no appointments are made by the time of the first board meeting.\nThe committee consists of Shoulders and trustees Thomas Reilly Jr., Dr. William Cast and Dr. Philip Eskew Jr. The committee met via conference call Wednesday, with a general agreement to hold off the nomination for the presidential candidate, in hopes that Stephen Ferguson, whose term expired July 1, will be reappointed by Daniels so he can serve as board president again.\nIn addition to Ferguson, the board is waiting for word from the governor about whether replacements for student trustee Casey Cox, Jeffrey Cohen and Dr. Clarence Boone. Boone and Cohen do not expect to be reappointed by the governor because they were picked by Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan, University Chancellor Ken Gros Louis told the Indiana Daily Student in July.\nUnder trustee bylaws, nominations for the offices of president, vice president, secretary and treasurer must be made at least 10 days prior to the first scheduled meeting.\nShoulders said if Ferguson is reappointed by Daniels, he will likely be nominated at the first meeting. The committee’s solution to the leadership problem came at Cast’s suggestion.\n“There is a lot of feeling that the board and the officers who selected our new president, who just took office July 1, may want to continue in place so there’s a nice transition in place of support for President McRobbie,” Shoulders said.\nSome trustees are worried that Daniels’ tardiness could be holding up progress for the University. Trustee Sue Talbot said it is important to the people who “keep the wheels of the University turning” to know who the board members are.\n“The timeline is a little lengthy, and certainly people are concerned that it hasn’t been done yet,” Talbot said.\nShoulders said during the conference call that the committee had the only other options of either doing nothing or waiting until the very last minute, Aug. 7, to see if Daniels had made appointments yet.\nThe Nomination Committee also slated Robyn Gress to continue as Board Secretary, University Counsel Dorothy Frapwell to continue as Assistant Board Secretary and MaryFrances McCourt as Board Treasurer.\nThe committee hopes these provisional appointments will allow the board to keep working.\n“If, say, the governor does not appoint anybody for a prolonged period of time of 10 days or 30 days, by taking this action we have permitted ourselves to continue to function,” Reilly said.\nBrad Rateike, a spokesman for the governor’s office, would not comment on a timeline for the appointments and only said, “The governor is taking great care to appoint qualified people to lead the University.”