Search for Khayat's replacement underway

Amy Whitten, left, listens as an Ole Miss staff member gives input on the search for a new chancellor.

The search for a replacement for Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat is officially underway. The state’s College Board met in Oxford on Tuesday for a listening session with faculty, staff and students. MPB’s Cari Gervin has this report.

If everyone at the University of Mississippi placed a classified ad for the new chancellor, it might go something like this:

Wanted: an academically minded man - or woman - with a business background who cares about both undergraduate and graduate education. Must love sports, art, science, medicine and the environment. Friendly personality required!

Members of the Ole Miss community listed those qualifications over and over in a series of sparsely attended meetings on Tuesday. The College Board search committee listened attentively as individuals described their ideal chancellor.

Still, one issue stood out – money, and the need for the next chancellor to raise a lot of it. Amy Whitten is the chair of the search committee. She told the audience that fundraising ability would be key.

“That would have been important before the economic downtown. It’s indispensible now. I don’t know that we have a particular litmus test for the level of experience that somebody has had with fundraising, but it would be doubtful to me that we could consider a candidate who did not have a proven record of strong fundraising in a public university setting like this."

The committee will now hire a search firm to select top candidates. Whitten said she hopes to name Khayat’s replacement by May.

For MPB News, I’m Cari Gervin in Oxford.